Academic Writing Tips 4: Articles in English (A/An and The)
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Academic Writing Tips 4: Articles in English (A/An and The)
At Ju-mi's specific request, I've found a very clear set of online guidelines for using articles in English (it's a different section of the same site I referenced earlier for punctuation tips: OWL - Online Writing Lab, at Purdue University):
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/esl/eslart.html
You can click on the link there to get a printer-friendly version for your notes, and there are also links there to practice exercises if you want to try them out and test your knowledge.
Mastering articles usage in English is notoriously difficult if you are a second language learner. There are so many categories and subcategories of rules, and so many exceptions to the rules... It truly is one of the areas of English grammar that takes the most time to master, and in fact many second language users never truly master all aspects of article usage.
Based on that, I wouldn't stress if you make occasional mistakes with articles, but at the same time I encourage you to improve your understanding and productive use of them. Some "experts" in Korea have stated that articles are not important at all, and don't influence communicative meaning. In some cases that can be true, but in other cases the specific use of articles can have a big impact on the exact meaning conveyed.
I hope you find the resource useful!
Best of luck,
~ Jason
***
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/esl/eslart.html
You can click on the link there to get a printer-friendly version for your notes, and there are also links there to practice exercises if you want to try them out and test your knowledge.
Mastering articles usage in English is notoriously difficult if you are a second language learner. There are so many categories and subcategories of rules, and so many exceptions to the rules... It truly is one of the areas of English grammar that takes the most time to master, and in fact many second language users never truly master all aspects of article usage.
Based on that, I wouldn't stress if you make occasional mistakes with articles, but at the same time I encourage you to improve your understanding and productive use of them. Some "experts" in Korea have stated that articles are not important at all, and don't influence communicative meaning. In some cases that can be true, but in other cases the specific use of articles can have a big impact on the exact meaning conveyed.
I hope you find the resource useful!
Best of luck,
~ Jason
***
Last edited by Jason Renshaw on Sun Apr 06 2008, 21:27; edited 1 time in total
Re: Academic Writing Tips 4: Articles in English (A/An and The)
Thank you, Jason!
Ju-mi,Im- Flyer
- Posts : 40
Join date : 2008-03-11
ah,
Article usage is one of the biggest problems when I write.
Really helpful!
Really helpful!
Eunsil- Mover
- Posts : 14
Join date : 2008-03-13
Age : 39
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