Modal Markers in Japanese: A Study of Learners’ Use before and after Study Abroad

Japanese discourse requires speakers to index, in a relatively explicit manner, their stance toward the propositional information as well as the hearer. This is done, among other things, by means of a grammaticalized set of modal markers. Although previous research suggests that the use of modal expressions by second language learners differs from that of native users, little is known about “typical” native or non-native behavior. This study aims (a) to delineate native and non-native usage by a quantitative examination of a broad range of Japanese modal categories, and qualitative analyses of a subset of potentially problematic categories among them, and (b) to identify possible developmental trajectories, by means of a longitudinal observation of learners’ verbal production before and after study abroad in Japan. We find that modal categories realized by non- transparent or non-salient markers (e.g., explanatory modality no da, or utterance modality sentence-final particles) pose particular challenges in spite of their relatively high availability in the input, and we discuss this finding in terms of processing constraints that arguably affect learners’ acquisition of the grammaticalized modal markers

Automatic Scaling of Text for Training Second Language Reading Comprehension

For children learning their first language, reading is one of the most effective ways to acquire new vocabulary. Studies link students who read more with larger and more complex vocabularies. For second language learners, there is a substantial barrier to reading. Even the books written for early first language readers assume a base vocabulary of nearly 7000 word families and a nuanced understanding of grammar. This project will look at ways that technology can help second language learners overcome this high barrier to entry, and the effectiveness of learning through reading for adults acquiring a foreign language. Through the implementation of Dokusha, an automatic graded reader generator for Japanese, this project will explore how advancements in natural language processing can be used to automatically simplify text for extensive reading in Japanese as a foreign language

Metaphoric competence and communicative language ability

Recent developments in cognitive linguistics have highlighted the importance as well as the ubiquity of metaphor in language. Despite this, the ability of second language learners to use metaphors is often still not seen as a core ability. In this paper, we take a model of communicative competence that has been widely influential in both language teaching and language testing, namely Bachman (1990), and argue, giving a range of examples of language use and learner difficulty, that metaphoric competence has in fact an important role to play in all areas of communicative competence. In other words, it can contribute centrally to grammatical competence, textual competence, illocutionary competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence. Metaphor is thus highly relevant to second language learning, teaching and testing, from the earliest to the most advanced stages of learning

Language Learners as Agentive Meaning-Makers: Exploring Learners\u27 Investment and Meaning-Making

The motivation for this research is the subordinated position of writing in Japanese language education. As many studies indicate, writing in Japanese language education is often perceived as a space for teachers to monitor learners’ acquisition of grammar structures and kanji (Hirose, 2015; Kumagai & Fukai, 2009; Ramzan & Thomson, 2013). Such discourse of writing conceives Japanese writers, especially elementary writers, as individuals who have little agency in making meaning. The purpose of my dissertation study is to explore alternative discourses of writing that position elementary Japanese language learners as agentive meaning-makers. For this inquiry, first, I explore literatures that inform this dissertation study. This literature review explores systemic functional linguistics, or SFL, which explicitly situates one’s meaning-making in a social context. This review also explores critical instantiations of SFL, which emerged across disciplines. Then, I design a conceptual framework that is essential for my inquiry. I revisit (critical) SFL theories of text and context, and weave them together with post-structuralist theories of identity to investigate collegiate Japanese language learners’ identity and their meaning-making. Based on this conceptual framing, I propose a new pedagogy. This pedagogy resides in literacy practices which enhance learners’ awareness of linguistic choice in a social context (Rose & Martin, 2012), while it also actively incorporates literacy practices in which individuals can invest their time and effort in negotiation with their future affiliation (Norton Peirce, 1995; Norton 2013). I utilized this pedagogy to teach a personal narrative genre in a US college level elementary Japanese course. By drawing on Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (1989; 1992; 2003), I conducted textual analysis on each participant’s personal narrative texts and interpreted the linguistic cues in reference to their negotiations with identities and writing tasks. Overall, the four case studies of Mary, Andrea, Jean, and Lapis showcase a complex picture of investment and meaning-making. Their meaning-making is, on the one hand, to achieve the intended goal and purpose of writing, but on the other hand, is to organize and reorganize who they are and how they relate to the social world (Norton, 2013, p. 4). This suggests L2 learners’ meaning-making is enabled and/or constrained in certain ways, and equally important, contingent on learners’ agency, investment, and identity

Formulaic language : The case of How about you?

This paper investigates the formulaic English expression How about you? （and its variants And you? and What about you?） in the context of Japanese learners of English as a foreign language. These expressions are very familiar to Japanese EFL students and are used very frequently by Japanese learners of English. The study examined the expression as found in classroom data, corpora, recordings of native English speaker interactions and Japanese EFL textbooks. This data indicated that the learners tend to overuse the expression in their speaking, compared to native English speakers, and also use it solely as a stand-alone expression at the end of a turn to nominate the next speaker and to index a question that was asked previously. In contrast, in native English speaker interactions, the expression is often accompanied by an address term and also may be followed by a question （either a reprise of an earlier question, or a newly introduced question） and seems to be used when there are more than two participants in the interaction to allocate turns when uncertainty may occur and thus its use contributes to progressivity. It is suggested that apart from relative overuse by the learners, the deployment of this expression in minimized form in dyadic interactions impedes progressivity as it prevents a recipient of the question from building on the content of the previous turn with assessments, commentary or the like, and instead directs the next nominated speaker to give their own response to a question and in effect disattend to the contents of the prior turn. The overuse is therefore not only a question of frequency, but also of unintended pragmatic effects