An investigation on extensive reading mechanism-focusing on the development of lower level processing skills-

2020 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K13188
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 09040:Education on school subjects and primary/secondary education-related
• Research Institution: Okinawa International University
• Principal Investigator: Aka Natsuki 沖縄国際大学, 総合文化学部, 講師 (10736656)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2021-03-31
• Keywords: 多読 / 偶発学習 / 文法習得 / extensive reading / incidental learning / grammar

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The purpose of this project is to investigate whether EFL learners are able to improve their grammatical knowledge incidentally by extensive reading. During the intervention, the experimental group (n=74) read five passages consisting of a total of 40 sentences that include to-infinitives used as nouns, whereas the participants in the control group (n=83) also read the same number of reading passages, but with only 10 sentences consisting of to-infinitives used as nouns. As a result of the experiment, The results showed that the experimental group incidentally noticed and learned about the use of to-infinitives as nouns through reading. The findings indicated that learners pay attention to language forms even though their focus is on reading comprehension. The study shows that frequent exposure to target grammar items repeatedly helps learners notice a grammatical rule, which, in turn, contributes positively to incidental grammar acquisition.

Free Research Field

英語教育学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究では読みの偶発学習による文法習得について研究を行ったが、遭遇頻度は語彙よりも多く要求されることが明らかになった。語彙研究者により、習得までの遭遇回数は異なるが、4～20回以上の遭遇で語彙が習得されると述べているが、文法習得の場合には、40回程度の遭遇頻度が必要であることが明らかになった。これらの結果より、文法習得の方が語彙習得よりも複雑であることがわかる。このような複雑化した規則を定着させるためには、授業内を通して、同じ文法事項に繰り返し遭遇させる機会を学習者へ与える必要がある。このような実践を通して、学んだ知識のさらなる定着が期待できる。