Indefinite articles (a and an)
If indefinite articles are the proverbial thorn in your side, the good news is that you don't need a lot of grammatical jargon to understand their usage. You simply need your ears (okay, and maybe just a little grammatical jargon).
In English, a and an are indefinite articles, which means that they don't refer to anything definite or specific. If someone were to say, "Give me an apple," you might be inclined to run out and pick one from the tree outside, or you may even run to the store and buy one. By using the word an, the speaker has let you know that he or she is looking for any apple rather than a specific one.
The same can be said for the article a. If someone told you there's a dog on the road, you would probably want to go out and save it before a car came by. Furthermore, you would know it's not your best friend's dog because the speaker chose to use the word a rather than call the pooch by name. Hence, it's understood that the dog on the road is one of the millions of dogs in the world and is therefore not specific.
A and an are indefinite articles used to refer to a singular countable noun.
An indefinite article means that we don't know which one, or it is
not important.
A is used before a consonant (b,c,d,f,g,etc.): a car
An is used before a vowel (a,e,i,o,u) : an animal
*Tom lives in a town.
*Julie is reading an English book.
*We eat meat with a knife and a fork.
The definite article (the)
There is only one definite article in the English language (the), which means that you don't have to worry about listening for vowel sounds. The is used in front of singular or plural nouns and adjectives to refer to something with which both the speaker/writer and listener/reader are familiar. For example, if you're bouncing a basketball at school, your friend might say, "Give me the ball." In this case, both you and your friend recognize that there is only one specific ball being referred to, and that's the one you're bouncing. Your friend doesn't want a ball (meaning any ball); he or she wants the ball that you're holding.
The is a definite article used to talk about something specific.
*The town where Tom lives is very big.
*What book is Julie reading? She is reading the book Tom gave her.
The is also used to refer to:
*Rivers, seas, oceans :
the Mississippi, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic.
*Nationalities :
the British, the Americans, the Japanese
