Distribution of Articles in Malaysian Secondary School English Language Textbooks

Jayakaran Mukundan,Amelia Leong Chiew Har,Vahid Nimehchisalem

doi:10.5539/ells.v2n2p62

Abstract

This paper reports the results of a corpus-based study on English grammar articles presented in the Malaysian Form 1 to Form 5 English Language textbooks. The study aimed to find out the distribution patterns of the articles and the distributions of their colligation patterns in the secondary school English Language textbooks. The findings showed that all the three articles (a, an, the) are presented in all the five English Language textbooks and that their frequency of occurrences has an increasing trend from Form 1 to Form 5. However, the distributions of the colligation patterns of the articles showed inconsistency from one form to another. Some colligation patterns were over-emphasized while others were neglected in the English language textbooks. This study indicates that a textbook corpus can be useful in analyzing the presentation of grammatical structures (articles, in the case of this research). The findings can provide guidance to teachers to improve their pedagogical practices in the teaching of articles and to cater to the weaknesses of the presentation of articles in the textbooks.

Highlights

The English article system is one of the most commonly used aspects of grammar in the English language
The frequency of occurrences of all the articles is investigated in this research in order to obtain the number of times these articles are presented to students throughout the texts in Form One to Form Five English Language classrooms
Out of the total number of article occurrences in the textbook corpus, 68.1% related to the occurrence of the article the, followed by the article a (28.5%) and an (3.3%)

Summary

Introduction

The English article system is one of the most commonly used aspects of grammar in the English language. An article is used as a sentence element to determine nouns and to specify the definiteness of nouns. Article usage is very important as it contributes to the correct use of the English grammar. English article system is said to be “one of the most difficult grammatical items for the non-native English speakers to learn” 50), the article is “one of the smallest grammatical items”, the difficulties in learning the articles are undeniable. Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman (1999) argue that articles are well-known to be problematic in the aspect of English grammar. Learners face difficulties in learning how to use articles because of their complicated usage (DeCapua, 2008)

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Discussion

Conclusion