著者

柳川 浩三

出版者

関東甲信越英語教育学会

雑誌

関東甲信越英語教育学会誌 (ISSN:21858993)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.32, pp.1-14, 2018 (Released:2019-03-31)

参考文献数

23

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This study aimed to reveal a) whether the Five Sentence Types (FST) contributes to improving the proficiency level of Japanese learners of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) and b) how their parsing of English sentences varies depending on their understanding of FST. The FST has long been a cornerstone of English Language Teaching (ELT) in Japanese secondary schools, and it is believed to represent five major sentence types in English, based on the form of the main verb and the predicate that follows. Little research, however, has been conducted into whether or to what extent the FST contributes to L2 development, and how differently EFL learners parse English sentences according to the FST. A total of 570 university or college students, mainly the first- or second-year students, participated in this study in response to an originally constructed “Basic Grammar Test” (BGT) of 36 items. Cluster analysis identified five different groups among the 570 students who share the parsing, and two-way ANOVA showed that interactional effect was found between skills (i.e., listening and reading) and groups. The simple main effect was statistically significant on reading proficiency but on listening proficiency, suggesting that the FST may contribute to enhancing reading proficiency but listening proficiency. The results of multiple comparison, however, showed that the effect is limited since statistically significant difference was not necessarily found across the groups. Correspondence analysis revealed that Japanese learners of EFL have difficulties in recognizing transitive verbs followed by an object, particularly when the object is to-infinitive and that-clause. Resulting discussions explore how FST instruction should be incorporated into ELT at the secondary and tertiary levels.