抄録
This study investigated the ability of Japanese EFL learners to recognize incorrect definiteness marking on anaphoric noun phrases in English. Japanese EFL learners are known to have difficulty in accurately producing definite articles, but limited information is available regarding their capacity for using articles in constructing and maintaining text cohesion during reading. Twenty-two Japanese EFL university students performed a grammaticality judgment task on short passages containing either a direct or associative anaphoric reference, marked with either a definite or indefinite article. Results showed that participants judged the majority of passages as correct, regardless of whether the anaphoric reference was preceded by a accurate definite article or an inaccurate indefinite article. This indicates that the participants were not sensitive to the definiteness condition for either direct or associative anaphoric references. These findings indicate that Japanese EFL readers either do not process articles at all during reading, or read them without understanding their function. Pedagogical implications are discussed in terms of options for improving awareness of the article system in classroom texts and environments.
