手把手教你学口语13

Welcome to Daily Tips on learning English. Today’s tip is on using the articles “a” and “the” correctly.

More specifically, today’s tip is on the difference between using “a” or “an” before a singular countable¹ noun and using “the” or “the(i:)” before a singular countable noun. Most frequently, both “a” and “the” are used to refer to a specimen² of a group of things, for example, “a table” and “the table” both refer to one table out of the group of all tables. When people say “the table”, they mean the table that we’ve been talking about and which you know about. So if you begin to talk about a new object about which your listener knows nothing, you must use the article “a”. But after you have introduced the object, or future references are preceded by the article “the”. Let’s take a simple example. “I bought a table yesterday. The table is in the living room. I really like the table.” Did you notice how the article “a” was used first, and then after that, the article “the” was used. If you said, “I bought the table yesterday” instead of “I bought a table yesterday”, you would mean that you and the listener are talking about some table previously³. If you hadn’t talked about any table previously, the listener would be confused and would probably ask you, “What table?”

Let take another example. “I put together a jigsaw⁴ puzzle yesterday. Really? How often do you put together a jigsaw puzzle?” Notice that the article “a” was used in both sentences before “jigsaw puzzle”. That’s because the question, “How often do you put together a jigsaw puzzle” was not referring to the same jigsaw puzzle mentioned in the first sentence. If you ask, “How often do you put together the jigsaw puzzle?” you would be asking how often the listener put together the same jigsaw puzzle, you would be saying the person puts together, then takes apart, then puts together the same jigsaw puzzle over and over again. And that’s a silly thing to ask.

So remember, “the” is used to refer to a previously mentioned specimen, something about which the listener knows. The article “a” is used to refer to a specimen which hasn’t been mentioned before, something which the listener doesn’t know about.

This has been today’s tip on learning English. Tune⁵ in tomorrow for another tip.

1 countable   

adj.可数的，可以计算的

参考例句：

• The word "person" is a countable noun.person这个词是个可数名词。
• Countable nouns have singular and plural forms.可数名词有单数和复数之分。

2 specimen   

n.样本，标本

参考例句：

• You'll need tweezers to hold up the specimen.你要用镊子来夹这标本。
• This specimen is richly variegated in colour.这件标本上有很多颜色。

3 previously   

adv.以前，先前（地）

参考例句：

• The bicycle tyre blew out at a previously damaged point.自行车胎在以前损坏过的地方又爆开了。
• Let me digress for a moment and explain what had happened previously.让我岔开一会儿，解释原先发生了什么。

4 jigsaw   

n.缕花锯，竖锯，拼图游戏；vt.用竖锯锯，使互相交错搭接

参考例句：

• A jigsaw puzzle can keep me absorbed for hours.一副拼图就能让我沉醉几个小时。
• Tom likes to work on jigsaw puzzles,too.汤姆也喜欢玩拼图游戏。

5 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。