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I am a student of functional English. My teacher told me to search a difference between two sentences that have almost same structure except the article "THE". And because of this article the meaning of both sentences differ. I have searched many websites but i don't find the appropriate answer. So help me to find the appropriate difference between these following sentences:

1: He goes to School.

2: He goes to the School.

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marked as duplicate by Edwin Ashworth, Kris, tchrist♦ Apr 3 '18 at 12:08

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  • Possible duplicate of Is there a reason the British omit the article when they "go to hospital"?. You will find most of the answer there, but I'd guess that your teacher is unfamiliar with the ground-breaking work of Master looking at the 'null article' (as contrasted with the 'zero article'). – Edwin Ashworth Apr 3 '18 at 8:41
  • A superficial answer here is that 'He goes to school' is idiomatic for 'He attends school'. It is fine as a complete sentence given sensible context, or may have a temporal and/or other qualifiers ('He goes to school by car on Thursdays'). // I'll change your second variant slightly in the interests of idiomaticity. 'He went to the school' means 'He went to the school building / premises'. It would normally be used with immediate context (eg 'He went to the school to see whether the building was still as ugly as he remembered it being'). There is an overlap with ... – Edwin Ashworth Apr 3 '18 at 8:54
  • sense (1): 'OJ Simpson went to the school in San Francisco that Dom DiMaggio had attended', but 'the' here is specifying [the particular school that Dom DiM had attended] and this trumps the usual 'go to [no article] school' form for 'attend'. Of course, 'OJ Simpson went to the school in San Francisco that Dom DiMaggio had attended' is ambiguous (though it is a fact that they both attended the then Galileo High School). (It's also a fact that my wife and I went to [well, past] the school in San Francisco that Dom DiMaggio and OJ Simpson had attended, in 2017.) – Edwin Ashworth Apr 3 '18 at 9:25
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To my ears:

1: He goes to School.

implies he is likely a student or teacher who regularly goes to his school.

2: He goes to the School.

doesn't imply he is a student or teacher. He could go to that school for any purpose.

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