Articles, determiners and countability

The list to drill, because English treats these as substances rather than objects: advice, information, equipment, research, evidence, furniture, homework, luggage, machinery, money, news, progress, traffic, vocabulary, work, knowledge, feedback, training. None takes -s and none takes a. Portuguese counts several of them, which is why they surface constantly in Brazilian students' writing.

Use a partitive when you need a number: a piece of advice, an item of furniture, a bit of research, a body of evidence, a great deal of information, two loaves of bread. Vaguer quantities work directly: much advice, a lot of information, some evidence, little progress.

Say the next word aloud. MBA starts with the sound "em", hour with a vowel, so both take an. University starts with a "yoo" sound and one with a "w" sound, so both take a despite their spelling.

Introduce with a or an, refer back with the. Once the reader knows which one you mean — because you said so, or because the situation makes it obvious — the article becomes the and stays there.

Anything that can only be one thing takes the: superlatives (the best), ordinals (the first, the third), and the same, the only, the next, the last, the main, the entire. Also the singular unique nouns: the sun, the government, the internet, the environment.

When you mean a category in general, use a plural or an uncountable noun with no article at all. Adding the narrows it to a specific set the reader is supposed to recognize — which is why the students need support and students need support say different things. This is the single most common article error in TOEFL essays.

The mirror image of pattern 6. An of-phrase or a defining relative clause pins the noun down to a particular one, and a pinned-down noun takes the. Compare general oil prices rose with specific the price of oil rose.

Countable plurals take many, fewer, a number of; uncountables take much, less, an amount of. Test it by asking whether you could count the noun one by one: fewer students but less funding, the number of errors but the amount of evidence.

Dropping the article reverses the meaning. A few and a little are positive — some, enough. Few and little are negative — hardly any, not enough. The rest of the sentence usually tells you which the writer meant, and that is what TOEFL items test.

No the with most countries, cities, states, lakes, single mountains or continents: Brazil, Curitiba, Lake Titicaca, Mount Everest. Use the with plurals and political unions: the United States, the Netherlands, the Philippines, and with rivers, seas, deserts and ranges: the Amazon, the Andes, the Sahara. Institutions used for their purpose take no article — at school, in class, at work — though American English keeps it in in the hospital.

Singular noun after each, every, either, neither, another. Plural noun after both, several, many, few, all and after one of. All and most also take uncountables directly: most research, all evidence.

Another already contains an, so it never follows the. Use another for one more of many, the other for the remaining one of two, the others for all the rest, and bare other before a plural: other studies disagree. Two determiners never stack: not the my report, not a some evidence.