A Study Of English Article Acquisition By Chinese Learners

English articles are deemed to be the most frequent morpheme,including definite article the, indefinite article a/an and zero article. Asfar as non-native English learners like Chinese students are concerned,English articles are problematic due to no article system in Chinese at all.Thus, all these factors pose great challenge on teaching articles well andsometimes puzzle the students and teachers. Furthermore, the articlesrarely cause misunderstanding when second language learners misusethem in spoken English. It is usually only when students have to writethem and make many mistakes that they will realize it is necessary tolearn them by heart.Plenty of researches have been made by many foreign scholarsperformed in an early age, with great achievements being reached.Compared with second language acquisition of English articles byoverseas, the related study start lately by Chinese. Recently there havebeen a number of researchers start to concern the study of articles, butthey implement studies monotonously and the theory construction is notcomplete.This paper, based on Bickertons (1981) Language BioprogramHypothesis(LBH) and Huebners (1983) semantic wheel theory, theauthor implements an experimental study on articles by Chinese learnersand then proposes some pedagogical suggestions for foreign language teaching in the future.The present study employs quantitative research method, randomsampling eighty subjects, whom are divided into three proficiency levels(i.e. advanced level, upper-intermediate level and lower-intermediatelevel). Each of them is sent out a questionnaire, fill-in-blank paper. Allthe collected data are scored as SOC and UOC, ad the results are finallyinput into SPSS18.0by one-way ANOVA. The major findings arereported in the following: First, the accuracy rate of article types isassociated with proficiency levels of learners. That is to say, subjects inadvanced level acquired articles best, followed by upper-intermediatelevel, lastly lower-intermediate level. Second, the sequence order ofarticle types proved in this research is: the>a/an> and subjects had atendency in overusing the and a/an in the present study. Third, foursemantic types are included in this study, and the result of accuracy orderis: Type2=Type4> Type1> Type3. Type3is proved to be the last andhardest one to acquire in these four types and statistical difference issmall between Type2and Type4. Fourth, the overgeneralization of the isassociated with contexts of [+HK](i.e.[-SR,+HK]&[+SR,+HK]).Chinese learners have trouble with the distinction of [-SR] and [+SR].Fifth, countability of NPs is another influencing factor to correctly choosearticles, and the accuracy order is presented to be: C2(plural NPS)> C1(singular NPs)> C3(uncountable NPs). Learners might have difficulties distinguishing singular NPs and uncountable NPs.