Belonging, and its opposite
Think of a place that changed something about you. Not a holiday — somewhere you had to be, repeatedly.
Hold it. First, the language people use about places they are from.
Eight things people say about places. Match each to what it actually claims.
A street, described carefully
Rua Amélia, from memory
There was a bakery at the end of our street. Not a good one — the bread was fine and everything else was there to be looked at rather than bought — but it opened at half past five, and for two years I was the person who went.
The street itself ran downhill towards a junction that had no lights and never needed any, because everybody who used it already knew who had priority and it was never written down anywhere. Halfway down there was a wall with a gap in it, and behind the gap a piece of land that belonged to nobody. We called it the field. It was not a field.
Life on that street was arranged around two things: the bakery in the morning and the shade in the afternoon. Shade was a resource. In August the east side was uninhabitable by eleven and the west side was full of chairs.
I have been back twice. The bakery is a phone shop, the gap in the wall has been bricked up, and the junction now has lights.
Five questions. Each one asks why a particular article was chosen — or why none was.
1. Why a bakery the first time, and the bread immediately afterwards?
2. Why the end of our street rather than an end?
3. Why a junction, then the junction three sentences later?
4. Life on that street was arranged around two things. Why no article before life?
5. Shade was a resource. Why not the shade?
A claim about your listener
What each choice claims
| Choice | The claim it makes about your listener | Example |
|---|---|---|
| a / an | There are several. This one is new to you. | There was a bakery at the end of our street. |
| the | You can work out which one I mean. | The bakery is a phone shop now. |
| no article | I am not pointing at any one of them — I mean the kind of thing. | Shade was a resource. |
Four routes, and only four. A listener can identify which one you mean if:
1 · it was mentioned before — a junction … the junction
2 · it is here — pass me the salt
3 · it is unique in the world you share — the sun, the government, the kitchen (there is one in this house)
4 · the words after it make it unique — the end of our street, the man who came yesterday
Every correct the in English rests on one of those four. If you cannot say which, you probably want a or nothing.
Six sentences describing a square. Put them in order — the articles tell you which one has to come first.
- A man sits there every morning with a newspaper he does not open.
- There is a bench on the north side of the square, under a plane tree.
- When the man is not there, people notice, and none of them knows his name.
- The tree was planted in 1954, which is carved into a small plaque nobody reads.
- The newspaper is bought from the kiosk on the corner, which sells almost nothing else.
- The bench has been there longer than anybody using it.
Choosing on purpose
Eight sentences. Choose the article — and be ready to say which of the four routes justifies any the.
1. We moved into ___ flat above a shop. (first mention)
2. ___ flat was cold and the shop was a bakery. (second mention)
3. I grew up in ___ small town in the south.
4. ___ life there was slower, and I did not notice until I left.
5. She studies ___ history at university.
6. She is writing about ___ history of the port.
7. Can you shut ___ door? (there is one door in this room)
8. ___ people who live there mostly work in the next town.
Seven sentences. One article error each. Five run in the same direction.
1. I like the football.
2. The life is difficult here in winter.
3. The Brazilians are very direct. — Brazilians in general
4. I went to the school in a village near Braga. — as a pupil
5. My father worked in the construction.
6. There is bakery at the end of our street.
7. We sat in shade on the west side. — the shade you already know about
A place that shaped you
Task card · Speaking · Pairs · 3 minutes each, twice
Describe the place you thought of at the start. Not what it looked like — what being there did.
Three minutes. Your partner will stop you afterwards, not during.
- Start with one physical thing small enough to be specific: a wall, a bus stop, a smell, a corner.
- Say what was arranged around what — the shade, the shop, the hour the light went.
- Say what changed, and whether it changed in the place or in you.
- Finish with the thing you would go back for, if you would.
Listener’s job. Write down every noun phrase you hear that begins with the. Just the phrases.
Afterwards, read them back one at a time and ask the same question each time: "which one?" Your partner answers with one of the four routes — mentioned before, it was there, only one exists, or the words after it.
Count how many have no answer. That is the number.
The ones with no answer
Five sentences of the kind this task produces. Fix each.
1. We used to play in the street where I lived. — first mention of the street
2. The nature there is beautiful.
3. I miss the peace of the mornings. — correct as written
4. My grandmother lived in the countryside near a small town. — correct as written
5. The people are very friendly in my city. — people in general there
Not the noun. The listener.
Three questions. Thirty seconds.
1. What does the claim?
2. How many routes are there to that?
3. Why do article errors survive for decades?
Next. Four writers describing places they know well — and what their articles assume about the reader.