The

During my community college class today, I was talking with one of my students after class. This student is concerned about issues of grammar arising from his/her learning English as a second language.

I seriously pity anybody who has to learn English as an adult. English doesn’t really make sense.

Last class, my student was concerned about when to use “a” and “an”. So, today, I had a little after-class session for anybody who wanted to stay. I went over the difference. Turns out that what she doesn’t understand is when to use “a” or “an” and “the”.

I tried to explain the definite article and another student came up with a perfect example: you might go shopping for “a” sweater, but eventually, while you are at the store, you find “the” sweater that you want. But my student still had problems with it. I think she is going to make it because her diagnostic essay was at the same writing level as everybody else’s but I wish I could explain it better.

After class, I stopped by my favorite microbrewery, Lunar Brewing, to drown my sorrows. While I was there I read the “Great Lakes Brewing News,” and, since it was on my mind, I marked all the usages of the word “the” in one of the articles.

This article is short. It consists of nine short paragraphs, but it contains 27 usages of the word “the”. Thing is, out of those 27, only fifteen of them were absolutely necessary. The remaining twelve could have been switched with “a” or “an,” or left out altoghether.

I have decided that the definate article is a subversive little bastard the gets everywhere, like roaches, and that I don’t like it very much at all. Grrrrrr.

So it goes.