Over the river...

 As we were not going to Grandmother's house, we didn't pass through any woods.  Instead, Susan took me to Tokushima University - the public university in the city.  I met some of the faculty there (one Canadian, one American, and one Japanese) and had lunch.  We talked about this and that.  The Japanese professor asked us about the use of articles.  That gave rise to a lively discussion about how we know when to use "a," "an," and "the" in which cases.

The questioner pointed out that sometimes it seems, even though the noun is a countable thing, we do not use articles.  It occurred to me that I never once thought about "countable" as an indicator of using an article or not.  I started running through a list of article usage and noticed that is a good way to get most of the cases.  The consensus among us native English speakers, though, is the usage is so ingrained that we do not really know how to explain when it's right.  I think we really only recognize when it is wrong.  Even there I can't explain it beyond "years of training have taught me that was not right."

I've been wondering how many other rules I follow because I know doing otherwise is wrong, but I can't say why.  It's difficult to be aware of things you do by instinct.  I suppose I should be more mindful of what I assume about student understanding and comprehension.  Tomorrow evening I'll ask the students what they think of things.  Do professors assume too much?  Do we expect too much?  What can we do to help them gain understanding?

Hopefully I'll learn a lesson that sticks with me.