Englishfor English speakers
a
Determinative
—
A is used when the following word could be any of a certain type.
Compare "A book I saw on the shelf" and "The book I gave you yesterday".
a
Noun
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A is the first letter of the alphabet.
The letter "a" comes before "b".
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In some schools, an A is a very high grade.
Ron got an A on his earth science test.
day
Noun
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A day is a measure of time.
—
24 hours
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Seven days make one week
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The time between midnight and the following midnight (or between sunset and sunset in Jewish reckoning)
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The time between sunrise and sunset, when it is daylight
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The part of a day spent at work or school
He spent two days at work means that on two days he went to work; he did not spend 48 hours at work.
at
Preposition
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Used to describe where something is, or when saying something's position
I am at home.
Let's meet at the pub!
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The time at which something happened or will happen
Breakfast is at 9 o'clock.
At 5pm we went home.
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Indicating something's state
At half price!
Water boils at high temperatures.
at
Symbol
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The @ symbol, used to replace at
support@microsoft.com is an email address.
Apples @ £1.50 per kilogram.
the
Determiner
—
Used, instead of a, to reference something specific, already known to exist.
Compare "I read a book." and "I read the book."
—
Used with a stress, to show that the word following is special.
Are you the John Smith that I went to school with?
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Used with an adjective that acts like a noun to mean all of the people concerned
The poor are always with us.
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Used with superlatives forms of adjectives and adverbs.
You are the best.
race
Noun
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A race is when people compete to see who is the fastest at either driving or running.
There was a race to see who could finish first.
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A race is a group of people that come from the same place and have similar traditions.
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A race is a group of people with the same physical characteristics, such as skin color, hair color and type, etc.
race
Verb
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When a person races, he competes with other people to see who can go the fastest.
Tom was hungry, so he raced George down to the ice cream truck.