English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Compare the two sentences below：
A: I have been reading the book for three hours.
B: I have been reading the book three hours.
I know A is obviously correct. But my question is:
Example B is not natural, and would sound odd to a fluent speaker. I am inclined to say that it is grammatically incorrect.
Example A requires some previous context that specifies what book is being referred to. In the absence of such context "the book" is not correct, and "a book" or perhaps "this book" would be better.
If "The Book" is used with capitals, it might refer to the Christian Bible.
