摘要：This study was an attempt at finding the improvement trend of the article use in
Iranian learners of English regarding the implicit and explicit knowledge of the
article system. In so doing, 154 participants were categorized into three levels of
Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced using Oxford Placement Test. Then, each
group of the participants took the timed and untimed Grammaticality Judgment
Task. The data obtained from the test were analyzed using a two-way ANOVA.
The results on both tests (timed and untimed) revealed that the Elementary learners
outperformed the Intermediate ones. However, Advanced learners performed more
accurately than the other two groups. The performance fluctuation of the
participants on the article use was attributed to the conflict between the implicit
and explicit knowledge of the article system. Moreover, it was concluded that the
conflict was due to the inappropriate time of the explicit instruction of the articles
and their rules, which was accompanied by dearth of practice. Finally, the new
term of tick-shaped improvement was introduced to demonstrate the refinement of
the article use across proficiency levels.
