Information structure and English article pedagogy

Abstract

This paper describes several reasons for the difficulty non-native speakers of English have in acquiring the English article system and reviews five pedagogical methods for teaching the article system. The notion of information structure, specifically givenness, is then applied to a sample text to examine the extent to which canonical information structure (i.e. given information first, new information last) is obeyed. Given information was found to adhere to canonical structure most of the time, whereas new information adhered to it only half of the time, though within a narrow range of exceptions. The results of a pilot study in which one group of non-native English speakers is taught the article system using information structure as an overarching framework, another is taught using a traditional explanation of article use, and a third receives no instruction show that the group taught with the information structure framework made small but noticeable improvement compared to the other two groups. The suggested pedagogical application is for language teachers to present canonical information structure as a preliminary guess in determining the appropriate article for any noun, providing a further potential aid in learning the article system.