抄録
This study examines how Japanese high school students learning English perceive the copular verb be. A survey was conducted using various sentence types, including present and past tense as well as affirmative and negative sentences, with different groups of participants. Additionally, an experiment was conducted in which the same groups were asked questions with different tenses to examine changes in their responses. The results indicate that many learners associate the copular be with the Japanese translation wa in present affirmative sentences, but when awareness of tense is emphasized, responses shift toward dearu, which more explicitly marks tense. Similarly, in negative sentences, learners also prefer dearu. This study discusses the difficulty of acquiring be and emphasizes the necessity of explicit instruction tailored to learners’ developmental stages.
