A Corpus-Based Study On The Use Of English Definite Article By English Majors

As one of the most frequently used word class, the English article system has no lexicalmeaning, which can not be used independently, but it could be used widely and the usages arecomplicated, what’s more, second language learners, being influenced by their motherlanguages and interlanguage, would continuously change their hypothesis of articles usage atdifferent learning stages while they are learning English articles. As a result, the complicationand difficulty of learning and teaching English articles have been a common view of manyexperts and scholars. Due to the absence of article system in Chinese language, thecomplexity of English article system makes it difficult for Chinese English learners to acquirethe proper use of English articles. After literature review, more researches on English articleshave been found in international journals; however, researches on use of English articles arerare in China. Research content in China often focuses on the whole English article systemrather than the definite article the. Research method used in previous study shows more use offorced elicitation tasks and interviews. Since2001, more and more researches in secondlanguage acquisition began to adopt corpus linguistics method. Previous corpus-basedresearches on English articles shed light on the current research. Thus a corpus-basedinvestigation of the English definite article used by English majors is implemented.The method used in this research is a Corpus-based method. Corpus researching softwareAntConc has been employed for searching the definite article the in both corpus LOB andSWECCL2.0to investigate use of the definite article by Chinese-speaking English learnersand English native speakers for finding what differences are existing; meanwhile, the key taskof this research is to investigate use of the definite article used in spoken and written Englishfor finding different characteristics of the definite article used by English majors betweendifferent grades in spoken and written English with the purpose to improve the teaching andlearning of the English definite article in China.Research questions are:1）What are the differences existing in the definite article used by Chinese-speaking English learners and English native speakers?2）What are the different characteristics of the definite article used by English majors inspoken and written English?3）What are the different characteristics of the definite article used by English majorsamong different grades?The result shows that compared with English native speakers, Chinese English learnerstend to underuse the definite article the, and significant difference is found; there are alsodifferences in the use of the definite article by English majors in spoken and written English,Chinese-speaking English learners tend to use more definite articles in spoken English than inwritten English; there are also significant differences in the use of the definite article byEnglish learners between different grades, learners with long language learning time showmore use of definite articles in spoken English, learners in lower grades shows less use ofdefinite articles than those in high grades, and the difference is significant; but in writtenEnglish, although learners in lower grades use less definite articles than those in high grades,there is no significant difference.This research will bring implications for further researchers in their studies of theEnglish definite article with intention to achieve more findings in a broad view, and put theirachievements into English definite article teaching and learning.At the end of this thesis, limitations of this research and some recommendations forfurther study are proposed.