Some ideas for article lessons

Zero article stuff I did in Mexico

An idea adapted from Grammar Practice activities: have students expand headlines that I had found or made up, as an exercise in the zero article versus the definite article.

I did the same thing with a few proverbs.

I rewrote (to simplify) a newspaper article about a man who got trapped on an ice floe, and I created a cloze exercise for definite and zero articles. Ditto with song lyrics.

For “a” vs. “the”

I also had them build a city with rods and name each structure they erected: this is a park, etc. And then we talked about it: Is there a park? Where is the park? Etc.

I also did a version of Elka’s “a” vs. “the” drawing exercise. However, after all the repetition, the Ss wanted an explanation of the rules.

For “a” vs. “an”

Some kind of alphabet game… maybe a form of BASTA. Generate heaps of nouns and then have people volunteer what goes before and then look for patterns.

For use, I need to let them know what articles go before adjectives too. So do some paired stuff like “an owl” versus “a small owl” to show location and also the consonant to vowel change.

General

Realia: bag of tricks with individual items, multiples of some, and some uncountables (a bag of sand). Reach in and make a sentence. Then put everything away, and later in the class see who can remember what was in the bag.

From the ELT Grammar Book: Write a list of ten things they’d like to have, using articles. Exchange lists anonymously and have Ss ask each other grammatically correct sentences to find out whose list they have.