Articles and Determiners

Articles and determiners are words that we use in front of nouns to help us talk about them more clearly.

Articles are words like “a,” “an,” and “the.” We use “a” or “an” when we’re talking about something in general. For example, “a cat” could be any cat. But when we say “the cat,” we mean a specific cat that you already know about.Determiners are a bigger group that includes articles but also other words that help us point out which thing or things we are talking about. For example, “my,” “this,” “some,” and “three” are determiners. If I say “my apple,” you know it’s the apple that belongs to me. If I say “three apples,” you know I’m talking about exactly three apples.So, articles and determiners are like little helpers that make it clear which things we’re talking about when we use nouns.

Here are three examples demonstrating the use of articles, the ‘before’ sentences do not have an article and the ‘After’ sentences have the article included:

Before: She wants dog.
After: She wants a dog.

Before: They are going to park.
After: They are going to the park.

Before: I saw movie last night.
After: I saw a movie last night.

Now a longer sentence

Before: Sarah plans to adopt cat from shelter next weekend.

After: Sarah plans to adopt a cat from the shelter next weekend.

In English, there are only three articles you can use:

  1. a – Used before words that begin with a consonant sound. Example: a cat, a house.
  2. an – Used before words that begin with a vowel sound. Example: an apple, an umbrella.
  3. the – Used before both singular and plural nouns, and can be used with any noun regardless of its starting sound. Example: the cat, the houses, the apple.

Here are three examples demonstrating the use of determiners, the ‘before’ sentences do not have a determiner and the ‘After’ sentences have the determiner included:

Before: They bought house.
After: They bought that house.

Before: She needs pencils for school.
After: She needs some pencils for school.

Before: I like book you recommended.
After: I like the book you recommended.

Now a longer sentence

Before: We decided to take trip to mountains during summer vacation.

After: We decided to take a trip to the mountains during our summer vacation.

Here is a list of 15 determiners that you could try to use to include in your writing.


this
that
these
those
my
your
his
her
our
their
so
me
any
many
few
all