Correct or natural use of articles (the, a, an) is probably one of the most difficult things for learners of English to master. For example, why did I write "temperatures are highest" instead of "temperatures are the highest" in the essay I wrote last week? Click here to read an explanation.
There are many other complex 'rules' about article use in English, which grammar books and websites do their best to explain. I also recommend using Google in the way described below.
Task: try Googling the phrases "temperatures were highest" and "temperatures were the highest" (make sure you put the quotation marks so that Google searches for the whole phrase). Compare the number of search results to see which is more common, then look through the results to find good examples of full sentences for each phrase. You might find that good examples help you more than grammar rules do.
Hi Mr.Simon,
Thank you for your job
I wanted to ask you about a book i bought recently.
IELTS for academic purposes: 6 Academic practical tests.
i want to ask about the level of complexity of the book. i mean are the reading and listening tests in the book similar in hardness to those in the real exam?
thank you for your time.
Posted by: SAEED | November 29, 2012 at 16:45
Hi, Mr.Simon,
Thanks for your explaining.
I have checked the results from Google, but I found the number of search results were not discriminative significantly (695,000 v.s. 537,000), and it seems that the rule, when we put the noun before, we don't need "the", you mentioned before is still very common.
Hoping for your replying, and thank you for your time.
Posted by: James | November 29, 2012 at 23:52
Hi Saeed,
I'm afraid I haven't used that book. I only use tho official Cambridge IELTS books.
...
Hi James,
Yes, I suppose my point is that the 'rules' are often not the same as the reality. Google and other search engines offer us a great opportunity to check how languages are really used.
Posted by: Simon | November 30, 2012 at 11:31
Hi Simon
When i google "temperatures are the highest" instead of "temperatures were the highest", the result showed is much excess the result of "temperatures are highest". Can you please help me by explaining this difference?
Thanks much.
Posted by: tracybi | November 30, 2012 at 14:21
Hi Mr Simon
I would send you my own writing to you?can you correct it ?
Thak you.
Posted by: ALI | December 05, 2012 at 13:19
Dear Simon
I would like to ask you about this formula
Should we say:
A and B showed an increase of 10% over the period . Or
A and B showed increases of 10% over the period.
Please help me, I'm struggling to talk about this
Posted by: VU | December 06, 2012 at 02:08
max number of articles that can be used in the word limit of 80 words
Posted by: tanveer | March 01, 2017 at 12:32