What Is An Article? Types & Examples Published November 12, 2021 What Is An Article?

Sports: He plays football. We watched basketball on TV.

School subjects: She loves math. He is bad at chemistry.

Names: Meghan lives with Ken. I gave a biscuit to Princess, my poodle.

Abstract nouns: She has impressive speed. The professor gave a lecture on communism.

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Many nouns (including some that fit into the categories above) may take an article only in some instances, depending on how they are used in a sentence. Some examples of this include:

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  Countries: We went to Colombia. She lives in the Netherlands.
  
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  Uncountable nouns: The bottle was full of water. The water was polluted.
  
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  Plural nouns: He is allergic to peanuts. She gave the peanuts to an elephant.
  
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  Nouns that can be both abstract and concrete: My son is at school. They are building a school near the library.
  
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  Times of day: Bats hunt for food at night. It was a lonely night.
  
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  Seasons: Winter came quickly this year. The winter was long and harsh.
  
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  Transportation: I get nauseous when traveling by boat. The sailors sat on the boat.
  

LANGUAGE TEACHING Short form LT. In principle, instruction in any LANGUAGE, under any conditions, formal or informal; in practice, as the term is commonly used among language teachers and applied linguists, instruction in a second or foreign language within a system of education, such as the institutionalized teaching of FRENCH in Britain and English in France. More specifically, the teaching of a MOTHER TONGUE, home language, or national language may be referred to as L1 teaching (where L1 means first language) and the teaching of one or more other languages as L2 teaching (where L2 means second language).

L1 and L2 teaching

By and large, L1 teaching is that part of general education which deals with the transmission of a society's written culture and STANDARD speech (which may or may not involve training in an approved accent). It usually includes instruction in aspects of a particular literature, and it has traditionally included explicit instruction in GRAMMAR, SPELLING, PUNCTUATION, and COMPOSITION, matters that are currently controversial. L2 teaching for many centuries centred on acquiring a classical language, in Europe especially LATIN, sometimes GREEK or HEBREW, and elsewhere such languages as classical ARABIC, Mandarin Chinese (see CHINA), and SANSKRIT. In Britain, the teaching of a second vernacular (nonforeign) language has taken place, on a limited scale and mainly since the 19c, in Scotland and Wales, usually for those who have already had GAELIC or WELSH as their mother tongues, their general education proceeding in English as a second language which more often than not becomes their primary medium. Because there has been no significant other VERNACULAR in England since NORMAN FRENCH in the 14c, L2 teaching in that country has generally been concerned with ‘foreign’ languages. The most powerful L2 tradition in England, and elsewhere in the English-speaking world, has usually been the teaching of French.

The literary method

Throughout Western history, LITERACY and EDUCATION have run together. Only in the 20c has the technology of audio-recording allowed conversation to become an object of study. This change, along with a broad acceptance of democratic ideals in education as well as in politics, has made possible a vernacular rather than a classical education, or one that judiciously draws on both. For many centuries, language teaching in the European (‘monastery’) tradition of Christianity meant the teaching of the languages of religion, literature, and scholarship: Latin and to a limited extent Greek. In addition, in the Middle Ages in England, children of the aristocracy were taught Norman French, while English was a largely irrelevant vernacular. Although some attempt was made to teach spoken Latin (for example, in the English Abbot AELFRIC's Colloquy, a conversation reader, c. AD 1000), learning centred mostly on a close acquaintance with the most highly valued literary texts. With the Renaissance and the Reformation, and the return of classical Latin as a model, the language largely ceased to be used in speech; thenceforth, the aim was written mastery, learners imitating the style of ‘the classics’, and being led away from the ‘debased’ styles of less highly regarded texts. The ‘golden’ texts of Cicero, Horace, and Virgil were accepted, while the base metal of Apuleius, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Petrarch, and later Latin writers was ignored. The route to understanding lay through rote memorization of grammar and vocabulary and imitation that might or might not lead to creativity.
The grammar-translation method
Opposition to the literary tradition arose in and around Germany in the late 18c, with methods of teaching Latin and other languages that have in the 20c been given the name the grammar–translation method/approach. Reformers sought to organize and simplify the traditional exposure to texts by using specimen sentences and emphasizing practice by translating in both directions.