Hi, could you help me with articles in the following sentence, please? It would be great if you also could explain why a/the or no article is correct here.
I would like to note that my qualification is a/the standard and the most common pre-university qualification received by the vast majority of students in my country who go on to Higher Education.
In order to know which article to use, if any, you need to know exactly what you want to say and why. What exactly do you mean by “standard” here? Does it overlap with “most common”: is there one qualification that is the standard qualification and therefore the most common one? Or are there several standard qualifications, but yours in the most common standard one?
“Most” needs “the” in any case, because there should be only one that is the most common one. For “standard”, it depends on whether there are several standard qualifications or only one.
Cerberus™, you have encouraged me to think again about the meaning of what I am trying to say. If fact, I express the same idea three times in this sentence: ‘standard’ = ‘most common’ (i.e. the most popular) = ‘received by the vast majority of students’. I think, I’ll remove ‘the most common’ and make it ‘the standard pre-university qualification received by the vast majority…’ Your explanation has also helped me to understand the peculiarity of the choice between the/a. Only one question is left - in what situation would I need no article with the word ‘standard’?
Many thanks!
That sounds good.
You do not need an article before “standard” if you use it with “no”, or as an adjective to a noun that doesn’t need one: