I Want to Marry *the Merchant Banker: An Exploratory Self-Paced Reading Experiment on Arab Learners’ Processing of English Articles

Abstract

Purpose. This study explores the processing of English articles by native speakers of Hejazi Arabic, a language with articles. The research aims to answer the question of whether offline (explicit) knowledge of specificity in English article choice mirrors online (implicit) knowledge. Existing research has found that Hejazi-Arabic learners of English misuse articles in the indefinite specific context when answering a written task; however, their performance is target-like in all other contexts of article use, which indicates that their production may be sensitive to specificity, similar to the production of learners from languages that do not include articles. Little has been done, though, to explore this phenomenon using online measures. Methods. To answer the research question, 68 speakers of Hejazi-Arabic were recruited alongside 23 native English speakers. The participants and native English speakers completed an article elicitation task and self-paced reading task. Results. The results of the article elicitation task show learners’ overuse of the in the indefinite specific context, which is consistent with the findings of existing research. Similarly, the real-time processing results indicate that there is a wider gap in reaction times between natives and L2 learners in the indefinite specific context, suggesting that learners’ online performance is not on target in this context. Conclusion. The study concludes that Hejazi Arabic speakers’ online knowledge of English articles show some resemblance to their offline knowledge. Theoretical implications and methodological issues are also discussed.