Acquisition Of English Articles Research Articles

The Acquisition of English Articles by Chinese EFL College Students

The Acquisition of English Articles by Chinese EFL College Students

The effects of various combinations of form-focused instruction techniques on the acquisition of English articles by second language learners of English

The current study investigated the extent to which second language (L2) learners of English benefitted from various combinations of form-focused instruction (FFI) techniques on the acquisition of English articles. Forty-six participants were randomly assigned to four conditions: input enhancement only ( n = 12); input enhancement and metalinguistic explanations ( n = 11); input enhancement, metalinguistic explanations, and practice ( n = 11); and a control condition ( n = 12). They each received six hours of online instruction on English articles according to their condition. The participants’ knowledge of articles was measured by four tasks (i.e. grammaticality judgment task, metalinguistic knowledge task, elicited imitation task, and picture-description task) in a pretest, an immediate posttest, and a delayed posttest. Results showed that the group receiving input enhancement and metalinguistic explanations exhibited clear and durable gains in the metalinguistic knowledge task. Furthermore, a subset of participants who benefitted the most from the instructional treatment revealed two common factors: a first language (L1) without an article system and a high rate of engagement during the online instruction. The findings suggest that metalinguistic explanations clearly contribute to explicit knowledge of articles and that learners’ L1 backgrounds may affect the extent to which FFI on English articles benefits them. The present study contributes meaningfully to the current understanding of the effects of FFI as well as the L2 acquisition of English articles.

Nunation and the L2 acquisition of English indefinite articles by L1 Najdi and Hijazi speakers

Whether nunation is a marker of indefiniteness is a controversial issue in the literature of Arabic grammar. To date, no study has investigated whether the use of nunation in a speaker’s L1 can affect their second language (L2) acquisition of English articles. This paper reports the results of a study on the use of English articles by speakers of two Saudi dialects, Najdi and Hijazi, of which only the former – Najdi – grammaticalises nunation. The study recruited 56 participants (24 Najdi speakers, 24 Hijazi speakers and 8 native speakers of English). The experimental groups were third-year secondary school students whose English was at the elementary level, according to the Oxford Quick Placement test. The participants completed a 48-item multiple-choice test that examined their use of the English indefinite articles a and ø. It was found that a) the participants used ø more accurately than a; b) Najdi speakers were more accurate in using a than ø due to the presence of nunation in Najdi; and c) because Hijazi does not use nunation, Hijazi speakers were more sensitive than Najdi speakers to the semantic properties of nouns modified by articles.

The Acquisition of English Articles by Chinese Learners

English articles pose a lot of problems even after years of L2 English exposure and learning. The question is why it is so difficult to acquire these elements when a learner does not have them in their native language. This question points to a deeper reason that involves looking into the structure of L1 and L2 and understanding their differences. In this paper, we focus on Chinese learners of English, where Chinese is a language without articles. In order to find out more about the differences in the structure of the grammar between the elementary and advanced learners, we conducted a simple empirical study using a close test. The results show that there are differences between article use among elementary and advanced learners, and that advanced learners were more target-like in their article use than the elementary learners.

The acquisition of English articles among L1 Dagbani L2 English learners

AbstractThis study investigates the acquisition of articles in L2 English by L1 speakers of Dagbani, a Gur language spoken in Ghana. Dagbani differs from English in that it has two definite articles, no indefinite article, and a zero-article which may express definiteness, indefiniteness as well as genericity. The study consisted of a Forced-choice task (FCT) and an Acceptability judgement task (AJT) which were administered to Dagbani teenagers with an intermediate proficiency in English (n = 45) and a group of native English speakers as controls (n = 8). The results showed that the learners’ article choice was based on definiteness, not specificity (i.e., no fluctuation between the two) and that they had slightly more problems with indefinite than definite contexts, while generic contexts were the most problematic. Except for a certain task effect as well as a possible interference of instruction (in the FCT), the results can be argued to generally be due to influence from the L1 and to the difficulty of feature reassembly.

Acquisition of Definiteness And Indefiniteness by Behdini Kurdish Learners of English

The acquisition of English grammatical articles by non-native speakers of English language has been the main concern of a wide range of research, especially in languages whose grammatical article system functions differently from the English grammatical article system. Behdini is a variety whose grammatical article system is different from that English grammatical parameter. Thus, the acquisition of L2 English articles among L1 Behdini speakers is investigated in this study along proposals based on the Interpretability Hypothesis (Hawkins & Hattori, 2006; Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007; Hawkins & Casillas, 2008), and the Full Transfer Full Access (FT/FA) hypothesis (Schwartz and Sprouse, 1994, 1996). The researcher developed a Judgement Elicitation Task (JET)   based on the following research question: Will Behdini learners’ English language proficiency level play a role in participants’ judgements? Will these learners be able to acquire English definite, indefinite, and zero articles systematically? In other words, is any development expected in Behdini learners’ acquisition of English articles? 40 Behdini L2 English learners took part in the Judgement Elicitation Task . English learners took an English language proficiency test based on which they were roughly grouped into three sub-groups: elementary (11 participants), intermediate (22 participants), and advanced (7 participants). All participants took two tests: an acceptability judgment test including 46  items (34 pure test items + 12 filler gaps) and a proficiency test with 40  items. The results of the study show that there is a transfer from L1 into the L2ers’ English interlanguage due to the finding that most participants, disregarding their proficiency level, failed to reject the ungrammatical sentences in almost all the categories. The study finds support for the FT/FA proposal, where first language transfer, second language input and access to universal grammar features are argued to have impacts on Learners of English article acquisition among L1 Behdini learners. The result  also show that learners of  English  fluctuate in their choice of articles, which is interpreted by the predictions made by the Fluctuation Theory. Uninterpretable features also, proved to be difficult to acquire by Behdini learners, a point that  can be interpreted the base form of the Interpretability Hypothesis.&nbsp

Difficulties in The Acquisition and Use of English Articles among Adult Pashto Learners

The acquisition of the English articles is one of the most difficult areas for the second language learners particularly when there are no articles in the first language of the learners. The purpose of this study is to investigate the difficulties in acquisition and use of the English articles. The study aims at identifying the errors the EFL learners make in using the English articles. Two theoretical approaches regarding noun classification for articles choice were adopted in this study. The data were collected in the form of a gap-fill task from seventy five (75) adult Pashto learners of English. The results showed the students used the definite article ‘the’ and the indefinite article ‘a/an’ more often than the zero article Ø. In noun types, a few subjects made errors in using articles before count nouns. In the noun phrase environments, the lowest error rate was in referential indefinite while the highest error rate was in generics. The reasons for difficulties in acquiring and using the English articles were found to be mainly the identification of noun types, NPs environments, and language transfer.

Interaction between two determiner systems: The acquisition of English articles by a Hebrew-speaking child

This longitudinal case study followed a Hebrew-speaking child acquiring L2-English, focusing on her production of articles. Although the child had already developed significant aspects of the Hebrew determiner system, her acquisition of English followed a typical developmental route for first language acquisition: single words; telegraphic speech; and complete sentences, including articles. The child’s acquisition of definite and indefinite English articles was based on different strategies: the was dropped for a long period, but was then incorporated in full sentences; whereas a, which lacks an equivalent form in Hebrew, appeared earlier in the child’s utterances, but only in memorized templates of [ a + Noun]. Moreover, the proportion of cases in which English articles were omitted in obligatory contexts decreased over time, whereas additions and substitutions increased. These findings bear upon the role of functional categories in language acquisition and the endeavor to understand the extent to which children’s L1-based knowledge may guide or interfere with their mastery of a second language.

The Effect of Written Corrective Feedback and Learner Differences on Korean Learners’ Acquisition of English Articles

The Effect of Written Corrective Feedback and Learner Differences on Korean Learners’ Acquisition of English Articles

The Role of Semantic Features on the L2 Acquisition of English Articles

The Role of Semantic Features on the L2 Acquisition of English Articles

Effects of Two Types of Indirect Written Corrective Feedback on the Acquisition of English Articles

The study investigates the relative effects of two types of indirect written corrective feedback (CF) on the acquisition of English articles. Thirty-five high intermediate Korean EFL college students who were enrolled in three composition classes participated in this study. After the instruction on the English article usage, three classes (Class A, Class B, and Class C) received different types of feedback on their blog writings over the course of a semester. Both Class A and Class B received indirect feedback in the form of underlining errors. In the following class, Class A received correct forms with metalinguistic information for the errors revised incorrectly, but Class B did not have such opportunities. The Class C received no feedback. The results showed that only Class A, which received indirect feedback plus correct forms with metalinguistic information, made a statistically significant gain from the 3 sessions of feedback treatment. Pedagogical implications were provided on the basis of the findings.

Rethinking the role of universal semantic features in the L2 acquisition of English articles: a critique of Ionin, Ko & Wexler (2008)

Rethinking the role of universal semantic features in the L2 acquisition of English articles: a critique of Ionin, Ko & Wexler (2008)

The Acquisition of English Articles by Arabic L2-English learners: A Semantic Approach

The Acquisition of English Articles by Arabic L2-English learners: A Semantic Approach

A Study on Chinese Students’ Acquisition of English Articles and Interlanguage Syntactic Impairment

AbstractThis study investigated the resetting process of the articles’ parameters by Chinese English learners with a Forced Choice Elicitation Task on the basis of the Article Choice Parameter and Fluctuation Hypothesis proposed by

The Acquisition of English Articles by Second Language Learners

Despite the numerous studies on English article acquisition, the acquisition sequence, differences, and difficulties by English-as-a-second language learners (ELLs) remain to be further explored. With a detailed literature review, this study investigated the acquisition sequence, differences, and difficulties of English articles by ELLs with diverse first language backgrounds. Eighteen college ELLs participated in the study. Data were collected through cloze exercises. The results, through the analysis of its database of 6,178 article used, indicated that “zero article” was the last to be acquired while article “a” is the first to be acquired; positive correspondence existed between the growth of the acquisition of article “a/an,” “the,” and “zero” between “+Art” (with article system) group and “−Art” (without article system) group. The results also revealed that (a) the most difficult article for participants in both groups to acquire was “zero article,” (b) “the” was the most difficult article for participants in “+Art” group, and (c) “a” was the easiest one acquired by both groups. These findings, in fact, challenge the commonsense belief that “+Art” ELLs acquired English articles faster than “−Art” ELLs and that when two languages were similar, positive transfer would occur.

Transfer and semantic universals in the L2 acquisition of the English article system by child L2 learners

ABSTRACTL2 learners’ problems with English articles have been linked to learners’ L1 and their access to universal semantic features (e.g., definiteness and specificity). Studies suggest that L2 adults rely on their L1 knowledge, while child L2 learners rely more on their access to semantic universals. The present study investigates whether child L2 learners access features like adult L2 learners (i.e., reassembling the features of the L1) or as L1 acquirers (i.e., choosing from the inventory of universal features). We evaluated the acquisition of English articles in 30 Spanish-speaking children learning English as their L2 and found that they transfer knowledge from their L1 much in the same way as do adults. However, the error analysis also suggests that article acquisition in child L2 learners is restricted by Universal Grammar resembling L1 acquisition. In conclusion, we propose that article acquisition in child L2 learners patterns with both adult L2 and L1 acquisition.

Acquisition of English Articles by Croatian Primary School Students in Early English Foreign Language Learning

This paper deals with an analysis of transcribed recordings of spontaneous classroom interaction in five classes of primary school students in early EFL learning in Croatia. The study was conducted within the framework of a large research project supported by the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sports. The students involved in this study started learning English at the very beginning of their education. The recordings were made during three consecutive years when the students were at the end of grades one, two and three. Although the students’ overall language development showed clear progress, the development of the correct use of definite and indefinite articles remained highly variable. Progress was made in the sense that throughout the years the use of both types of article increased, but incorrect usage was still very frequent. The study shows a clear interdependence between lexis and grammar at the very beginning of English foreign language learning.

The relative effectiveness of mixed, explicit and implicit feedback in the acquisition of English articles

Abstract This article reports on a study that compares the effectiveness of three oral negative feedback types in the acquisition of English articles. A mixed feedback treatment, in which learners' errors were corrected, first, through explicit feedback, then through implicit feedback, was compared to implicit-only (i.e., recasts) and explicit-only (i.e., explicit correction) feedback treatments. The study followed a pretest/posttest/delayed posttest experimental design. Eighty English-as-a foreign language learners, whose proficiency level ranged from beginner to intermediate, were randomly assigned into explicit-only feedback, implicit-only feedback, mixed feedback, reduced-explicit feedback and no-feedback control groups. The learners and researcher met two times for the treatment sessions. In each treatment session, the learners and researcher carried out three oral production tasks, where learner errors on the English indefinite and definite articles were treated according to their group assignments. The differences between the groups in performance were measured using oral production tasks. The results of the study revealed that the explicit-only feedback and mixed feedback groups outperformed all the other groups on the immediate posttest, but there was no difference between the explicit-only and mixed feedback groups on either of the posttests. This result was interpreted as indicating that mixed-feedback can be as effective as explicit-only feedback.

Article Semantics in L2 English Acquisition by Korean Elementary School Students

This research investigates the effects of the universal semantic feature, specificity, in the L2 acquisition of English articles by Korean...

Count-mass Distinction in the Acquisition of English Articles by Persian Learners of English

Articles in general and definite articles in particular can create problems even long after all other aspects of English have been mastered. The present article investigated the learnability problems related to the acquisition of count-mass distinction of English nominals by Persian L2 learners. The theoretical underpinning of the study is the interpretability hypothesis (Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007) arguing that the features which are semantically interpretable can be acquired. To this end, 50 learners constituted the participants of the study and completed a forced-choice elicitation task requiring the use of articles. The results of the study substantiated the interpretability hypothesis. Nonetheless, the advanced L2ers showed a conservative behavior in the mass context. They significantly opted for a/an in wide scope indefinite non-referential de/re context. The findings reveal that article suppliance creates more learnability problems in the plural and indefinite mass contexts compared to the count singular ones.