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The acquisition of English articles by Arabic L2-English learners: a semantic approach
Abudalbuh, Majdi1.
The purpose of this study is to examine the acquisition of English articles by Arabic second
language (L2) learners of English as a function of different linguistic contexts contrasted based
upon two semantic notions: definiteness and specificity. The participants in this study are 30
adult learners of L2 English whose first language (L1) is Arabic. The data for this study consist
of the participants’ responses to a forced-choice elicitation task targeting the use of articles in
English. The results show that the learners were more accurate in terms of their article usage in
definite contexts than in indefinite contexts regardless of specificity. While advanced learners
performed native-like and converged to the target system of articles in English in all of the
semantic contexts, low proficiency learners and intermediate learners made several errors, the
most common of which was article omission in obligatory contexts. Moreover, the results show
that the low proficiency learners fluctuated between definiteness and specificity in the two
crucial mismatching semantic contexts: [+definite, -specific] and [-definite, +specific], overusing
the indefinite article in the former context and overusing the definite article in the latter context.
Unlike the low proficiency learners, the intermediate learners did not fluctuate between
definiteness and specificity. The study proposes a development model for the acquisition of the
English article system by Arabic learners of L2 English incorporating the Fluctuation Hypothesis
(FH) and drawing on the available sources of linguistic knowledge in second language
acquisition (SLA).
Affiliation:
- Yarmouk University, Jordan
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MyJurnal (2021) |
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Immediacy Index
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