A Survey on Japanese Junior High School Students' Knowledge of English Phrase Structures : Identifying Time-gaps between Instruction and Acquisition

Abstract

This is a longitudinal study that aims at investigating Japanese junior high school students' knowledge about English phrase structures and the process of its development based on Eigo Test-ho (Kanatani et al. 1994). About 150 subjects had joined in this study for over 2 years. They took eight grammar tests which consisted of questions about: 1) noun phrases with several modification structures, 2) to infinitive phrases, and 3) gerund phrases. We watched over their growth in the accuracy rates and tried to figure out any tendencies in the process. The obtained results were interesting and informative. We found that fairly a long period of time is needed for learners to acquire these phrase structures. Some possible factors to interfere with learners' acquisition, such as other grammatical items or question types, were also identified. We have a strong belief that accumulating such information about learners' knowledge will provide us of a better idea in teaching and assessing our students.