6 Ideas for Content-Based Practice in Teaching Articles

1. Teaching Articles: 6 Ideas for Content Based Practice Katie Subra, English Language Fellow Minsk State Linguistic University

2. Use thematic poetry and ask students to either complete a cloze exercise or simply describe the rationale behind each article's use in the poem. • A great resource for this is the Poetry Foundation:  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/238450 • Music lyrics can be used the same way. • Example: "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver 1) Thematic Poetry + Cloze

3. You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
Forhundred miles throughdesert, repenting.
You only have to letsoft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhileworld goes on.
Meanwhilesun andclear pebbles ofrain
are moving acrosslandscapes,
over prairies anddeep trees,mountains andrivers.
Meanwhilewild geese, high inclean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you likewild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
infamily of things.

4. You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For hundred miles through desert, repenting. (2)You only have to let soft animal of your body (1)love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhileworld goes on. (1)Meanwhile sun and clear pebbles of rain (3)are moving across landscapes, (1)
over prairies and deep trees, (1)
mountains and rivers. (2)Meanwhile wild geese, high in clean blue air, (2)are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
worldoffers itself to your imagination, (1)calls to you like wild geese, harsh and exciting -- (1)over and over announcing your place
in family of things. (1)

5. You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles throughdesert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
themountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
theworld offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

6. Use current newsprint articles to create a cloze exercise or, again have students describe the article usage.  Voice of America is one good source for intermediate level students as it adapts current news articles for a L2 audience:  http://learningenglish.voanews.com/ • A more advanced group of students may want to use an international news source. • Example: VOA English "Program provides Food, Farming Education to Urban Poor"  2) What's the latest?

7. Directions: 1) Read the excerpt. Circle all of the nouns. 2) Put the nouns into 4 columns according to which article is used (a/an/the/0). 3) Add the nouns to other columns if you can write example sentences using them with different articles. 4) Explain the rule. "At Common Good we tried to stick to 85-15, so 85 percent of the food we grow are distributed within the community, then 15 percent we sell to local restaurants and a mobile farmers' market that comes once a week."  Companies donate seeds to the farm.  They are also harvested from the farm’s greenhouse.  Community members, staff and volunteers grow them in a garden built on an old baseball field.

8. I have several examples of authentic L2 student essays which include article errors • Students should identify errors in the essay or in individual sentences • This is an advanced level skill but can be done individually or in groups, through speaking or writing exercises • Other grammatical errors can be featured simply by doctoring up the examples 3) Grammar Analysis

9. Visuals can be used to promote conversation about authentic prompts, such as food, maps, menus, and so on... • After modeling a few sentences or creating pointed questions, students can practice using articles in their responses   • Examples: maps, advertisements,Menzel's photo book 'Hungry Planet' (also adaptable to other grammar or vocabulary practice, i.e. families, nutrition, roles and relationships, culture…) 4) Visual Aids

12. Corpora can be used to present authentic examples of article use.  Students or teachers can search for parts of speech in real contexts that are collected from news and academic sources   • For example: A search for 'the' in 'spoken context' comes up with thousands of real, quoted texts: http://corpus.byu.edu/ • Students can compare spoken vs. written, formal vs. informal uses 5) Corpora

13. http://moviesegmentstoassessgrammargoals.blogspot.com/search/label/articleshttp://moviesegmentstoassessgrammargoals.blogspot.com/search/label/articles • You can search for different tenses and parts of speech and it will provide modern movie clips that use that grammatical element and it also provides some semi-decent worksheets to go along with the clips. 6) Movie Segments to Assess Grammar

14. Indefinite Article Practice: __ new hat __ toothpaste bars of chocolate big box of bleach cinnamon … The downloadable worksheet has instructions and 20 more items. This also goes nicely with a game I have called Lost at Sea.