Does the L1⁺ Approach Derived from Syntactic Priming Research Facilitate Sentence Production for Japanese English Learners?

This study empirically investigates whether the L1+ approach will facilitate learners’ English sentence productions by comparing the performance of students with two varying proficiency levels. L1+ is a bridge language where Japanese words are placed in English word order. Twenty-eight Japanese female university students participated in ninety-minute weekly training for fifteen weeks, with six interview tests in total. The sample was divided into a high and low group according to the total number of sentences produced in the six interviews. The analysis indicated the following five findings: 1. high group significantly improved in sentence production, compared to the low group (p<.01), 2. The improvement of the high group’s performance was observed in sequential interviews (p<.01) but, 3. the low group’s performance depicted no significant sequential changes from the first to the fifth interviews, 4. the final exam scores of the high group were significantly higher than those of low group, 5. only the high group significantly improved self-efficacy through this study. The results suggest that the reason for no significant gain observed in the low group is due to their reliance on internal factors, such as self-efficacy, towards learning English, in contrast to the intervention proposed.