A Study Of The Use Of English Articles By Chinese College Learners Of English: An Error Analysis

The English article system (a, the and 0) is one of the most difficult grammatical elements to learn and to use for Chinese students whose language doesn't have the articles. There have been a large number of studies concerning the English article system, ranging from its acquisition, function, and pedagogy to variation, etc. Native Chinese scholars and overseas researchers have contributed to the understanding of this elusory and complex system from different perspectives. The Chinese scholars have paid much of their attention to the general description of how the English article system is used. These researchers often concentrate on one specific aspect of article usage by providing lists of example plus brief explanations. Their researches are not empirical in nature. Therefore, the researcher carries on an empirical study to make clear the errors committed by intermediate college learners of English.Observation of Chinese college learners of English gives the impression that the article system is never adequately mastered, and that errors persist even when the learners have reached the advanced level of proficiency. The current study sets out to investigate the performances of 45 college juniors in China using a test instrument consisting of an article-focused task and a guided writing task. The results were analyzed according to Huebner's adaptation of Bickerton's 'semantic space' method of evaluation and methodology of Error Analysis, and rates of accuracy compared statistically to measured overall proficiency levels. Moreover, data was analyzed in order to determine specific types of article error occurring within each specific NP type.Therefore, the research yielded the following findings:1. The learners' performance was considerably better in guided writing task thanin article-focused task. In the latter task, there was a positive correlation between article accuracy and proficiency level, but no such correlation was found in the former, as had been predicted2. The article-focused task revealed that the order of accuracy in article choices is:a > the > φ. For the guided writing task it became apparent that learnersencountered great difficulty in marking both first and second mentions of NPs, with the definite article for the latter proving especially problematic when remote in the discourse from the original entity.3. Females out-performed males in both tasks, relative to their proficiency levels. The study concludes by suggesting a context-based experiential methodology for teaching the articles in China, in which function is stressed rather than the memorization of abstract rules.