The Acquisition Of English Articles By Chinese EFL Learners

English articles do not have independent meanings, and they are usually put before anoun (or a noun phrase) to indicate whether the noun (or the noun phrase) refers to aspecific example of something or a category of something. Although the forms of the threeEnglish articles a, an and the are very simple, Chinese EFL learners often have difficulty inmastering their uses. So far, very few empirical studies have been conducted to examine themechanism of the learning of English articles by Chinese-speaking learners of English.Taking the Semantic Wheel Theory as its theoretical foundation, the present studyattempts to explore the following four research questions:(1) What is the relationship between the EFL learners’ English proficiency and Englisharticle acquisition?(2) What is the participants’ acquisition sequence of the English articles’ four semanticfeatures?(3) What is the participants’ acquisition sequence of the three English articles?(4) What are the causes of the participants’ misuse of the English articles?The semantic features of the English article are categorized into four types:[SR,+HK],[+SR,+HK],[+SR, HK],[SR, HK].[SR,+HK] concerns the context inwhich the NP does not have a specific referent, but the hearer have the knowledge of thereferent represented by the NP.[+SR,+HK] represents the case in which the noun beforethe article codes a specific referent and the hearer knows the thing or person that is beingdescribed.[+SR, HK] indicates that the speaker refers to a particular example ofsomething, but assumes the hearer does not know the referent that is being talked about.[SR, HK] is used in the condition in which the NP refers to a category of somethingnonspecific; and the hearer does not know the referent.The study had120Chinese EFL learners as its participants.40Junior Two studentswere recruited as the beginning level group,40Senior One students and40Grade TwoEnglish majors of Chongqing Normal University were treated as the intermediate and theadvanced groups respectively. All the participants were asked to take an English proficiencytest and an article test. The result of the English proficiency test showed that the mean difference of the three groups of participants reached the significant level. This proved thatthe three groups could represent the learners from three different English languageproficiencies. The findings of this study can be summarized as follows:(1) The participants’ acquisition of the English articles was positively correlated withtheir English proficiency. The higher the learner’s proficiency was, the better they could useEnglish articles.(2) The acquisition sequence of the articles’ four semantic features for beginning-leveland the intermediate-level learners is [+SR,+HK]>[-SR,-HK]>[+SR,-HK]>[-SR,+HK], and the advanced-level learners’ acquisition order is [+SR,+HK]=[-SR,-HK]>[+SR,-HK]>[-SR,+HK]. In addition, the [+SR,+HK] and [-SR,-HK] features are mucheasier than the [+SR,-HK] and [-SR,+HK] features for all the participants.(3) The three groups of participants had different acquisition sequence of the threeEnglish articles. Specifically, the beginning level group’s acquisition sequence was the>a/an>, while the intermediate level group and the advanced level group followed thesame learning order, that is, the>> a/an.(4) There are factors that caused the participants’ misuse of the English articles:(a)participants could not distinguish nouns’ countability;(b) participants could not identify thedifference between the generic and specific referents of nouns;(c) participants areunfamiliar with collocations;(d) participants’ confusion of articles a and an.Based on the findings of the study, some suggestions are proposed for Chinese EFLlearners and teachers. They should pay more attention to the semantic features of Englisharticles and the reasons that can cause the misuse of articles. All the results will shed lighton article teaching in China.