The Acquisition of Japanese Passive Sentences by Chinese Beginner Learners: A Longitudinal Study

The acquisition of Japanese passive sentences presents a well-documented challenge for Chinese-speaking learners. However, longitudinal research on how learners in foreign language (JFL) classrooms comprehend and process these structures remains scarce. This study addresses this gap by tracking five beginner-level learners in a Chinese high school over approximately 18 months through repeated grammaticality judgment and error correction tasks. We examined five sub-constructs: voice selection, verb conjugation, possessor passive, indirect passive, and agent selection. Results indicated that the core difficulty of learners lay in locating errors rather than correcting them. Developmental trajectories diverged significantly across sub-constructs. Verb conjugation and indirect passives improved rapidly, consistent with the role of input-driven noticing. In contrast, agent selection and voice choice remained persistently difficult, while possessor passives exhibited a U-shaped development pattern, indicating interlanguage restructuring. Crucially, learners heavily relied on a “ni + passive” form chunk as a local processing cue-a strategy explainable by Andersen’s One-to-One Principle and reinforced by textbook bias. This led to systematic overuse and omission errors. The findings underscore that JFL learners’ acquisition of passives is hindered by a bottleneck in metalinguistic error identification, uneven development across construction types, and dependence on overly simplistic processing strategies. Pedagogical implications highlight the need for instruction that enhances form-meaning mapping and contextualized practice to foster more flexible and accurate usage.