Writing Across Boarders

Reflecting on the video, the part that sticks out in my mind is allowing international students to write in their own dialect. Having been asked to read and correct scientific reports for a Japanese student in summers past, I now realize that it can be overwhelming for them to have articles inserted into every single sentence. Honestly, why do we use articles? Are they really critical to our understanding of what is being said? Or are they simply something we have memorized that we need to do when writing?