| The present study aims to investigate the influence of both countability and semantic context on learners' article choices before abstract nouns, with a focus on the potential interaction between them. An elicitation task was created using three different types of nouns (count, noncount, and both) within two semantic contexts (definite and indefinite). Chinese participants completed the elicitation task and rated the confidence of their article choices. A subset of the participants were interviewed to reflect on their choices. The results indicate that when Chinese ESL learners use English articles before abstract nouns, they tend to be more accurate with [+countable] nouns and [+definite] nouns, while making more errors with [-countable] nouns and [-definite] nouns. Their self-rated confidence scores do not correlate with their test scores. When asked to explain their decisions, learners mostly refer to semantic context as the reason why they choose a certain article. The interaction between countability and semantic context was not found in the present study. |
