Japanese Language Learners Benefit from Information on Verb Structures

The writing errors made by second language learners of Japanese often reflect insufficient knowledge of verbs, specifically in choosing appropriate verbs and using them correctly in given contexts. To support these learners, we have been developing a Japanese verb database, Don 動詞どん (www.dondoushidon.org), which explicitly provides information about verb structures, including types of entities expressed by co-occurring elements, their semantic roles, and accompanying particles. To investigate whether having access to such information improves learners’ accuracy in sentence production, we conducted a study with forty-three learners of Japanese using two tools: Don 動詞どん and, for comparison, Jisho (jisho.org). While the former highlights verb structures explicitly, the latter does not. The results showed that participants performed significantly better when using Don 動詞どん. Responses to a post-experiment questionnaire further revealed that learners of Japanese believe that information about verb structures would be helpful for their learning.