A Study of the Acquisition of Relative Clause Constructions by Japanese Learners of English

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19K20790
• Project/Area Number (Other): 18H05581 (2018)
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund (2019); Single-year Grants (2018)
• Review Section: 0102:Literature, linguistics, and related fields
• Research Institution: Hiroshima University
• Principal Investigator: Takahashi Yuka 広島大学, 外国語教育研究センター, 助教 (60825222)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-08-24 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: 関係代名詞 / 学習者コーパス / CEFR / コーパス言語学

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study investigates the use of relative clause constructions by Japanese learners of English at each CEFR level, using three types of corpora: 1) International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English (ICNALE); 2) British National Corpus (BNC); and 3) the English textbook corpus. Sentences with relative pronouns were extracted from these corpora and the uses of different types of relative clauses were defined by the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (NPAH; Keenan & Comrie, 1977) and SO Hierarchy Hypothesis (SOHH; Hamilton, 1994). Error analysis was conducted for the ICNALE. Zero relatives were extracted from the corpora using Stanford Parser and AntConc. Further, university students’ writings were collected via picture description tasks in order to analyze what alternative ways they employed besides using relative clause sentences. These data were compared to reveal the characteristics of the use of relative clauses by Japanese learners of English.

Free Research Field

コーパス言語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

日本における英語教育では、ヨーロッパ言語参照枠（Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: CEFR）に基づいた評価や教材開発が広まりつつある。各CEFRレベルを特徴づける日本人英語学習者の関係代名詞の使用傾向をコーパスを分析することで明らかにできれば, シラバス構築や到達度評価に資するレベル別言語特徴リストを整備することが可能となり、より効果的な学習や教材開発に貢献することができる。