Top 20, Great Grammar for Great Writing, First Edition Teaching Notes

Top 20, Great Grammar for Great Writing, First EditionTeaching Noteshttp://esl.college.hmco.com/instructorsCopyright Houghton Mifflin CompanyChapter 7 – Articles: a, an, theOverviewArticles are little words, but they cause huge headaches for language learners (andteachers!). Article usage varies greatly from language to language. Some languages donot have indefinite articles (Japanese, Arabic). Others do not have definite articles(Japanese, Malay). Others have definite articles but the usage is different from that inEnglish (Spanish, French).You may want to combine some material in this chapter with Chapter 3, which deals withcount and noncount nouns.Teaching NotesArticle Basics (7.1)Indefinite Articles (7.2)The Definite Article (7.3)Exercise 1 is a basic production exercise about articles. The information in the paragraphis about a magic trick with numbers; it often generates a great deal of student interest.Exercise 2 is a production exercise of the same goals.In Exercise 3, students have to write original sentences as examples of the six uses of thedefinite article in English. Though some of these uses may seem obvious to a nativespeaker, they are certainly not so for the average nonnative speaker.No Article (7.4)Just as important as when to use which of the articles is when not to use any article.Again, this differs from language to language.In Exercise 4, students have to write original sentences as examples of the ten uses of noarticle in English. This list is not so for simple for the average nonnative speaker.Exercise 5 is a production exercise in which students must fill in the blank with the or 0/[[[[ART: NULL SIGN]]]]. The topic of the writing is equality for the sexes in LatinAmerica.1