Acquisition of English Definite Article ‘The’ By EFL junior Learners

The English has the definite article “the”, indefinite article “a/n” and a zero article “Ø”. This paperexamines the acquisition of the English definite article „the‟ by L۱ Persian speakers. The Persian languagemakes use of a definite article “An, in” which corresponds to the English definite article superficially.However, the Persian language has different ways of encoding both the notions of definiteness andindefiniteness. Using Huebner‟s (۱۹۸۳) classification system, this paper aims to investigate the extent towhich L۱ Persian speakers of L۲ English of varying proficiency levels have acquired the definite articlethe. One hundred and fifty L۱ Persian respondents (lower intermediate) were selected for the study. Therespondents attempted a set of study tasks, a fill-in-article test task and a forced-choice elicitation taskrespectively. The data was analysed quantitatively. The results of the study showed that L۱ Persianrespondents generally are non native-like in using the English definite article. Respondents showed lowlevels of accuracy with regard to the use of the definite article the. The findings also show that L۱ transferwas involved in the acquisition of the English articles. In addition, the different assignments of the articlesin both languages seemed to have contributed to the difficulty of the definite article use in English evidentin the study. The study highlights the importance of investigating the acquisition of English definitearticle by L۲ learners and provides some pedagogical perspectives for the L۲ English instructors andhighlights the importance of the context in which articles are used.

Keywords:

SLA , definite article the , Persian speakers