Using articles

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irina-amarena

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Should we use the definite article with the word "TERM" in the folloing example?


"All students will be tested by the school at the end of TERM.

The sentence is taken from Face2Face, Cambridge, Intermediate. Why there's no "the". Is it that case of set phrases that don't need any articles, like "at class", "at university"? I didn't find such in examples with "term" in grammar books. And moreover, Goole says there are about 143 million examples with "at the end of THE term" rather than with "at the end of term" (about 6 million).
 

bhaisahab

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It's fine as it is. No article is necessary.
 

MikeNewYork

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Why did you put "TERM" in all capital letters?
 

tkacka15

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I'm not a teacher and I'm not a native speaker.

Hi Irina.

We, non-natives, are lacking in intuition of the native English speakers hence our hesitations, or even disorientation in English grammar rules which are often not ironclad and full of exceptions.

My understanding is that in the case of "term" in the cited context, the noun "term" is uncountable; it simply cannot be a situation when a student is "at the end of terms" at school.
 

MikeNewYork

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But one can finish "a term" or be at the end of "the term".
 
J

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It's a difference between BE and AE. In AE, it would be "...at the end of the term." (or, more likely, some other word like semester)

Term is a countable noun.
 
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