Teaching the english article system through the communicativestructural approach

Abstract

Teaching Grammar has changed from focusing on the grammatical structures and combinations using a direct and explicit instruction into emphasizing communication and developing the communicative skills. Like all the grammatical aspects, the English article system is taught following the same perspective. Articles are believed to be acquired through exposure to natural and authentic input. However, they are very difficult for non-native speakers to be detected for they are unstressed. Hence, direct explanation of their rules is necessary as they are hard to be heard and cannot be taught following the Communicative Approach solely. This leads us to consider the Structural Approach combined with the Communicative where teachers present the rules, explain them and practice them in a Communicative context. This study sets out to investigate the usefulness of systematic teaching of the English article system using a Communicative-Structural Approach at the Department of Letters and English, University “Frères Mentouri”, Constantine. We hypothesise that if the English article system is taught systematically through the Communicative-Structural Approach, students would improve their understanding and use of articles. We also hypothesize that the teachers at the Department of Letters and English, University “Frères Mentouri”, Constantine believe that the Communicative-Structural Approach is effective in teaching articles and use it in their own teaching. The hypotheses are verified by means of a Pre-test Post-test Control group Experimental Group design as well as a Teachers’ and Students’ Questionnaire. The informants of our study are fifty second year students at “Frères Mentouri” University, Constantine 1. They were divided into two groups, one control and another experimental. According to the data obtained from the test, we can confirm the first hypothesis since the test clearly demonstrates a better performance and thus improvement in the Experimental group’s results. Regarding the Teachers’ and Students’ Questionnaires, the teachers believe that using the Communicative-Structural Approach is effective in teaching Grammar, and the students stated that their teachers use this approach in