a MA student vs an MA student

Answers to yesterday's questions:

“To swim” means the activity, swimming, in general. “To have a swim” means to experience a single action of swimming, from start to finish. So we should say:

- I like to swim. / I like swimming. (i.e. Swimming is one of my hobbies.)
- I would like to have a swim today. (i.e. I prefer to enjoy “the process of swimming” today.)

Thus, the answer to Q2 is:

- When you have time, I would like to have a chat.

But we say, “I am a person who likes to chat/ who likes chatting”.

Thus, Crystal, you are right. Keep it up!

From the above, you can see some simple words can be not simple! There is a Chinese saying “學海無涯，唯勤是岸”. It’s true! Even though I am an English teacher, I know that I still have many things that I do not know, so I also have to keep learning. As some of you may already know, I am now a part-time MA student in CUHK. What is MA? MA stands for “Master of Arts”/ 文學碩士. In Hong Kong, more and more teachers possess or are going to possess that kind of qualifications. It's common!

It’s time for a question. As we all know, we often use “an” in front of a word that starts with “a”, “e”, “i”, “o” and “u” and use “a” in other cases, but there are exceptions, like “I have been hungry for an hour”. Then, we may have troubles about the following:

Q3: Which of the following is/ are correct?
- I am a MA student.
- I am an MA student.
- I am a Master of Arts student.
- I am an Master of Arts student.

Tell me what you think. You may be correct!