Grammar: Word classes: Nouns

Proper nouns

Proper nouns for places and institutions: Student problems

Here are some examples where students add the definite article unnecessarily to the place name:

I often go shopping with my father in the Causeway Bay.
I stayed at a hotel in the Central.
Chow Wa Kin will go to the Lan Kwai Fong to drink some wine.
First you can go to the Ocean Park and take a cable car to the Water World.
From the Peak, you can see the Victoria Harbour.

Over time certain patterns have become associated with particular places, often with no clear reason for the usage. For example, we can say The Polytechnic University, but not The Tak Shing Primary School. Students typically have difficulty with the names of places and institutions, mainly because of inconsistencies in the use of 'the'. When teaching these names, it is useful to indicate whether the is used or not, as students need to learn this as part of the place name. (There can even be differences between national varieties of English. For example in Britain it is common to say Walk up the High Street, then ... whereas in Australia the use of the determiner the before the name of a street or road is almost unknown and people would simply say Walk up High Street, then ...)