Exploring patterns of article use by advanced Korean learners of English and Spanish

It has been widely recognized in the field of second language acquisition that language learners tend to struggle with the acquisition of articles when their first languages (L1) do not have a similar linguistic system. Thus, various L1 effects on the usage of articles have been studied. In this context, the present study examined how the same L1 (i.e., Korean) would influence article usage in two different languages (i.e., English and Spanish). Specifically, advanced learners of English and advanced learners of Spanish performed a task of consecutive interpreting from Korean to English and Spanish, respectively, and their article usage patterns in English and Spanish were analyzed for comparison. The results show that both groups exhibited high levels of accuracy in the use of English and Spanish articles while major error types were article omission and article misuse, which can be partly attributed to L1 effects. As for differences, the participants in the English group tended to employ other determiners instead of articles, such as possessives, quantifiers, and demonstratives. In Spanish, the tendency to over-use definite articles was stronger than the English group. These differences may be related to certain consecutive interpreting strategies as well as differences in pedagogical approaches of teaching English and Spanish in Korea. Detailed patterns in the use of articles in English and Spanish are compared, and their implications are discussed.