Cantonese ESL learners’ interpretation of English article use for generic reference

This paper investigates Cantonese ESL learners' interpretation of the use of English articles for representing generic reference. A grammaticality judgement task and a truth-value judgment task were conducted with a total of 57 advanced Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong. Results of the study showed that learners were confused about the structures of noun phrases for representing generic reference. Some learners had a tendency to use the + plural or bare singular noun phrases for representing generic reference, although others could recognize the correct use of ZERO + plural and other relevant structures. The + singular, known as the definite generic, was largely unnoticed. It is argued that the absence of structural equivalents of English articles in Cantonese interacts intricately with the infrequent use of plural marking in the language, resulting in learners' problems with the structures. It is recommended that ESL teachers put more pedagogical efforts onto this area of learner difficulty. Explicit teaching is needed to help learners recognize the variant structures used for representing generic reference.