Articles in English as a Second Language – A Phraseological Perspective

Justyna Leśniewska is assistant Professor in the Institute of English Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, earlier she worked at the Troy University (AL, USA) and at University of Northern Iowa (IA, USA). She is is the author of several scientific publications in the field of applied linguistics.

Introduction


Chapter 1

Articles: Descriptive approaches

1.1. Introduction

1.2. The classification of articles as parts of speech and sentences

1.3. The indefinite article

1.4. The definite article

1.5. The zero article / bare noun phrase

1.6. Conclusions


Chapter 2

Key concepts in the study of articles

2.1. Introduction

2.2. Reference

2.3. Information flow

2.4. Countability

2.4.1. The count / non-count distinction

2.4.2. Implications for L2 acquisition

2.4.3. Some uses of articles are very difficult to explain

2.5. Definiteness

2.6. Conclusions


Chapter 3

Other approaches to articles

3.1. Introduction

3.2. Socio-pragmatic approaches

3.3. Cognitive accounts of definite article use

3.4. The generative tradition

3.5. Corpus-based perspectives

3.6. Conclusions


Chapter 4

Articles as a source of difficulty in SLA

4.1. Introduction

4.2. Theoretical approaches to difficulty

4.2.1. Difficulty as cognitive complexity

4.2.2. Feature-related difficulty

4.2.3. Context-related difficulty

4.2.4. Learner-related difficulty

4.2.5. Some final words on objectivity

4.2.6. Articles and feature-related difficulty

4.2.7. Salience

4.2.8. Context- and learner-related difficulty

4.2.9. Language patterns versus metalinguistic propositions and rule difficulty

4.3. Implicit versus explicit learning and knowledge

4.4. Conclusions

4.4.1. High difficulty level

4.4.2. Implicit learning

4.4.3. Limited usefulness of metalinguistic propositions


Chapter 5

Articles in SLA research

5.1. Introduction

5.2. Crosslinguistic aspects

5.3. Semantic universals and the acquisition of articles

5.4. The sequence of acquisition of articles in L1 and L2 English

5.5. Studies on countability

5.6. Abstractness

5.7. Articles and learners’ interim rules

5.8. Type of task

5.9. Lexical chunks

5.10. Conclusions


Chapter 6

Articles and ESL teaching

6.1. Introduction

6.2. Articles and the efficacy of corrective feedback

6.3. Other treatments and recommendations concerning the teaching of articles

6.4. The treatment of articles in teaching materials and pedagogical grammars

6.5. Conclusions


Chapter 7

Formulaicity

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Speaker-external formulaicity

7.3 Speaker-internal formulaicity

7.3.1 The idiom principle

7.3.2 Theoretical support for the formulaic nature of language processing

7.3.3 Empirical evidence supporting the formulaic nature of language processing in native speakers

7.4 Formulaicity, frequency and recent trends in linguistics

7.5 Formulaic language in L2 speakers

7.5.1 Speaker-external aspects

7.5.2 Speaker-internal aspects

7.6 Formulaicity and second language teaching: A brief history

7.7 Articles and formulaicity

7.8 Conclusions


Chapter 8

Investigating article use by advanced Polish learners of EFL: The role of formulaicity

8.1 Introduction

8.1.1 Purpose and rationale

8.1.2 Approach

8.2 Study 1

8.2.1 Participants

8.2.2 Instrument and procedure

8.2.3 Analysis, results and discussion

8.3 Study 2

8.3.1 Participants

8.3.2 Instrument and procedure

8.3.3 Results and discussion


Conclusion

References

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3