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Research on Grammar

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The late Robert J. Connors once called it "the various bodies of knowledge and prejudice called 'grammar.'" For more on the knowledge part, see below:

Selected Research

Connors, robert j. "grammar in american college composition: an historical overview." the territory of language: linguistics, stylistics, and the teaching of composition. ed. donald a.mcquade. carbondale: southern illinois up, 1986. 3-22..

Robert J. Connors, who co-authored Andrea Lunsford's early research on the frequency of error, also studied the history of English grammar instruction in the United States. When did American schools switch from teaching Latin grammar to teaching English grammar? Who invented and popularized sentence-diagramming? How did the rise of structural linguistics in the 1950s affect ideas about grammar? In his inimitable style, Connors treated these questions and more.

Connors, Robert J., and Andrea A. Lunsford. "Frequency of Formal Errors in Current College Writing, or Ma and Pa Kettle Do Research." College Composition and Communication 39.4 (Dec. 1988): 395-409.

Hartwell, patrick. "grammar, grammars, and the teaching of grammar." college english 47.2 (1985): 105-127..

In this classic essay, Patrick Hartwell offers five definitions of grammar that elucidate the many ways the term gets used: from an internalized set of linguistic rules to a meta-awareness and stylistic choice.  His varied definitions suggest the co-existence of multiple literacies that undermine an approach to teaching grammar focused exclusively on correctness.

Lunsford, Andrea A. and Karen J. Lunsford. "'Mistakes Are a Fact of Life': A National Comparative Study."  College Composition and Communication 59.4 (Jun. 2008): 781-806.

Stanford's own Andrea Lunsford, Louise Hewett Nixon Professor of English, is a leader in the study of error in writing. Her long-term quantitative research has revealed shifting patterns of error as technologies and rhetorical situations change. Among Professor Lunsford's findings ( summarized in Top 20 form here ):

• Student papers today are longer and more complex than they were 20 years ago, yet there has been no significant increase in the overall rate of error.
• Although word-processing tools have advanced substantially, they are responsible for the most common error in student writing today: using the wrong word, spelled correctly.

Micciche, Laura. "Making a Case for Rhetorical Grammar." College Composition and Communication 55.4 (Jun. 2004): 716-737.

What do you think of when you think of the word "grammar"? Laura Micciche argues most people think of formal grammar: "Usually, our minds go to those unending rules and exceptions, those repetitive drills and worksheets..." (720). This formal grammar is "the deadly kind of grammar," the one that makes us anxious. Drawing on Martha Kolln's idea of "rhetorical grammar," Micciche argues that grammar doesn't have to be deadly: it can give a writer more powerful choices, and thus make writing and communicating more satisfying and more pleasurable.

Williams, Joseph M. "The Phenomenology of Error." College Composition and Communication 32.2 (May 1981): 152-168.

Why do some grammatical errors seem to cause so much venom and rage? Why is a misuse of the word "hopefully" considered an "atrocity"? Joseph M. Williams examined this question in this still-relevant 1981 article. Williams is also the author of Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace (Longman).

English for Academic Research: Grammar, Usage and Style

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• Includes hundreds of real-life examples
• Ideal study-guide for universities and research institutes
• Great tool for improving English language skills
• Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: English for Academic Research (EAR)

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Table of contents(29 chapters)

Front matter, nouns: plurals, countable versus uncountable.

Adrian Wallwork

Genitive: the possessive form of nouns

Indefinite article: a / an, definite article: the, zero article: no article, quantifiers: any, some, much, many, much, each, every etc., relative pronouns: that, which, who, whose, tenses: present, past, future, conditional forms: zero, first, second, third, passive versus active: impersonal versus personal forms, imperative, infinitive versus gerund (−ing form), modal verbs: can, may, could, should, must etc., link words (adverbs and conjunctions): also, although, but etc., adverbs and prepositions: already, yet, at, in, of etc., sentence length, conciseness, clarity and ambiguity, word order: nouns and verbs, word order: adverbs, word order: adjectives and past participles, comparative and superlative: -er, -est, irregular forms.

• English Grammar
• English Language Learners

This guide is based on a study of referees' reports and letters from journal editors on the reasons why papers written by non-native researchers are rejected due to problems with English usage, style and grammar. It draws on English-related errors from around 5000 papers written by non-native authors, 500 abstracts by PhD students, and over 1000 hours of teaching researchers how to write and present research papers.  

English for Academic Research: Usage, Style, and Grammar covers those areas of English usage that typically cause researchers difficulty: articles ( a/an, the ), uncountable nouns, tenses (e.g., simple present, simple past, present perfect ), modal verbs, active vs. passive form, relative clauses, infinitive vs. -ing form, the genitive, noun strings, link words (e.g., moreover, in addition ), quantifiers (e.g., each vs. every ), word order, prepositions, acronyms, abbreviations, numbers and measurements, punctuation, and spelling. Due to its focus on the specific errors that repeatedly appear in papers written by non-native authors, this manual is an ideal study guide for use in universities and research institutes.

  The book is cross-referenced with the following titles:

• English for Academic Research: Grammar Exercises

• English for Academic Research: Vocabulary Exercises

• English for Academic Research: Writing Exercises

• English for Writing Research Papers    

Adrian Wallwork is the author of more than 30 English Language Teaching (ELT) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) textbooks. He has trained several thousand PhD students and researchers from 40 countries to prepare and give presentations. Since 1984 he has been revising research manuscripts through his own proofreading and editing service.

Book Title : English for Academic Research: Grammar, Usage and Style

Authors : Adrian Wallwork

Series Title : English for Academic Research

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1593-0

Publisher : Springer New York, NY

eBook Packages : Humanities, Social Sciences and Law , Education (R0)

Copyright Information : Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

eBook ISBN : 978-1-4614-1593-0 Published: 26 October 2012

Series ISSN : 2625-3445

Series E-ISSN : 2625-3453

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XVI, 252

Number of Illustrations : 12 b/w illustrations

Topics : Language Education , Grammar , Professional & Vocational Education , Syntax

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Teaching and learning english grammar: research findings and future directions.

Edited by MaryAnn Christison, Donna Christian, Patricia A. Duff, and Nina Spada Published by  Routledge  and the International Research Foundation for English Language Education ( TIRF )

An important contribution to the emerging body of research-based knowledge about English grammar, this volume presents empirical studies along with syntheses and overviews of previous and ongoing work on the teaching and learning of grammar for learners of English as a second/foreign language. It explores a variety of approaches, including form-focused instruction, content and language integration, corpus-based lexicogrammatical approaches, and social perspectives on grammar instruction.

Nine chapter authors are Priority Research Grant or Doctoral Dissertation Grant awardees from The International Research Foundation for English Language Education (TIRF), and four overview chapters are written by well-known experts in English language education. Each research chapter addresses issues that motivated the research, the context of the research, data collection and analysis, findings and discussion, and implications for practice, policy, and future research. The TIRF-sponsored research was made possible by a generous gift from Betty Azar. This book honors her contributions to the field and recognizes her generosity in collaborating with TIRF to support research on English grammar.

Teaching and Learning English Grammar  is the second volume in the Global Research on Teaching and Learning English Series, co-published by Routledge and TIRF. 2015  236 pages

Order online from the publisher website . Enter code AF001 at checkout to receive a 20% discount.

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Graham Burton, Grammar, ELT Journal , Volume 74, Issue 2, April 2020, Pages 198–201, https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccaa004

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Most English language teachers are probably comfortable using the word ‘grammar’. There is an established grammatical tradition within ELT, and terms such as ‘tense’, ‘conditional form’, or ‘defining relative clause’ are likely to be familiar even to relatively inexperienced teachers. Grammar is often thought of as something reliable and predictable, but although the term is a keyword in the ELT profession, it is somewhat under-examined. A look at the word’s history reveals a perhaps surprising amount of variation and inconsistency.

The word ‘grammar’ comes originally from Ancient Greek grammatike (‘pertaining to letters/written language’). Grammar was one of the ‘liberal arts’ taught in Ancient Greece, and in Rome from around the fifth century BC, although at this time it was a wider area of study than today, including textual and aesthetic criticism and literary history. Its study continued in Europe in medieval times and beyond, with grammar being taught at schools alongside logic and rhetoric in what was known as the ‘trivium’. The tradition of studying the grammar of English in British schools did not emerge until the 16th century ( Howatt with Widdowson 2004 : 77)—until then, studying grammar at school meant studying Latin or Ancient Greek, not vernacular languages. Indeed, the first grammar of English, Bullokar’s Pamphlet for Grammar (1586), is said to have been written to demonstrate that the English language was in fact rule-based and could be analysed in the same way as Latin ( Linn 2006 : 74). Grammar has lost its status as a distinct subject in the school curriculum but the word has continued (since 1530 according to the Oxford English Dictionary ) to be used as a countable noun meaning ‘a book describing the grammar of a language’.

‘Grammar’ has, of course, also come to refer to the actual ‘structure of a language and the way in which linguistic units such as words and phrases are combined to produce sentences in the language’ ( Richards and Schmidt 2002 : 230), not just to a description of these properties. Yet, even today, the word means different things to different people. One common division is that made between descriptive and prescriptive grammar, with the former describing usage, and the latter attempting to influence it. Within linguistics, there are many approaches to the analysis of the grammar of a language, including Noam Chomsky’s transformational grammar and Michael Halliday’s systemic functional grammar. Mentalists in the Chomskyan tradition strive to explain the internal rule-based system by means of which speakers produce grammatical sentences, whereas Hallidayans, by contrast, look to external, social factors and explore how these shape the choices speakers make. Nevertheless, within ELT, there tends to be quite a strong agreement on what the grammar of English consists of; a brief examination of the contents pages of coursebooks and well-known learner grammars (e.g. Murphy 2012 ; Azar and Hagen 2016 ; Swan 2016 ) reveals coverage of the same familiar areas, such as tenses, articles, relative clauses, and modal verbs.

The sum of these areas can be said to constitute a pedagogical grammar for English, that is to say, a description of language devised specifically for those learning English as a second or foreign language. Pedagogical grammar does not attempt to offer a comprehensive account of the structure of a language; instead it focuses specifically on areas of language deemed likely to be most useful to learners. Here it is worth highlighting Williams’s (1994) distinction between ‘constitutive’ and ‘communicative’ grammar rules. For example, word order in affirmative and interrogative sentences or the - s present simple third-person verb endings are examples of ‘constitutive grammar’; these are structures or forms that learners must simply learn as such. By contrast, an example of a ‘communicative’ grammar rule is the choice between ‘I went to’ and ‘I’ve been to’: these are both formally correct, and a learner needs to know when to use one rather than the other. Both types of rule are important for foreign language learners, but older grammars tended to favour the former and neglect the latter.

Our contemporary pedagogical grammar of English is therefore one of many possible ‘grammars’ of English, reflecting a consensus that started to evolve in the 20th century, driven by a burst of activity in the first half of the century, with individual, often non-native speaker teacher-authors 1 around the world deciding which areas of grammar should be prioritized. What seems now an obvious point—that learners of English need grammatical explanations written specifically for them—was once an innovation; thus, W. Stannard Allen, in the introduction to the seminal Living English Structure , laments that ‘a large number of [grammar books] that are intended for foreigners have not managed to free themselves entirely from the purely analytical point of view’ of traditional school grammars ( Allen 1947/1959 : vii). In this period, many well-known content points in ELT grammar emerged, e.g. much-expanded coverage of future forms (giving going to and present continuous equal importance to will and shall ), and the three-way conditional system (first found in Allen’s grammar). The consensus on ELT grammar content that emerged, especially in materials produced by UK publishers, was added to as the century progressed, under the influence, in particular, of functional and notional descriptions (e.g. Wilkins 1976 ), discourse analysis (e.g. Halliday and Hasan 1976 ), and, to a more limited extent, spoken grammar (e.g. Carter and McCarthy 1995 ). Arguably, however, the foundations established in the first half of the century remained unshaken, and publishers and teachers appear reluctant to deviate from the well-established consensus ( O’Keeffe and Mark 2017 ; Burton 2019 ).

While ELT pedagogical grammar might be argued to be robust in the sense that it is tried and tested, its contents do not appear to have been arrived at in a systematic way. The current consensus is strong and thus difficult to challenge; however, recent research, including that using learner corpora, has begun to call into question both the choice and treatment of grammar points (see, for example, Barbieri and Eckhardt 2007 ; Jones and Waller 2011 ; McCarthy 2015 ), and the levels (beginner, intermediate, advanced, etc.) to which they are assigned ( Mark and O’Keeffe 2016 ; Burton 2019 ). Can we be sure that the tradition we have inherited truly reflects what learners need to know? Will, or indeed should, the consensus be updated to take account of different features that have been identified in grammars of World Englishes ( Davis 2006 ) and English as a lingua franca ( Ranta 2017 )? And, finally, to what extent and how—if at all—will emerging notions of grammar as a complex, ‘perpetually dynamic’ system ( Larsen-Freeman 2012 : 76) characterized by temporal as well as spatial variation come to challenge the received notions that have, so far, stood the test of time in ELT? Final version received January 2020

Including, in the first half of the 20th century, Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), Etsko Kruisinga (1875–1924), Harold E. Palmer (1877–1949), A. S. Hornby (1898–1978) and W. Stannard Allen (1913–1996?).

Allen , W. S . 1947/1959 . Living English Structure . London : Longman .

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Azar , B. S. and Hagen , S. A . 2016 . Understanding and Using English Grammar (Fifth edition). New York : Pearson Education .

Barbieri , F. and Eckhardt , S. E. B . 2007 . ‘Applying corpus-based findings to form-focused instruction: the case of reported speech’ . Language Teaching Research 11 / 3 : 319 – 46 .

Burton , G . 2019 . The Canon of Pedagogical Grammar for ELT: A Mixed Methods Study of its Evolution, Development and Comparison with Evidence on Learner Output . Unpublished PhD thesis. Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick . Available at https://dspace.mic.ul.ie/handle/10395/2891 .

Carter , R. and McCarthy , M . 1995 . ‘Grammar and the spoken language’ . Applied Linguistics 16 ( 2 ): 141 – 58 .

Davis , D. R . 2006 . ‘World Englishes and descriptive grammars’ in B. Kachru , Y. Kachru and C. Nelson (eds.). The Handbook of World Englishes , 509 – 25 . Oxford : Blackwell .

Halliday , M. A. K. and Hasan , R . 1976 . Cohesion in English . London : Routledge .

Howatt , A. P. R. with Widdowson , H. G . 2004 . A History of English Language Teaching (Second edition). Oxford : Oxford University Press .

Jones , C. and Waller , D . 2011 . ‘If only it were true: the problem with the four conditionals’ . ELT Journal 65 / 1 : 24 – 32 .

Larsen-Freeman , D . 2012 . ‘Complexity Theory’ in S. M. Gass and A. Mackey (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, 73 – 87 . Oxford : Routledge .

Linn , A . 2006 . ‘English grammar writing’ in B. Aarts and A. McMahon (eds.). The Handbook of English Linguistics , 72 – 92 . Oxford : Blackwell .

Mark , G. and O’Keeffe , A . 2016 . ‘Using English Grammar Profile to improve curriculum design’ in Proceedings of the 50th Annual IATEFL Conference , Birmingham, UK , 14 April, 2016 .

McCarthy , M . 2015 . ‘The role of corpus research in the design of advanced level grammar instruction’ in M. Christison et al. . (eds.). Teaching and Learning English Grammar: Research Findings and Future Directions , 87 – 102 . New York : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group .

Murphy , R . 2012 . English Grammar in Use: A Reference and Practice Book for Intermediate Learners of English Without Answers (Fourth edition). Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

O’Keeffe , A. and Mark , G . 2017 . ‘The English Grammar Profile of learner competence’, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 22 / 4 : 457 – 89 .

Ranta , E . 2017 . ‘Grammar in ELF’ in J. Jenkins , W. Baker and M. Dewey (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca , 244 – 54 . Oxford : Routledge .

Richards , J. C. and Schmidt , R. W . 2002 . Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (Third edition). London : Longman .

Swan , M . 2016 . Practical English Usage (Fourth edition). Oxford : Oxford University Press .

Wilkins , D. A . 1976 . Notional Syllabuses: A Taxonomy and its Relevance to Foreign Language Curriculum Development . Oxford : Oxford University Press .

Williams , E . 1994 . ‘English grammar and the views of English teachers’ in M. Bygate , A. Tonkyn and E. Williams (eds.). Grammar and the Language Teacher , 105 – 18 . New York : Prentice Hall .

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Grammar and the Research Article

2012, The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics

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Research article is a prominent communicative genre among members of the academic discourse community. It constitutes several subgenres at the macro level such as abstract and IMRD (Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion) sections which are organized based on their own communicative purposes. The structure and variations of research articles (RA) and abstracts have been studied extensively across disciplines. It has been postulated that abstract, on its own, include distinctive functions as an independent genre, but at the same time it may follow the content and rhetorical structure of RA. However, the focus of most studies on analyzing RAs has been on the individual section rather than on the entire structure of IMRD sections. The analysis of the rhetorical structure of abstracts in previous studies was also concentrated on the macro-structure rather than on the micro-structure of abstracts. Not many studies have been done on the comparison between abstract and IMRD sections...

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Abstract The previous studies on abstracts (e.g., Santos, 1996; Samraj, 2002; Pho, 2008) illustrate that disciplinary variation in research article abstracts is discernibl e. However, the studies of abstracts from two related disciplines are still limited. The present study aimed to explore the rhetorical moves of abstracts in the fields of linguistics and applied linguistics by investigating 200 abstracts published between 2009-2012. Hyland’s (2000) model of five rhetorical moves was chosen as the anal ytical framework for the rhetorical structure. Findings indicated that there were three conven tional moves in abstracts in linguistics, while there were four conventional moves in abstracts in applied linguistics. The findings have significant pedagogical implications for academic writing for novice writers in the two disciplines. Keywords: research article abstracts, rhet orical structure, abstracts, disciplinary variation, genres 1. Introduction

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English dominates scientific research – here’s how we can fix it, and why it matters

Científica del Instituto de Lengua, Literatura y Antropología (ILLA), del Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales (CCHS) del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales (CCHS - CSIC)

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Elea Giménez Toledo does not receive a salary, nor does she own shares, nor does she receive funding from any company or organisation that might benefit from this article. She is a commissioner of the SEGIB, which implies only unpaid scientific advice to this institution, as part of the scientific activity carried out at the CSIC.

Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation ES.

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It is often remarked that Spanish should be more widely spoken or understood in the scientific community given its number of speakers around the world, a figure the Instituto Cervantes places at almost 600 million .

However, millions of speakers do not necessarily grant a language strength in academia. This has to be cultivated on a scientific, political and cultural level, with sustained efforts from many institutions and specialists.

The scientific community should communicate in as many languages as possible

By some estimates, as much as 98% of the world’s scientific research is published in English , while only around 18% of the world’s population speaks it. This makes it essential to publish in other languages if we are to bring scientific research to society at large.

The value of multilingualism in science has been highlighted by numerous high profile organisations, with public declarations and statements on the matter from the European Charter for Researchers , the Helsinki Initiative on Multiligualism , the Unesco Recommendation on Open Science , the OPERAS Multiligualism White Paper , the Latin American Forum on Research Assessment , the COARA Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment , and the Declaration of the 5th Meeting of Minsters and Scientific Authorities of Ibero-American Countries . These organisations all agree on one thing: all languages have value in scientific communication .

As the last of these declarations points out, locally, regionally and nationally relevant research is constantly being published in languages other than English. This research has an economic, social and cultural impact on its surrounding environment, as when scientific knowledge is disseminated it filters through to non-academic professionals, thus creating a broader culture of knowledge sharing.

Greater diversity also enables fluid dialogue among academics who share the same language, or who speak and understand multiple languages. In Ibero-America, for example, Spanish and Portuguese can often be mutually understood by non-native speakers, allowing them to share the scientific stage. The same happens in Spain with the majority of its co-official languages .

Read more: Non-native English speaking scientists work much harder just to keep up, global research reveals

No hierarchies, no categories

Too often, scientific research in any language other than English is automatically seen as second tier, with little consideration for the quality of the work itself.

This harmful prejudice ignores the work of those involved, especially in the humanities and social sciences. It also profoundly undermines the global academic community’s ability to share knowledge with society.

By defending and preserving multilingualism, the scientific community brings research closer to those who need it. Failing to pursue this aim means that academia cannot develop or expand its audience. We have to work carefully, systematically and consistently in every language available to us.

Read more: Prestigious journals make it hard for scientists who don't speak English to get published. And we all lose out

The logistics of strengthening linguistic diversity in science

Making a language stronger in academia is a complex process. It does not happen spontaneously, and requires careful coordination and planning. Efforts have to come from public and private institutions, the media, and other cultural outlets, as well as from politicians, science diplomacy , and researchers themselves.

Many of these elements have to work in harmony, as demonstrated by the Spanish National Research Council’s work in ES CIENCIA , a project which seeks to unite scientific and and political efforts.

Academic publishing and AI models: a new challenge

The global academic environment is changing as a result the digital transition and new models of open access. Research into publishers of scientific content in other languages will be essential to understanding this shift. One thing is clear though: making scientific content produced in a particular language visible and searchable online is crucial to ensuring its strength.

In the case of academic books, the transition to open access has barely begun , especially in the commercial publishing sector, which releases around 80% of scientific books in Spain. As with online publishing, a clear understanding will make it possible to design policies and models that account for the different ways of disseminating scientific research, including those that communicate locally and in other languages. Greater linguistic diversity in book publishing can also allow us to properly recognise the work done by publishers in sharing research among non-English speakers.

Read more: Removing author fees can help open access journals make research available to everyone

Making publications, datasets, and other non-linguistic research results easy to find is another vital element, which requires both scientific and technical support. The same applies to expanding the corpus of scientific literature in Spanish and other languages, especially since this feeds into generative artificial intelligence models.

If linguistically diverse scientific content is not incorporated into AI systems, they will spread information that is incomplete, biased or misleading: a recent Spanish government report on the state of Spanish and co-official languages points out that 90% of the text currently fed into AI is written in English.

Deep study of terminology is essential

Research into terminology is of the utmost importance in preventing the use of improvised, imprecise language or unintelligible jargon. It can also bring huge benefits for the quality of both human and machine translations, specialised language teaching, and the indexing and organisation of large volumes of documents.

Terminology work in Spanish is being carried out today thanks to the processing of large language corpuses by AI and researchers in the TeresIA project, a joint effort coordinated by the Spanish National Research Council. However, 15 years of ups and downs were needed to to get such a project off the ground in Spanish.

The Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia, on the other hand, have worked intensively and systematically on their respective languages. They have not only tackled terminology as a public language policy issue, but have also been committed to established terminology projects for a long time.

Multiligualism is a global issue

This need for broader diversity also applies to Ibero-America as a whole, where efforts are being coordinated to promote Spanish and Portuguese in academia, notably by the Ibero-American General Secretariat and the Mexican National Council of Humanities, Sciences and Technologies .

While this is sorely needed, we cannot promote the region’s two most widely spoken languages and also ignore its diversity of indigenous and co-official languages. These are also involved in the production of knowledge, and are a vehicle for the transfer of scientific information, as demonstrated by efforts in Spain.

Each country has its own unique role to play in promoting greater linguistic diversity in scientific communication. If this can be achieved, the strength of Iberian languages – and all languages, for that matter – in academia will not be at the mercy of well intentioned but sporadic efforts. It will, instead, be the result of the scientific community’s commitment to a culture of knowledge sharing.

This article was originally published in Spanish

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Grammar: Articles

Articles video.

Note that this video was created while APA 6 was the style guide edition in use. There may be some examples of writing that have not been updated to APA 7 guidelines.

• Mastering the Mechanics: Articles (video transcript)

Article Basics

What is an article.

• Articles ("a," "an," and "the") are determiners or noun markers that function to specify if the noun is general or specific in its reference. Often the article chosen depends on if the writer and the reader understand the reference of the noun.
• The articles "a" and "an" are indefinite articles. They are used with a singular countable noun when the noun referred to is nonspecific or generic.
• The article "the" is a definite article. It is used to show specific reference and can be used with both singular and plural nouns and with both countable and uncountable nouns.

Many languages do not use articles ("a," "an," and "the"), or if they do exist, the way they are used may be different than in English. Multilingual writers often find article usage to be one of the most difficult concepts to learn. Although there are some rules about article usage to help, there are also quite a few exceptions. Therefore, learning to use articles accurately takes a long time. To master article usage, it is necessary to do a great deal of reading, notice how articles are used in published texts, and take notes that can apply back to your own writing.

To get started, please read this blog post on  The Argument for Articles .

A few important definitions to keep in mind:

• one horse, two horses
• one chair, two chairs
• one match, two matches
• one child, two children
• one mouse, two mice
• Information

Please see this webpage for more about countable and uncountable nouns .

"A" or "An"

When to use "a" or "an".

"A" and "an" are used with singular countable nouns when the noun is nonspecific or generic.

• In this sentence, "car " is a singular countable noun that is not specific. It could be any car.
• "University" is a singular countable noun. Although it begins with a vowel, the first sound of the word is /j/ or “y.” Thus, "a" instead of "an" is used. In this sentence, it is also generic (it could be any university with this specialization, not a specific one).
• In this sentence, "apple" is a singular countable noun that is not specific. It could be any apple.

"A" is used when the noun that follows begins with a consonant sound.

• a uniform (Note that "uniform" starts with a vowel, but the first sound is /j/ or a “y” sound. Therefore "a" instead of "an" is used here.)

"An" is used when the noun that follows begins with a vowel sound.

• an elephant
• an American
• an MBA (Note that "MBA" starts with a consonant, but the first sound is /Ɛ/ or a short “e” sound. Therefore, "an" instead of "a" is used here.)

Sometimes "a" or "an" can be used for first mention (the first time the noun is mentioned). Then, in subsequent sentences, the article "the" is used instead.

• In the first sentence (first mention), "a" is used because it is referring to a nonspecified house. In the second sentence, "the" is used because now the house has been specified.

When to Use "The"

"The" is used with both singular and plural nouns and with both countable and uncountable nouns when the noun is specific.

• In this sentence, "book" is a singular, countable noun. It is also specific because of the phrase “that I read last night.” The writer and reader (or speaker and listener) know which book is being referred to.
• In this sentence, "books" is a plural, countable noun. It is also specific because of the phrase “for this class.” The writer and reader (or speaker and listener) know which books are being referred to.
• In this sentence, "advice" is an uncountable noun. However, it is specific because of the phrase “you gave me.” It is clear which piece of advice was helpful.

Here are some more specific rules:

"The" is used in the following categories of proper nouns:

• Museums and art galleries : the Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Art
• Buildings : the Empire State Building, the Willis Tower
• Seas and oceans : the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean
• Rivers : the Mississippi, the Nile
• Deserts : the Sahara Desert, the Sonora Desert
• Periods and events in history: the Dark Ages, the Civil War
• Bridges: the London Bridge, the Mackinac Bridge
• Parts of a country : the South, the Upper Midwest

In general, use "the" with plural proper nouns.

• the Great Lakes
• the Rockies (as in the Rocky Mountains)

"The" is often used with proper nouns that include an “of” phrase.

• the United States of America
• the University of Minnesota
• the International Swimming Hall of Fame

Use "the" when the noun being referred to is unique because of our understanding of the world.

• The Earth moves around the sun.
• Wolves howl at the moon.

Use "the" when a noun can be made specific from a previous mention in the text. This is also known as second or subsequent mention.

• My son bought a cat. I am looking after the cat while he is on vacation.
• I read a good book. The book was about how to use articles correctly in English.

"The" is used with superlative adjectives, which are necessarily unique (the first, the second, the biggest, the smallest, the next, the only, etc.).

• It was the first study to address the issue.
• She was the weakest participant.
• He was the only person to drop out of the study.

Biber et al. (1999) found that "the" is about twice as common as "a" or "an" in academic writing. This may be because writers at this level often focus on overall ideas and categories ( generic reference , usually no article) and on specific references (definite reference, the article "the").

• Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of written and spoken English . Pearson.

No Article (Generic Reference)

Writers sometimes struggle with the choice to include an article or to leave it out altogether. Keep in mind that if the noun is singular, countable, and nonspecific or generic (e.g., book, author), the articles "a" and "an" may be used. However, if the noun is countable and plural (e.g.., "research studies") or uncountable (e.g., "information") and it is being used in a nonspecific or generic way, no article is used.

Here are some more specifics:

• I bought new pens and pencils at the store. (general, not specific ones)
• Cats have big eyes that can see in the dark. (cats in general, all of them)
• Babies cry a lot. (babies in general, all of them)
• I bought milk and rice at the store. (generic reference)
• We were assigned homework in this class. (generic reference)
• There has been previous research on the topic. (generic reference)

Articles in Phrases and Idiomatic Expressions

Sometimes article usage in English does not follow a specific rule. These expressions must be memorized instead.

Here are some examples of phrases where article usage is not predictable:

• Destinations: go to the store, go to the bank , but go to school, go to church, go to bed, go home
• Locations: in school, at home, in bed, but in the hospital (in American English)
• Parts of the day: in the morning, in the evening, but at night
• Chores: mow the lawn, do the dishes, do the cleaning

There are also numerous idiomatic expressions in English that contain nouns. Some of these also contain articles while others do not.

Here are just a few examples:

• To give someone a hand
• To be on time

Related Resources

Knowledge Check: Articles

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