The purpose of this paper is to answer the following three research questions: First, if a learner of L2 is able to produce the target grammatical morpheme correctly in a given production test, is it safe to say that the learner has acquired the item? Second, to what extent is morpheme acquisition sequence, proposed by Krashen (1977), applicable to Japanese learners of English in a given context? Third, can the accuracy rate of morpheme acquisition improve if the pre-test is done at home rather than in class or if the feedback is provided after the pre-test? Grounded in the results, the author contends that a learner’s use of the correct form in one production test does not mean that the student has acquired its grammatical item. It has also become evident that the natural order of morpheme acquisition proposed by Krashen (1982) does not seem to hold for Japanese EFL students in question. An answer to the third question appears to be indeterminate since each group’s proficiency was not checked before the surveys were conducted, and thus there is a possibility that the differences in accuracy rates, and the degrees of improvement might be triggered by other reasons which have not been originally contemplated in framing the study.
Hisao NISHIJIMA (Wed,) studied this question.