Effective Teaching and Efficient Learning in English Language Education at School in Japan: The Grammatical-Illusion Turn

Generally observed, it is more difficult to acquire English as a second language than as a native language. More specifically, it is more difficult to learn English as a foreign language than as a second language. Why is this the case? To answer this question is theoretically intriguing, but practically or educationally it is important to achieve effective teaching and consequently efficient learning in consideration of this learning difficulty. The present study investigates the offline and online processing of English sentences by Japanese-speaking learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in the light of the phenomenon of so-called ʻgram-matical illusionʼ phenomenon, and proposes that it is important to note that every aspect of the teaching of English should not be viewed with the same emphasis, recognizing that some grammatical characteristics of English are harder to learn and others easier. In this paper, we focus on four grammatical items of English: definite and indefinite determiners, be-verbs, and general verbs. The results of the on-line self-paced experi-ment showed that Japanese-speaking EFL learners treated ungrammatical sentences erroneously as gram-matical more frequently when processing definite determiners compared to indefinite determiners and when processing general verbs with third-person singular subjects in the present tense compared to be-verbs and other types of general verbs. The results of off-line acceptability judgment experiment showed no such grammatical illusions at all. Taking this grammatical-illusion phenomenon as evidence for predicting the difficulty order of acquisition, we specifically propose that in the English-learning classroom, more empha-sis on (definite) determiners and general verbs with the so-called ʻthird-person-singular -sʼ could lead to more effective teaching and efficient learning for Japanese-speakers EFL learners