An Investigation On Junior High School Students’ Mastery Of The Rules In Using English Articles

English Articles are one of the most frequently-used words in English discourse.There are three forms of the article, i.e., the definite article “the”, the indefinite article“a/an” and the zero article. Although there are only three forms, the usage is verycomplicated. Articles in English belong to a kind of determiners, which is also the mostbasic determiner. The English article itself cannot be used alone, because there is noactual meaning of it. It is mainly used in front of nouns to assist nouns indicating thereference range. Articles are, as it were, one means used to achieve this purpose of nouns,which is to make both speakers and hearers reach an agreement within the certain scopeof language and ideas communicated. For English as a second or foreign languagestudents there are a lot of difficulties using articles, especially for Chinese students,because the Chinese language has no exactly corresponding phenomenon. The use of theEnglish article is not completely invariable, which increased the difficulty of the Englisharticle learning. In summary of the recent decades on article studies, it was found thatforeign scholars and Chinese scholars have made great progress on the use andacquisition research of the English article from the macroscopic aspect or microscopicaspect. The article learning sequence has been studied very early by foreign scholars, butthe objects were not native Chinese students. Chinese scholars have conducted studies onarticle grasping and using, but most of the research subjects were college students orsenior high school students.In order to know the situation of the article using by students, combining thequantitative research and qualitative research, the present study chose the junior highschool students from Grade7, Grade8and Grade9as samples carrying out the surveyand interviews. The articles test was as the investigating tool, which was divided into twoparts, filling in the blanks and writing. Based on Huebner (1983) theoretical frameworkwhich was according to the classification of the noun reference (Whether the noun phrasewas referential [±Specific Reference] and whether the hearer was known [±HearerKnowledge]), this paper analyzed the accuracy of article uses from two parts, combiningthe students’ and teachers’ interviews and then got the present situation of junior highschool students’ mastery of the rules in using English articles. Meanwhile, somepedagogical suggestions were put forward based on the findings.The results of the analysis are as follows: the accuracy of the rules in using Englisharticles by junior high school English learners was not ideal. The overall accuracy ofEnglish articles mastering in filling-up part and writing part from the test was not high. The definite article was grasped the best, and the indefinite article was grasped thesecond best, while the zero article was mastered the worst. With the improvement oflearning levels, the article accuracy increased gradually. The accuracy of the writing partexceeded the filling-up part. In the filling-up part and the writing part, the definitereference of English articles was mastered well ([+SR,+HK]) in the test. However, inthe filling-up part, the general reference ([-SR,-HK]) and the indefinite reference ([+SR,-HK]) was mastered the worst. And in the writing part, the worst one was the genericreference ([-SR,+HK]). At the same time, the study has put forward some correspondingpedagogic suggestion for English teachers on articles teaching. The article teachingshould not be only limited to asking students to learn principles by rote, but also aimed athelping students to understand noun phrases, recognize and define the use of Englisharticles.