Consider these sentences
In this school, most of the children are from the Chinese community.
In this school, most the children are from the Chinese community.
In this school, most of children are from the Chinese community.
In this school, most children are from the Chinese community.
The first one is definitely grammatically correct, as it's an example from Oxford Dictionary, how about the others?
I guess the last one is also grammatical, since an English tutorial says
before most nouns in english, you have to use an article
in the pattern of most + countable nouns.
Best Answer
The following are not grammatically correct:
("most" cannot be followed by an article ("the"/"a"))
("of children" is not grammatically correct, it requires a definite article or some other specifier before "children")
The following are both grammatically correct:
In this case, they mean basically the same thing, because you've specified the particular population you're talking about beforehand ("In this school"). However, it is important to note that if the context is not specified, the two forms do not necessarily mean the same thing:
Using "the children" in this construct says you are talking about a specific group of children (presumably mentioned previously, or implied by context), and that most of that specific group are from the Chinese community.
"most children", on the other hand generally implies you are talking about "most children in general". That is, of all possible children (in the area, in the state, in the world, etc), most of then are from the Chinese community.