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We have ten foreign students in our school. One is from America, ______ is from Australia and all the other students are from England.

What should I fill in the blank? "one" or "another"? Our teacher said it should be "another", can anybody tell me why?

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    I would say that either was acceptable.
    – Kate Bunting
    Mar 18, 2020 at 12:36
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    If I had to choose from these two acceptable words, I would think that "one" would be preferable since it is a series of categories dividing the foreign students into one American, one Australian, and remaining eight English. equaling 10 foreign students..
    – Katherine
    Mar 18, 2020 at 17:25

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In that situation, you can use either "one" or "another". They have the same meaning, and neither one is really more right or wrong than the other.

In some cases, the use of "another" can be useful to emphasize that you are not talking about the same person/people you just mentioned. In this case, it's not necessary because you're stating things which are mutually exclusive (there's no way that the same student would be both "from America" and "from Australia" at the same time, so it's obvious they have to be different people). However, if you were describing things that could potentially overlap, it might be different:

We have ten foreign students in our school. One is from America, one is Muslim, and four are women.

This sentence is fine, but it is a little unclear: It could mean that we just described six different people (all are different), or it could be that the person from America is also the one who is Muslim, or it could even be that there's a Muslim woman from America (plus three other women). On the other hand:

We have ten foreign students in our school. One is from America, another is Muslim, and four others are women.

This makes it very clear that the Muslim person is not the same one as the one from America, and that the four women do not include either the American or the Muslim we just mentioned.

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Your question is concerned only with the words 'one' and 'another'. But the whole sentence has a problem.

After describing two of the foreign students you say the others are English. The last part of your sentence means "...all the other foreign students are English students."

You need another sentence.

We have ten foreign students in our school, including one from America and one from Australia. Our other students are from England.

Or, better,

Some of our students are English, the rest are foreign, including an American and an Australian.

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