The Use of English Article by Chinese and Spanish Speakers

Abstract

This study is to investigate the different influences of an LI with article system and of an L1 without article system on the second language acquisition (SLA). Specifically, how the positive and negative transfer of a [+article] language like Spanish and a [-article] language like Chinese as LI s to English as a second language (ESL) interferes with respect to the use of the English articles. The instrument consists of three parts: (1) a diagnostic test of twenty questions about general English ability of the participants, (2) a doze test consisting of thirty fill-in questions about three categories of the use of the English articles, and (3) a self-report questionnaire about the participant's demographic information. The voluntary participants included fourteen Spanish and fifteen Chinese adults with higher level of English proficiency in an ESL context. They were selected for two experiments. Ten from each language group with higher scores of the diagnostic test were chosen for Experiment 1. For Experiment 2, another ten from each language group with lower scores of the same diagnostic test were chosen as subjects. Some of the participants in each language group were included in the two experiments respectively. Part II of the instrument consists of thirty fill-in questions about the use of the English article system (three categories: definite article the, indefinite article a, and zero article O) for the participants to answer by choosing an appropriate article to complete the sentence in the doze test. t-test was used to analyze the data collected, and the results revealed that overall, the Spanish speakers have higher score than the Chinese speakers. In particular, the former performed better in the usage of the article the than the latter. It seems that the Spanish speakers positively transferred their L1 to their use of the English article in ESL setting because the definite article is used in their L1. The results also showed positive transfer of Li with article system (Spanish) and negative transfer L1 without article system (Chinese) to the English article use in ESL environment. Implication for the instruction on the English article system in ESL/EFL context is proposed and further study is also suggested.