| The English article system ranks among the most difficult element for learners who learn English as a foreign language, which is particularly true for learners whose native language does not include any equivalents. The difficulty and wide use of the English article system bring about piles of studies on it, most of which focus on the acquisition order of English articles, the use of English articles, errors in article use, and reasons for these errors. To get a new understanding of how Chinese learners use English articles and provide some suggestions for research and pedagogical process, the present study compares the use of English articles by a group of intermediate learners and a group of advanced learners in two kinds of tasks, namely, competence-and performance-oriented tasks, to be more specific, a blank-filling task and a writing task. The study is aimed at finding out how task type influences Chinese learners’ use of English articles:to what extent task type affects Chinese learners’correct use of English articles and errors they make. Effects of the interaction between task type and proficiency level are also explored. Besides, reasons for errors are qualitatively analyzed in this study.The present study employed a blank-filling task and a writing task to test a group of30English majors and a group of30non-English majors. It was found that:(1) Task type does influence Chinese learners’ accuracy in English article use to a large extent. Learners performed not so well in the blank-filling task (with an accuracy rate of just60.04%) but relatively well in the writing task (with an accuracy rate of 81.42%). Differences between learners’ performance in the blank-filling task and writing task were significant.(2) The interaction of task type and proficiency level also has an influence on Chinese learners’ accuracy in English article use. High achievers performed significantly better than low achievers in the blank-filling task but slightly better in the writing task.(3) Task type affects both the types and numbers of errors in learners’article use. There are three types of errors in the blank-filling task, namely, omission (of the and a(n)), overuse of the and overuse of a(n) and four types in the writing task, namely, omission (of the and a(n)), overuse of the, overuse of a(n)and0errors which means learners omit the s of the plural form of countable nouns when they use plural forms to express generic meaning. The difference between article error types in the blank-filling task and in the writing task has not been paid much attention to in previous studies.(4) Reasons for learners’errors are divided into two kinds:noun-phrase-related reasons which include the semantic functions of noun phrases, countability of noun phrase and structures of noun phrases and other reasons which include L1transfer and proficiency level. Among the reasons, the structures of noun phrases are among the most influential ones but are not carefully studied.The present study provides methodological implications as well as practical implications. It provides future researches with a new perspective to study the article system, namely, task type. In addition, this study is beneficial to teachers and students to teach and learn English articles. |
