Abstract

ABSTRACT

Observing the students of English department gives the impression that the article system is never adequately mastered and that errors persist into the advanced level. The current study sets out to investigate the use of the English articles (the, a/an, zero ) by 100 fourth year students in Iraq.

The theoretical part of the study probes the conceptual elements comprising the meaning of definiteness ; it also includes a simple classification of nouns in English. This part is terminated in the different usage contexts of the definite, indefinite and zero article in English.

The study employed a gap filling test, as a means of data collection, that consists of forty - five discrete items. The study adopted an error analysis in processing the collected data.

The empirical part of the study indicates that fourth year students at the department of English face problems in using the English article system correctly. The results also show that the percentage of article errors are statistically significant ,in other words , the use of the definite article proved to be the easiest, then the indefinite article, and at last the zero article. The results also report a noticeable transfer of students' native languages in their use of the English article system.