Contextual Priming In Chinese EFL Learners' Acquisition Of English Articles

Most Chinese EFL learners experience a learning stage where they find themselves unable to use English articles accurately despite years' hard work on the article knowledge.This is also a stage characterized by frequent article misuses observed in L2 learners.Much of previous research interprets L2 article errors from either a semantic or language transfer perspective,yet a close examination of these studies shows that both the two interpretations are under the influence of context.The purpose of the present study is therefore to look at L2 learners' article misuse in light of contextual priming,which refers to the phenomenon that L2learners' use of a functional morpheme can be primed by contextual features.For example,the English plural morpheme –s is used more often after numerals,as in two boys.L2 article learning in this view is like an interactive activity between learners and the context,in which contextual features function as contextual variables to prime learners' article choices.In an attempt to examine how these contextual features influence L2 learners' article choices,two research questions are thus addressed:(1)Do contextual features influence Chinese EFL learners' article choices?(2)Do learners show patterns in their article errors in the presence of contextual features?To answer the research questions,a forced-choice elicitation task was designed to explore whether L2 learners' article use can be influenced by three contextual features: specificity,partitivity and explicitly stated knowledge(ESK).Participants were 90 Chinese third-year senior high students.The elicitation task consisted of 70 dialogues,with 60 indefinite target contexts categorized into [-specific] vs.[+specific],[-partitive] vs.[+partitve] and [-ESK] vs.[+ESK] contrasts.Participants were required to fill the gap in each dialogue with a,the or ?.Finally,based on participants' performance in the Oxford Quick Placement Test,only 40 intermediate-level participants' article choices in target contexts were analyzed.The results verified the priming effect of contextual features on participants' article use.Three findings emerged from the study.First,participants' accuracy ratesvaried in the three contrast contexts,indicating that the three contextual features did exert influence on participants' article decisions.Specifically,participants performed better in [-specific] contexts than in [+specific] contexts,and their higher accuracy rate was observed in [-partitive] contexts than in [+partitive] context.Interestingly,participants made more article errors in [-ESK] contexts than in [+ESK] contexts.Second,Chi-square test showed that systematic patterns could be found in participants' article misuses,implying that different contextual features bear a close relationship with participants' article errors.Data analysis showed that significant differences existed between participants' misuse of the in [+specific] and [-specific]contexts.Similar findings were also found between [+partitive] and [-partitive]contexts.This demonstrates that specificity and partitivity may prime participants' systematic overuse of the.Note that the effect of explicitly stated knowledge(ESK)was not evident in the data analysis.Overall,the present study has gleaned empirical evidence for contextual priming by the fact that L2 learners' article misuse can be primed by two contextual features:specificity and partitivity.In this sense,article learning in L2 context has the advantages of removing the powerful L1 contextual knowledge,developing proper L2 contextual knowledge,enhancing the sensitivity to contextual features,and priming accurate article production.In short,contextual priming generates a virtuous circle:context-based article use ? proper L2 contextual knowledge ? sensitivity to contextual features? accurate article production ? successful L2 article learning.Viewed in this way,the effect of context deserves special consideration in L2 article instruction and learning.Both English teachers and learners should have the consciousness to use articles within L2 contexts,as learners' sensitivity to contextual features may further prime their subsequent article use.