Matsunuma Mitsuyasu

The first purpose of the present study was to investigate whether Japanese learners understood the usage of the passive voice in English. A preliminary study with 42 university students showed that the students did not have a sufficient understanding of the English passive voice. Based on those results, a new instructional method for teaching the passive voice was prepared, based on psychological theory. The new method was taught to 2 high school classes (n=68 students), while students in 2 other classes (n=67 students) were taught the passive voice by the method generally used in Japanese high school English classes. The new method was different from the traditional one as follows: (a) students were forced to realize that their knowledge about the passive voice was insufficient, (b) differences between the structure of English and Japanese sentences were explained, and (c) the method showed the students what experts were thinking while solving problems about the passive voice, so that the students could learn how to solve those problems. All participants were trained for an hour, and then took 2 posttests. On both tests, the 2 classes receiving the new instructional method performed better than the classes taught in the traditional way.

This study examined why some high achievers on the course final exam were unsuccessful on the proficiency exam in English. We hypothesized that the learning motives and learning behaviors (learning strategy, learning time) had different effects on the outcomes of the exams. First, the relation between the variables was investigated using structural equation modeling. Second, the learning behaviors of students who got good marks on both exams were compared with students who did well only on the course final exam. The results were as follows. (a)Learning motives influenced test performance via learning behaviors. (b)Content-attached motives influenced all variables concerning learning behaviors. (c)Content-detached motives influenced all variables concerning learning behaviors that were related only to the course final exam. (d)The students who got good marks on both exams performed the learning behaviors that were useful on the proficiency exam more frequently than the students who did well only on the course final exam.