ARTICLES

                                              

                                                 KAREN                                          JOHN

John:  I had a sandwich and an apple for lunch.

                 John says "a sandwich", "an apple" because this is the first time he talks about them.

Jhon: The sandwich wasn´t very good, but the apple was nice. 

  John now says "the sandwich", "the apple" because Karen knows which sandwich and which apple       he means - the sandwich and the apple he had for lunch.

  There are only three articles in English: a,  an,  and the.

  There are two types of articles: indefinite "a, an" and definite "the".

THE 

  The definite article the is the most frequent word in English.

  The definite article "THE" is the same for all genders in singular and in plural. Examples:     the boy, the girl, the cat.

  We use the definite article in front of a noun when we believe the hearer/reader            knows exactly what we are referring to.

• because there is only one:

The Pope is visiting Cuba.
The moon is very bright tonight.

 This is why we use the definite article with a superlative adjective:

He is the tallest boy in the class.
It is the oldest building in the town.

• because there is only one in that place or in those surroundings:

  We live in a town next to the Magdalena River.

 We use THE when we are thinking of one particular thing.

 Carlos sat down on the chair neraest the door. 

 We also use THE when it is clear in the situation which thing or person we mean. For    example in a room we talk about "the light" / "the floor" / "the ceiling"

 The definite article with names:

 We do not normally use the definite article with names:

William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet.
Paris is the capital of France.
Iran is in Asia.

 But we do use the definite article with:

• countries whose names include words like kingdom, states or republic:

the United Kingdom; the Kingdom of Nepal; the United States; the People’s Republic of China.

• countries which have plural nouns as their names:

the Netherlands; the Philippines

• geographical features, such as mountain ranges, groups of islands, rivers, seas, oceans and canals:

the Himalayas; the Canaries; the Atlantic; the Atlantic Ocean; the Amazon; the Panama Canal.

• newspapers:

The Times; The Washington Post

• well known buildings or works of art:

the Empire State Building; the Taj Mahal; the Mona Lisa; the Sunflowers

A    /     AN

 A and AN are indefinite articles. They refer to something not specifically known to the  person you are communicating with.

 A and AN are used before nouns that introduce something or someone you have not  mentioned before.
 Example: I ate a delicious strawberry.

 A and AN are also used when talking about professions.

Example: i am an English teacher.

We use A when the noun you are referring to begin with a consonant sound.

Example:    a pencil        a book        a newspaper

We use AN when the next words begins with a vowel sound.

Example:    an orange       an apple       an apricot
ACTIVITY
http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/exercises/nouns_articles/article_a2.htm

http://www.grammarbank.com/indefinite-articles.html

http://www.learnenglishfeelgood.com/eslvideo/esl_movieclip5.html#

Retrievaled by

http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar/determiners-and-quantifiers/definite-article

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