Hello, welcome to GMAT Tuesdays! My name is Kevin, uh we're talking about articles today. This is a very
in-depth and rich topic, there are lots of things that we could talk about. So we're
just gonna touch on the basics and look at an exception. We had a comment on a previous video,
a student was asking about articles so I'm just going to go over the basics. In terms of the GMAT
you're not necessarily going to be tested on the articles but it is something that you're
going to want to demonstrate that you can use them correctly when you're writing your essay.
You know when you're talking with people it's very easy to communicate and not use articles.
People understand what you're saying if you drop all of the articles in your sentence
but if you're writing and you want to demonstrate that you have a very strong knowledge of English
you definitely want to know how to use articles. So an article is a type of determiner so it's
something we put in front of a noun that helps to determine what noun we are referring to or
talking about. A determiner, some other determinants besides articles, are words like my or this or
that or her and again these all designate what noun we are referring to. So here are the basics,
sometimes it's hard to know if you should use the or a or an, and this is the question you
should think about when you're deciding you know what I'm talking about right. So ask yourself this
question you're either going to be writing a letter an email or text message or talking to
someone and that person either is going to know what you're referring to or they're not going to
know what you are referring to. If they know what you're referring to the answer is yes then you're
going to use the article the you put the in front of the noun. So for example if I said please feed
the dogs you would know that I'm talking probably about dogs that I own maybe or at least
dogs that you would know about. If you didn't know what I was referring to or I knew you didn't know
what dogs I was referring to I would use 'a'. So the answer is no you don't know what dogs I'm
referring to, and we need to consider one other point here too, is the noun singular and countable
then we're going to use a or and so with the dogs we'd say can you feed a dog which sounds
kind of funny um but we have dogs which are countable and it's singular so we'd use a
if for example it's plural or uncountable and you don't know what we're talking about.
So for example if we had I love dogs then we're not using an article at all, I'm making a general
statement about dogs. And if for example we have an uncountable amount like information or help
you could say I need help or I need information. Um and that is uncountable it isn't plural so there
isn't more here. So it's plural or uncountable and so dropping the article in front of those nouns
is the rule. So these are the basics we have one exception that we're going to talk about
today, there's lots of exceptions so uh definitely do more research if you're curious.
This has to do with groups, so if you're dealing with groups and you're making a generalization
about the group you're saying making some general statement you're not going to use the article
the you're going to leave it off. So for example here I have two sentences
and I'm making general statements here, teachers work hard, making a general statement. And so we're
not going to say the teachers. Again airlines lose suitcases this is a general statement about
suitcases you might have lost yours on occasion and in this case both of these sentences imply
nothing particular about the group but just referring to the group as a whole.
Next if you want to talk about the group as a unit as one complete unit then you will use the. So for
example we can say the teachers are upset and that implies that you know which groups of teachers I
am talking about and I'm talking about the whole group being upset about something. And then again
with the airlines you could say the airlines are raising rates maybe fuel prices went up
and so in this case we're talking specifically about the airlines. So what you can see here is
that if you're making generalizations about something drop the but if you want to talk
about specifics or something more in particular then use the article the at in front of the noun.
All right so hopefully this was a little helpful um and you have some idea of how to deal with
articles. Again, there's a lot more to this topic so um do some research hit the internet and
if you have any questions feel free to put them in the comments below the video
I will be here at Magoosh ready to help if you need anything head on over and we'll answer all
your questions and help you get ready for the GMAT. Be excellent to the universe and I'll see you soon!