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Hi, I'm Oli. I'm a teacher from Oxford Online English, and today we have a grammar lesson
about the word 'the.' 'The'
us a very complicated word. If your language has a word like 'the,' then congratulations,
you probably don't need this
lesson. But, if your language does not use a word like 'the,' then learning to use 'the'
correctly can be one of the
most difficult things about learning English. In this class, I'm not going to show you every
way to use 'the,' because
that would take all day. But, I will give you some simple advice, which will make it
easier to remember how to use
'the' correctly in English. The first thing to remember is that there are tens, or maybe
even hundreds of rules about
using 'the.' And, every rule has several exceptions. It's better not to think about rules when
you're thinking about
'the.' Use them if they're useful, forget them if they're not. Otherwise you'll just
get more confused. So, let's
start with what 'the' means. Have you ever thought about this? What job does 'the' do
in a sentence, and why do we
need it? So for example, if I say: "the book is on the shelf," why do I use 'the' in that
sentence. When we use 'the'
before a noun, we mean we are talking about one specific thing, or group of things. 'The'
is a pointing word. It
answers the question "which one...?" in the same way that words like 'this' and 'that'
do. So for example, if I say:
"I like apples," I mean: I like apples in general - all apples. If I say: "Give me an
apple," again, it's not
specific. I mean: give me one apple, I don't mind which one. But if I say: "Give me the
red apple," I use 'the'
because I'm talking about one particular apple that I want. I don't want any other apple;
I want that one! So, 'the'
means we're talking about a specific thing or group of things. Let's look at some more
examples of this. So we use
'the' when there is only one of something. For example: "The Eiffel Tower." There's only
one Eiffel Tower. "The
richest man in the world." You can't have two richest men in the world; there can only
be one. Or, "the moon." There's
only one moon. We also use 'the' if the person you're talking to will know which thing you're
talking about. So if I
say: "Put it on the table." Sure, there are many tables in the world. Perhaps there are
many tables in this room. But,
you know which table I mean, so I use 'the,' you can see it. Or if I say: "I'll meet you
outside the cinema at 8.00."
This means we've already talked about our plans. You know which cinema I'm talking about,
so I use 'the.' We also use
'the' to talk about specific types of thing with a general meaning. So for example, if
I say: "The computer has
changed the way business works." We say 'the computer' to mean all computers. 'The computer'
in this sentence, refers
to the idea or the type of the computer. Or, another example: "The English are famous for
their manners." We're
talking about all English people, as a group, so again, we use 'the.' Or, I can say: "The
wolf can be a dangerous
animal." So, again, I'm talking about all wolves as a group, not about one specific
wolf. If you want to learn to use
'the' correctly, you also need to learn when not to use it. We don't normally use 'the'
with talking about things in
general. So, I would say: "Big cities are more expensive," big cities in general. We
also don't use 'the' with
countries. We say: "Germany," we don't say "The Germany." Although, there are one or
two exceptions, like "The United
States," or "The UK." We don't use 'the' with cities, with people's names, with street names
or with company names. Using 'the' can also change the meaning of
a sentence, in some cases. So, let's look at two sentences, and see if you
can tell the difference. If I say: "He's at school," or "He's at the school." Both correct,
but they have different
meanings. Any ideas? Well, in this case, "school" means the idea of the place where you learn.
"The school" just means
the building, or the location. So, "he's at school" means he's a pupil, he goes to school
to study. "He's at the
school," means he's visiting for some other reason. Let's look at another example. If
I ask: "Do you like tea?" or "Do
you like the tea?" Again, both correct, but with different meanings. So: "Do you like
tea?" I mean in general; do you
like tea generally? "Do you like the tea?" means you're drinking some tea now, I'm asking
you if you like this
particular type of tea. So, this is just the beginning. There's so much you can learn about
'the,' and it's very
difficult. It's important to be patient if you're trying to learn to use 'the.' It will
take a long time to learn to
use it correctly if your language does not have 'the.' If you want some more practice,
you can read an article and do
some exercises which practise what we've talked about today. That's on our site: www.oxfordonlineenglish.com.
You can
also find many other free English lessons. So that's all for today. Thank you very much
for watching, and I'll see you
next time. Bye bye!