PART SEVEN: Teaching articles - 4 techniques |
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| Articles can be daunting. Students who enjoy a challenge may
plunge in without fear, but less adventurous ones may become
discouraged. You may choose to teach even these foundational
patterns incrementally, one or two parts at a time. Here are
some techniques to choose from as you brainwash your students
into using articles correctly. |
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| These techniques can be used as needed for any level of articles.
After using them for an early level (for a fundamental understanding
of articles), you can use them again to address exceptions. |
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| You'll find many resources related to these activities
on the next page. |
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| #1: A short, targeted writing assignment |
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| To begin teaching articles, you may want to draw attention
to them. Some students, particularly those whose native languages
don't rely heavily on articles, may be in the habit of ignoring
them. |
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| One way to do this is simply to assign a writing assignment
that uses simple grammar and vocabulary, but invites articles
mistakes. Here are some examples, followed by some kinds of
mistakes that might occur: |
- My family and what they do - My father
is doctor. I have sister. She lives in the small house.
- My secret life - When I'm not studying
the English, I am time traveller. I have met the King Solomon.
- My restaurant - I own very good restaurant.
We serve a chicken for the dinner with glass of a wine.
- My trip to Mars - When I went to the
Mars I met a beautiful ladies with the two heads.
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| As their teacher, you may have already noticed students' mistakes.
In that case, you can assign a text that you believe will invite
these mistakes. |
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| Before marking corrections, make a copy that the student can
correct, themselves, after learning more about articles. |
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| Remember that this exercise is intended to attract attention
and interest to article mistakes; it's not a framework for teaching
articles. That will come later. You may want to react positively
to the content, to soften the blow of article criticism. Or,
you may wish to crush your students' spirits and laugh at their
tears. |
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| #2: Articles gapfill |
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| Another method of attracting attention to articles is a gapfill.
This is more focused, plus may better suit students who dislike
writing texts because they're impatient or have difficulty writing. |
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| All that you need do is replace every article with a gap,
and also add a gap before every noun (or noun idea). It can
be helpful to provide the count of each article. (For example,
"This text contains 4 the's, 5 a/an's,
and there are 3 places without any article.".) |
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| Students then complete the gaps. This can be done in class
or as homework, and can be checked in pairs. |
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| Forced to focus only on articles (rather than blissfully ignoring
them), students will, hopefully, be curious about how these
little words operate. Now it's time to draw the students into
an analysis. |
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| #3: The French flag chart |
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| Ask each student to divide a blank sheet of paper like a French
flag (divided into thirds like the diagram at the bottom of
page 2) and write a/an, the,
and [no article] or Ø
at the top of each third. Or, hand out copies of the chart from
the Teaching Resources
page. You can then begin eliciting rules and writing them
on the board, letting students take notes as you guide the discussion
to discover correct patterns of article use. They can later
refer back to this as a list of rules for articles. |
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| Whenever possible, use questions and examples to lead students
to the correct rules. Don't correct every mistake right away.
Instead, try to offer cases that illustrate the mistake and
let the students do the thinking. Only control the situation
when the students are going in a totally wrong direction. |
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| If all goes well, each student will end up with their own
chart that lists rules for articles. You can encourage them
to recopy the paper more neatly. |
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| #4: Caveman Texts |
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| Another way to motivate students to improve their use of articles
is to explain to them that without articles they sound like
a caveman. To illustrate this point, you can bring a picture
of a caveman to class. The purpose of this is to motivate students,
but be careful not to discourage them from trying. They should
be motivated to make careful attempts, and not too insecure
to practice. Then again, I suppose it can be a lot of fun to
humiliate people just for the heck of it. |
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| Once the caveman point has made, you can present a Caveman
Text. A Caveman Text is simply a text of English that is incorrect
in a primitive-sounding way. A line from a Caveman Text might
read, "Tonight moon look like eye.", which should
be corrected to read, "Tonight the moon looks like an eye.".
Another example is "If I no caveman, I not need big stick
to find girlfriend." which might sound more civilized like
this: "If I weren't a caveman, I wouldn't need a big stick
to find a girlfriend." |
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| Although Caveman Texts can be used to focus on many kinds
of grammar, you may prefer to begin with Caveman Texts that
only omit articles. Later, you can use Caveman Texts that don't
use tenses and modals correctly, or that use overly simple vocabulary
and invite creative substitutions. |
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| An important difference between an articles gapfill and an
articles Caveman Text is that the latter doesn't indicate where
an article may be used. Students must sense that, themselves.
Thus, this exercise is useful for students who have developed
fluency without articles and don't easily recognize where articles
are needed—i.e., where the noun ideas are. This may seem
obvious, but many people aren't used to inserting words before
noun ideas. (As described earlier in this guide, a 'noun idea'
is one or more words describing a noun, possibly including adjectives
and adverbs.) |
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| Anyway, if you need some caveman pics, check the Teaching
Resources page for a few handsome specimens. |
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| A word of caution: |
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| As already noted, articles can be very discouraging. This
is in part because students' native language may not use articles,
but especially because articles in English have many exceptions.
Remind your students that learning articles takes time and is
possible. Don't let them give up. |
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| And beyond... |
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| After practicing articles with the techniques above, get your
students to use their knowledge. Here are some suggestions: |
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Give the students an uncorrected copy of
the text that they wrote as suggested in #1, above, and
let them correct their own work. This way, they can feel
the improvement. If they've made progress, this reinforces
knowledge and motivation and builds self-confidence. |
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Ask students to create their own article gapfills, either
from imagination or from real texts. |
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Pair students and ask pairs to compete at creating the
most complete and accurate copy of the French flag chart
of articles. |
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Ask students to create their own Caveman Texts, either
from imagination or from real texts. |
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Invite students to devise questions for a quiz to be
given to the entire class. You will probably need to oversee
this, both for accuracy and to ensure that there's a useful
variety of questions. |
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Invite students to bring a few sentences, from an outside
English source, that illustrate a variety of uses of articles. |
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| Learning articles takes patience. Remind your students of
this and provide them with a variety of interesting resources
and activities to develop their article knowledge. |
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