I work at a writing center, helping students with academic papers. Because of my college's demographics, this job also includes helping ESL students, or English as a Second Language.
Many ESL students who come in are Chinese or Indian, and have a tendency to drop articles ("the," "a," "an") from their writing.
Our center does have worksheets for certain repetitive problems, but unfortunately the particular "article" sheet we have available is a flow chart which is confusing and unhelpful.
Most students can identify what article they need to use when a noun lacking one is pointed out to them, but otherwise can't notice the need for one on their own.
Does anyone have any helpful hints or pointers? Any particularly good explanations on how to identify nouns that need articles? I'm not necessarily looking for worksheets, but has anyone seen anything particularly useful?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Many ESL students who come in are Chinese or Indian, and have a tendency to drop articles ("the," "a," "an") from their writing.
Our center does have worksheets for certain repetitive problems, but unfortunately the particular "article" sheet we have available is a flow chart which is confusing and unhelpful.
Most students can identify what article they need to use when a noun lacking one is pointed out to them, but otherwise can't notice the need for one on their own.
Does anyone have any helpful hints or pointers? Any particularly good explanations on how to identify nouns that need articles? I'm not necessarily looking for worksheets, but has anyone seen anything particularly useful?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
