English– and Arabic-Medium of Instruction and Second Language Acquisition of English Articles System by ESL Arab Sophomores in Sharjah
AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION This study investigates the acquisition of the English articles system by Arab sophomores in Sharjah in the UAE, one group being taught through the medium of English and the other through the medium of Arabic. The main focus of the study is the extent to which the medium of instruction affects the acquisition of the articles system. The role of mother tongue transfer in this process is also examined. Initially a quick placement test was applied to exclude low-achievers, and then two instruments were adopted. The first instrument is an English article forced-elicitation task which comprises thirty contexts; eighteen of them are adopted from Ionin, Ko and Wexler (2004), but with some modifications, the other twelve are generated by the researcher to meet the objectives of this study. The participants completed this task within a fifty-minute class period. The second instrument is a written argumentative essay, in which the participants are aske...