A look at the use of articles with reference to a group of adult Chinese students at the intermediate level
A look at the use of articles with reference to a group of adult Chinese students at the intermediate level
Adrian Jordan
University of Leicester, England
Contents
Section 1.
Introduction.
Section 2
The learning challenges that students face when using articles.
Section 3
A grammatical look at the English article system and how the students’ L1 interferes with their learning process.
Section 4
Conclusion.
1. Introduction.
The English article system is complex and problematic for students, but a solid understanding is vital as these determiners are used extremely frequently in English. The COBUILD (Collins Birmingham University International Language Database) frequency count (Sinclair 1991) indicates that the is the most common word in English and that a is the fifth most common. Since the and a/an make up 8.5% of all text (Sinclair 1993), any difficulties with the article system are bound to make themselves apparent in students’ language production. The aim of this paper is to try and understand why Chinese students constantly make mistakes in this grammatical area. This paper commences with the learning challenges that students face when using articles. After this, I will take a grammatical look at the English article system and discuss how the students’ L1 interferes with their learning process. Due to the 3,000-word limit which has been set for this task, I am unable to provide a detailed analysis of the vast and complex article system, but rather I will provide a general overview.
2. The learning challenges that students face when using articles.
Articles are members of a group of words called determiners, which are used before nouns (Swan 1980:65). Two of the most important determiners are the definite article the and the indefinite article a(n) (Huddleston 1984:248). Master (2002) writes that
Adrian Jordan
University of Leicester, England
Contents
Section 1.
Introduction.
Section 2
The learning challenges that students face when using articles.
Section 3
A grammatical look at the English article system and how the students’ L1 interferes with their learning process.
Section 4
Conclusion.
1. Introduction.
The English article system is complex and problematic for students, but a solid understanding is vital as these determiners are used extremely frequently in English. The COBUILD (Collins Birmingham University International Language Database) frequency count (Sinclair 1991) indicates that the is the most common word in English and that a is the fifth most common. Since the and a/an make up 8.5% of all text (Sinclair 1993), any difficulties with the article system are bound to make themselves apparent in students’ language production. The aim of this paper is to try and understand why Chinese students constantly make mistakes in this grammatical area. This paper commences with the learning challenges that students face when using articles. After this, I will take a grammatical look at the English article system and discuss how the students’ L1 interferes with their learning process. Due to the 3,000-word limit which has been set for this task, I am unable to provide a detailed analysis of the vast and complex article system, but rather I will provide a general overview.
2. The learning challenges that students face when using articles.
Articles are members of a group of words called determiners, which are used before nouns (Swan 1980:65). Two of the most important determiners are the definite article the and the indefinite article a(n) (Huddleston 1984:248). Master (2002) writes that
References: Huddleston, R. (1984) Introduction to the Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Master, P. (1990) ‘Teaching the English articles as a binary system’ TESOL Quarterly 24:3, 461-478 Master, P. (1997) ‘The English article system: Acquisition, function, and pedagogy’ System 25:2, 215-232. Master, P. (2002) ‘Information structure and English article pedagogy’ System 30, 331-348. Parrish, B. (1987) ‘A new look at methodologies in the study of article acquisition for learners of ESL’ Language Learning 37, 127-152. Sinclair, J., ed. (1991) Corpus, concordance, collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sinclair, J. (1993) Foreword in R. Berry (1993) Collins COBUILD English Guides (3): Articles. London: Harper Collins Publishers. Swan, M. (1980) Practical English Usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Swan, M. and B. Smith (1987) Learner English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .