The Investigation Of The English Articles' Acquistion By Native Chinese Learners

Articles which include a/an, the, and the zero article are the most commonly used words in English. Despite high frequency and early input, English articles remain a widely recognized marked feature for learners, especially [-ART] learners. There is observational evidence that [-ART] learners of English experience immense difficulty in acquiring the English articles. The process of articles'acquisition thus becomes one of the focuses of SLA studies.There has been a considerable amount of research conducted by overseas scholars pertaining to the processes of L2 acquisition of English articles by non-native learners of English in ESL contexts. However, there have been few studies, to my knowledge, on the process of English articles'acquisition by learners in China. This stands in a striking contrast to the fruitful researches conducted in foreign countries. Therefore, to get a relatively realistic picture of the actual acquisition process of English article system by Chinese learners is sure to be of great theoretical and practical significance.The purpose of this pseudo-longitudinal study is to investigate the underlying processes in terms of article accuracy and use by native Chinese learners. The theoretical approach adopted here was Huebner's (1983) semantic wheel model, marked by the features, [±Specific Referent (±SR)] and [±Assumed Known to the Hearer (±HK)]. Chinese learners drawn from three proficiency groups (Advanced, Intermediate, Lower-intermediate) participated in an article cloze test and an interview. The measures employed for data analysis were SOC (Supplied in Obligatory Contexts), TLU (Target-like Use), and UOC (Used in Obligatory Contexts). One-way ANOVA procedures along with Scheffe follow-up tests were performed. The results reveal that:1.SOC and TLU reveal two accuracy orders of the =a/an> ? and the>a/an> ? across the groups. UOC reveals that the latter is a more reliable measure. It also...