星野, 由子

物井, 尚子

安部, 朋世

橋本, 修

HOSHINO, Yuko

MONOI, Naoko

ABE, Tomoyo

HASHIMOTO, Osamu

言葉の決まり（language rules）

発見（discovery）

気づき（noticing）

[SUMMARY] In the Japanese Course of Study for Elementary School (2017) (the government curriculum guidelines for elementary school education), “understanding of language knowledge” was added as a goal of foreign language education. This paper describes two studies (Study 1 and Study 2) conducted to investigate how students acquire English language knowledge (or grammar) through school textbooks. Study 1 explored all English and, for comparison, Japanese textbooks authorized by the government and found that elementary school students learn English primarily through oral communication (listening and speaking). Only 44 out of 3,300 language activities (1.9%) in the English textbooks were focused on grammar. In contrast, we found that in Japanese elementary school textbooks 60 out of 861 lessons (7.0%) were about Japanese grammar, specifically, sentence patterns and word order. Study 2 looked for overlap or similarities between elementary and junior high school English textbooks in how English grammar is taught. We found there were no grammatical activities in junior high school English textbooks that resembled the pedagogical approach found in elementary school English textbooks. That is, once elementary school students reached the junior high school level, they started to learn English grammar differently from when they were in elementary school. The inconsistent methodology between elementary and junior high school may negatively impact learner achievement and enthusiasm for English study．