scholarly journals Hand in Hand: A Comparison of Gestures Accompanying Japanese Native Speaker and JSL Learner Refusals

2004 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Jungheim

The purpose of this study is to describe how native speakers of Japanese and Japanese as a second language learners use gestures as an integral part of Japanese refusals. Participants were 10 native speakers and 33 Japanese as a second language learners who performed a series of role plays that included refusals. This study focused on refusals of an offer and refusals of an invitation. Although learners tended to use manual gestures with refusals of an offer and head movements with refusals of an invitation as did native speakers, there were noticeable differences in the actual performance of these gestures. Implications are that in spite of experience living in the Japanese culture, learners could possibly benefit from additional instruction dealing with gestures as an integral part of Japanese refusals. 本研究は、日本人母語話者と第2言語としての日本語学習者が、日本語の断り表現における主要な表現手段としてのジェスチャーをどのように用いているかを明らかにしようとしたものである。被験者は10人の母語話者と33人の日本語学習者で、断りを含む一連のロールプレイを行った。特に焦点を当てたのは、何かの申し出に対する断りと招待に対する断りである。学習者は母語話者と同様に、申し出に対する断りには手の動きで、招待に対しては頭の動きでそれを示す傾向にあったが、実際のこれらのジェスチャーには顕著な違いが見られた。この結果は、日本の文化に触れる経験がすべてなのではなく、日本語の断り表現としてのジェスチャーを大切な要素として学習者に指導することによっても学習者がそれを学べる可能性があることを示唆している。

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
TERRY NADASDI ◽  
RAYMOND MOUGEON ◽  
KATHERINE REHNER

ABSTRACTOur paper examines lexical variation in the spoken French of second language learners and focuses on words referring to the notion of ‘automobile’ (i.e., automobile, auto, voiture, char and machine). Results reveal that while students do follow the native speaker pattern of using the neutral variant auto in most instances, they diverge from native speakers by making no use of the vernacular form char and relatively high use of the prestige variant voiture. The principal external factors that influence variant choice are students' home language and the representation of variants in the input to which students are exposed.


Author(s):  
Aarnes Gudmestad

The current study builds on research on mood distinction in Spanish, which has focused on the subjunctive mood, by examining the full inventory of verb forms that second-language learners and native speakers (NSs) of Spanish use in mood-choice contexts. Twenty NSs and 130 learners corresponding to five proficiency levels completed three oral-elicitation tasks. The results show that participants use a wide repertoire of tense/mood/aspect forms in mood-choice contexts and that NSs and learners use largely the same forms. An analysis of the conditional and imperfect suggests that learners tend to restructure and strengthen their form-function connections between these verb forms and a range of functions.


1997 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 447-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theo Bongaerts ◽  
Chantal van Summeren ◽  
Brigitte Planken ◽  
Erik Schils

This paper reports on two studies that addressed the issue of ultimate attainment by late second language learners. The aim of the studies, which included a carefully screened group of highly successful Dutch learners of English in their designs, was to determine whether or not late second language learners who had achieved a nativelike performance in the pronunciation of a second language could be identified. Speech samples provided by two groups of learners, one of which consisted of highly successful learners only, and a native speaker control group were rated for accent by native speakers of English. The ratings obtained by some learners were within the range of the ratings assigned to the native speaker controls. Such results suggest that it is not impossible to achieve an authentic, nativelike pronunciation of a second language after a specified biological period of time. Examination of the learning histories of the highly successful learners lead the authors to argue that certain learner characteristics and learning contexts may work together to override the disadvantages of a late start.


Author(s):  
Choong Pow Yean ◽  
Sarinah Bt Sharif ◽  
Normah Bt Ahmad

The Nihongo Partner Program or “Japanese Language Partner” is a program that sends native speakers to support the teaching and learning of Japanese overseas. The program is fully sponsored by The Japan Foundation. The aim of this program is to create an environment that motivates the students to learn Japanese. This study is based on a survey of the Nihongo Partner Program conducted on students and language lecturers at UiTM, Shah Alam. This study aims to investigate if there is a necessity for native speakers to be involved in the teaching and learning of Japanese among foreign language learners. Analysis of the results showed that both students and lecturers are in dire need of the Nihongo Partner Program to navigate the learning of the Japanese language through a variety of language learning activities. The involvement of native speaker increases students’ confidence and motivation to converse in Japanese. The program also provides opportunities for students to increase their Japanese language proficiency and lexical density. In addition, with the opportunity to interact with the native speakers, students and lecturers will have a better understanding of Japanese culture as they are able to observe and ask the native speakers. Involvement of native speakers is essential in teaching and learning of Japanese in UiTM.


2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-569 ◽  
Author(s):  
YUKI YOSHIMURA ◽  
BRIAN MACWHINNEY

ABSTRACTCase marking is the major cue to sentence interpretation in Japanese, whereas animacy and word order are much weaker. However, when subjects and their cases markers are omitted, Japanese honorific and humble verbs can provide information that compensates for the missing case role markers. This study examined the usage of honorific and humble verbs as cues to case role assignment by Japanese native speakers and second-language learners of Japanese. The results for native speakers replicated earlier findings regarding the predominant strength of case marking. However, when case marking was missing, native speakers relied more on honorific marking than word order. In these sentences, the processing that relied on the honorific cue was delayed by about 100 ms in comparison to processing that relied on the case-marking cue. Learners made extensive use of the honorific agreement cue, but their use of the cue was much less accurate than that of native speakers. In particular, they failed to systematically invoke the agreement cue when case marking was missing. Overall, the findings support the predictions of the model and extend its coverage to a new type of culturally determined cue.


AILA Review ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 55-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antje Wilton ◽  
Holger Wochele

In this paper, we focus on comments on language issues from a historical perspective. The concept of the layperson (non-linguist) is discussed to identify laypeople and lay comments in history when the modern concept of a linguist did not yet exist. Two studies show how the historical perspective complements modern research on folk linguistics. Firstly, historical comments about Latin will be put in relation to comments about English, focusing on their roles as linguae francae and exploring the potential and application of the ‘Latin Analogy’. Secondly, an analysis of language appraisal texts of French and Romanian from 1500 to the present shows that the topoi used are still reflected in today’s perception of the languages by their native speakers, affecting the attractiveness of the languages for second language learners.


2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 619-647 ◽  
Author(s):  
SOL LAGO ◽  
CLAUDIA FELSER

ABSTRACTSecond language speakers often struggle to apply grammatical constraints such as subject–verb agreement. One hypothesis for this difficulty is that it results from problems suppressing syntactically unlicensed constituents in working memory. We investigated which properties of these constituents make them more likely to elicit errors: their grammatical distance to the subject head or their linear distance to the verb. We used double modifier constructions (e.g., the smell of the stables of the farmers), where the errors of native speakers are modulated by the linguistic relationships between the nouns in the subject phrase: second plural nouns, which are syntactically and semantically closer to the subject head, elicit more errors than third plural nouns, which are linearly closer to the verb (2nd-3rd-noun asymmetry). In order to dissociate between grammatical and linear distance, we compared embedded and coordinated modifiers, which were linearly identical but differed in grammatical distance. Using an attraction paradigm, we showed that German native speakers and proficient Russian speakers of German exhibited similar attraction rates and that their errors displayed a 2nd-3rd-noun asymmetry, which was more pronounced in embedded than in coordinated constructions. We suggest that both native and second language learners prioritize linguistic structure over linear distance in their agreement computations.


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