The English article system is extremely complex because of its conceptual abstractness and context-dependent usage. For these specific features, some second language learners (e.g., Japanese) find article acquisition to be very difficult. Traditionally, the definite article the is thought to express exclusively the referential function of "identifiability", that is, the is there to identify or pick out the referent so the hearer can identify what is being discussed (Lyons, 1999). This view has been widely accepted and has served as the foundation of research as well as for pedagogical orientations. Recently, however, these traditional notions have been heavily criticized as 'insufficient'. As a result, a cognitive, mental space notion of "accessibility" has been introduced (Epstein, 2002). / This study was designed to investigate the effectiveness in teaching the English article the by comparing two instructional approaches: a traditionally-based approach and a cognitively-based approach. The study hypothesized, first, that article usage is contextually and conceptually configured; therefore, not all definite articles the exhibit the same level of difficulty (some are conceptually more complex than others). Second, the higher the complexity, the more difficult it is for learners to understand. Third, in light of these hypotheses, learners are predicted to benefit more from conceptually oriented instruction than structurally oriented traditional instruction. / In order to measure the effectiveness of these approaches, two comparable, computerized instructional treatments were created. The mental space treatment shows the learners the framework in which 'accessibility' to the object is emphasized, whereas the traditional treatment shows learners the framework in which 'identifiability' of the object is emphasized. / Eighty-three Japanese learners of English (41 in the mental space treatment and 42 in the traditional treatment) were recruited to test the hypotheses. Three lessons were administered individually; each lasted 1.5 to 2 hours (4.5 to 6 hours per participant). As predicted, the results revealed that there is a distinct order of complexity according to the conceptual load of the article the. The study also confirmed that the higher the complexity levels, the more difficult it is for the learners to learn. However, this conceptual complexity can be significantly alleviated when the conceptual framework is taught.

This thesis analyses article errors made in written English by Japanese students of English as a foreign language. The study attempts to determine whether the use of articles is a fossilizable item for the Japanese learner of English, and, if so, what types of article errors trouble the learner most. The hypotheses set up are: 1) there is no significant correlation between frequency of article errors in a student's writing and the student's level of English proficiency; 2) of the types of errors under study, the omission error is prevalent; and 3) the first language interference is the main cause of the omission error.By means of careful error analysis, the investigator substantiates the hypotheses showing that the group which was in the higher grade in school was not always the one which made fewer errors, that in all the groups but one, the percentage of omission errors was conspicuously high, and that the subjects made fewer errors when the specific use in English had a lexical counterpart in Japanese.

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English articles are perhaps the most difficult grammatical items for Japanese students to master. However, because these are among the most frequently occurring grammatical items in English, Japanese students must concern themselves with them.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate Korean EFL learners' judgments of countability of English nouns because a correct judgment of noun countability is a key factor for the appropriate use of English indefinite articles and noun phrases. To investigate the subjects' judgments of noun countability and how they are related to the use of English indefinite articles and noun phrases, fourteen hypotheses were set forth and four task types were designed.Participants were 115 Korean college EFL students and they were given four tasks: a task of judgment of countability of nouns in isolation OCT), a task of judgment of countability of nouns in context (JCC), a fill-in-the-blank task (FB), and an error correction task (EC).Overall the subjects showed a flexible notion of countability. There was a statistically significant difference between their performance of JCI and JCC. There was a positive relation between their judgments of countability in three contexts (isolation, context, and overall context) and their performance on the indefinite articles in FB.There was no relationship between their performance of JCC and OJC (overall judgment of countability) and the indefinite articles in EC.With respect to JCI, a statistically significant difference was found between the performance of the low and advanced learners and between the performance of the intermediate and advanced learners, but it was not found between the performance of the low and intermediate learners.In regard to JCC, no statistically significant difference was found between the performance of the low and intermediate learners and between the performance of the intermediate and advanced learners. A statistically significant difference was found only between the performance of the low and advanced learners.The participants performed better on the count use of concrete nouns than on the noncount use of concrete nouns, whereas they performed better on the noncount use of abstract nouns than on the count use of abstract nouns.There was an interaction between proficiency and the noncount use of concrete nouns, while no interaction was found between proficiency and the count use of abstract nouns. / Department of English

One aspect of the English language which has been overlooked by English-as-a-Second-Language educators is the article system, a, the, and 0. For students from articleless first languages such as Japanese, learning this complex system is a formidable challenge. Performance studies show an error rate among advanced Japanese students of approximately thirty percent. There may be several reasons for this high rate: 1) the differences between Japanese and English, 2) the unusually high degree of complexity/difficulty of the article system itself compared to other English morpheme systems and 3) inadequate treatments of the subject as revealed in this thesis' survey of forty ESL textbooks. Recent pragmatic discoveries about article function reveal subtle, contextual influences which have not been well integrated into traditional treatments. Definiteness may be dependent on sentential, discourse, and situational contexts, on whether referents are unique and manifest to the hearer, and on the nature of certain implicatures induced by the articles. Computerized, interactive tutorials are the best way to capture how these variables interact to constrain article choice. A prototype for a tutorial is submitted with this thesis. In addition to exhaustive explanations of contexts and implicatures in the form of actor's "asides," it features Japanese translations throughout, and, to show how uniqueness may be culture bound, utterances that take place within Japanese culture. Although the tutorial presented here needs enlargement, it is believed that an animated, computerized tutorial emphasizing subtle pragmatic features is more illustrative of actual article usage than have been traditional hard copy explanations.

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy