Are you someone who is generally a competent user of English and can manage to communicate in most everyday situations? However do you find that when, for example, preparing a presentation or writing a report for work, you really struggle to produce accurate sentences? Perhaps your boss has returned documents and asked you to correct your grammar.

You know that your vocabulary, grammar and use of English are generally adequate for most situations but you may often be tripped up by the use of just three little words which seem so simple yet can be so tricky to master.

In English, we often use the expression “three little words” when we’re talking about those three very important little words that each of one us really wants to hear from our special person, “I love you”!

However, three of the most commonly occurring words in the English language are, sadly, not “I love you “– the world would be a much, much nicer place if they were – but the words a, an and the. They are such apparently insignificant little words that native speakers are usually unaware that their use is governed by such a complicated set of rules.

They’re certainly easy to spell and are so easy for beginning readers to learn. However, before the age of about 2 years old children tend not to use them and only use simple commands “Look! Car!” or “Want drink!” The developing child naturally absorbs both the simple and complex rules of use without even being aware of them. Aren’t they lucky! However as a learner of the language, you unfortunately have to take the hard route it you want your proficiency in this area to develop or you will be left at a kind of babyish stage.

The definite article “the” and the indefinite article “a/an” are concepts which do not appear in every language. There is a spectrum ranging from languages which don’t use articles at all eg. Russian, Chinese, Japanese ( in fact most Asian languages), to languages such as French, Italian and Spanish, where nouns have a masculine or feminine gender assignment therefore a masculine or feminine version of the article, to German which has an additional neutral gender. English is in the middle, so if you are struggling with English articles you can comfort yourself with the knowledge that learning them in English is so much easier than it would be in French or German! If your mother tongue already uses articles, you have a BIG advantage when learning English as this concept will not be new to you. However, if your mother tongue does not have the concept of articles you will find it strange, unfamiliar and will need to constantly remind yourself to use them.

“But” you might say, “how important can they be really, and does it matter if I don’t use them?” For sure, if you don’t use them, native speakers will be able to understand you although not using them or faulty use of them may cause a bit of confusion at times. There have even been arguments that in the area of international business, where people are communicating in English with other non-native speakers, the use of articles should be abandoned because everybody understands each other anyway so why bother? The fact remains that if you want other native English speakers to see you as a fluent and accurate user of their language, then missing articles will immediately identify you as an outsider. It’s something that we really notice! Put simply, correct use of articles will separate out those who are truly proficient in the language from those who aren’t.

So there are a lot of rules: some simple and some more complicated. To get more accurate there are some key questions to ask yourself so I have designed a nice clear checklist to help you to choose articles correctly. If you would like to receive a free copy, please email me at info@checkingmyenglish.com and type ARTICLES in the subject line.