Job Discussion Forums

[erracht]

I am enjoying teaching English in the Czech Republic (last year I thought I would return to Canada before too long but have since completely changed my mind and now I'm staying). My students range from weak pre-intermediates to advanced. A problem with the majority of them is that they can't get into the habit of using their articles. I have repeated countless times that they need to say A(N) and THE and explained most of the theory but they just don't seem to want to get into the habit.

Is there anything that I as a teacher can do to get them to start using their articles?

[leeroy]

I see two main problems with articles with advanced learners.

Firstly, in native spoken English they are almost always "hidden" - articles are hardly ever stressed - and are often partially or completely assimilated into the words surrounding them. With my accent "In the car" sounds like "in-nuh-car". So, a large problem is that learners simply don't notice articles when processing native speech - they are (perhaps understandably) more concerned with emphatically stressed words, verbs, nouns, adjectives etc...

Secondly, articles are often not (really) semantically necessary - meaning can regularly be conveyed adequately (albeit incorrectly in the grammatical sense) without articles;

"The dog is in the car"
"Dog is in car"

Thus, students (consciously or otherwise) might simply reason that articles are not worth it - especially given the multitude of grammatical rules and exceptions that can apply.

The issue with articles is not usually that "People won't understand you if you don't use them" (although admittedly sometimes the semantic difference between "the", "a" and nothing at all can be profound!), it is that "Non-, or bad use, of articles will make you sound like a rubbish speaker of English".

In solution to these two problems, firstly I try to ensure that students actually notice articles in everyday speech - and secondly that they are aware that "speaking English just about good enough to have your meaning conveyed is not good enough" - misuse of articles can create a negative impression of the speaker's English abilities.

[dyak]

[Glenski]

This won't provide any lesson ideas, but the book Three Little Words. A, An, and The at least shows you the various ways to use articles.

[Nauczyciel]

From my personal experience (I'm a Pole) I know that the only way to learn how to use articles is to read and listen to English as much as possible. Eventually it will click somehow. There are no articles in any Slavic language so it's not the question of the aesthetic of them - it's just a completely alien concept. My Polish students find it really hard to learn when to put "a" and "the" and very often tend to overuse them, especially "the" (e.g. "I'm going to the Paris"). As one of the posters suggested, it's best to pronounce articles very clearly when speaking to students and help them notice the importance of articles in writing. But don't expect to work miracles, especially teaching at private study centres. With university students it should be easier.

[Roger]

Really surprised to red that Czechs can't be taught to use articles... believe it though! I had a Czech girlfriend man years back, and we used to chat in German. She had no problem getting used to the der/die/das enigma.

May I suggest that you try a wholly new approach? Maybe you produce new lists of words in which you prefix each noun with a "the" and a (n.). I know they will still need to know when to drop the article "the", and when to use an indefinite article "a" or "an".

[Nauczyciel]

Roger,

Der, die, das may be an enigma to you, I mean English speakers, who do not recognize gender in nouns. In Polish and other Slavic languages, every noun is either feminine, masculine, or neuter. However, this is not a question of articles (as is in German, where der is m, die is f and das is n), but endings. Let me use Polish as an example: in this language, most feminine nouns end in "a", most masculine nouns end in a consonant, and most neuter nouns end in "o" (but there are multiple exceptions, where the gender isn't determined by endings). Therefore, for a Slavic person it's quite easy to adopt the idea of gender of nouns expressed by articles. What WILL pose a problem is the fact that der die das are definite articles and ein and eine are indefinite. Thus, we've come back to the original question: how to teach a Slavic speaker when to use definite and indefinite articles.

[Sheep-Goats]

More practically, just focus on article usage for two or three hours worth of lessons. Simply tell your students that they're not using articles enough and that it sounds bad to you. Start with writing practice and move to speaking, last to listening.

Keep in mind that you should be teaching the zero article as well as a, an, the. This makes the whole "do I need an article or not thing" moot -- English always uses an article, but sometimes it's the unpronounced and unwritten "zero article" (usually written on the board as a null sign).

The indefinite article is best understood conceptually through exercises that make the indefinite point -- eg: "A brother is...". Speakers unfamiliar with the concept will produce sentences that should read "My brother is...". You can introduce this concept through "A bird is..." -- deleting sentences like "A bird can fly" will help to demonstrate that you're not talkign about just one bird, even though the article is singular.

The definite article is best understood through exercises where what the other person knows is known to both people -- not too hard to build -- usually any kind of exercise where both SS have the same info (eg: book) in front of them will do. Contrast that with an exercise where the same info is not known (two different info sheets) for the final stroke.

[Dr.J]

Great! I was just thinking about this topic and I have a brilliant idea!

Please read this!

Actually it's very simple. Copy a chunk of text from the internet (news is good, anything with correct standard English), then use the search and replace function in Word to erase ALL the "a's" and "the's" from the text, then get your students to put them back in. Just do this every day again and again and they will start to get an instinctive "feel" for where articles go - this might be more effective than learning all the rules which to me have too many exceptions to be that useful.

The other thing is, as someone said above, learn new vocabulary with the most common article ALREADY in place e.g.

the library
the park

BUT

a restaurant
a baseball stadium

THEN teach them where you drop the article, because this is conceptually easier to swallow than adding on articles to each word from scratch.

I've just started teaching elementary school kids and I just make them use "the" and "a" all the time. The other teachers freaked out: "They can't handle it, they are too young!" but I don't see native English speaking kids having any problem with it. Of course they make loads of mistakes, but they realise that it's a fundamental part of the language.

[erracht]

[Stephen Jones]

Indians are also hopeless with articles. This includes university professors of English. Half of the CVs I receive from India, and nearly all I receive from Pakistan, have glaring omissions of the article.

Makes grading the hires a lot easier though!

[merlin]

I proofread for Czechs with near-native ability but it's inevitable that I always have to fix a few articles and commas on otherwise spotless papers. They can do exercise after exercise but somehow they just don't get it every time. How do we teach them to "feel" it?

One extremely good translator I know believes it's a conspiracy we native speakers perpetuate to keep ourselves employed.

[zaneth]

Long live the conspiracy!! Editing just wouldn't be the same.

The article: loads better than a secret handshake.

I was listening to some students presenting their bachelor papers. One was on articles and one of the judges commended her, saying that we need more research on this sort of thing. My phd perhaps?

After being asked to come up with an article lesson, I got really interested in it, myself. (granted, I'm easy to impress) But try making a gap fill and then figuring out how to explain each choice of article and how it changes the meaning if you imagine a different article. I had a piece of religious text close at hand that weekend so I was using it. It was actually very interesting how the meaning was changed in some cases.

If I hear 'the' Moscow one more time I'll throw a hissy fit.

[culfy]