Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to discuss certain uses of adverbial participial clauses (APCs) and sentential participial clauses (SPCs), which (as opposed to APCs) refer back to a whole clause, and to argue that they should be prioritized in classrooms/teaching materials for Japanese L2 learners of English (JLEs). Study 1 investigates 24 textbooks and 10 grammar books for Japanese high school learners of English, and the standardized exams of English from 2021 to 2024 in terms of the distribution (i.e., initial, medial, final) and interpretation of APCs. In Study 2, 135 JLEs were asked first to read and translate four sentences containing V-ing clauses, including two SPCs and one APC, and then to classify each V-ing according to its grammatical status (e.g., progressive, gerund, APC). The findings show that APCs receiving an “attendant circumstance” interpretation in sentence-final position are most frequent in the textbooks and the exams, and that knowledge of APCs/SPCs is not significantly helpful for JLEs to understand sentences containing APCs/SPCs. The present paper argues that the notion/terminology of APCs can be eliminated and proposes that APCs in sentence-final position and SPCs should be given priority and presented as “Sentence, V-ing’ Constructions” in classrooms/teaching materials.
