Title: The Order of Acquisition of the English Article by Montenegrin ESL Learners
Abstract: (ProQuest: ... denotes formula omitted.)1. IntroductionThe acquisition of English articles represents a big problem for second language (L2) learners especially if their native languages are article-less and they do not acquire this system automatically as they become more proficient. As Master (1997: 215) points out the articles are among the most frequently used English words, but their successful acquisition by second language (L2) learners seems to be difficult and sometimes even impossible. Article acquisition appears to be rather late, and the reasons for that might be the fact that article choice is very complicated and sometimes beyond simple rules, that their usage depends on the noun and the context and that articles belong to a group of unstressed function or grammatical words and hence perceptually they are non-salient and semantically light-weight.The aim of my paper is to investigate the order of acquisition and accurate use of English articles by Montenegrin students at three different levels, elementary school, high school and university (students of the English department)and to compare it with the acquisition of the English article by speakers of other articleless languages such as Russian, Polish and Chinese.2. Theoretical background: research on article acquisitionResearch on article acquisition should first focus on the identification of contexts in which articles appear. Based on Bickerton's semantic wheel model, Huebner (1983: 129-148) states that the use of English articles is determined by two discourse features of referentiality [?Specific Referent (?SR)] and [?Assumed Known to the Hearer (?HK)]. By taking these two aspects of referentiality into account, four basic NP contexts that affect article use can be distinguished:* [-SR, ?HK], (the,a, 0): Generics;* [?SR, ?HK], (the): Unique, previously mentioned, or physically present referents;* [?SR, -HK], (a,0): First-mention NPs, or NPs following existential 'has/have' or 'there is/are';* [-SR, -HK], (a, 0): Equative NPs, or NPs in negation, question, or irrealis mode.This classification is one of the most widely used models for the analysis of English noun phrase (NP) environments. For my analysis I shall use this model in order to determine the acquisition order, as research on article acquisition relies largely on Huebner's methodology.When it comes to research on article acquisition by L2 learners, some studies did not pay attention to the article system in particular, but dealt with the acquisition of grammatical morphemes in general or with some unique features of the English article system (Liu and Gleason 2002; Mizuno 1999; Yamada and Matsuura 1982). Only Master (1987), Parrish (1987), Tarone and Parrish (1988) and Thomas (1989) studied article acquisition exclusively.An outline of some of the most important findings on article acquisition is given in the tables 1 and 2.All these findings concerning the acquisition of English articles by speakers of article-less languages show that the order of acquisition varies widely depending on L2 learners' level of proficiency and methodological approaches used in the study of article acquisition.3. Research description3.1. ParticipantsThree groups of participants were involved in my research:a) 21 students from the secondary school (9th grade),whose knowledge of English corresponds to B1 (pre-intermediate) level;b) 20 students from high school (4th grade), whose knowledge of English corresponds to B2 (upper-intermediate) level;c) 19 students of English at university level - 4th year, whose knowledge of English corresponds to Cl (advanced) level.There are two main methodologies used for article acquisition studies: longitudinal and cross-sectional. As the cross-sectional methodology is a type of observational study, which concerns a single point in time, I found it most appropriate for this kind of corpus based study. …
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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