A Meaning-Based Approach to the Language of the TOEFL test and Japanese EFL Textbooks: A Functional Analysis of Patterns of Lexico-Grammatical Meanings and Structures
The primary objective of this research project is to show varying degrees of textual and semantic contributions that semantic density and grammatical metaphors make in the way that TOEFL iBT reading sections and Japanese EFL textbooks are used. This research is conducted from two theoretical perspectives within the theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics. The first analysis is to investigate logical and semantic relationships within clause complexes in order to identify structural variations and their textual distributions. The second analysis focuses on the use of ideational and interpersonal grammatical metaphors and on the way that they further compact or untangle textual meanings. This second analysis allows the researcher to unpack the semantic features and their density of lexico-grammatical meanings within each lexical item. The results from these analyses show a lexico-grammatical gap between the two language materials in terms of the density of grammatical metaphors distributed in the data sets. The findings may have the potential to be applied to Japanese EFL educational settings as one meaning-based perspective distinct from the current form-based EFL pedagogical practice
