When and When NOT to use an article

One common rule to keep in mind is that articles are not used when referring to a name.

"Turn right at the burger store"
"Turn right at McDonalds"

"The boy was running very fast"
"Mike was running very fast"

Another example of when not to use an article is when referring to general things in conversation.

"Too much alcohol is bad for you"
"Cigarettes can cause lung cancer"

When you are referring to sports, you do not need an article.

"I love playing badminton"
"Football is a dangerous sport"

In most cases, you don't need an article when referring to a country except when the name is referring to multiple countries or regions. For example, if you say "England" or "Scotland", you don't need an article, but if you are referring to "The United Kingdom" or "The United States", then you do need an article.

http://www.talkenglish.com/Grammar/Grammar-speaking.aspx

Why teach grammar?

Why, then, should grammar be taught? For some teachers, the only driving force is ‘because The Boss says so’, where The Boss could stand for various figures ranging from Head of Department, through Head Teacher, to the Secretary of State for Education. This is to be expected, given the powerful campaign that finally removed grammar from the curriculum. For decades, teacher-trainers have been telling trainee teachers that teaching grammar is a waste of time, or worse, and it is common to hear grammatical analysis described as merely ‘the naming of parts’, a pointless exercise in classification. As I shall explain in section Ошибка! Источник ссылки не найден., such comments miss the point almost entirely, but the fact is that these views are influential.

There are, in fact, some very good reasons for teaching grammar, and improving writing is only one of them – an important reason, but by no means the most important one. The debate about the pros and cons of grammar teaching had such a negative outcome in part because it focused almost exclusively on this reason, ignoring all the others – improved reading, foreign-language learning and general thinking skills. Imagine a similar debate about the pros and cons of teaching algebra which focused entirely on the benefits for domestic account-keeping and concluded against algebra on the grounds that it doesn’t help people to avoid debt. One of the purposes of this book is to restore the balance in the debate about grammar by presenting a broader picture.

One important consequence of looking beyond any one aim of grammar teaching is to reframe the debate about the benefits of teaching grammar. Like any other teaching activity, teaching grammar has a cost, in terms of time that could be devoted to other worthwhile activities, in terms of teacher training and in terms of pupil commitment. The debate is about whether this cost is balanced, at least subjectively in the eyes of teachers, by educational benefits to the pupils, so it is important to have a clear global view of both the costs and the benefits. If grammar teaching produces benefits in just one area, such as writing skills, these benefits must balance the total cost of teaching grammar from scratch. But if the benefits are spread across a wide range of areas, the cost per area is clearly much lower.

To see the importance of this point, consider two contrasting scenarios. In the actual current scene, children know very little grammar when they leave primary school, so any secondary teacher who wants to mention grammatical concepts must teach not only the concepts concerned, but also a whole raft of elementary ideas which underpin them. Historically, this is the situation in which foreign-language teachers found themselves in during the 1970s when English teachers stopped teaching grammar, and it is hardly surprising that grammar-free teaching methods for teaching foreign languages became so popular. Now consider the scenario that exists in some countries, in which children learn and consolidate a great deal of grammar in primary school. By the time they reach secondary school, basic grammatical concepts and terminology are familiar, so there is no cost at all to using them – indeed, the more they are used, the more firmly they become entrenched in children’s minds. Admittedly a secondary teacher may need a specialised concept that the children have not yet learned – such as ‘modal verb’, ‘subjunctive’ or ‘ablative’ – it will be relatively easy to teach because children already understand foundational concepts such as ‘verb’, ‘subject’ and ‘subordinate’. In this scenario, grammar is virtually cost-free in secondary schools, and its costs in primary are offset against a wide range of benefits in secondary.