Teaching articles ... a, an and the?

Hello colleagues, David Rosen's thoughtful response to Evonne's question about teaching parts of speech got me thinking about the rules for using articles, i.e., a, an and the. While explaining the basics of how we use articles isn't that difficult, when we get into the nuances, it quickly gets super complicated.

Assuming instructors are teaching articles, I'm wondering if members can talk about how they approach this aspect of grammar. Do you have online resources you can recommend?

Cheers, Susan Finn Miller

Moderator, English Language Acquisition CoP

Comments

I agree it gets complicated quickly, usually when I'm in the thick of it! I don't have any online resources that I use, but I do teach the articles in quick mini lessons over and over again with my ESL students. The main points I try to stress are definite noun vs. indefinite nouns and of course, an for a vowel word. Early in my ESL teaching, students asked me why sometimes we say the (th schwa) and sometimes the (long e), and I had no idea there was a rule for this! Crazy how as native speakers we don't even know so many of these rules even exist!

I didn't know that rule until I was in a chorus.   Our brains are so pre-wired for imitating language that ... it just happens.   In my church choir, which is mostly Korean, we have to go over that ... and every CHristmas, learn that shepherd is pronounced shep --  herd ...  not shefferd...