Ning Liu TP#5

When we ended the lesson last Friday, Ooki asked me what the difference between some and any was. For example, “Do you have any apples?” as opposed to “do you have some apples?” Since I could not answer this question as I felt like both of these were okay, I told him that I would inform him the next time we met.

First off, I wanted to teach him the differences between definite and indefinite articles. I felt that this was a very important grammar point that should not be mixed up. First off, I told him that the is used for specific objects, whereas a and an are not. I gave him examples using objects around us, giving him visual aids. Using sentences like “Is the pencil I used earlier in this room?” or “Is there a pencil in this room?” I was able to help him differentiate between the two. When he wrote on paper, we were able to incorporate adjective and noun clauses that he learned on Friday. When he asked about a and an, I told him that an was used when the word begins with a vowel sound. For example, though hour starts with a consonant, it sounds like it starts with an ah sound.

Afterwards we discussed about some and any. Of course, I gave the basic differences of the two, where any doesn’t specify the object, and some is a quantity. However, when used in a question, the two have the same meaning. However, any is used in a negative question sentence, whereas some is used in a positive question sentence. Examples would be “Do you not have any apples left?” and “Do you have some apples left?”