Abstract
The main purposes of this study are to examine (1) whether grammar instruction with example sentences of better quality can lead to learners’ better understanding of the target grammatical item, (2) which types of example sentences in the instruction help learners gain deeper impression, and (3) what factor good example sentences should hold when used in grammar instruction. Various theories have been presented on the effect of the quality of example sentences in grammar instruction, but there have been few empirical studies focusing on this subject. Therefore, experimental lessons on the subjunctive mood were conducted on two groups of learners at an upper secondary school in Japan. The subjects were 20 tenth graders in an experimental group and 19 in a control group. In addition to the lessons, pretests, posttests, and questionnaire survey were also administered and data analyzed with the use of t-test, multiple comparison, and ANOVA. The results implied (1) that grammar instruction in which examples sentences of good quality are used could lead to better understanding of the subjunctive, (2) that the number of words or the addition of context in example sentences could affect the impression the learners have of them, and (3) that teachers should take account the content, the language simplicity focus on one target grammatical element in example sentences used in their grammar instruction.
