星野 由子

type:text [要約] 2017年告示の小学校学習指導要領外国語科では，「外国語の音声や文字，語彙，表現，文構造，言語の働きなどについて日本語と外国語との違いに気付き，これらの知識を理解する」という目標が示されている。本稿では，小学校の外国語科と国語科の検定教科書を通して，英語や日本語の言語知識，なかでも，文構造や文法について，どのような内容をどのように学んでいるのかを調査した。まず，研究1では，小学校で使用されているすべての英語検定教科書を調査したところ，教科書に掲載されている3,300の言語活動のうち，英語のルールや文法に関する活動が44件あった。活動内容としては，語順の違い，品詞の区別等があった。次に，小学校の国語科検定教科書を調べたところ，861件の単元・教材うち60件が日本語の文法，特に文型や語順に関するものであることが確認された。研究2では，小学校と中学校の英語教科書の中で，小中の接続に関わる内容を調査した。その結果，中学校英語教科書の小・中接続の部分では，文法に関して小学校で経験したような活動が行われていないことがわかった。このことから，小学生が中学校に入学すると，小学校とは異なる方法で英文法の学習が始まることが確認された。このような学習方法の変化が，英語嫌いの一因になることも考えられるだろう。 [SUMMARY] In the Japanese Course of Study for Elementary School (2017) (the government curriculum guidelines for elementary school education), “understanding of language knowledge” was added as a goal of foreign language education. This paper describes two studies (Study 1 and Study 2) conducted to investigate how students acquire English language knowledge (or grammar) through school textbooks. Study 1 explored all English and, for comparison, Japanese textbooks authorized by the government and found that elementary school students learn English primarily through oral communication (listening and speaking). Only 44 out of 3,300 language activities (1.9%) in the English textbooks were focused on grammar. In contrast, we found that in Japanese elementary school textbooks 60 out of 861 lessons (7.0%) were about Japanese grammar, specifically, sentence patterns and word order. Study 2 looked for overlap or similarities between elementary and junior high school English textbooks in how English grammar is taught. We found there were no grammatical activities in junior high school English textbooks that resembled the pedagogical approach found in elementary school English textbooks. That is, once elementary school students reached the junior high school level, they started to learn English grammar differently from when they were in elementary school. The inconsistent methodology between elementary and junior high school may negatively impact learner achievement and enthusiasm for English study．

本研究では，児童が英語のきまりを帰納的に学ぶ際に用いたメタ言語を調査し，その結果から，小学校の外国語科（英語）と国語科の授業を有機的に連携させる方法を探究した。はじめに，児童が使用したメタ言語の分析結果から，国語で得た知識を英語の知識の理解に活用している児童がいること，英語のきまりを一般化して概念で捉えようとしている児童がいること，英語の文構造に関する気付きを引き出す際，英語とその逐語訳的な日本語訳の比較は有効であること等が確認された。続いて，全ての小学校の英語科検定教科書で扱われている活動を抽出した結果，文法に関する活動は，活動全体の1.4％（46 件／3,300 件）であり，また，全ての小学校の国語科検定教科書では，文型，主語・述語・修飾語，品詞に該当する概念が扱われており，これらは英語の学習に活用できる可能性があることが確認された。最後に，英語と国語の授業の連携の方法として，両言語において，文中の語のまとまりに注目させること，また，品詞に関わる概念を捉えるようにすることは有効であることが示唆された。

<tt>データに基づいて判断・行動することをデータ駆動と呼び，この手法を英語教育に取り入れた学習方法を</tt>DDL<tt>（</tt>data-driven learning<tt>：データ駆動型学習，以下</tt>DDL<tt>）と呼ぶ。</tt>DDL <tt>では，学習者が多様な言語データ（コーパス）に触れ，英語の規則に気づいてそれを学ぶ。本研究では，国内外で授業実践が広がるなか，初等教育段階での実践が進んでいない</tt>DDL <tt>に着目し，小学生のためのデータ駆動型英語学習支援サイト（以下</tt>DDL <tt>支援サイト）を開発し，公開した。本支援サイトでは，学習する文法項目を</tt>CAN-DO <tt>の形で示しているため，児童は英語を使う実際の場面と英語の文構造を結び付けて学べる。また，主語の種類，動詞の種類，文の種類で検索条件を絞り込んで英文を調べることができる。授業においては，意味伝達を重視する暗示的指導に，</tt>DDL <tt>による明示的指導を組み合わせることで，児童の注意を英語の文構造に向けさせ，気づきを引き出すことができる。公開された</tt>DDL <tt>支援サイトは，小学生が使いやすいユーザーフレンドリーな検索ツールを搭載していること，小学生に適したレベルの語彙と文法項目を扱っていることが確認された。また，本</tt>DDL <tt>支援サイトは，平成 </tt>29 <tt>年告示の『小学校学習指導要領』に対応しており，コンピュータやタブレット型端末でアクセスして，誰でも，自由に，無料で利用できる。</tt>

2017年にA大学の大学祭で行われた「慢性疾患の子どもの学校生活に関するシンポジウム」への参加者に、中学校・高等学校の教員が、慢性疾患の子どもの学校生活に関して求めていること、困難を感じていることについて質問紙調査を実施した。シンポジウム参加者の16名から回答が得られた。教員の回答に焦点を当てるため、教員13名(養護教諭1名、所属校は中学校5名、高等学校2名、中学・高等学校5名、不明1名)の回答を分析対象とした。教員が慢性疾患の子どもの学校生活に関して求める情報は、「疾患の病態・治療等」「日常生活での管理方法」「学校生活で気をつけること」などであった。教員が慢性疾患の子どもの学校生活で困っていることは「病気や治療の理解」「療養行動への配慮」「授業の配慮」などであった。子どものより良い学校生活のために、教員が必要とする情報を得られるように学校と医療が連携することなどの必要性が示唆された。

Basic words appear with extremely high frequency in English texts, and without sufficient understanding of such words, text comprehension is undoubtedly impeded. Past research has regarded the relationship between English texts and vocabulary as important, but their focus has mainly been on lexical coverage, which cannot consider the multiple meanings of a word. Basic words often have several meanings; therefore, analyzing the frequency of appearance of each meaning will add important information to the results of earlier research. The current study used seven grades of the EIKEN test and compared how the frequency of meanings of the 100 highest frequency basic words in these tests differed between the upper and lower grades. The results demonstrated that the target words could be grouped into three categories: (a) words mainly used with a single meaning over all grades; (b) words used with multiple meanings in the upper grades, but with a single meaning in the lower grades; and (c) words used with multiple meanings both in the upper and lower grades. Adding to these findings, some unique tendencies were observed irrespective of grade. The results of this research will be beneficial for further studies on English basic words as well as lexical coverage in English tests.

This study produced six types of tests to measure knowledge of multiple meanings of one word. Despite the abundance of vocabulary research for some decades, the amount of research on words with multiple meanings is scarce compared to research on other aspects of vocabulary, such as vocabulary size and collocation. This is largely due to the lack of tests for measuring learners' knowledge of words with multiple meanings. Such tests have not been developed thus far; hence, this study tried to find better tests for words with multiple meanings. Using seven target verbs, three test formats with either sentential or collocational contexts were prepared. The test formats were selection (selecting the correct expressions), translation (translating the target English expressions into Japanese), and pairing (finding pairs that have the same meaning among the target words). These formats were compared in terms of reliability, discriminability, difficulty, and correlation coefficients with estimated vocabulary size and reading ability. About half of the participants took these tests in the sentential context, and the others answered the questions in the collocational context. The results showed that the translation tests had the highest reliability in both contexts. The translation format also had the highest discriminability in the sentential context, but the pairing test had the highest discriminability in the collocation context. In terms of difficulty, the translation tests were affected by the length of the context more than the selection and the pairing tests were. The correlation coefficients for vocabulary size and reading ability were highest in the translation tests for both the sentence and the collocation groups. Considering these results as well as test practicality, this study concluded that the translation test in the sentential context was the best test for knowledge of words with multiple meanings out of the six different tests.

This study investigated how a flashback in a passage affects Japanese EFL readers' narrative comprehension. The order of events written in a narrative story is sometimes different from that in the real world; thus, readers need additional processes which fill in the gap between the linguistic description of the event order and the event order in their mind. In the present study, 37 Japanese university students read a narrative text written in chronological order, and another 37 students read the same text written in non-chronological order. In the latter version, the first event (E) was put into the third position (E2→E3→E1→E4). That is, E1 was presented as a flashback. An immediate and a delayed recall test revealed that the participants who read the chronological text successfully recalled more information than those who read the non-chronological text, which was also supported by the participants' evaluation of text difficulty. In addition, the error analysis showed that both local and global errors increased when participants read the non-chronological text. Furthermore, more proficient readers were able to arrange the text information in chronological order in their mental representations even when they read the flashback text. Although the flashback did increase the cognitive demand on readers, these readers could follow the events in chronological order, and successfully corrected their situation model.

In the field of vocabulary acquisition, there have been many studies on the efficacy of word lists. However, very few of these were based on research in a classroom setting, and therefore, their results may not be applicable to standard classroom situations. This study investigated which of the five types of word lists (synonyms, antonyms, categorical, thematic, and arbitrary) facilitated L2 vocabulary learning in a classroom setting. The participants were classified into four clusters according to their learning styles, and the study compared the relative effectiveness of the types of word lists on different types of learners. The results showed that the most effective type of word list did not vary according to student clusters: all of the learners memorized the words in the categorical list more effectively than those in the other lists. Hence, the type of word list had a stronger effect on the efficacy of vocabulary learning than the individual learning style did. © The Author(s) 2010.

In this study, we investigated the role of first language (L1) information in learning semantically related second language (L2) words. Research suggests that L2 learners have difficulty in learning semantically related L2 words in paired-associate learning because those semantically related words cause interference effects between them. Research also suggests that, in paired-associate learning, the degree to which the learners are familiar with the response items plays an important role in making the association. Taken together, we conducted two experiments in which semantically related L2 words and their L1 translations were used as stimulus and response items respectively. We compared the learning of different types of word pairs that have L1 translation words with different degrees of L1 word familiarity to (a) test the influence of L1 translation familiarity on interference effects and (b) assess the viability of this commonly used technique in foreign language classrooms. Native Japanese speakers attempted to learn 15 antonymous L2 word pairs with either familiar or non-familiar L1 translations. The results of the study suggest that the degree of interference in learning L2 antonymous pairs differs, depending upon the differences in the familiarity with the L1 translated words in the L2 word pairs. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Words having multiple meanings cause difficulties in text comprehension because readers possibly interpret such words as the primary meaning even when the words are used as other meanings. The current study examined how Japanese EFL learners interpreted those words that were used as the secondary meanings in contexts when the participants knew the primary but not the secondary meanings. The results showed that there was no significant difference in the correct rate of interpreting homonyms between reading proficiency levels. However, the types of error they produced were different: the upper group wrote more answers that fitted the context than the lower group who stuck to the primary meanings even when they understood the target contexts. These results suggest that the better readers had greater flexibility in changing their interpretation to one that fitted the contexts, but the poor readers persisted in assuming the meanings they already knew and could not change their interpretation.

Words usually have multiple meanings, and some meanings are based on the same concept and others come from different concepts. This study focused on the former and investigated to what degree Japanese EFL students can understand different meanings of words (different L1 translation words). The results suggested that even when the participants understood the core meaning, most of them could not understand the non-prototypical meaning that shared the same concept with the core meaning, regardless of the participants' vocabulary sizes. This fact indicated no relationship between vocabulary breadth and knowledge about meaning other than the core meaning, and this was supported by non-significant partial correlation coefficients between the two. Therefore, knowing more than one meaning of words within the same concepts is a different aspect of vocabulary knowledge from mapping an L2 word onto only one L1 translation word.

The effects of reading perspective on summarization have not been investigated in previous studies even though many researchers have confirmed its influence on reading processes and comprehension. Through two experiments, the present study examined how EFL learners' perspective in reading affects their summary writing processes, including importance rating and application of macrorules. Experiment 1 showed that reading perspective influenced the reader's evaluation of information importance, whereas it had no significant effect on the selection of information to be included in summaries - a result which might have been caused by the lenient restriction on summary length. Hence, in Experiment 2, the effects of reading perspective were re-examined with a shorter summary task. Contrary to Experiment 1, the results revealed the significant influence of reading perspective on the selection of information as well as on the application of two other macrorules: generalization and construction. These findings suggest the importance of providing reading perspective in summary writing as well as the possibility that summary length influences the application of macrorules.

The aim of this study was to explore whether the use of elimination strategies differed with the change of distractors in multiple-choice vocabulary tests in sentential context. The distractors were classified into two frequency levels and into three different types, and the participants thought aloud while answering the test. Participants' elimination strategies were coded into four types, and the results showed that frequency of elimination uses did not differ with any change of distractors. In other words, the uses of elimination strategies were constant across any types of items this study adopted. However, there was a critical difference between types of elimination (i.e., informed elimination and random elimination) regarding their roles on the test performance. When participants adopted random elimination, the results of the test were totally different from the overall test performance, but this was not the case in terms of informed elimination. The findings implied that random elimination has a strong influence on the construct of tests; hence, it is necessary to create tests that reduce the use of random elimination as far as possible.

The relationship between reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge has been examined in many studies. However, few studies so far have distinguished the vocabulary knowledge in isolation and in context. Addressing this point, this study considered two types of vocabulary tests: Mochizuki (1998) Vocabulary Size Test (VST) and TOEFL vocabulary items, and tried to clarify the relationship further. Adding to this, we classified question types in the reading test and examined each relationship with two types of vocabulary knowledge in order to differentiate reading items by the level of reading comprehension. The results of Experiment I suggested that regardless of the presence or absence of context, there was no significant difference between the correlation coefficients of the two vocabulary tests and TOEFL Reading scores. In addition, no correlation coefficients were significantly different in any question type, remaining the issue about whether the vocabulary tests in context and without context really differ or not. For the sake of investigating this point further, the word inference test was newly introduced in Experiment II to examine what knowledge or ability the two vocabulary tests measure. The results revealed a large overlap between VST and TOEFL vocabulary items. It suggests not only VST but also TOEFL vocabulary items which present target items in context tend to measure isolated vocabulary knowledge. Pedagogical implications for vocabulary testing and recommendations for further research are also discussed.

This study examines the effects of reactivity in a vocabulary test in sentential context by comparing the performance of two groups: one using thinking aloud and the other not using thinking aloud. Although using thinking aloud in investigating the learning process is a widespread practice, there is a possibility that conducting thinking aloud might change the learner's cognitive process; hence, the data might not reflect the true process. The results of comparing two groups, one using thinking aloud and the other not using it, showed that the thinking-aloud group outperformed the control group. There were two possible interpretations: the thinking aloud itself affected the test performance, or other variables accompanying the thinking aloud were factors that caused the improved test score. The results of further analysis showed that the difference of the time allotment between the two groups rather than the characteristics of thinking aloud could influence the test performance. From these results, this study adds further proof of the validity of using thinking aloud as a methodology for collecting data about test-taking processes.

There has been much research conducted to compare open-ended and multiple-choice tests from the viewpoints of construct and difficulty. However, almost no studies have examined the effects of question types in relation to test formats. Through two experiments, this study investigated how question types influence the difficulty of these two test formats. The results of Experiment 1 showed that question types affected item difficulty in open-ended tests; more specifically, thematic questions were the most difficult, followed by inference questions, and paraphrase questions were the easiest. In contrast, the result of Experiment 2, in which the same tests were conducted in the multiple-choice test format, revealed that item difficulty did not differ significantly by question type. In addition, we found that predictability of the results of the multiple-choice test was low compared to the open-ended test. Comparison of these two experiments suggested the importance of choice in the multiple-choice test. Close examination of choices indicated that overlap of words in correct choices and the text influenced the item difficulty.

The aim of this study was to investigate whether attractive distractors differed by proficiency level in the multiple-choice sentential gap-filling test. In each item, apart from one correct choice, three distractors were prepared: a distractor which had a paradigmatic relationship with the correct answer, a distractor which had a syntagmatic relationship with a word in the context, and a distractor which had no relationship with either the correct answer or the context. The result of a chi-square analysis demonstrated that the lower group was attracted more to distractors with no relationship, but the upper group was likely to select syntagmatically-related distractors. In terms of distractors with paradigmatic relationship, there was no difference among proficiency groups, which was supported by low discriminability of paradigmatically-related distractors. These results provided an implication that using distractors with a syntagmatic relationship with the context or with no relationship makes tests more effective.

A lot of studies have been investigating factors influencing the success rate of lexical inferencing, but concreteness factor has been neglected. The aim of this study is to examine effects of concreteness on lexical inferencing. Four types of test were made to infer the meaning of: (a) concrete unknown words in concrete sentences, (b) abstract unknown words in concrete sentences, (c) concrete unknown words in abstract sentences, and (d) abstract unknown words in abstract sentences. The result revealed that concreteness of words did not influence the success rate of lexical inferencing, whereas the concrete context raised the success rate significantly more than the abstract context. Moreover, the result of questionnaire indicated that participants felt lexical inferencing from concrete sentences was easier than that from abstract sentences. These results imply that images created from contexts helped EFL students infer meanings of words. Therefore, a concrete rather than an abstract context should be used when we teach how to infer unknown words, so that students become more confident.