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.