Errors in the English Article System Among EFL Learners: Evidence from the Kurdistan Region - Iraq

Abstract

The identification of the sources and types of students’ errors in the use of the English article system is beneficial in assisting them to overcome such problems. This study aims to investigate the types and sources of article errors made by Kurdish EFL learners. The data was collected from 61 third-year university students who were studying English at the time of the present study. The types of article errors were analysed based on surface structure taxonomy (SST). Contrastive and error analyses were adopted to analyse the sources of article errors. The study findings suggest that the students committed different types of errors in the use of the English article system, namely, substitution, omission, and addition. Omission errors were the most frequent type of article errors, while substitution errors were the least frequent ones. The sources of errors are divided into two categories: inter-lingual and intra-lingual. Analysis of the student's written samples indicates that most of the errors in the articles are attributed to the target language itself. The implications of the study suggest that teachers should pay more attention to the acquisition of the English article system. Limitations and future research considerations are discussed in the article.