Articles

Articles
are the, a, and an. 
 Q: What do articles do in a sentence?
A: Articles signal that a noun is going to
follow.
Example:
  • Who invented the telephone? The wheel?
The refrigerator? The airplane?
  • A cat was chasing a mouse in my back yard.
Modifiers (adjectives & adverbs) can appear between an article and a noun.
Examples:
  • A sunset.
  • A spectacular sunset.
  • An exceptionally spectacular sunset.
The indefinite article ‘a’ can only appear before nouns that begin with a consonant sound: a hand, a book, a world, a computer…
The indefinite article ‘an’ can only appear before nouns that begin with a vowel sound: an apartment, an hour, an article… 
  General Rules for the Use of Articles:
I. Use a/an with singular count nouns whose specific identity is not known to the reader either because it is being mentioned for the first time, or because its specific identity is unknown even to the writer. 

  Examples:

  • Julia arrived in a limousine. (a = one among many. Not a specific one.)
  • We’re looking for an apartment. (an = any one.)
II. Do not use a/an with non-count nouns. Only use a/an with non-count nouns if you add a count noun in front of the non-count noun.
Example:
  • Anh asked her mother for an advice.
  • Anh asked her mother for a piece of
advice.
  III. Use the with most nouns whose specific identity is known to the reader because:
1. the noun has been previously mentioned:
    • Yesterday I saw a group of ESL students. The students were playing with a ball. The ball was white and blue. The ball rolled into a hole.The hole was small.
2. the noun is made specific by a superlative:
    • I bought thefastest computer they had.
3. the noun describes a unique person, place, or thing:
    • Please give this to themanager.
    • Thesun is bright today.
    • Rain is falling heavily in theNorth.
4. the context or situation makes the noun’s identity clear:
    • Please don’t slam the door when you leave.
    • Bob warned me that the dog playing in his yard is very affectionate and jumps on every person it meets.
IV. Do not use the with plural or non-count nouns meaning "all" or "in general" (i.e. generic reference nouns). Do not use the with most singular proper nouns.
  • The fountains are an expensive element of landscape design.
  • In some parts of the world, the rice is preferred to all other grains.
V. Do not use articles with other noun markers or determiners, i.e. possessive nouns (Helen’s) ; and some pronouns (his, her, its, ours, their, whose, this, that, these, those, all, any, each, either, every, few, many, more, most, much, neither, several, some).
Exceptions:
All the…
A few…
The most…
Examples:
  • The Helen’s book is on the floor.
  • A this book belongs to Trung.
A final caution- A word can be more than one part of speech. For example:
I sat on the sofa.
Above, sofa is used as a noun (object of the preposition).
I slept on the sofa bed.
But, here sofa is used as an adjective to modify the noun bed.
And, native speakers often take poetic license with words in conversation. For example:
It’s Sofa city for you!

Here, sofa acts as an adjective to describe the noun city. The meaning of the sentence is that the person will have to sleep on the sofa, not a bed. 

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