ADVANCED ENGLISH LESSONTHE MOST POWERFUL WORD

IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Source: An article from BBC Culture, ‘Is this the most powerful word in the English language?’; A podcast

episode from BBC Radio 4’s Word of Mouth, ‘The Most Powerful Word’

Focus: Reading and Listening

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• In terms of grammar, what are the most

significant differences between your

language and English? What are the

most challenging aspects of English for

native speakers of your language?

• Do you have a definite article (or

definite articles), like ‘the’, in your

language? Are the meaning and usage

the same as in English?

• Do you struggle with the use of ‘the’ in

English? Why do you think it’s so

difficult for English learners to get to

grips with?

• Can you explain the ‘rules’ related to

meaning and usage of ‘the’ in English?

Share what you know.

• To your knowledge, can ‘the’ ever be a

‘wow’ word? That is, can it be a word

that is used for dramatic effect?

• Can you explain the difference between

these utterances?

• I ate an apple. / I ate the apple.

• He scored a goal. / He scored the goal.

• I play guitar. / I play the guitar.

• I play the piano. / I clean the piano.

• The Americans / Americans

• The radio presenter / A radio presenter

• Romans wore togas. / The Romans wore

togas. / A Roman wore a toga.

DISCUSSION

QUESTIONS #1

Discuss these

questions with a

partner, using

examples from

your own

knowledge and

experience.

PREDICTION Look at the heading and byline of the article we are going to read, and a quote from the end of the

text. What do we learn about the word ‘the’? What do you expect to learn about the word?

Is this the most powerful word in the English language?

The most commonly-used word in English might only have three letters – but it packs a punch.

‘The’ deserves to be celebrated. The three-letter word punches well above its weight in terms of impact and breadth of

contextual meaning. It can be political, it can be dramatic – it can even bring non-existent concepts into being.

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Image: Brett Jordan on Unsplash

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DISCUSSION

QUESTIONS #2

1. It’s hard to imagine English without the word ‘the’.

2. Technically, the word ‘the’ is meaningless.

3. ‘The’ accounts for around 10% of all words used in English.

4. Short and simple words are the most frequent.

5. Someone with only a rudimentary grasp of English would not be able to tell the

difference between ‘I ate an apple’ and ‘I ate the apple’.

6. There are no exceptions in the rules for definite articles.

7. The simplest of words can be used for dramatic effect.

8. ‘The’ is a very important word in the field of philosophy.

9. All languages in the world have a word that means ‘the’.

10. Function words are very specific to each language.

11. There are differences between how US and UK speakers use ‘the’.

12. ‘The’ occurs more frequently in spoken language than in written language.

13. Women say ‘the’ more often than men do.

14. ‘The’ can infer power and authority.

15. ‘The’ comes from Old English grammar.

16. ‘Th’ is a relatively recent sound in English.

Discuss these

statements with

a partner.

Do you think they

are TRUE or

FALSE? Why?

READING #1 Now read the article to check. Are the statements TRUE of FALSE?

VOCABULARY #1 Match the words and phrases to their definitions.

A. Twofold /ˈtuː.fəʊld/

B. To expound /ɪksˈpaʊnd/

C. Generic /dʒəˈne.rɪk/

D. Referential /ˌre.fəˈren.ʃəl/

E. Workhorse /wɜːk.hɔːs/

F. To put forward /pʊtˈfɔː.wəd/

G. To evade /əˈveɪd/

H. To hedge your bets /ˈhedʒ.jəˈbets/

I. Spick and span /spɪ.kənˈspæn/

J. Prose /prəʊz/

K. To impart /ɪmˈpɑːt/

L. Semantic /səˈmæn.tɪk/

I. To present and explain a theory or argument in detail

II. To suggest

III. General and non-specific; Shared by, typical of, or relating to a whole

group of similar things, rather than to any particular thing

IV. Extremely clean and tidy

V. Related to meaning in language

VI. An animal, person, machine, piece of equipment, or vehicle that you can

trust to work well and that you can use to do a lot of work

VII.To avoid committing oneself when faced with a difficult choice

VIII.To communicate information and make it known to others

IX. Written language that is structured in an ordinary grammatical way in

sentences and paragraphs (i.e. not poetry)

X. Twice as great or as numerous

XI. Referring to a particular thing

XII.To avoid or escape from someone or something, especially through

trickery

VOCABULARY #2 Complete the sentences below with the words and expressions from the list. You can change the

form of the words to suit the sentence.

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1. I ______________ a few ideas for the party theme, but

nobody agreed with me.

2. I far prefer Margaret Atwood’s ______________ to her

poetry.

3. I didn’t know which dress I should buy, so I

______________ and bought both.

4. ‘The Arts’ is a ______________ term used to refer to

visual art, dance, performance, theatre and music.

5. My grandfather ______________ a lot of wisdom and

knowledge to my siblings and I.

6. Uber delivery drivers are the ______________ of the

hospitality industry nowadays.

7. She uses her newspaper column to ______________

her views on environment issues.

8. My reasons for travelling to Melbourne are

______________: I want to visit my cousin, and I also

need to attend a conference for work.

9. You can divide words into two categories: those

which serve a grammatical function, and words

that have a ______________ meaning.

10. If your in-laws are coming over, it’s a good idea to

make sure the house is ______________.

11. So far, he has managed to ______________ arrest,

even though everyone knows he’s guilty.

12. Words like ‘this’ and ‘that’ have a ______________

meaning.

READING #2 Read the article again and answer the questions.

1. What are two reasons why ‘the’ is ‘really miles

above anything else’?

2. What effect does the addition of ‘the’ have in the

sentence ‘He scored the goal’ (Rather than ‘he

scored a goal’)?

3. What example is given where it would be

appropriate to use ‘the’ before someone’s name?

4. Why would ‘the’ have been very useful around the

time of the Industrial revolution?

5. What does Michael Rosen think about the idea

that ‘the’ is a boring word?

6. Why did Bertrand Russell hate phrases like ‘the

man on the moon’?

7. What is the ‘Boring Conference’?

8. How do speakers of Danish, Norwegian, Hebrew

and Arabic fulfil the function of ‘the’?

9. How do speakers of Latvian and Indonesian fulfil

the function of ‘the’?

10. According to Murphy, what do some Chinese

students do when they are not sure whether to

use ‘the’?

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11. According to Russian, what do some of his

Russian friends do when they are not sure

whether to use ‘the’?

12. What might English speakers do when they

learn a language with no equivalent of ‘the’?

13. What’s the difference between ‘I play the piano’

and ‘I clean the piano’?

14. In what topics of speech does ‘the’ appear least

frequently?

15. In what sort of writing does ‘the’ appear most

and least frequently?

16. What explanations does Tannen offer for men

saying ‘the’ more than women?

17. What is the effect of the word ‘the’ for concepts

like ‘the greenhouse effect’ or ‘the migration

problem’?

18. What is the effect of adding ‘the’ before a

group of people, such as saying ‘the Jews’

instead of ‘Jews’?

19. Why was Trump criticised in the 2016

presidential debate?

20. What remnant of an Old English form of ‘the’ is

still used in parts of Yorkshire, Lancashire and

Cumberland?

READING #3 Read the article again. Which TWO of these are NOT mentioned as a meaning or function of ‘the’?

A. Making sense of a noun as a subject or an object

B. Signalling something important about a noun

C. Distinguishing football from one another

D. Acting as a quantifier

E. Creating a dramatic meaning

F. Implying that a non-existent object actually exists

G. Making it clear whether someone is talking

generally or specifically

H. Talking about formal and academic subjects

I. Creating rapport in speech

J. Signalling someone’s importance or status

K. Giving a concept credibility or push an agenda

L. Othering or objectifying groups of people Image: Jan Kahanek on Unsplash

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LISTENING #1 Now listen to the podcast episode and answer the questions.

VOCABULARY #3 Look at these highlighted adjectives from the text. What do they mean? Make guesses based on

context, and use a dictionary to check your guesses.

• ‘The’. It’s omnipresent; we can’t imagine English without it. But it’s not much to look at. It isn’t descriptive, evocative

or inspiring. Technically, it’s meaningless. And yet this bland and innocuous-seeming word could be one of the most

potent in the English language.

• But although ‘the’ has no meaning in itself, “it seems to be able to do things in subtle and miraculous ways,” says

Michael Rosen, poet and author. 

• Lynne Murphy, professor of linguistics at the University of Sussex, spoke at the Boring Conference in 2019, an event

celebrating topics that are mundane, ordinary and overlooked, but are revealed to be fascinating. She pointed out

how strange it is that our most commonly used word is one that many of the world’s languages don’t have. And how

amazing English speakers are for getting to grips with the myriad ways in which it’s used.

VOCABULARY #4 Read the Introduction to the Word of Mouth podcast episode, ‘The Most Powerful Word’, and

complete the spaces with words from the list.

Michael Rosen 1)____________ the strange history of 'The', the most 2)____________ word in English. It's

used more than 3)____________ as much as any other English word, and has 4)____________

philosophers centuries of head-scratching. So how did a word which means nothing, and didn't

even 5)____________ in Old English, come to 6)____________ our language? With 7)____________ Laura

Wright and Jonathan Culpeper, and philosopher Barry Smith.

• Twice

• Linguists

• Given

• Dominate

• Influential

• Exist

• Explores

1. What are ‘wow’ words? Give an example.

2. What’s Michael Rosen’s view on ‘wow’ words?

3. What percentage of the words we use consist of

‘the’?

4. What is the second-most frequent word in

English, and what percentage of our language

does it make up?

5. What follows ‘the’?

6. What are the two categories that words can be

divided into?

7. What example did Laura Wright give of when

‘the’ is general but ‘a’ is specific (opposite from

the usual meaning)?

8. What question does the university teacher dread

from his non-native English speaking students?

Why?

9. How is ‘the Jonathon’ explained as being

acceptable usage?

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DISCUSSION

QUESTIONS #3

• Did anything in this podcast surprise you? Or are you surprised that ‘the’ is so

complicated?

• The podcast guests mentioned the difficulty of teaching ‘the’ to students. What is an

aspect of your language that you think would be very difficult to teach or explain to a

10. What’s the difference between words with the

hard voiced ’th’ /ð/ and those with the softer,

unvoiced ‘th’ /θ/?

11. What did the latin-speaking Christian

missionaries bring to England in the 6th century?

12. What did ‘th’ suggest in the 15th century?

13. What does ‘rapport’ mean?

14. What are Bertrand Russell’s ‘two types of

knowledge’?

15. What happens as people age?

16. How do you have to be in trading and

manufacturing?

17. In 19th century data, which genres have the most

frequent usage of ‘the’?

18. In which genre of writing is ‘the’ most dense

nowadays?

19. What did ‘road’ use to mean?

20. What did some poets use to do to seem more

modern?

Image: Siora Photography on Unsplash

ANSWERS

VOCABULARY #2

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VOCABULARY #1

READING #1

READING #2

READING #3

VOCABULARY #4

LISTENING #1

1. TRUE

2. TRUE

3. FALSE

4. TRUE

5. FALSE

6. FALSE

7. TRUE

8. TRUE

9. FALSE

10. TRUE

11. TRUE

12. FALSE

13. FALSE

14. TRUE

15. FALSE

16. TRUE

A. X

B. I

C. III

D. XI

E. VI

F. II

G. XII

H. VII

I. IV

J. IX

K. VIII

L. V

1. Put forward

2. Prose

3. Hedged my bets

4. Generic

5. Imparted

6. Workhorses

7. Expound

8. Twofold

9. Semantic

10. Spick and span

11. Evade

12. Referential

1. Because it’s short and simple, and because it functions in

many different ways.

2. The inclusion of ‘the’ immediately signals something

important about that goal. Perhaps it was the only one of

the match? Or maybe it was the clincher that won the

league?

3. ‘You’re not the Jonathan I thought you were’

4. Because it would have acted as a quantifier, helping to

distinguish things clearly

5. He rejects the idea. He thinks it can be a powerful word

based on context.

6. Because it made it seem as if it actually exists, which it

doesn’t. ‘The’ gives it substance.

7. An event celebrating topics that are mundane, ordinary

and overlooked, but are revealed to be fascinating.

8. Through the use of an affix.

9. Through the use of a demonstrative word, like ‘this’ and

‘that’

10. They just decide to include it.

11. They sometimes leave a little pause.

12. They might overcompensate and overuse words like

‘this’ and ‘that’.

13. ‘I play the piano’ refers to a general skill on any piano,

and ‘I clean the piano’ clearly refers to one specific

piano.

14. A more personal, emotional topic might have fewer

instances of ‘the’ than something more formal.

15. ‘The’ appears most frequently in academic prose,

offering a useful word when imparting information –

whether it’s scientific papers, legal contracts or the

news. Novels use ‘the’ least, partly because they have

conversation embedded in them.

16. Men deal more in report and women more in rapport –

this could explain why men use ‘the’ more often.

Depending on context and background, in more

traditional power structures, a woman may also have

been socialised not to take the voice of authority so

might use ‘the’ less frequently.

17. It makes those ideas definite and presupposes their

existence.

18. It becomes othering and objectifying. ‘The’ makes the

group seem like it’s a large, uniform mass, rather than a

diverse group of individuals.”

19. For using ‘the’ in the content of referring to a group of

people. (It’s not mentioned in the text, but he referred

to ‘the African Americans’

20. Inflective forms of the definite article – t’ (as in “going t’

pub”).

C and I are not mentioned.

1. Explores

2. Influential

3. Twice

4. Given

5. Exist

6. Dominate

7. linguists

1. They are words that are more impressive and

interesting. Eg. Using ‘exclaimed’ instead of ‘said’,

or ‘gloomy’ instead of ‘dark’.

2. That no word is any more or less impressive than

any other. It’s all about how they are used. Power in

language comes from context.

ANSWERS

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© 2021 English Dot Community. All rights reserved.

3. Between 6 and 7%

4. Of; 3%

5. A noun

6. Lexical/semantic and functional.

7. ‘The Romans wore togas’ is general; ‘A Roman wore a

toga’ is specific.

8. How ‘the’ is used, because there are so many

exceptions.

9. Because it means ‘the type of Jonathon’, as in ‘the type

of person’.

10. /θ/ is found in words that carry meaning, whereas /ð/ is

found in grammatical function words.

11. The Roman alphabet

12. Prestige and high social rank

13. Social relations

14. Knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by

description

15. Their usage of ‘the’ increases.

16. Very referential, referring to bits and processes.

17. Legal texts, science, news reports, medicine

18. In academic prose.

19. ‘Ride’

20. Drop ‘the’