IELTS Preparation Series 1, Episode 13: Under the sea
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Hello. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation. I'm Margot Politis.
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We're going to look at articles today - indefinite articles 'a' and 'an', and the definite article,
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'the'.
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But first, let's meet an oceanographer. She's talking about using underwater devices to
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predict weather patterns.
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See if you can hear her using articles while she talks about monsoons.
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The monsoon gets a lot of its energy from the equatorial and sub-tropical Indian Oceans.
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Dr Susan Wijffels, an oceanographer from Australia's CSIRO, is hoping that by measuring the state
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of the Indian Ocean in those areas, scientists will be able to learn something about monsoon
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predictability.
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Predicting the monsoon is a very difficult thing and yet it impacts on millions and millions
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of people, and so we think that, if we can predict the monsoon usefully, we can make
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a real difference.
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We know from El Nino that it's a fully global system, so you just can't study one small
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part of the ocean and solve these problems. You really need a global integrated observing
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system, and the Argo program is the first real big ocean attempt to do that, and it's
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the float technology that's allowed us to even think about doing this.
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Using articles before nouns is one of the most difficult things in learning English.
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You can choose between indefinite articles 'a' and 'an', the definite article 'the',
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or no article at all.
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Let's start with the indefinite articles 'a' and 'an'.
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The rule is that 'a' is used before words starting with a consonant, and 'an' is used
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before words starting with a vowel.
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So we have a banana, but an apple.
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There are a couple of exceptions to the rule. Where the consonant 'h' is not pronounced,
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we use 'an'.
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So we say a happy man, but an honest man. The 'h' is not pronounced, so honest sounds
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like it starts with a vowel.
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Where the vowel 'u' is pronounced like a 'y' sound, we use 'a'.
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So we say an umbrella, but a user, because user sounds like it begins with a 'y'.
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'A' and 'an' are only used with singular nouns. We use 'some' with plural nouns.
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The indefinite articles 'a' or 'an' are used to refer to indefinite things, things that
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aren't specific. You use them when you're referring to any member of a group of things.
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The indefinite article does not refer to a particular thing, but one out of many possible
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things.
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If I say I would like a banana, I just want any banana, it doesn't matter which one.
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Let's look at an example of indefinite articles from the clip.
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Predicting the monsoon is a very difficult thing and yet it impacts on millions and millions
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of people, and so we think that, if we can predict the monsoon usefully, we can make
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a real difference.
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She uses the indefinite article twice.
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She says 'predicting the monsoon is a very difficult thing'. There are many things that
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are difficult to do, and predicting the monsoon is just one of them.
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Secondly she says 'we can make a real difference'. There are many differences that can be made
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in the world, but she is just talking about one of them.
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