Chapter 1 the study of collocations

ii)  Target-Like Use of Articles 
 
 
The analysis of the Target-Like Use (TLU) of articles was performed by 
the researcher.  TLU is an accuracy measure.  As in  Pica (1983), the number of 
accurately supplied articles (definite and indefinite) in obligatory contexts were 
counted and divided by the overall number of obligatory contexts in the essay 
(whether an article was provided in them or not) plus the number of 
non-obligatory contexts  with inappropriate articles multiplied by 100.  The 
TLU percentage score was recorded for each essay.  
 
Inter-rater reliability was performed on a sub-set of the ratings randomly 
sampled from the entire set of data.  5% of the data (i.e. 15 essays) was rated in 
this way by two other raters and the inter-rater reliability was at 99%.  The 
raters  were given a random selection of 15 essays, 5 essays from each sample, 
and an instruction sheet, which reported what the measurement was and what 
each rater was required to do (see Appendix I).  The raters  were given a short 
training session by the researcher on the TLU analysis on two other essays.  
After the raters had performed the measurement on the sample essays, the 
researcher's and each rater's ratings were compared.  In a total of 235 accurate 
 
221

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and inaccurate suppliance and omission of articles, there were two instances of 
disagreement between the researcher and one of the raters in one of the essays. 
 In essay 13 from Group 1, there was an ungrammatical sentence, "He plays 
basketball and sometimes he plays tennis or going with friends for jogging".  
The researcher had considered the phrase "going with friends for jogging" as a 
non-obligatory context for an article, provided that it was read as "going (for) 
jogging with friends", while the rater had marked it as an obligatory context for 
the use of an indefinite article, if it was read as "going with friends for a 
jog(ging)".  After the case was discussed, both the researcher and the rater 
agreed that "going with friends for a jog" was closer to what the student had 
written, and as such it was an obligatory context for an article.  The second 
instance was the phrase "she often climbs on the mountains" in the same essay.  
Here the researcher had considered that the phrase did not need an article, 
while the rater had marked it as correct, assuming that the student was 
probably talking about a specific group of mountains.  After discussion it was 
agreed that the omission of the article was much more general and 
consequently appropriate, especially since the student did not refer any further 
to particular mountains in his essay.  For the rest of the essays, there was total 
agreement between the researcher and the raters.