1 Introduction

The definite article frequently appears in English and is important in discourse coherence, but its acquisition is complex and involves knowledge of morphological syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, with incomplete correspondence between form and meaning. The phenomenon of misuse of definite articles still exists among high-level English learners. Previous studies have focused more on definite articles in noun phrases, while the misuse of definite articles in chunk structures has not received sufficient attention. As a multi word unit, lexical chunks appear frequently, have fixed and diverse structures, and can reveal the applicability and misuse of definite articles in various structures. This study focuses on Chinese college English learners and explores the types of incorrect use of definite articles in lexical chunks based on the TECCL corpus. The aim is to provide inspiration for definite article teaching and explore the possibility of lexical chunks as a means of acquiring definite articles.

Research on the correlation between definite articles and lexical chunks

Explored the phenomenon of misuse of definite articles and their relationship with lexical chunks. The usage of definite articles can be divided into two categories: categorical and non categorical. Non categorical usage is further subdivided into cultural, situational, structural, and discourse usage. Research has found that Chinese English learners have a high error rate in cultural usage, and as their English proficiency improves, errors first increase and then decrease. Overuse and absence of definite articles are common errors among second language learners, especially in noun phrases. However, existing research has paid little attention to the usage patterns of definite articles in lexical chunks. As a multi word unit in language production, lexical chunks play an important role in second language learning, but there is relatively little research on the accuracy of lexical chunk usage. This study will analyze the use of definite articles by Chinese English learners in lexical chunks, explore the underlying causes of misuse, and provide reference for teaching.

3 Research Methods

This chapter introduces the methods for studying the misuse of definite articles in Chinese English learners' output chunks. The study is based on the "Chinese Student 10000 English Composition Corpus" and selects writing texts from 211, 985, and non key university students as data, with a total of 6867 compositions. The corpus topic is closely related to students' social life and is a genre of argumentative writing. Starting from an academic chunk list, this study extracts the core semantic components of four word chunks containing definite articles, searches using AntConc, and manually checks contextual usage. Article errors can be classified into three types: omission, overuse, and error substitution. Reference dictionaries and corpora are used to calibrate errors, and the Kappa coefficient for the consistency of two authors' annotations is 0.87. By retrieving the core semantic components, definite article errors are easily identified in the index line.

4 Results and Discussion

This chapter analyzes the misuse of four word chunks containing the definite article 'the' by Chinese English learners. A study found that learners used 125 out of 173 target chunks, with 72 chunks used no more than 5 times and 6 chunks used more than 160 times, indicating a tendency for learners to overuse familiar chunks. Among the 108 core semantic components, 101 appear in the learner corpus, covering 93.5% of the learner's chunk selection. However, the frequency of core semantic components is three times that of their corresponding chunks, mainly due to the misuse of chunks leading to a decrease in the frequency of target chunks. There were a total of 749 instances of incorrect use of definite articles, with an incorrect usage rate of 8.3%. Among the types of misuse, missing necessary definite articles accounted for 80.4%, adding unnecessary definite articles accounted for 11.1%, and incorrectly replacing definite articles accounted for 8.5%. Misuse mainly occurs in noun structures, especially those containing the 'of' structure. The misuse of definite articles in verb, adjective, and conjunction structures is relatively rare, but mainly concentrated in the omission of definite articles. Development, one of, and part of are the three core semantic components with the highest frequency of misuse. Chinese English learners are easily influenced by native language transfer in their choice of collocations, and exhibit errors in using definite articles in multi word sequences. The method of analyzing misuse based on output chunks can comprehensively and systematically reveal the phenomenon of misuse of definite articles in chunk output, reflecting the complexity of English definite article acquisition. It is recommended to use lexical chunks as a means of teaching English definite articles, as lexical chunks have fixed structures, discourse functions, and structural diversity, which are beneficial for learners to examine definite articles in context and facilitate their mastery.

5 Conclusion

The importance of lexical chunks in helping Chinese English learners understand the usage of definite articles was emphasized, and it was pointed out that learners often overlook or misuse definite articles when using lexical chunks. The research results provide reference for future research on article acquisition and suggest that teaching should emphasize the usage characteristics of definite articles in lexical chunks, use corpora to guide students in observing chunk usage, and improve language accuracy. At the same time, the limitations of the research are pointed out, such as the lack of comparison with native language learners, the absence of longitudinal longitudinal studies, and the failure to consider various factors that affect article acquisition. Suggest adding interview sessions to understand the current teaching situation and problems, in order to improve students' ability to use definite articles in a targeted manner.