The Confusion with “Give” and “Get” by Japanese Learners: Common Errors in the Basic Meaning of Property Transfer

The prototypical semantic meaning and syntactic structures of “give” and “get” from the perspective of the “transfer of property” causes Japanese students at the University level a lot of trouble in both verbal and written discourse. The purpose of this study was to try to uncover the possible mental links these students were making with these verbs, and find out how these two very important and interrelated verbs are being misused, possible reasons for this misuse, and how they can be better understood and produced by Japanese learners of English. Through this research, it would appear that more comprehensive pedagogical practice that encourages students to see and experiment with the fuller ranges of verbs and their complements could help students to understand and produce these verbs more enthusiastically, confidently, and competently. In order to conduct this research, a test was administered to 96 students with fourteen questions separated into three sections, completed within ten minutes. The results showed that, generally speaking, it appears as if the students are having an extremely hard time reproducing the correct usage of both “give” and “get” in the second language (L2). More research should be conducted to find out more about the reasons for the difficulties and how Japanese students can successfully overcome them.