THE ARTICLES

In the world of grammar, the articles are playing a major role. It has been taught to us and we teach our students the same. Many of us had struggled ourselves over this topic. All the students, right from VI standard (probably) till I year of their under graduate degree, need to know this as they are in need of scoring a good mark. Whoever the students are, they must come over the subject English. In this case we, the teachers and the professors, should know how to teach it in more comprehensible manner. The points we teach must be ever registered in the minds of the students since it is our service/ duty.

Here some pieces of short cuts are disclosed to develop the confidence level of students on the topic “The Articles”. This methods will 100% work out with the students who are from Tamilnadu.

The Articles are: ‘a’, ‘an’, and ‘the’. To determine articles, students are used to blindly taught if any one letters from so called vowels (A, E, I, O, U) is placed in the beginning of the nouns.

In this, ‘a’ and ‘an’ are called as indefinite articles whereas ‘the’ is known as definite article.

Sometimes there would be some confusions like “what is definite article”? and “what is indefinite article”? I am not going to detail it rather, give you some tips.

1.      ‘a’ and ‘an’ – First set

2.      ‘the’ –  Second set.

The former is termed as an “INDEFINITE” starts with a letter ‘I’ which is a vowel and ‘an’ fits with this so it would be an indefinite article and latter ‘the’ will be definitely “DEFINITE” article (the word definite contains no vowel letter).

Next confusion is where to use ‘a’, ‘an’, and ‘the’.

First you should know the meaning of the letters and word – ‘a’ and ‘an’.

A

   ]   --- Meaning is “One” – Singular.

An

The terms used by ‘a’ and ‘an’ if used second time that should be used by ‘the’ even though they are singular.

For example: an ant (first use)- the ant (in second use)

                                                  the ants (ants are plural here)

                    An article – the articles (articles are plural here).

 

Let me explain the usage of ‘an’ then you yourselves can understand about ‘a’ and ‘the’ by eliminating method.

When we struggle in English language, there is nothing wrong in taking tips from our mother tongue (Tamil) for better understanding. We see vowel (A, E, I, O, U) in a word to find a proper article. For example: an ant, an ice-cream, an umbrella. All the underlined letters are vowels, but when we follow this method for the words like European, University, we may fail. To avoid this let us give a look in Tamil vowels. 12 vowels in Tamil are அ,ஆ,இ,ஈ,உ,ஊ,எ,ஏ,ஐ,ஒ,ஓ,ஔ.

When you find some words, first pronounce it. If that word starts with any of the sounds of above tamil vowels, blindly you can put ‘an’ in front of that particular word.

For example:

v  Ice – ஐஸ்- so an ice,

v  Umbrella – அம்பரெல்லா- so an umbrella,

v  MLA – எம்எல்ஏ – so an MLA, and

v  Honest- ஆநெஸ்ட்- so an honest.  

Note: The words above given are pronounced in tamil vowels.

but if the same words come in plural, use ‘the’ instead of ‘an’. If singulars are not with the sounds of the tamil vowels then you can use ‘a’.

 Therefore, these are the easiest ways to teach articles to the students by assisting Tamil vowels and it is one of the important ways to remember it forever.