Warm Up Questions

1. How are you?

2. What’s the weather like today?
3. What’s your favourite hobby?
4. What do you do after school?
5. Do you like English? Why or why not?
Singular Nouns

We use the indefinite article ‘a’ or ‘an’ when we talk about something for the
first time, or something that’s part of a group or type.
If a vowel starts with a consonant sound, we use ‘a’. If it starts with a vowel
sound, we use ‘an’.

E.g. 'Do you want to watch a film?'

'An elephant is over there.'
Singular Nouns

We use the definite article ‘the’ when the person we’re talking to already
knows what we’re talking about because we have mentioned it before or it’s
obvious what you are referring to.

E.g. 'I'm going to give the dog some food.'

Can you
'I don't like the song you're singing.'
think of
two more
examples?
Jobs
We also use ‘a’ or ‘an’ when we talk about a
person’s job.

E.g. 'Robert's dad is an architect and

his mum is a nurse.'

Can you o
tw
think of
more
es?
exampl
Things in General
When we talk about things in general, we don’t use an article.

E.g.
• Polar bears eat seals.
• Babies need to sleep, eat and
play.
• Mice are great pets.

Can you o
tw
think of
more
es?
exampl
Groups of Things
When we talk about specific groups of things, we use the definite
article ‘the’.

E.g. We went to the zoo and saw the tigers.

Here, we aren’t talking about tigers in general, so we use ‘the’.

No Articles
We use no article when we talk about the following things:
• nationalities: Swedish, Turkish, Australian
• sports: baseball, rugby, football
• school subjects: science, art, biology
 Geographical Places
In general, we use the ‘no article’ or ‘the’ with names of places.
No article The

Lakes. E.g. Lake Geneva Countries like the Netherlands, the USA, the
Phillipines, the UK.

Mountains. E.g. Mount Everest, Mount Fuji. Rivers. E.g. The Nile.

Continents. E.g. Asia, Africa, Europe. Mountain ranges. E.g. The Alps, the Pyrenees.

Most countries. E.g. Chile, Cuba, Canada. Oceans and seas.

The Mediterranean, the Atlantic.

Islands. E.g. Fiji, Mallorca.

Cities, towns, villages. E.g. Paris,

Marrakech, Sydney.
Here a
re
examp some
les.
Practice Makes Perfect!
Read the paragraph and fill in the gaps with ‘a’, ‘an’ ‘the’ or ‘X’ if there is
no article.

Hi! My name is Kim. I’m 12 years old and I’m student at Willow
School. school is far from my house but I go there because my dad is
geography teacher, so it’s easier for my family.
I study lots of subjects at school, but my favourite ones are
maths, chemistry and French. I want to
study hard because I’d like to go to good university in future.
Correct Answers
Read the paragraph and fill in the gaps with ‘a’, ‘an’ ‘the’ or ‘X’ if there is
no article.

Hi! My name is Kim. I’m 12 years old and I’m a student at X Willow School.
The school is far from my house but I go there because my dad is a geography
teacher, so it’s easier for my family.
I study lots of subjects at school, but my favourite ones are X maths, X
chemistry and X French. I want to study hard because I’d like to go to a good
university in the future.
Memory Game
Instructions: One student starts a sentence with ‘In the classroom I can see...’
and says a noun e.g. ‘a table’. The next student must remember it and add their
own, e.g. ‘In the classroom I can see a table and a pencil’. Continue for as long
as you can. For extra points, see if you can do it in alphabetical order.

Teacher instructions: You

can change the topic of this
game for anything you like, as
long as students are practising
using articles when they say
the different nouns.
Correct the Errors
Correct the error in each of the sentences below.
1. My brother has an horse called Django.
My brother has a horse called Django.

2. My family and I go to the Lake Geneva on holiday.

My family and I go to Lake Geneva on holiday.

3. The dogs and the cats are typical family pets.

Dogs and cats are typical family pets.

4. Our teacher is a French.

Our teacher is French.

5. A water boils at 100ºC.

Water boils at 100ºC.