A Longitudinal Study of Errors in Spoken Performance by Japanese EFL Junior High School Students

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the developmental features of errors in spoken performance by Japanese EFL junior high school students. The subjects are the same as in Kosuge (2003, 2004), that is, 90 Japanese junior high school students. None of the students have spent more than a month in a foreign country. The students were categorized into three groups of 30 each, according to their English results in the second term of the ninth grade. The spoken data was collected from six face-to-face interviews which were conducted by an ALT from the third term of the seventh grade to the second term of the ninth grade. Grammatical errors in the data were identified and corrected by a second ALT. 'The error rate (error AS-units per AS-unit)' and 'the means of the number of errors' were used to analyze the data. Also each error was categorized to examine what type of error occured. The error rate and the number of errors decreased the most in the first term of the ninth grade. Many errors in articles, prepositions, pronouns, noun plural forms, and the tense were found in the data.