IELTSNetwork.com

Understanding the full rules around when to use ‘the’ in English will take a good deal of time a practice, but today let’s look at a small group of nouns for very common locations in the town that can be used with or without their definite article to produce a distinctly different meaning. These words are: school, hospital, university/college, prison, church and class. These words all have a very well known function connected with them, so you should not use the definite article if you are going to these places for that function- if you commit a crime, you will ‘go to prison’ and if you’d like to pray you should ‘go to church’. Take care, however, that if you are a decorator and your next contract is repainting the prison, you can let people know that you are not a criminal by saying ‘I’m going to the prison (for work).’ Exactly the same is true with the other nouns: a non student is going ‘to the school’ or is ‘at the university’ and a healthy person is ‘visiting the hospital’. One small word, one big difference in meaning.

Hope that helps.
IELTSTeacher