iii ABSTRACT

This study focuses on the analysis of errors in the use of English articles made by
first-year students at Hung Yen Industrial College with an aim to recommend some
selected implications for better teaching of English articles. The analysis was based
on the data collected from two tests: a free-response test, writing a composition and
a multichoice test provided by 90 non-major first-year students of Hung Yen
Industrial college. Errors were described and classified according to linguistic
category and strategies employed by the students. The greatest frequency of errors
occured in the definite article in both tests. The omissions of both definite and
indefinite articles were most found in the compositions but the wrong selections of
definite article instead of the indefinite in the multi-choice test. Explanations for the
causes of the errors were done: interlingual or intralingual and developmental
causes. Suggestions for improvement in teaching English articles are offered based
on the findings.

v LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Summary of English articles (p.5)
Table 2: Bickerton’s semantic table for noun phrase reference (p.9)
Table 3: General information of the writing corpus (p.25)
Table 4: Frequencies of articles supplied in the written work by article type (26)
Table 5: Non-pass and pass students of Test 2 (p.26)
Table 6: Distribution of choices by the students in Test 2 (p.27)
Table 7: Distribution of explanations on the right choices by the students in Task 1
(p.27)
Table 8: Errors classified according to linguistic categories (p.29)
Table 9: Errors classified according to the strategies employed by the students
(p.30)

5. Methods of the study 3
6. Significance of the study 3
7. Design of the study 3
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. An overview of English article system 4
1.1.1. Definitions of English article 4
1.1.2. Types of English articles 4
1.1.2.1. Definite article 5
1.1.2.2. Indefinite articles 6
1.1.2.3. Zero article 7
1.1.3. Usage of English articles 8
1.2. The determiners in Vietnamese language 10
1.3. Error and error analysis 12
1.3.1. The notions of errors in language learning 12
1.3.2. Classifications of errors 13
1.3.3. Error analysis 14
vii 1.3.3.1. Definitions 14
1.3.3.2. Significance of error analysis 15
1.3.3.3. Stages in error analysis 16
1.4. Causes of errors in second language learning 17
1.4.1. Causes of interlingual errors 17
1.4.2. Causes of intralingual and developmental errors 18
CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
2.1. Setting of the study 21
2.2. Participants 22
2.3. Instruments of data collection 23

zero, are the most commonly used words in English, making constant rule application
difficult over a long discourse; Second, function words are often spoken with such
weak stress that they are inaudible and consequently are very difficult for non-native
speakers to discern, which affects the availability of input in the spoken mode; and
third, the article system stacks multiple functions onto a single morpheme, which
constitutes a considerable burden for the learner who usually looks for a one-to-one
correspondence between form and function, especially in the early stages of language
learning.
In addition, because they rarely carry significant information, they can usually be
deleted in telegraphic speech, including telegrams and newspaper headlines. Thus,
unlike content words, function words are generally overlooked by learners when
processing language primarily for meaning. According to Pienemann (1998), the
difficulty of the meaning expressed by an article is determined by the novelty and
abstractness of the concept, not to mention learners’ changing hypotheses about article
usage at different stages in interlanguage development and the potential influence of
the native language which may further complicate the task.
The idea of doing my research came from the following reasons. First, researchers such
as Newman (1977, cited in Master, 1988) and Barry Lush (2002) analyzed the
composition errors of EFL learners and found that of all error types, the most common
were related to definite and indefinite articles.

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Second, the English article system is so difficult to acquire for students with article-less
languages like Vietnamese as their first language. It is also understood that these errors
are mostly caused by the fact that no such independent grammatical category as the
article exists in Vietnamese on which the learners could lean when learning the use of
the English article system. This, of course, holds true generally, but we still come up
against the problem of which parts of the English article system are especially difficult
for Vietnamese learners to understand and learn.

as a foundation for the possible solutions to students’ errors in using English articles.
Furthermore, the study will make some contribution to the field of teaching
methodology.
7. DESIGN OF THE STUDY
The study has three main parts as follows: Part A provides a brief introduction to the
issue and an overview of the paper. Part B includes three chapters, namely Literature
Review (Chapter 1), Research Methodology (Chapter 2) and Data Analysis and
Discussion (Chapter 3). In greater details, Chapter 1 reviews the theoretical
backgrounds to English article system, error and error analysis in second language
learning. Chapter 2 describes the methods used to carry out the study. It also includes
an overview of the context of the study. Chapter 3 presents and analyzes the data
collected, and offers possible solutions to errors made by students at Hung Yen
Industrial College. Some suggestions for the betterment of teaching and learning
English article system are also provided. Part C summarizes the main issues so far
touched upon in the research, the limitations of the research and some suggestions for
further studies. Following the chapters are the references and one appendix.

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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. An overview of English article system
The article in English has always been considered one of the most formidable problems to
overcome in teaching English grammar to foreigners and its misuse is one of the most
evident grammatical signs that a person is not a native speaker of English. In this part, I
will present an overview of English article system.
1.1.1. Definitions of English article

Plural
Ø
The
Non-count noun
Ø
The
Table 1: Summary of English articles
According to Whitman (1974), “thinking about the articles in such terms as: A/an is the
indefinite article and the is the definite article” (p.253) is considered a misunderstanding or
misconception. He also explains that
The misconception involved lies in thinking that a/an and the are essentially the
same thing (that is, “articles”), differing only along a dimension of “definiteness/
indefiniteness” or “specificity/ nonspecificity”. A/an and the are, in fact, entirely
different syntactic entities, quite unrelated to each other except for that fact that
both occur within the same general structure (p254).
However, for reasons of conformity with other grammarians and textbooks, the
terminology “indefinite” or “definite” will be kept. For example, if we say, ‘I have a book
you may be interested in,” we are referring to a definite, specific book. Nonetheless, we
use the indefinite article a to signal that the book is not known by the listener.
1.1.2.1. Definite article
“The definite article the never varies in form whether it refers to people or things, singular
or plural” (Alexander, 1998:55).
(1) a. Ann is in the garden. (the garden of this house)
b. Please pass the wine. (the wine on the table)
(Thomson and Martinet, 1998:19)
According to Halliday and Hasan,
The definite article has no content. It merely indicates that the item in
question is specific and identifiable; that somewhere the information
necessary for identifying it is recoverable (1976:71).



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1.1.2.3. Zero article
Although the term “zero article” traditionally refers to any instance in which a noun
requires no article, the researchers (Yotsukura, 1970; Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman,
1999) divide the zero article into two types: zero and null. To Yotsukura, there is
distributional evidence suggesting a form other than the zero article. By using a post-
modifying restrictive relative clause test, she discovered that the second zero form is found
before singular proper nouns and some common nouns. Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman
also found that the zero article occurs with nonspecific or generic noncount and plural
nouns, such as water and cats. The null article occurs with certain singular count and
proper nouns, such as Chicago and lunch. Quirk et al. (1985: 246) describe a proper noun
like Marjon as having “no article” and a common noun like music as having a “zero
article”.
Chesterman suggests using the term the null form for the second zero article. Let us
consider examples such as the following from Chesterman (1991:17).
(4) a. * I like London that the tourists see.
b. I like the London that the tourists see.
c. I like cheese that is made of goat’s milk.
(5) a. Word has come that the Pope has died.
b. *Word that came yesterday was that the Pope has died.
c. The word that came yesterday was that the Pope has died.
(6) a. What about question seven?
b. *What about question seven you answered before, then?
c. What about the question seven you answered before, then?
(7) a. Breakfast is ready.
b. *Breakfast you asked for is ready.
c. The breakfast you asked for is ready.
Through a post-modifying restrictive clause test, it can be seen that there is a difference


The classification is summarized in the following table