Processing the meaning of English articles by Arab learners
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2019/10/0045/000405Keywords:
processing, English articles, definiteness and specificityAbstract
This study investigates the question of whether L2 learners’ online knowledge of specificity in English article choice mirrors their offline knowledge. Previous research found Hejazi-Arabic learners of English sensitive to the specificity feature when tested offline. In the current study, 68 Hejazi-Arabic participants and 23 native English speakers took an article elicitation task and a self-paced reading task. The article elicitation task results show learners’ overuse of ‘the’ in the indefinite specific context. The self-paced reading task results show higher reaction times for L2 learners for the correct article choice in the indefinite specific context only compared to native speakers. This suggests that Arab learners encounter difficulty due to the form/meaning mismatch of [+specific] feature in this context.References
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