This paper intends to investigate to what extent Japanese elementary school pupils know English letters and words receptively, and to compare with the data obtained in the previous study in 2001. The previous study showed that pupils had many opportunities to encounter English words and alphabets, and they had quite large knowledge of them. Based upon these results, the author emphasized the possibility to introduce receptive aspects into a new English curriculum at elementary school. This replication study was designed to investigate how pupils' receptive knowledge of English words and letters had changed for the past three years, and what kind of pedagogical implications we can obtain from the data. The result showed that pupils increased about 40% of their receptive knowledge, and that the ratio of correct answers to the word-decision task has improved from 70% to 85%. According to these data it would be reasonable to suggest that the English curriculum for elementary school could include teaching literacy by making the most of pupils' receptive knowledge in English.
