The Ways of Teaching Articles in the English Language Classroom

Abstract

According to their lexical meaning, morphological characteristics, and syntactical functions words fall into classes that are called parts of speech. For example, the words such as the question, answer, hand, sentence, and others are distinguished as nouns as articles precede them.  If the articles are not used before these nouns then there are not any morphological signs that show they are nouns. The use of articles shows that they are nouns such as a question, a hand, an answer, a sentence, etc. O.Musayev writes that there are thirteen kinds of parts of speech. They are: 1) the noun, 2) the adjective, 3) the pronoun, 4) the numeral, 5) the verb, 6) the adverb, 7) the modal words, 8) the interjection, 9) the article, 10) the particle, 11) the preposition, and 12) the conjunction (Musayev 1997, p.296).  These parts of speech differ from each other according to their characteristics in the speech and in the language. For instance, the noun, the adjective, the numeral, and others have nominative meanings. That is why they are called independent parts of speech and they have an independent communicative function. These are called notional parts of speech. They can make relationships among the sentences inside the text and they have crucial functions in the sentence.

The conjunction, the article, the preposition, and the particle are called functional (structural) parts of speech. They do not have any independent nominative meaning in the sentence and they cannot perform any independent functions in the sentence.

O Musayev writes: “The functional parts of speech express the grammatical meanings existing in the language and they have structural functions.^[1]Like the notional parts of speech, the functional parts of speech can be used to make relationships among sentences inside the text. Some parts of speech play a very important role in creating the text (Musayev 1997, p.8).

[1]Musayev O.İ.English Grammar. Baku, Qismet, 1997, p.8.