Article in English have always been a persistent grammatical problem for the Thai learner. A possible reason for this may be indirect interference, as a similar syntactic distinction involving definiteness and preferentiality, doesn?t exist in Thai. How to remedy this problem in second language acquisition is quite a difficilt but challenging task. 

The purpose of the study is to investigate the positive effects of intergrating explicit grammar, a for-based approach, and implicit grammar, a function-based approach, in teaching English articles. It will be argued that such an integration, in comparison with explicit grammar alone, can lead the learner to greater achievement. This learning method enables the learner to recognize both form and function in authentic texts concurrently. 

The pedagogical value of the study is in shedding light on the advantages of adopting an integrative strategy to teach articles to non-native speakers of English.