English Proverbs As Mnemonic Devices  

Oleh:

Reddy, S.Devaki

Jenis: Article from Proceeding
Dalam koleksi: The 62st TEFLIN International Conference: Teaching and Assessing L2 Learners in the 21st Century, Denpasar, 14-16th September 2015, Book 4, page 190-195.
Topik: mnemonic devices; articles; proverbs; definiteness; ESL
Fulltext: hal 190.pdf (9.39MB)

Isi artikel

The use of mnemonic devices is known to be effective in helping learners remember difficult concepts. The paper describes an experiment using popular English proverbs to help students remember the contexts in which articles are used, in an English course offered to students of an undergraduate programme, in India. The incorrect use of articles is one of the grammatical errors frequently seen in the writing of students using English as a second language. Speakers tend to omit articles where needed or use them in contexts that do not require them, as articles are not a part of the grammatical system of most of the Indian languages. The idea of definiteness or indefiniteness, however, is conveyed by other linguistic means in Indian languages. Experience in teaching and assessing students’ grammatical competence revealed that some students still made mistakes in the use of articles, in spite of explicit instruction. This was the motivation for trying a different method of teaching the use of articles in the classroom. Some of the English proverbs that students were familiar with, each of which illustrated specific contexts for the use of articles were chosen and discussed in class. Language tests that were administered to the students before and after the experiment indicated that most of the students had made significant improvement in the use of articles in English.

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