The use of articles in the names of students’ research papers: analysis of typical errors

Kochan Julius, Pertsev Evgenii Mikhailovich, Jakovleva Irina Olegovna

When students in higher educational institutions translate the titles of their course works, undergraduate theses and dissertations into English, problems relating to the use of articles (definite, indefinite and zero) are, currently, of paramount importance. An analysis of the titles of more than 2000 pieces of academic work written by undergraduate and masters humanities students in the fields of politics and philosophy has allowed us to elucidate the typical errors which students make when using articles. The style of the academic title frequently requires the inclusion of such lexical units as ‘analysis’, ‘interpretation’, ‘survey’ et cetera; when using these words, students often pick the incorrect article. In the title of the academic work, the student introduces key concepts and may abstract several words which they are to use as terms. This creates a particular difficulty when it comes to article usage. Students all too frequently miss out the definite article before nouns which are grammatically independent and are followed by a more specific nominal phrase, or, on the contrary, add an unnecessary ‘the’ before nouns used in an abstract sense. This article shall conduct an analysis of these errors and shall offer recommendations which will be of help to students in their use of articles when composing the titles of their academic work and in preparation for presentations given in English, the lingua franca of international scholarly communication.

Keywords:students’ academic work, indefinite article, definite article, zero article, terminology, substantivized adjectives, verbal nouns