2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Early syntactic development in Japanese EFL elementary and junior high school students: A cross-sectional analysis of speech production in communicative contexts
| Project/Area Number |
16K02940
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Foreign language education
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| Research Institution | Aichi University of Technology |
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Principal Investigator |
Eguchi Akiko 愛知工科大学, 工学部, 教授(移行) (30758602)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2016-04-01 – 2019-03-31
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| Keywords | 初期EFL学習者 / 統語発達 / 英語コミュニケーション / 処理可能性理論 / 英語発話コーパス / 早期英語学習開始 / 語彙発達 |
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| Outline of Final Research Achievements |
This study investigated the early syntactic development of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Japanese elementary and junior high school students using Processability Theory, which predicts the universality of second language development. The implicational analysis of the cross-sectional speech data collected in communicative contexts showed that the overall syntactic development follows the theory prediction precisely. The analysis of declaratives and interrogatives found some tendencies expected in early EFL development; the early stage of data included errors that may be affected by the word order of the Japanese language, frequent use of formulaic phrases, and, irrespective of stages, less variation of syntactic structures as compared to English as a second language data from a Japanese L1 child in a previous study. Further, the developmental stages predicted by Processability Theory indicated a significant correlation with complexity in the learners’ speech production
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| Free Research Field |
第二言語習得論、英語教育学
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| Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements |
小学校高学年での英語の教科化に伴い，言語運用能力という観点から小中一貫した到達目標や評価基準が必要となるが，小学生の英語運用に関する実証データが絶対的に不足している。本研究により，入門期の小学生の模倣的な発話から中学生の創造的な文産出へと発達していく過程やその傾向，及び外的指標としての言語的複雑さとの関連性が明らかとなり，中学校英語との接続に配慮したカリキュラムや評価基準の構築に有益な基礎的データを提示することができた。学術的には，日本の小学生を対象に処理可能性理論の妥当性を検証した初めての研究であり，この理論の精緻化に貢献した。
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