The Acquisition Of Four Non-generic Uses Of Definite Article By Chinese College Students

The acquisition and use of article system in English language are difficult for Chinese learners,especially for the complex semantic use of definite article.According to linguistic analysts,the non-generic use of definite article can be divided into four categories: cultural use,textual use,situation use and structural use.From the perspective of semantic use of definite article,this paper combines qualitative and quantitative methods to study the difficulty hierarchy,the acquisition characteristics of four uses of definite article and the correlation between the non-generic uses of definite article and learners’ English proficiency.The design process of this study consists of two parts.One is selecting college students from different majors in a University in Qingdao to complete the definite article test prepared by Liu & Gleason within the set time.Five scores are given to each test paper,including the score of cultural use,the score of textual use,the score of structural use,the score of situation use and the total score.Then,SPSS17.0 is adopted to input each participants’ five scores and to carry on the analysis.The other is choosing randomly 6 participants to inquire about their feelings of doing this article test and acquiring English article.The results suggest that:(1)The acquisition of four non-generic uses of definite article presents different levels of difficulty,with cultural use being the most difficult,followed by textual use and structural use,and situation use being the simplest.(2)There are differences of the acquisition of each non generic use among the three proficiency groups.There are differences in cultural use among three proficiency goups,but the differences are not significant.The acquisition of textual use and structural use are improved significantly from low-intermediate group to upper-intermediate group and from upper-intermediate group to advanced group.Although the acquisition of situation use has been improved between the low-intermediate group and the upper-intermediate group,the change is not significant,but it has been significantly improved between the upper-intermediate group and the advanced group.(3)There is significantly positive correlation between learners’ English proficiency and their acquisition of non-generic uses of definite article.The acquisition of four non-generic uses of definite article has a good predictive function on learners’ English proficiency.Based on the findings of this study,the author put forward some teaching and learning suggestions about the acquisition of four non-generic uses of English definite articles.