Contents

Table of contents

Acknowledgements v

1 Introduction

1

2 English Articles:

A Problem for Vietnamese Learners?

7

Data collection 8

Data analysis and results 9

Discussion 18

Implications

20

3 The Meaning of Articles 23

Defining definiteness 24

Notions to define definiteness 25

Uniqueness and existentiality 25

Familiarity 29

Identifiability and locability 32

Inclusiveness 37

Specificity and referentiality 39

Definiteness in cognitive grammar 45

Concluding definiteness 48

Genericity 48

Generic a 51

Generic the 54

Generic zero 57

Concluding genericity 62

Contents

Conclusion definiteness and genericity

63

4 Using articles 65

Types of articles 65

Classes of nouns 69

Usage contexts 75

Quirk et al’s classification 76

Langacker’s classification 80

Classification of the article environments

84

5 Article interlanguage in Vietnamese students

of English as a foreign language

91

Acquisition of the English articles by L2 learners 91

The determiners in Vietnamese 98

Một

101

Zero article and Null article 102

Những / Các

105

Cái

107

Demonstratives 108

An error analysis 113

Method 113

Hypotheses, Results and Discussion 117

Conclusion

132

6 Approaches to teaching the English article 135

Pedagogical suggestions on teaching English articles 136

Student textbooks and the English articles 142

Usage content and organization 143

Contents

Patterns of article usage presentation 144

Sequencing 145

Rule descriptions and presentation 145

English article usage: a cognitive grammar approach 149

General principles 150

Elements of the approach

159

7 Comparing cognitive grammar and traditional grammar

in the acquisition of the English article system in

Vietnamese students: some results

163

Method 164

Subjects 164

Materials 164

Design and procedures 169

Analyses 171

Results 173

Conclusion

177

8 Conclusion

179

Summary of the findings 179

Limitations 185

Implications and additional research 186

Appendices

189

Bibliography

27