Studying Grammar Like Crazy!

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Part of speech
or grammatical category:

Word, term
or idea:

Other notes on
class or type:

Level of difficulty
1 elementary
5 intermediate
9 advanced

Pronouns

Demonstrative

This and that, these and those

3 - 5

Explanation and discussion:

In English, there are two sets of demonstrative pronouns, this and that, and their plurals, these and those.

Unlike some languages with three forms, there are only two sets in English, one set that refers to things that are closer to me, this and these and the other that refers to things that are farther away from me, that and those.

Note that as a pronoun, they can take as antecedents nouns, phrases, clauses and even whole sentences. But, please remember that they can be demonstrative adjectives, too, here, they precede the noun they modify.

The most important rules to remember are shown in the table below.

Example(s):

	For things closer to me	For things farther away
For one thing (singular)	Always use this	Always use that
For more than one thing (plural)	Always use these	Always use those

Let's see, which book do I want to read. Ah! This is it!

To be or not to be, that is the question.

OK, let's sort out the sports gear and return it to their proper owners. These belong to Atsushi and those belong to Boris.

Note(s):

Exercise(s):

Note: Due to a bug in Microsoft Internet Explorer, you must click next question for the first question. This does not happen in Netscape. In any browser, click on the [a], [b] or [c] for the answer and the next question button to see the next question.

For this exercise, consider 7 or better "Great", 5 or better "Very Good", 3 or better "Good" and 2 or better "OK". Remember the score is RIGHT minus WRONG. Zero or less, please study some more.

Studying Grammar Like Crazy!

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