Eight noun phrases, two different jobs
Eight sentences. Four are about a class of thing and four are about a particular one. Sort them before you look at the articles.
Eight sentences. Match each to what kind of reference it makes.
The rule that fixed it, and the rule that broke it
A class, or a member of one
Unit 23 gave you a test that works. The is a claim about your listener — you can work out which one I mean — and there are four routes by which they can: it has been mentioned, it is present, it is unique in the world you share, or the words after it make it unique. That test is correct, and it repairs most of the article errors a B1 writer makes.
What it cannot reach is the case that is left. Tigers are endangered is not about any tiger. There is no particular animal, no referent to identify, and therefore nothing for a test about identification to test.
And here is the awkward part, which is the reason this unit exists. Applied to a generic, the test does not fail quietly. It misleads. Ask yourself can my listener work out which tigers I mean? and the honest answer is yes — tigers in general, obviously — so the test returns the, and English wants nothing at all. The rule that fixed your B1 errors is the rule that produces your B2 ones.
Portuguese pushes in exactly the same direction, which makes the two forces additive rather than competing. Os tigres estão em perigo. A vida é dura. A televisão mudou tudo. Os brasileiros gostam de futebol. Every one of those supplies a definite article where English supplies none, and the mis-applied test agrees with every one of them.
So what replaces the test is not another rule. It is a question you ask first: am I talking about a class, or about a member of one? A member takes the Unit 23 test, which still works perfectly and has not changed. A class takes one of three generic patterns — and those three are the whole of the new material in this unit.
The count today is simple. How many times do you say the in front of a class of things over fifteen minutes of talking about media? Almost nobody at this level says none.
Four questions.
1. Why does the B1 listener test not apply to tigers are endangered?
2. What happens when you apply it to a generic anyway?
3. What does Portuguese do in the same position?
4. What is the question that comes before the test?
Three generic patterns, and six sentences that mix them
The three generic patterns, and what each one claims.
1 · Zero + plural. Tigers are endangered. Newspapers are closing. Brazilians watch a lot of television. The neutral default, and the one English actually uses most. When in doubt, this one.
2 · a/an + singular. A tiger is a dangerous animal. A newspaper is a business before it is anything else. Any representative member — used for definitions and for saying what counts as a member of the class.
3 · the + singular. The tiger is endangered. The novel is not dead. The class as an institution or a type. Formal, faintly classificatory, and restricted to species, inventions, instruments and social institutions.
Pattern 3 will not take a predicate that is only true of individuals: the tiger is endangered works, and the tiger ate my chicken does not — unless you mean one particular tiger, which is a different sentence entirely.
Six sentences. Five supply an article English does not want; one leaves one out.
1. The social media has changed everything.
2. The Brazilians watch a great deal of television.
3. The life is hard for freelance journalists.
4. A tiger is endangered.
5. She works in the television. — she works in the industry
6. Newspaper is dying. — you mean the industry as a whole
Who reads what, and where
Eight gaps. Some want an article and some want none. Choose the one English would use.
has been declared dead about once a decade since 1994, and it keeps not dying. What has changed is not the appetite for news but the route to it: now reach most people through a feed rather than through a front page.That matters more than it sounds. is edited by a person who has to defend the order of it; is ordered by a system that nobody has to defend at all. is not a neutral container, and neither is a newspaper, but only one of them has an editor whose name is printed inside.Meanwhile has been reorganised around the same logic. watch less scheduled television every year, and the decline is steepest among the under-thirties — a fact that has been used to argue almost everything, in both directions, by people who work in .
One word per gap, and every gap needs one: a, an or the. These are all specific reference.
She presents weekly programme about local politics.
programme she presents goes out on Thursday evenings.
He is editor of a small monthly magazine.
She is editor of the paper, and has been since 2019.
They spent hour arguing about a single headline.
press has been criticised for its coverage of the inquiry.
It was single sentence in the third paragraph that caused the complaint.
She has best shorthand in the building and everybody knows it.
What the media has done to you
Task card · Speaking · Pairs · 15 minutes
How you actually get your news, what you have stopped reading and why, and one thing you believe about media that you cannot fully defend.
Three minutes each. Your partner counts one thing and one thing only.
- 4 minutes alone: your routes to news, one thing you have given up, and one belief you hold without full evidence.
- 3 minutes each, speaking: talk. Do not think about articles — the whole point is what comes out when you are not watching.
- Partner: write down every noun phrase where the appears in front of a class of things: the social media, the newspapers, the people, the television, the young people, the internet users.
- Count them. Write the number at the top. Then, together, decide which of the three generic patterns each one should have been.
Expect a number between six and fifteen. Almost nobody at this level scores zero, and the reason is not carelessness: it is that Portuguese and the mis-applied listener test both recommend the, and nothing in eleven years of using English has ever produced a single moment of feedback about it.
What the count showed
Three questions.
1. How many generic thes did you produce in three minutes?
2. Which nouns collected the most?
3. Did any of them sound wrong as you said them?
Ask the prior question
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. What do you ask before the listener test?
2. Which generic pattern is the safe default?
Next. Four pieces of media criticism, and a count of which generic patterns each one uses — including one that uses the plus singular throughout, on purpose.