A Study of Second Language Processing of Relative Clause and Wh-question Constructions by Japanese Learners of English

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The purpose of this study is to elucidate the types of real-time processing strategies adult Japanese speakers use to comprehend sentences in the acquisition of L2 English. Especially, focusing on the constructions of relative clauses and wh-questions which are considered one of the most difficult structures for them to acquire due to the great difference between Japanese and English, we will examine sentence processing by L2 learners using an on-line experiment in which we measure their reaction times to understand the constructions.The experiment was as follows. Using stimuli like The lady who(m) I employed last month works hard and *This is the house which we heard the news that Dick bought, the latter of which is ungrammatical because of the violation of Subjacency, the participants read the sentences in the self-paced moving window condition. In this technique, they sit in front of a computer screen and each sentence is presented on the computer screen, one word/phrase at a time. The word/phrase appear in linear position in the sentence moving across the screen from left to right. Upon pressing the pushbutton, previous word/phrase disappears). This gives a measure of how fast participants understand the sentence and a decision of which points in the sentence are difficult to process.Participants are classified into several levels ob the basis of their English proficiency as measured by Oxford Placement Test. The experiment ended up with a pilot experiment due defects in stimuli, setting of program, finding enough participants (especially, advanced and non-Japanese learners of English), so that we could not have results we had expected at the outset. Problems are piling up, and hence, we have to continue to elaborate a study plan and investigate the mechanisms of L2 acquisition with the sufficient number of participants. To this end, we are now planning a new experiment.