USING THINK ALOUD PROTOCOLS TO ASSESS THE USE OF THE DEFINITE ARTICLE WITH SERBIAN STUDENTS OF ENGLISH

Abstract

One of the issues which has not received enough attention in the Serbian linguistic environment is how Serbian (L1) learners of English (L2) decide which criteria are sufficient and appropriate for the use of the definite article in English. The success that linguists would have in mapping these criteria could make it possible for us to identify key problem areas in this case, and thus provide our students with appropriate and explicit input regarding how to better understand the use of the definite article. What this type of knowledge could lead to is a more specialized approach to teaching articles to non-native speakers (NNS) in the L1 Serbian/L2 English speaker community. With this aim in mind, we have carried out a pilot study which included six NNS of English, seniors at the English Department of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš. Using the method of the think-aloud protocol and a specially-designed fill-in-the-blank task, we attempted to elicit information from our respondents regarding which rules for definite article use, whether specific or non-specific, they rely on and how they account for the use of the definite article in select anaphoric definite and associative definite contexts.