Abstract
This study investigates how Japanese children who are learning in an English immersion setting acquire English language, especially, sentence structures. The subjects are 54 Japanese students at Katoh Gyosyu Gakuen, who were interviewed by being showed two sets of cartoon pictures and asked to make two stories from those pictures. The data was analyzed regarding the use of verb morphemes and sentence structures. The results showed 1) verb morphemes were observed from the early stages, 2) at grade 1. SV, SVC. SVO patterns were produced, at grade 3, SVOC was added, and SVOO was observed at grade9. In addition, before SVOO was observed SVO+Adverbial modifier was used from grade 3 (e.g. Father bought the toy dog for the daughter.) From these results it was concluded that Japanese English immersion students can learn second language from the early stages.
