Поновно разматрање дела који недостаје: чланови у уџбеницима за учење енглеског језика намењеним средњим школама
Keywords:
articles, EFL textbooks, secondary education, teaching materials
Abstract
Building on previous research (Gaskell & Cobb, 2004; Trenkić, 2008; Veličković, 2021) and taking into consideration the general lack of data pertaining to the teaching of articles in the later stages of EFL acquisition, this study aims to investigate how articles are presented and practiced in secondary school EFL textbooks by focusing on five courses: the immensely popular Headway series, the Serbian Improving English, but also the On Screen, Traveller, and Solutions series. These textbooks have recently been approved for use in secondary education by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia. The corpus comprised 20 textbooks to be used across grades 1-4 (i.e. the pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate, and advanced level). The results showed which features of article use (cf. Huddleston & Pullum, 2002) were represented in the select EFL textbooks, which types of examples (contextualized vs stand-alone) were included, whether article-oriented exercises and explanations differed across grades and the selected textbooks, but also what conclusions could be drawn about the practices of article instruction at the primary (Veličković, 2021) and secondary level of education. In line with the obtained results, we discussed the pedagogical implications and proposed possible teaching interventions.
References
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White, B. J. (2010). In search of systematicity: A conceptual framework for the English article system. Ann Arbor: UMI Dissertation Publishing, ProQuest.
Yoo, I. W. (2009). The English definite article: What ESL/EFL grammars say and what corpus findings show. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 8(4), 267–278.
Yule, G. (2009). Explaining English Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Žugić, D. (2017). How to teach the article system to ESL students? Journal of Teaching English for Specific and Academic Purposes, 5(2), 179-187.
Brown, H.D. (2007). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. White Plains: Pearson.
Brown, H.D. & Lee, H. (2015). Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. White Plains: Pearson.
Browne, C. (2013). The New General Service List. Available at https://www.newgeneralservicelist.com/new-general-service-list. (accessed February 28, 2025)
Celce-Murcia, M. & Larsen-Freeman, D. (1999). The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher’s Course. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
Cowan, R. (2008). The Teacher's Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eastwood, J. (2005). Grammar Finder. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ellis, N. (2006). Selective attention and transfer phenomena in L2 acquisition: Contingency, cue competition, salience, interference, overshadowing, blocking, and perceptual learning. Applied Linguistics, 27, 164–94.
Epstein, R. (2001). The definite article, accessibility, and the construction of discourse referents. Cognitive Linguistics, 12(4), 333–378.
Gaskell, D. & Cobb, T. (2004). Can learners use concordance feedback for writing errors? System, 32, 301-319.
Harmer, J. (2015). The Practice of English Language Teaching. Harlow: Pearson.
Huddleston, R. & Pullum, G. K. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ionin, T., Ko, H. & Wexler, K. (2004). Article semantics in L2 acquisition: The role of specificity. Language Acquisition, 12, 3-70.
Ko, H., Perovic, A., Ionin, T. & Wexler, K. (2008). Semantic Universals and Variation in L2 Article Choice. In R. Slabakova et al. (ed.): Proceedings of the 9th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (pp. 118-129). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Lee, H. (1999). Variable article use in Korean learners of English. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 6(2), 35-47.
Lopez, E. & Sabir, M. (2017). Article Pedagogy: Encouraging Links between Linguistic Theory and Teaching Practice. RELC Journal, 50(1), 1-14. doi: 10.1177/0033688217730143
Long, M. (1998). Focus on form in task-based language teaching. University of Hawai'i Working Papers in ESL, 16(2), 35-49.
Master, P. (1990). Teaching the English articles as a binary system. Tesol Quarterly, 24(3), 461-478.
Master, P. (2002). Information structure and English article pedagogy. System, 30(3), 331-348.
Mueller, C. M. & Tsushima, Y. (2021). Acquisition of English article uses by Japanese EFL learners. The Language Teacher, 45(4), 3-10.
Nation, I.S.P. (2001). Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Pearson Longman.
Richards, J. (1971). A non-contrastive approach to error analysis. English Language Teaching, 25, 204-219.
Scrivener, J. (2005). Learning Teaching: The Essential Guide to English Language Teaching. Oxford: Macmillan Education.
Snape, N. (2008). Resetting the Nominal Mapping Parameter: definite article use and the count – mass distinction in L2 English. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11(1), 63-79.
Trenkić, D. (2002). Nominal definiteness in English – Hawkins’ (1991) account and some modifications. Views and Voices, 1, 53-71.
Trenkić, D. (2004). Definiteness in Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian and some implications for the general structure of the nominal phrase. Lingua, 114, 1401–1427.
Trenkić, D. (2007). Variability in L2 article production: beyond the representational deficit vs processing constraints debate. Second Language Research, 23(3), 289–327.
Trenkić, D. (2008). The representation of English articles in second language grammars: Determiners or adjectives? Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11, 1–18.
Umeda, M., Snape, N., Wiltshier, J. & Yusa, N. (2017). The long-term effect of explicit
instruction on learners’ knowledge on English articles. Language Teaching Research, 23(2), 179-199. doi: 10.1177/1362168817739648.
Veličković, M. (2021). The missing piece of the puzzle: articles in elementary-school EFL textbooks. Nasleđe, 48, 351–368. doi: 10.46793/NasKg2148.351V
Veličković, M. & Danilović Jeremić, J. (2022). How Not To Teach the Definite Article in the EFL Classrooms. Presentation at the TESOL conference: Inspiring Innovation, Empowering ELT Professionals. Pittsburgh: Pennsylvania.
Veličković, M. & Danilović Jeremić, J. (2023). How (Not) To Teach the Definite Article. Workshop organized at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš, April 21, 2023.
Veličković, M. & Danilović Jeremić, J. (2024). Raising awareness of the definite article in the EFL classroom: a corpus linguistics approach. Facta Universitatis Series Linguistics and Literature, 22(1), 41–53. doi: 10.22190/FULL240410004V
White, B. J. (2010). In search of systematicity: A conceptual framework for the English article system. Ann Arbor: UMI Dissertation Publishing, ProQuest.
Yoo, I. W. (2009). The English definite article: What ESL/EFL grammars say and what corpus findings show. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 8(4), 267–278.
Yule, G. (2009). Explaining English Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Žugić, D. (2017). How to teach the article system to ESL students? Journal of Teaching English for Specific and Academic Purposes, 5(2), 179-187.
Published
2026/03/02
Section
Članci