An Empirical Research Into English EEL Learners’Article Acquisition From The Perspective Of Fluctuation Hypothesis

English article system consists of definite article the, indefinite article a/an and zero article φ. When articles are utilized alone, they have no content meaning. Nevertheless, they can be used to refer to such complicated semantic meanings as definite, indefinite, specific, nonspecific, etc., when they are employed together with noun phrases. English article system is one of the most difficult aspects of English grammar for nonnative speakers and one of the latest to be fully acquired, especially for L2English learners who speak an article-less mother tone. To remove the obstacles in English article acquisition, scholars researched into it from semantic, contextual, syntactic and pragmatic perspectives. Semantically, studies were mainly conducted under three categories of theoretical frameworks:the semantic wheel model (Bickerton,1981), definiteness and specificity (Ionin et al,2004a), and specificity and partitivity (Ko et al,2006). However, the categorization of the English articles system under the semantic wheel model is complicated and vague, compared with that under definiteness and specificity. Moreover, the framework of specificity and partitivity proposed by Ko et al (2006) is only applied in the research into indefinite articles. Therefore, this paper attempts to investigate Chinese EFL learners’article acquisition under the framework of definiteness and specificity.This paper is an empirical research with quantitative method as the principal approach and qualitative method as a supplement. From the perspective of Fluctuation Hypothesis (Ionin et al,2004a), the present paper surveyed80Chinese EFL learners with a forced choice elicitation task and a L2proficiency test. By observing subjects’overuse errors in the four contexts ([+Def,+Spec],[+Def,-Spec],[-Def,+Spec] and [-Def,-Spec]) cross categorized by definiteness and specificity, it discusses the roles of definiteness and specificity in English article choice, tests Fluctuation Hypothesis for L2English article choice proposed by Ionin et al (2004a), and reveals the correlation between L2proficiency level and the accuracy of English article choice. The paper is designed to explore the answers to the following two questions.(1) Do both definiteness and specificity play a role in Chinese EFL learners’article acquisition? To be more concrete, Chinese EFL learners fluctuate between definiteness and specificity, i.e. the two settings of the Article Choice Parameter, when selecting English articles?(2) If fluctuation between definiteness and specificity occurs in Chinese EFL learners’article choice, is it related to L2proficiency level?With the assistance of the two software EXCEL2003and SPSS17.0, this paper analyzes the overuse errors and puts forward the following two findings:(1) Both definiteness and specificity significantly influence Chinese EFL learners’article acquisition. They fluctuate between the definiteness setting and the specificity setting of the Article Choice Parameter. Thus, the present paper provides evidence for Fluctuation Hypothesis for L2English article choice;(2) L2proficiency level is positively correlated to the accuracy of English article choice.