The Effects of Explicit Instruction on Intransitive Verb Structure in L2 English Classrooms

Abstract

The present study attempts to demonstrate that explicit instruction, more precisely, proactive deductive explicit instruction, can be effective for Japanese university learners of English (university JLEs) to notice and comprehend the features of the particular items as in the distinction between transitive-intransitive verb structures. There are two reasons for this assumption. One is that in the first place most JLEs do not clearly know the rules of transitive and intransitive verbs. The other is that analytic ability and English proficiency of university JLEs are sufficient to understand instructor's grammar explanations of the rules. It has been found that JLEs often produce and accept ungrammatical sentences such as *The magician disappeared the rabbit. The researchers gave explicit instruction on the transitive and intransitive verb distinction to 45 university JLEs, focusing on their structures and meanings three times over a period of three weeks (once a week) for about 25 minutes each time. The participants completed a 40-item grammaticality judgment task before, immediately after, and 5 weeks after the series of instructions. The results showed that our assumption was valid for some participants but had little effect for others. These results are discussed in detail.