Practice materials to improve your writing

Article

Your feedback says:

ARTICLE - you have made a mistake with the use of the article ( i.e. a, an, the or zero) with a noun or noun phrase. First check that you know whether the noun is countable or uncountable, and singular or plural

So what’s the problem? And what do you need to do?

Your first language may not use articles at all, or very differently from English. Articles in English come in 4 forms:

·         THE

·         A

·         AN

·         (zero)

Try a decision tree to help you decide what article you need to choose (Thanks to Martin Holmes and Quandary!).

A similar type of mistake is NUMBER OF NOUN. Check it out.

Here are some links to practice materials:

On this site:

• Add articles to a short text from the Economist

• Add articles to another short text from the Economist

• Add articles to yet another short text from the Economist

• Add articles to one more short text from the Economist

On other sites:

• Articles, determiners and quantifiers - explanations (Webster)

• Summary of use of articles (Julie Sevaxstopoulos - ESL Department, College of San Mateo) 

• Articles - a basic quiz

• 5 exercises on articles

• Articles - Practice in Sentences

• Purdue University - articles exercise #1

• Purdue University - articles exercise #2

• Quantifiers - a basic quiz

• Articles - a gap-filling exercise

If you find more useful exercises for any type of error, please let us know and we will add the links. Visit www.ngberger.com for other materials that may help you on your pre-sessional course or other studies in academic or business English.

Please send your comments to Norbert G. Berger. This document was updated 03/08/2003.

Error Typology - © English Language Centre, University of Exeter, UK. 2003.

For use within educational institutions as part of IT-assisted teaching provision only. If used outside the Universities of Exeter (UK) and Graz (Austria), acknowledgement must be made to the English Language Centre, University of Exeter. Not to be reproduced in a different medium or modified without permission.