Homophones, which are basically a set of words having the same pronunciation but different meanings and spellings, often pose problems for new learners whether they are native speakers or foreigners. There, their and there are a set of such homophones in English that learners need to have adequate understanding of their function in order to avoid confusions in their usage.
It is common to use their as an attributive adjective placed before a noun. Their shows possession and is the possessive form of they, used in the plural. Their is also used sometimes as a singular pronoun specifically by writers who want to avoid using both the pronouns his or her when the gender is not known as in the sentence, "Someone left their bag in the room". However, the use of their as a singular pronoun, is generally disapproved in English.
Depending on its usage in a sentence, there can perform the function of different parts of speech. The meaning of there used as a part of speech would generally mean a place or location-
The use of there along with the different forms of the verb “to be” (is, are, am, was, were) is commonly used in English.
The use of the apostrophe in they’re should not be confused. The apostrophe used in they’re acts as a substitute for a missing letter in this case-‘a’. In other words they’re stands for a contraction of two words-they (subject) and are (verb).
The words There, Their, and They’re may sound similar but they function differently and have different meanings. It may be difficult to master the complex grammatical rules of a language but knowledge of the basic difference and practice makes all the difference in using them correctly. How about using all these words in a sentence- They’re going to be felicitated for showing their skills there.