Well, makes a change from “Letter from a reader”
“Hi Alex,
How are you? It’s ****. ***** gave me the link to your webpage. It looks great!
Actually, I have a few questions about the definite article. ***** and I were frankly talking about grammar of English in the bus to the beach last Saturday, because he started to say I always forget to put “a” or “the” in the English sentences. We discussed for a quite long time which made him tired, then, he said to me, “Alex is your man.”
Anyway, please see below questions.
1/ Why you don’t put “the” in the sentence of “I’M GOING TO SCHOOL.” However, you need “the” in “I’M GOING TO THE OFFICE.” “I’M GOING TO THE LIBRARY.”??
2/ “THE JAPANESE, THE BRITISH, THE RICH, THE POOR…” But you say “SMOKERS, BIKERS, HIKERS” without “the”??
3/ Why can you say “I’M GOING FOR LUNCH.” and also “I’M GOING FOR THE LUNCH.” Both are ok?
It would be very kind of you if you could reply me with answers”
Think I can do most of those, but there is one I’m not so sure about and anyway wanted to see what others thought first. Anyone want to be a gent (or gentlelady) and answer?
TEFLtastic 
1/ With the first example I am not aware of any rule or reason other than general usage. When we know which “school, library, office” etc. is being spoken of, there are some that can be used with or without an article (school, hospital, town etc.) and others that require a definite article (office, library, cinema) etc. They just have to be learnt.
Note that there is a slight nuance between the following:
“I’m going to hospital” = I’m going to receive treatment.
“I’m going to the hospital” = I’m going to visit a person there, or visit the building.
The difference between “school” and “the school” is similar.
2/ “Japanese, British, Rich and Poor” are all uncountable nouns, and require “the” when spoken of as a general group. “Smokers, bikers, hikers etc.” are countable. The definite article is not required here unless we are speaking of a sub-group of smokers etc. in particular (example: “Can you tell the smokers in the corner of the restaurant that this is a non-smoking area?”)
3/ Both are ok, but the meaning is different:
“I’m going for lunch” implies that I am going out to eat and won’t be back until I’ve finished.
“I’m going for the lunch” implies that I am probably going out to buy food to bring back and share.
I often get tied up in knots trying to teach articles, and increasingly it seems to me that it is best for learners to gradually develop an instinct for their usage over time through constant exposure. Most errors do not impede comprehension, and apart from 3 or 4 fundamental rules, giving learners exhaustive explanations about how articles work is probably counter-productive.
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Alex: I like this post. You’ve got an ongoing series on ‘links of the month’, why not a grammar/ language awareness of the month?
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By coincidence, I wrote two articles on teaching articles last week:
https://www.tefl.net/elt/ideas/grammar/fun-activities-for-practising-a-an-the/
https://www.tefl.net/elt/articles/teacher-technique/tips-learning-articles/
The second one echoes what Simon says by mainly consisting of oversimplifications that help students remember and ways of reinforcing what they do know, rather than more and more precise rules
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Here’s the (oversimplified) way I usually explain it to students:
98% of the time you need something in front of the verb, e.g. a number, a, an, the, some, any, my
If you don’t need anything in front, that is because it has a special meaning. For example, “He is in prison” means that he is a prisoner. Therefore it is an idiom and so doesn’t follow the normal rules.
The one that I can’t explain is why we do need “the” in “I’m going to the office”, as it seems idiomatic in a similar way to prison, hospital etc. Maybe it is because it is a different idiomatic form, “the” meaning “my” in sentences like “the phone rang” and “I put it in the fridge”?? Or maybe offices haven’t been around long enough for it to become idiomatic and so it is an example of the general rule “the office = you know which one = the office that I work in”??
I must say, I wouldn’t say “I’m going for the lunch”. With the meaning Simon says, I’d probably say “I’m going out to fetch some/ my/ our lunch” – possibly that sentence with “the” if we had just talked about it, but not the shorter version.
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I’m going for the lunch can also mean “The reason I’m going is for the lunch”.
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