A question for you indians and asians?

really?!...i don't think so...these words do exists....

i hope they are not missing from my essays

In general they seem to be missing from areas where they are needed and included where they are not.

for instance. "I am pursuing Wharton MBA because" .... needs a "the" or "a"

Or "This allows me to view the problems"

not the problems... just problems. No need for the "the".

Maybe they are just trying desperately to adhere to the word limits

You mean: Maybe they trying desperately adhere word limits

I have noticed another common mistake. A lot of people like to say they will "give" the GMAT. That is not correct. You "take" tests. GMAC "gives" the GMAT. As a test-taker you "take" the test.

"The" does not really exist in the our native the toungues. Since the peoples some times the transliterate their own language to english, you see the lack of the.

Sometimes, local lingo gets literally converted to english -for e.g. in my language, we have a phrase that translates to "don't eat my head" - it means stop bothering me or annoying me, but it's used all the time even as part of spoken english "will you please stop eating my head?"

Pelihu's observation is right too - when we speak in India, we don't "take" and exam, we "give it".

somehow, "I just gave it to the exam" doesn't sound innocent anymore....

I think that's common across Europe too. I hear a lot of "did you give the exam" or "did you sit the exam?".

I have to add one more thing here. Learning of how and when to use 'the' seems either difficult or time taking. As you know, there is no need for perfect english to convey the meaning. So, in general, we neglect learning the proper usage of 'the.' I tried to learn its proper usage from my language editor once, and all she said was "don't bother about learning. There are simply too many rules to learn"

am not an Asian (though some might argue), but will insert my two cents

in Russian we also do not have articles, so it is a pain in the (a?) behind to learn the concept

and we do "give" (or rather "submit") exams

you are incorrect in assuming that we do not use the articles in the language. it can be an issue of avoiding the articles in informal writing. You can not generalize,somem people do not some people do. I do, I believe. I have taken TOEFL etc so may be that helped.

I hate to get in on this discussion, but I feel I must offer a balancing counter point. All Indians do not speak and write English at the same level. There a hundreds of school systems in India. Some teach English from kindergaten and others from Grade 5 or later.

There are school systems within India (relatively large ones) that teach kids the works of Shakespeare before they are teenagers. Several of the Indian applicants to business schools come from schooling backgrounds I have described.

Stereotyping in this situation may be easy... but unfortunate. India is an extremely diverse land in which everyone has a voice. Some of these voices use articles more infrequently than others.

Also, have you considered the possibility that the Indians who have good command over the language may not need your essay-editing services?

I don't mean to bag on you because I know you mean well. I just wanted to set the record straight.

Oh, I wasn't saying "all indians" make this mistake, just that I'd noticed it from more than one person, so I thought maybe there was a logical explanation. I've also read some fabulous stuff from people in India (and I've read some pretty poor stuff from people in the US!).

By no means trying to generalize and stereotype (you know I've always wondered why it isn't monotype instead of stereotype), it was just something I was curious about.

All I know is you better get it right for your essays!

for me it is a big mistery, I mean I still don't know where I should use "the/an/a" and should I use it at all I would appreciate if anyone explains it in more understandable language.

As rightly pointed out earlier, the articles 'a/an/the' don't exist in our native languages.

And its interesting to note that most parts of the world 'give' an exam, while in US you 'take' an exam ! Its not difficult then to see why US is a good borrower and the other countries lend to it willingly

More confusing : in French we don't say "take an exam" or "give an exam" but what would translate into "pass an exam". And it doesn't mean anything about your performance (you could have failed it), it just means that you took it...

You have then French-English situations where you can hear:

- I passed the exam last week
- Oh great, congratulations!
- No, no, I just passed it, I still have to wait ten days to get the results.
- ??? ...

so how do u know who passed and who didnt lol