Simon Mumford and Nesta Parry presented this week a short seminar on academic writing at IEU, Izmir. In the seminar they focussed on common mistakes of L2 academic writers thast they met as academic proof readers of academic work. They chose to focus on articles, prepositions and relative clauses. My interest was to see how my article flow chart actually works. I have used it several times as a poster stuck on the wall for learners to consult:
noun
↓
is it a proper noun? → yes? = ø
↓
no?
↓
is there a referent? → yes? = the
↓
no
↓
is it count? → no? = ø
↓
yes?
↓
isit singular? → no? = ø
↓
yes? → a/an
You might of course realise that such a simple flowchart could not possibly account for all the vagaries of article use.
- The first problem is that proper nouns can carry articles:
“The Nesta Parry who passed that phonetics assignment is the same Nesta Parry who gave the presentation.”
- Secondly, the decision regarding reference is not always obvious and may require some extra input. How would you explain to a learner that door is a referent to shop?
“My uncle has a shop. The door is green.”
- Are there any other examples where the referent could be considered unique or not unique?
Despite some reservations, this flow chart does seem to enable learners at the start of their learning careers (perhaps up to intermediate levels) get the articles correct most of the time.
Aknowledgements: I cannot claim that this chart is mine, but have no reference regarding where it came from. if it is yours, or you have a reference, please let me know and I will give creit where credit is due. Thank you.
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Tags: grammar
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September 19, 2008 at 10:45 am
Andy
I’ve seen something similar in ‘Explaining English Grammar’ by George Yule (OUP) and adapted something similar for use in class. I tried to incorporate reference, singularity and new information and it was just a bit too unwieldy so I stopped using it. Meta-language was also a problem. This one seems simpler so I might give it a go.