TESOL conference in Rivne, Ukraine April, 2010
I was visiting a lady who lives near L'viv a few years ago, and near the end of the visit she told me that "the husband was soon coming home..." this little anecdote illustrates the problems of correctly using the article, and the confusion or amusement it can cause for the hearer. These errors are typically use of the article and preposition, also pronunciation and collocation errors which have created a specific “Ukrainian English”.
This course will focus on these types of errors, by alerting students to the error, correcting the error, and with various types of practice hopefully eliminate the error before it becomes fossilized in the students' speech.
The university has agreed for me to work with the fourth year psychology students who are studying English as their only foreign language. The class is split into 2 subgroups, group A and group B. I will work with one subgroup, the other group is the control group.
At the beginning of the course both groups will take the same test. I will work with group A once a week; group B will not participate in my course. My work with group A will consist of fill in the black exercises, drills, communicative games, role play and other types of activities to teach and reinforce the correct forms in the students' minds. My weekly lessons will follow the set curriculum of the group's normal English classes.
After working with the fourth year students for one year I will administer a test again to both groups to check if there is any improvement in group A in comparison to group B. If students do well on this test I would recommend giving them enough points to raise their mark one point at the end of the spring term. It is too early to have any results yet from our observations, but we have detected some patterns in the errors made, as listed:
• Percentage of correct answers in English Article test
• Superlative 90,00%
• you know which one 63,00%
• things in general 51,00%
• plural noun 43,00%
• only one around 72,00%
• place names exception 84,00%
• a closed group with a limited number of members 58,00%
• uncountable noun 38,00% • proper noun 70,00%
• one person or thing 55,00% • expression of quantity 74,00%
The problem of the English article is one that has been explored for many years. Otto Jespersen, a Danish grammarian wrote A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles. The Article was addressed in this work as well as in other current publications such as The English Article by Stoudinets, published in Kyiv in 2006.
Conclusion A native speaker may be able to detect and correct these errors more readily; the native speaker does face the limitations of never having studied English as a foreign language. This presents certain challenges, such as having to learn grammar rules in order to explain why something doesn't "sound right" But with enough drill and practice of correct article use, it's possible that even a native English speaker will understand the "logic" behind the need for articles in the English language!
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