Which is correct: all of the people, all the people, or all people? Give your students this simple explanation.

Not only do students have to contend with the articles a, an, and the, but they also have to learn to use many other quantifiers. Words like all, some, and none seem simple enough to learn, but when students have to use them with the, confusion abounds. If you follow the steps below, you will be able to clearly convey the three different quantifier sentence patterns to your students.

Step #1

First, explain the terms “specific” and “general.”

In English, a specific noun is one that you can see, that there’s only one of, or that you’ve already mentioned before.

• Please pass me the pen that is in front of you.

A general noun is one that you can’t see or that there are many of.

• I’m hungry. I wish I had a sandwich.

Step #2

Next, give the three main sentence patterns and explanations for quantifiers.

all of the + Ns

Use this pattern when you want to talk about specific nouns.

• All of the students in my class studied hard for the test. (plural count noun)

• I used all of the paper in my notebook to write my essay. (non‑count noun)

all the + Ns

Explain to students that this pattern is the casual form of the “all of the + Ns” pattern, where “of” is simply dropped to shorten the phrase. Most textbooks don’t mention it, but shortening phrases is very common in English, especially spoken English, and should be taught to your students.

• All the students in my class studied hard for the test. (plural count noun)
• I used all the paper in my notebook to write my essay. (non‑count noun)

all + Ns

Use this pattern when you want to talk about general nouns.

• All students (in the world) have to take exams. (plural count noun)
• Not all water (in the world) is drinkable. (non‑count noun)

Step #3

Finally, you can mention that these three patterns also apply to other quantifiers in English.

Alternatively, you could repeat these rules using different quantifiers on other days as a review. I find it helps to give students approximate percentages of amounts, to help them understand the meaning of each quantifier.

• 100% = All
• 95% = Almost all
• 80% = Many (count nouns), much (non‑count nouns)
• 50% = Some
• 20% = A few (count nouns), a little (non-count nouns)
• 5% = Almost none
• 0% = None

I hope all students benefit from all (of) the info here! :)

—Tanya