The Grrrammar Guide to Articles Part 1: Dorota’s question

Many years ago, one of my colleagues came down to the factory in southern Poland where I was based, in order to teach an intensive English course with a manager called Dorota. Her level of English was incredible: she was extremely fluent and accurate, and didn’t seem to need an English course at all. By the end of day 1, my colleague was feeling bad: he felt that he hadn’t been able to teach her anything new during the whole day.

When I spoke to him at the end of day 2, however, he was feeling much better. He had identified Dorota’s main weakness in English. She never used articles (a/the). Dorota was Polish, and Polish people are well-known for having problems with articles; after all, there are no articles in Polish. But Dorota didn’t have a problem with articles – she simply didn’t use them at all.

So my colleague spent that evening photocopying whatever worksheets he could find that would help him teach Dorota about articles. There was a list of rules, there was a worksheet on articles and geographical names (e.g. __ Himalayas, __ Mount Everest) and a text with all the articles removed (e.g. My uncle is __ postman. He lives in __ small village in __ England). Armed with all these materials, how could he fail to teach her about articles and improve her English?

After day 3, I asked him how it had gone. “It was a disaster”, he said. She had refused to look at the rules, and hadn’t touched the worksheets. 

“As you said yourself, I speak very fluently and accurately”, she had explained to my colleague. “Everyone understands me. Why do I need articles? If I start worrying about which articles to use, it’ll slow me right down. It’ll make my English worse, not better. What purpose do they serve? How do they help me? If you can’t answer my question, I’m not going to learn your stupid, complicated rules”.

And that was the problem. My colleague couldn’t explain how articles would help her, and why she should even consider becoming less fluent in order to worry about these meaningless little words. That evening, he asked me for my advice, and I was also unable to answer Dorota’s question. 

But that wasn’t the end for me. I then worried about Dorota’s question for several years, and searched everywhere for an answer. Over the years, I’ve had quite a few insights into the purpose of articles and how they work – perhaps still not enough to satisfy Dorota, but I’d certainly be able to give her a sensible answer now. 

So that’s the purpose of this series of blog posts. Articles are one of the most misunderstood parts of English grammar. One day I hope to write a whole book about them. So be warned: this series could be quite long.

The Alps by coyote-agile

Isn't there more to articles than learning about names of mountain ranges?

To be continued ...

Welcome to Grrrammar

Welcome to my new blog, Grrrammar.

(I'm sure I'll regret the name when people can neither spell nor pronounce it, but ... I kind of like it).

As it says at the top, this is aimed at EFL teachers and learners who love grammar (or perhaps even those who hate it and want to soak up some of my enthusiasm).

I'll be honest - I love grammar. Thinking about it, reading about it, talking about it, writing about it. I've done quite a few conference presentations over the years on very simple topics like "What are articles for?", "My top ten grammar structures", and "Timelines and the English tense system". I tend to avoid methodology issues and just stick to the language issues. What always surprises me is how many teachers come to my presentations. I guess they like thinking about grammar too. Or perhaps they come looking for answers.

I don't claim to have all the answers. In fact, very often there are no definitive answers in the world of grammar; sometimes there are only strongly-held opinions.

What I do claim to have, on the other hand, is lots of questions. I'm the sort of person who, when the book says "in this example you can choose between past simple and past perfect - both are correct", wants to know "but why are they both correct? What's the difference? Help me choose."

So that's what I'll do for this blog - I'll raise lots of questions. I'll offer my own answers, on the understanding that my answers aren't necessarily any more valid than yours. I might be wrong, in which case please tell me.

I'm hoping you'll also have lots of questions. Many years ago, I ran a service at the British Council called the Language Doctor, where users from all over the world submitted grammar and learning questions, which I tried to answer. It was exhausting work (and unpaid), but the worst thing was that I'd spend an hour writing an answer that only one person ever saw. With this blog, I'd love to do something similar, but allow the whole world to see (and comment on) my answers.

I'm going to try to be disciplined and publish posts several times a week. I'll do that by keeping my posts very very short. My plan is to split every article into around three bite-sized posts. Hopefully I'll be able to feed any comments from parts 1 and 2 into part 3. That's the idea at least ...