Abstract

This paper discusses the effects of Chinese on the use of English articles by Hong Kong Cantonese ESL learners. A total of 63 Cantonese ESL learners participated in two language tasks about the use of English articles, including a cloze passage task and a noun countability task. In the cloze passage task, participants completed two cloze passages by providing a suitable article for each of 50 blanks and explained, immediately after the completion of each passage, the reason for each article choice. In the noun countability task, participants used a bilingualized dictionary to determine the countability and associated article use of seven nouns in different contexts and explained, in an introspective questionnaire, how their judgements were made. Results of the tasks showed that despite the absence of structural equivalents of English articles in Chinese, Cantonese ESL learners occasionally resorted to their mother tongue in their article selection processes. A translation and comparison strategy was often employed to validate an article choice by comparing a given English sentence with its seemingly equivalent Chinese version. In teaching the use of English articles, ESL teachers are suggested to alert learners to the differences and similarities between English and their mother tongue and to help learners tackle possible adverse L1 influence.