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Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study
As functional words, articles are frequently used in English language system.Sinclair's (1991) “COBUILD list of the five most frequently-occurring words’’ showsthat definite article the ranks first and indefinite article a in fifth. Meanwhile, it is thehighly complex grammatical parts for second language learners to obtain. Eventhough we have been acquiring articles at the very beginning since we started tocontact the English, nevertheless, because of no article system in our Chineselanguage, many students are aware that they can not stop making errors when dealingwith English article. Meanwhile, being functional words, articles have little meaningin themselves, so their omission and redundancy would not make a seriously problemin conveying thoughts or meanings, which results in the fact that a large number ofstudents even many English teachers are paying less attention to articles. On the otherhand, most grammar books in China only spend few pages to explain English articlesusage and function which may be impossible for learners to remember or acquire well.Under such circumstances, the studies on English article system become an importantresearch field in Second language acquisition.

作为功能的话，文章中经常使用的英文系统。辛克莱（1991）“COBUILD的五个最经常发生的话”显示列表，明确articleranks第一和不定冠词a在第五。同时，它是高度复杂的语法部分为第二语言学习者获得的。虽然我们一直在收购的文章，因为我们在开始的时候开始接触英语，不过，因为我们中国人的语言中没有文章系统，很多学生意识到，他们不能处理英文文章时，停止错误。同时，虚词，文章很少有自己的意思，所以他们的遗漏和冗余输送的想法或含义，这导致了大量的学生甚至许多英语教师较少关注的事实，不会造成严重问题的文章。另一方面，大部分的语法书在中国只花几页的英文文章解释用法和功能，这可能是为学习者不可能记住或取得好。在这种情况下，英语文章系统的研究成为第二语言习得的一个重要研究领域。

The abroad researches of English article are fruitful. Researchers carry out theirinvestigations from various perspectives, Fodor & Sag (1982) and Heim (1991)attempt to explore the English articles semantic choice from the perspective ofphilosophy; Lyons (1997) investigates English articles usage and function from theview of syntax; Hawkins (1978, 1991) works on characteristics of English articlesapplication from the perspective of pragmatics, etc. Article system abroad arerecognized as the most complex teaching difficulties in applied linguistic field, whichhave been taking seriously by second language acquisition scholars. While researchesat home started later than foreign countries. At the early stage, they have placedemphasis on the English articles usage and function from the perspective ofgrammatical elements. These studies are of little help for learners to fully acquirearticles. Recently, some scholars tend to make empirical studies，these researches changes its techniques from qualitative to quantitative，which can provide not only ofthe English articles basic knowledge for us students but also some practicalimplications for English teachers.
Throughout all these fruitful findings, English articles misusages have been oneof the main most extensive research topics. Dulay & Burt (1974:95) point out “youcannot leam without goofing." It seems that error is inevitable in the process oflearning. As for S. R Corder (1981), two major purposes are proposed for the study oflearners' errors: (1) the pedagogical purpose, namely that a good understanding of thenature of error is necessary before a systematic means of eradicating them could befound; (2) the theoretical purpose, which claims that a study of learners* errors is partof the systematic study of the learners' language which is本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。