Measuring the Effects of Intensive Instruction on the Rules of Adjective Order in English Noun Phrases for Japanese EFL Students

Abstract

Whereas the order of adjectives is completely free in Japanese, this is not the case with English. Japanese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students at the university level experience great difficulty in identifying and producing noun phrases with correct adjective order in English. This study examined the effect that a brief period of intensive instruction on the rules of adjective ordering would have in improving student ability to correctly produce descriptive phrases. An adjective ordering task for noun phrases was administered both before and after the lesson to determine the extent that 81 Japanese students could correctly arrange three adjectives. The difference in average pre- and post-test scores showed dramatic improvement which was directly attributed to brief intensive instruction, underscoring its practical value in current pedagogical applications. However, neither previous awareness of, nor formal learning experience in English adjective ordering had an effect on improvement in EFL student ability to order adjectives.