Panel Title

Second Language Acquisition Panel: 日本語学習者の談話運用ストラテジーの使用と未使用に関する判断過程の分析 (The analysis of decision-making processes in the use of oral production strategies by L2 learners of Japanese)

Author's Name, Institution and E-mail Address

Yukiko Abe Hatasa, University of Iowa, yukiko-hatasa@uiowa.edu

Abstract

Until recently, research on second language learners' conversational skills has primarily focused on learners'productions during natural conversation or specific conversational tasks. Using various discourse analytic techniques, previous studies reveal what the learners are capable or not capable of doing linguistically or interactionally in a given context of conversation and what external factors such as topics and participant relationship contribute to learners'production. Also, longitudinal analyses show the developmental patterns of specific linguistic and discourse knowledge as well as affective changes over time. However, not much research has been conducted to explore learners'perceptions about their moment-by-moment language use and decision-making processes as to what to say or what not to say during conversational activities.

For this reason, the following three studies in the proposed panel addresses the issue of learners'decision-making process and use and non-use of conversational strategies in various conversational tasks. The first paper deals with how planning what to say before or during the speech affects learners' speech quality and what kind of things learners plan. Planning has received much attention and is found to be effective in European language and this is the first study in Japanese. The second paper explores learners'strategy use in phone-conversations in which no non-verbal cues are available. The results show learners are unable to come up with verbal strategies that native speaker would use in this medium. The last paper will deal with learners ' use of aizuchi expressions during discussion, and explore reasons for using or not-using them or what form of aizuchi to use. In addition to qualitative analysis of oral production data, all of the studies employ retrospective interviews, in which learners are asked to discuss their thoughts while viewing their video-recorded performance, as this technique is found to provide direct evidence of learners'thought process.


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