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Usenet Posted 21 years ago
Learning
Articles
This post is addressed to upper-level language learners and language teachers. It may not make much sense to those of you who have not studied formal grammar intensively.
* * *
In Greece, we only have two real problems with getting the principles of article usage across to upper-intermediate/advanced teenagers and adults.
First, it is very difficult for Greek speakers to both understand and successfully apply the general rule that plural countable/uncountable nouns used in a wholly general, wholly abstract sense do not normally take an article, i.e.:
Life is funny. (All life, generally.)
NOT * The life is funny.
Guns don't kill people. People kill people. (Yeah, right.) NOT * The guns don't kill the people. The people kill the people.
Second, Greeks easily understand but do not always successfully apply (dare I say acquire?) the general rule that a singular countable noun, except in certain collocations, normally takes a determiner.
I am a teacher.
NOT * I am teacher.
Moreover, these two grammatical forms are inevitably the first to go to the wall when students stop studying English formally.
Does anyone else have these same problems as a teacher (or had them as a learner) and what do/did you do to get around them? I have several solutions, all of which I consider only partially helpful and not particularly responsible, although they do help students perform well on standardized tests, which is unfortunately the primary goal of teaching English in Greece.
Do you have similar problems with other grammatical phenomenon? Which ones?
Thank you for your time.
* * *
In Greece, we only have two real problems with getting the principles of article usage across to upper-intermediate/advanced teenagers and adults.
First, it is very difficult for Greek speakers to both understand and successfully apply the general rule that plural countable/uncountable nouns used in a wholly general, wholly abstract sense do not normally take an article, i.e.:
Life is funny. (All life, generally.)
NOT * The life is funny.
Guns don't kill people. People kill people. (Yeah, right.) NOT * The guns don't kill the people. The people kill the people.
Second, Greeks easily understand but do not always successfully apply (dare I say acquire?) the general rule that a singular countable noun, except in certain collocations, normally takes a determiner.
I am a teacher.
NOT * I am teacher.
Moreover, these two grammatical forms are inevitably the first to go to the wall when students stop studying English formally.
Does anyone else have these same problems as a teacher (or had them as a learner) and what do/did you do to get around them? I have several solutions, all of which I consider only partially helpful and not particularly responsible, although they do help students perform well on standardized tests, which is unfortunately the primary goal of teaching English in Greece.
Do you have similar problems with other grammatical phenomenon? Which ones?
Thank you for your time.
Top answer
Students in Turkey also have problems with articles, but different ones to Greeks: there is no equivalent of the determiner 'the' in Turkish, so students will very often omit it, producing sentences such as: *Have you locked door? *There's a house in my picture. House is big.
- Students in Turkey also have problems with articles, but different ones to Greeks: there is no equivalent of the determiner 'the' in Turkish, so students will very often omit it, producing sentences such as: *Have you locked door?
- *There's a house in my picture.
- House is big.
- etc.
- ) and give lots of dull rules; 'articles lessons' were never popular with me or my students.
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1 Answers
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Students in Turkey also have problems with articles, but different ones to Greeks: there is no equivalent of the determiner 'the' in Turkish, so students will very often omit it, producing sentences such as:
*Have you locked door?
*There's a house in my picture. House is big.
etc.
Unfortunately most of the coursebooks and grammar books I've seen focus on the tricky articles (a
*Have you locked door?
*There's a house in my picture. House is big.
etc.
Unfortunately most of the coursebooks and grammar books I've seen focus on the tricky articles (a
0
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