Learners of Japanese have difficulties using the passive appropriately in compositions (Tanaka, 1993, 1997; Tashiro, 1995; Watanabe, 1996). They fail to use the passive in situations where native speakers use it to maintain a consistent perspective. In order to use the passive appropriately, learners need to know the perspective system in Japanese and the discourse/pragmatic rules of the passive. This study examines instructional effects in the acquisition of the passive as a linguistic means to maintain a consistent perspective.
Twenty-seven learners of Japanese participated in this study. They were assigned to one of the three groups: Explicit Instruction (EI, n= 10), Textual Enhancement (TE, n=10) and Nontextual enhancement (NTE, n=7). A pretest- posttest design was employed, and instructional effects were determined by the difference between the two test scores (gain).
The study found that the students in the EI group outperformed those in the TE and NTE groups. However, a significant difference was found only between the EI and TE groups. Some students in the NTE group also exhibited improvement. This result implies that providing input is enough for some students to acquire the discourse functions of the passive. However, whether or not students can learn from input seems to depend heavily on the readiness of learners. In actual classrooms where we have a variety of students, it is not economical to give input to students who are not ready to learn. In comparison with input flooding, explicit instruction seems to be beneficial for a wider range of students. Since the purpose of classroom instruction is to assist different types of students to learn, I maintain that explicit instruction, which is helpful for a wider range of students, is more beneficial as an instructional tool than textual enhancement.