A System for Understanding and Selecting English-Language Articles for Advanced ESL Writers

The use of definite and indefinite articles in English is well known to be a major point of difficulty for many nonnative English speakers. These difficulties prevail even when the speakers are fluent in most other aspects of English grammar and style. This article investigates the pedagogical and linguistic reasons why article use is such a persistent problem area for ESL writers, and it presents a system for teaching the use of articles in English. It shows how the inherent meaning of a noun phrase interacts with other elements in the linguistic environment and with authorial intention in determining which article is most appropriate for that noun phrase. Finally, it provides an apparatus with which ESL writers can track the various components of article use and demonstrates how this apparatus can help make decisions about which article is the best choice for expressing the writer's intended meaning.