2024 Volume 23 Pages 177-192
VanPatten has pointed out that “Input Processing Strategies” can lead to erroneous semantic comprehension when used by learners whose sentence parsing skills are still developing (VanPatten, 2007). This study aimed to investigate whether these “Input Processing Strategies” actually cause errors in sentence comprehension among learners of Japanese. Among the various “Input Processing Strategies,” the “First Noun Principle” is the most referenced in Japanese language education research. Therefore, this study focuses on the “First Noun Principle,” specifically examining two grammars presumably using this principle, namely “temorau” and comparative adjective sentences among Thai learners of Japanese, to identify the factors influencing learners' sentence comprehension. Participants were divided into two groups: one group comprised 23 intermediate-level students and the other comprised 23 beginner-level students, both of whom took a sentence-comprehension test. The results of the study showed that the "First Noun Principle" does not affect sentence comprehension in any of the grammatical items. This suggests that sentence patterns extracted from the Japanese textbook used in the class, and grammatical processing strategies in the native language, may be the affecting factor. In addition, errors caused by sentence patterns extracted from biased inputs were found less likely to improve, compared to errors caused by native language grammatical processing strategies.
