What Is an ARTICLE?  Part 1

In today's lesson we begin our unit on articles.  English abounds with the use of articles, and is challenging for many learners of English because of it.  So we begin with one simple question: What is an article? 

Sneak Preview

I used to like to set old newspapers on fire and blow the burning newspapers out.  Once I set a sofa bed on fire.  The sofa bed stood on the street next to my building and near the garbage cans.  The flames spread very quickly.  I tried to blow them out, but soon the sofa bed and all ofthe garbage was on fire.

What Is an Article?

The words a, an and the are known as articles.

Articles are often used before nouns and they provide important information about those nouns.

  • When I was pregnant, my husband made a phone call to the doctor and the doctor made an appointment for me to see him.

When you see an article, you will always see a noun following it (though not always immediately following it).  As a result, some linguists and teachers use the phrase noun determiner to describe the words a, an and the.

Beginners' Warmup

Warm-up 1A  The sentence below uses four articles. For each time an article is used, what is the noun that it accompanies, or determines? 

When I was pregnant, my husband made a phone call to the doctor and the doctor made an appointment for me to see him.

article (noun determiner) noun
1.  
2.  
3.  
4.  

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Next... What Is an Article? Part 2MORE!

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