English Thought Order ● Sense Order Research
L1 English speakers know English word order in the form of thought order or sense order. This is why they can write and speak English in the correct word order so effortlessly, and comprehend meaning correctly when they read or hear English sentences. This was confirmed through my preliminary survey of 60 students on two occasions. The real research begins now. Since many world languages are NOT fixed-word-order languages, ELLs from those countries such as Japanese ELLs rarely pay attention to the sense order of English sentences; they don't try to remember English word order in the form of sense order. I hypothesize that this is the root cause of difficulties many ELLs have for writing and speaking English in the correct word order and for comprehending English correctly in reading and listening. When they just try to remember the order of words alone, they are not remembering English word order in a functional way or in a meaningful way, but when they pay attention to sense order, they are building schemata that enable thinking and understanding English in the correct English word order. When teaching sense order to ELLs, we must teach not only in what word order L1 English speakers speak and write, but also how exactly they interpret each word, especially the key function words (e.g., who, that, as, it, to, unless...).
Evidence-Based Word Order Instruction
Data are accumulating and will be summarized and published in order to benefit many English language teachers and learners to learn and acquire English word order quickly in a functional way and to learn to learn English word order on their own. Just memorizing the order of words is not very useful (That's what many teachers have ELLs do and that is what many ELLs do). In order to internalize the English word order in a functional way, i.e., to be able to make sense of English phrases and sentences in a syntactically correct way as you read or hear them, and in order to be able to think in the correct English word order when you write or speak, knowing sense order is an absolute requirement. The problem is that it appears that for many ELLs whose L1 is not a fixed-word-order language, implicitly learning sense order through exposures to English seems extremely rare. Many ELLs have no idea that they even have to be paying attention to sense order, so they don't. Even if they do pay attention to sense order, they must be explicitly taught how to encode words accordingly the word order when a sentence structure is complex or words' functions are very foreign to them (e.g., relative pronouns). I am hoping to work with speakers of other languages to publish textbooks in multiple languages.
If you are L1 English speakers, you are welcomed to be part of this search.