Acquisition of the English Definite Article by Chinese and Malay ESL Learners

Chinese Mandarin and the Malay language have no functional equivalents of the English article system and it has been observed anecdotally that many Chinese and Malay ESL learners have difficulty using English arti-cles accurately, particularly the definite article the. Based on Hawkins ’ Location Theory (1978), Liu and Gleason (2002) suggest that the non-generic uses of the fall into four major categories: situation, cultural, structural, and textual. This study aims to determine whether the non-generic uses of the present different levels of difficulty for Chinese and Malay ESL learners, and whether or not these different uses are acquired at the same time. One hundred (50 Chinese and 50 Malay) upper secondary students of three levels of English proficiency (advanced, intermediate and low) participated in this study. The participants were instructed to complete a 91-item fill-in-the-article-the test by inserting the in the items wherever deemed necessary. The measures employed for data analysis were SOC (Supplied in Obligatory Contexts), TLU (Target-Like Use), and UOC (Used in Obligatory Contexts). The participants ’ performance revealed that: (i) the four non-generic uses of the English article the pose different levels of difficulty; (ii) the acquisition order of the four non-generic uses of the follows a natural order independent of the ESL learners ’ first languages; and (iii) the par-ticipants ’ accuracy rate on article usage also depends on their proficiency level