PART SIX: Common mistakes [made by people
who haven’t spent years and years hearing and using
articles] |
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| Now we’ll look at some common mistakes that students
make with articles, and we’ll also consider Comprehension
Check Questions (CCQs) that might lead the student to enlightenment. |
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The most common mistake among speakers of article-free tongues
is to omit a needed article completely.
“What is point
of trying to use article at all?”
This is the worst mistake, because they’re limping along
without articles and feeling too comfortable sounding like a
caveman. Sometimes students develop a high overall fluency but
skip over articles, which makes them sound primitive. Some students
actually seem to deny the existence of articles, going so far
as to omit them when reading a written text aloud! |
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A CCQ for this may simply have to be designed to motivate:
“Do you want to sound like a native speaker?”
“Do you want people to be impressed with your knowledge
of English?”
As a last resort, pose the question in the student’s native
language and make some bloodcurdling grammatical error while
doing so. This is known as deterring by example. And of course,
the student may just not care. |
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An early mistake is using a/an and the
in the wrong places.
“I saw a sun this morning while I was eating the doughnut
for breakfast.”
This is a good sign for early learners, because it suggests
that they’re trying to use articles, rather than ignoring
them. It's a first step to correct article use. |
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You can address these, respectively, with the following
CCQs:
“Which sun did you see? Are you talking about the one,
unique sun that we all know?”
“What doughnut? Do I know which doughnut you’re
talking about?” |
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Some students seem to sense that they should use the,
but they instead use a stronger determiner such as this
or that.
“Yesterday I saw a dog, and this dog saw me, also.”
This is a good sign, because the student is aware of articles’
role and place. They just need to refine their sense of which
words to use. |
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Possible CCQs:
“This dog saw you?” (pointing
as if there is an invisible dog in the room)
(and, if explicitness is needed…) “Are you talking
about the dog that you saw?” |
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| Other mistakes come from simply not knowing or understanding
patterns or exceptions. Here are some that you may encounter: |
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“My mother is bellydancer.”
(a has been omitted. This is normal in some
languages that use articles, such as French: “Je suis
professeur.”.)
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CCQs:
“Is bellydancer an adjective?”
“She
is a what?”
“What article did you use?” |
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“My mother is the belly dancer.”
(Here, the speaker forgets that descriptions should use a.
When corrected, the student may retort “But we know this
bellydancer! She is my mother!” Yes, but it’s a
description!) |
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CCQ:
“Is she the only bellydancer?” |
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“Do you have any pets?” “Yes, I have the
cat.”
(The student has confused the ‘we know which one’
idea. The speaker knows the cat, but the audience doesn’t,
so a is correct.) |
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CCQ:
“The cat? Is it unique?” |
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“I just told you that I have the cat!”
(If the speaker is only emphasizing that he/she is a cat owner,
and not referring to one particular cat, then this is really
a description and a should be used. This is
confusing because the cat has already been mentioned, yet we
still use a.) |
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CCQ:
“Are you telling me that you have that particular
cat, or are you describing yourself as a cat owner?” |
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“I just got an email from the President Clinton.”
(In this context, ‘President’ is the title part
of a name, like Dr. or Mrs. There should be no article.) |
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CCQ:
“Isn’t ‘President’ part of
a name in this case?” |
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“Yesterday I saw the dog with green spots.”
(The student has mistakenly used the because of the description
of the dog that follows. However, the description is not specific
enough to use the—unless we know which
dog with green spots the student has in mind.) |
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CCQs:
“Is there only one dog with green spots?”
“Do I already know which dog you’re talking about?”
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“I’m at a party with French women and Italian
women. French women are more interesting then Italian ones.”
(From the context, we understand that the second sentence is
about the women at the party. We use no article when speaking
about plural nouns in general, but here we would use the to
refer to just the women at the party. Otherwise, it sounds like
a generalization about the two cultures.)
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CCQs:
“All French women? All Italian women?”
“Are you talking about French and Italian women in general,
or only about the ones at the party?”
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| An interesting mistake that some students make is that they
mix up the specificity of the with countability.
The result can be something like this: “Yesterday I took
all money I had and bought the new dog.”, instead of “Yesterday
I took all the money I had and bought a new dog.” A method
for dealing with this confusion is to emphasize that the
means ‘specific’, not ‘countable’. You
can draw this chart and elicit while filling it in to help students
organize these differences: |
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single
countable |
plural
countable |
uncountable |
| unspecific |
a/an |
no article (or some/any) |
no article (or some/any) |
| specific |
the |
the |
the |
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| This makes it obvious that the can be used
for a specific noun from any of these groups (with proper nouns
being a notable exception). |
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