Learning by Comparing: Effects of Cues Focusing on Chinese-Speaking Learners’ Acquisition of English Articles

Abstract This study examines whether and how cues focusing enhances Chinese-speaking English learners’ engagement in comparison, thereby facilitating their acquisition of English articles within xu -based comparative continuation writing tasks. Fifty English majors from a Chinese university were randomly assigned to three groups and each group was required to complete a comparative continuation task with one of three conditions: paired cues (cues presented in pairs), randomized cues (cues presented in random order), or implicit cues (no explicit cues provided). All participants undertook pretests, posttests, and delayed tests on English article knowledge, and ten of them volunteered to take follow-up interviews. The results indicate that: 1) paired cues were more effective than randomized or implicit cues in promoting the acquisition of English articles; and 2) learners in the paired cues condition produced more target-like article usage in their continuation writings compared to those in the other two conditions. The effectiveness of paired cues is attributed to an enhanced contrast effect, which prompts learners to identify similarities and differences between cues within each pair, relates cue explanations and examples with actual article usage in the reading text, and reflects upon and compares their own article productions against those in the provided reading text. The study concludes that the process of learning through continuation is fundamentally supported by learners’ capacity for comparison, reinforcing its role as a core element of xu -competence.