More about articles

I have been reading, marking and correcting a lot of student work recently and I continue to be interested in the mistakes that students make with articles. Unfortunately my students do not seem to be quite so entertained with the use of articles in English! Really high level students often have gaps in their understanding of the article system in English and sometimes mistakes with articles are the only ones they make. The webpage I am showing you today offers an interesting approach to the study of articles. What I like about this page is that it does not try to tell you lots of rules which you won’t be able to remember. First of all it says that an understanding of the article system develops over a long period of time. This development can be stimulated by noticing what you read and referring to the notes on this page as you read. There are some interesting thoughts on how articles are used depending on your meaning and the type of noun. There is also a flow chart which you can follow to help you find which article you should be using. The page, which comes from the University of North Carolina, is here.