Abstract
Although the cultivation of communicative skills is required in English education in Japan, the acquisition of fundamental grammatical knowledge is equally essential for achieving the educational objective. This practitioner research examines the effect of a short-term meaning-order approach on the accuracy of word order among beginner-level Japanese high school English learners. A total of 64 first-year high school students participated in this instructional intervention, which emphasized enhancing their understanding of English word order. They also completed word-order rearrangement tests both before and after the instruction. The results revealed significant improvements in overall word order accuracy. Notably, non-response rates and errors related to verb placement—classified as global errors that hinder comprehension—were substantially reduced. However, frequent errors persisted in double-object constructions, particularly in cases where the English meaning order conflicted with Japanese syntactic structures. These findings highlight the potential benefits and limitations of the meaning-order approach to pedagogical grammar for beginner-level English learners.
https://ror.org/059x21724 
