Why do Japanese EFL learners generate atypical erroneous adjective collocations?

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25370704
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Foreign language education
• Research Institution: Meisei University
• Principal Investigator: Uchida Tomio 明星大学, 人文学部, 准教授 (50513850)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 形容詞 / 母語参照 / 産出語彙 / コロケーション知識 / コーパス分析 / CEFR / CEFR-J Wordlist / 語想起調査

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study aims to reveal causes of atypical erroneous adjective collocations in learner English. Writing samples by Japanese EFL learners in learner corpora, JEFFL Corpus (e.g., Tono 2007) and part of ICNALE (e.g., Ishikawa 2013), were investigated and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. A corpus analysis and NS informant research as well as an analysis of a word finding test were conducted.
Results revealed that the learners’ repertoire is insufficient and learners tend to overuse a few basic adjectives (CEFR-J A level). There is also a tendency to misuse adjectives, referring mostly to L1 lexical and collocational knowledge. Another problem the learners have is their deficient knowledge of word class. The necessities of expanding adjectives in a productive way, fostering the active knowledges and skills to select appropriate parts of speech in generating sentences in English, and the need of teaching typical collocations as productive vocabulary are implied as a result.

Free Research Field

英語教育