Scores on a test of article usage are correlated with scores on the U.C.L.A. ESL Placement Examination in order to determine the extent to which article usage relates to other English skills. Comparisons of article usage scores are made among various groups of non‐native speakers according to native language. Implications for the contrastive analysis hypothesis are explored. Results show that skill in article usage is closely related with overall proficiency. This is more true in the case where the learner's native language uses formal equivalents of the English articles. No conclusion can be drawn concerning the contrastive analysis hypothesis although positive transfer is demonstrate