title: Bidirectional crosslinguistic influence in the acquisition of L2 English articles by Arabic-English bilingual adults and children
Creators: name: Hamadah, Zahra
Publisher: name: University of Reading
Year: 2024

description: Using English articles has been viewed as a challenge for second language (L2) English 
learners. Two reasons were often given to explain this difficulty: 1) the complexity in 
mapping forms to meanings and 2) the influence of the learners’ first language (L1). This has 
been linked to whether or not the L1 has an articles system and to the extent to which the L1 
article system (if it exists) is similar to or different from the L2 English article system. In 
addition to these aspects, it has been found that patterns of using English articles present a 
variability in relation to L2 age of onset of acquisition (L2AOA) and L2 proficiency. In 
respect to L2AOA, it was found that early learners often demonstrate higher accuracy in 
using L2 English articles and their L1 has less of an influence on their performance. Among 
L1 Arabic-L2 English groups, prior research has focused on adult learners with little attention 
given to children. Moreover, attention was only given to how L1 Arabic likely impacts the 
use of L2 English; examining how L2 English article use might affect L1 Arabic use has not 
been addressed. The current project examined the use of articles in both L1 Arabic and L2 
English among two populations of Arabic-English bilingual adults (N = 40) and school-age 
children (7–12) (N = 13) in two studies employing two different tasks: 1) a narrative�elicitation task and 2) a sentence-repetition task (SRT). The projects considered a number of 
factors, such as L1 (in children) and L2 proficiency, L2AOA and the length of residence in 
the L2 context (the United Kingdom [UK]). The studies also examined the role of 
crosslinguistic influence and whether the use of L2 English is impacted by the learners’ L1 
Arabic, and vice versa. Furthermore, in the SRT, the study examined whether adjectival 
noun-premodification affects the degree to which English articles are omitted. In the two 
studies, the performance of the two bilingual groups was compared to two control groups: 
monolingual Arabic speakers (N = 39) and English native speakers (N = 30).
The results of the L2 English article use varied across the two studies. In the narrative�elicitation study, the bilingual children were more target-like than the bilingual adults. Both 
bilingual groups shown instances of L1 influence mainly in their omission of the indefinite 
article, a/an; however, this was more prominent in the bilingual adults. In the SRT, unlike the 
first study, the two bilingual groups were less accurate in their use of English articles than the 
native English speakers. In both studies, the bilingual adults’ patterns of errors showed that 
they generally struggle in marking noun countability. Additionally, in both studies, the results 
indicated increased accuracy in L2 English article use, particularly in adults with higher L2 
proficiency. 
The findings of both studies showed no direct L2 effects on the use of L1 Arabic articles by 
the two bilingual groups. However, in some of the patterns of use of Arabic articles, the 
bilingual adults showed an increase in accuracy with higher L2 proficiency and prolonged 
residence in the UK.