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in article uses has been studied among second language (L2) learners (Avery & Radišić, 2007), across different text types (Wolf & Walters, 2001), and across different contact varieties of English (Sand, 2004). New pedagogies for English articles have been exploited and experimented (Master, 2002).
Persistent interest in the study of the acquisition and uses of English articles is due to the following factors. First, it is a known fact that L2 learners of English often have continual difficulty in the use of articles until the very late stages of acquisition. More often than not, they do not ever reach native-like levels of performance. Misuse of articles is often used as an evidence of long-lasting non-native performance. Secondly, the acquisition of English articles has been attested to be a notoriously difficult process in terms of semantic features, syntax-morphology interfaces, syntax-pragmatics interfaces, and meaning-form connections. This is especially the case for L2 learners whose native languages do not have an article system or have a different article system. Thirdly, the L2 acquisition of English articles can serve as a mirror to reflect the general processes of L2 acquisition. As a consequence, the following important questions can be directly or indirectly addressed: