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Click here to find my unique posts on the English language: Singular 'they' Hello my friends and welcome to Practice English with Paul. Today it’s grammar; it is the singular ‘they’. Now this is a mistake many of my students have made over the years in their essays especially at FCE, even surprisingly sometimes, CAE. You should not be making this kind of mistake at CAE. Now we know the word ‘they’ the pronoun and it is followed by a plural verb. They are…. They like….. They were…. But sometimes we use the pronoun ‘they’ with a singular noun. Now let’s have a look at how this works, so we can avoid making mistakes in the future. They/them/their. We use them after nouns of unidentified people or a job whose role is a man or a woman and there is no way of knowing if that role is for a man or a woman. Now if you look at German or if you know German, German has suffixes belonging to their roles that tell you that job is of man or of a woman. Lehrer – lehrerin. English doesn’t have that. We just have the one word ‘teacher’ and it doesn’t tell you if it’s a man or a woman. Now, if you have a look at this example: ‘A doctor looks after his patients.’ That is wrong because the doctor here could be a woman. Saying ‘his’ could be sexist and is wrong. So, how do we avoid this? We can say: ‘A doctor looks after his or her patients.’ You will see such a structure sometimes in English. It’s correct, it’s fine or we can improve it. We can say ‘A doctor looks after their patients.’ Their – meaning the doctor who is a man or a woman so it’s a singular noun with a plural idea. Man or woman. That’s very important to understand. Other such words like this: teacher, pilot, paramedic et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But not only jobs. Now, unidentified people, we have the pronouns like somebody and anyone. This can also take the singular ‘they’. For example, somebody has forgotten their book. That somebody could be a boy or a girl. If anyone touches you (man or woman), I’ll kill them. Do you understand how it works? This is a fantastic way of reducing your word limit in your essays for your FCEs, CAEs. On top of that it’s a fantastic way of avoiding or upsetting people because you got their gender wrong. Whenever you’re unsure if it’s a man or a woman always use the singular ‘they’. You can’t make a mistake with it. Any questions, please write them below in the comment section and I will be happy to help you. Please subscribe to my channel and please give a thumbs-up. Thank you very much. Have a good day.
