Category: Language Acquisition
Improved Fluency through the Timed-Pair-Practice Framework
Determining proficiency of students by speed measures alone is insufficient. By using a triad of composite measures, two cohorts of low-intermediate Japanese students (N=12) were continuously analysed over one year in which a noticeable improvement in fluency occurred as a result of the inclusion of the Timed-Pair-Practice framework into the classroom. Furthermore, it was observed …
The Features of Japanese EFL Learners’ Peer Feedback in Writing Compositions
This study investigated how the corrective peer feedback between the peers is related to Japanese university learners’ noticing in their foreign language acquisition. In this research, 12 students written composition data was collected from the following three stages: (1) essay writing, (2) corrective feedback with peers and (3) self-revision. In the process of the peer …
Trilingual Preschool Children’s Cognitive Understanding of Mouth Action Verbs in Chinese, English and Malay
This paper explores how Malaysian Chinese children acquire word concepts in the Chinese language with the “interference” from the English and Malay languages. We selected eight commonly used Chinese eating and drinking verbs (吃 “eat”, 喝 “drink”, 咬 “bite”, 吸 “suck”, 嚼 “chew”, 吞 “swallow”, 啃 “nibble”, 舔 “lick”) for this study and tested 80 …
Japanese ESL Students’ Willingness to Communicate in English: The Effects of L2 Self-Confidence, Acculturation, and Motivational Types
This study aimed to identify the factors that affect English learners’ willingness to communicate (WTC) in the second language (L2) (L2 WTC) and particularly focused on self-confidence in the second language (L2 self-confidence), acculturation, and motivational types. L2 self-confidence was hypothesized to predict L2 WTC and to mediate the correlation between acculturation and L2 WTC …
Bilingual Transition of Address Terms for Family Members: A Longitudinal L1 Case Study from Birth
This longitudinal study focuses on the bilingual transition of address terms for family members used by a Japanese-English speaking child from birth. The child has been raised in Japan, mostly in English at home, and in Japanese at nursery since 0;4; and has been in a regular Japanese schooling system since 3;0. In a broad …
Gender Differences in Subjective Age of Word Acquisition
Studies in language development have shown that throughout childhood and adolescence girls are more advanced in language acquisition than boys. However, researchers in psycholinguistics have paid little attention to gender differences in subjective age of acquisition (AoA) – people’s reports of the age at which they think they learned a particular word. The aim of …
Contrasting Pragmatic Elements of L2 Japanese and L2 English Learning: A Closer Look at Refusals and Indirect Opinions
This paper examines the acquisition of pragmatically correct refusal and indirect opinion strategies by first language (L1) English learners of Japanese, and mirror image pragmatic acquisition of L1 Japanese learners of English. The scholarly evidence seemingly indicates that both L2 learners of English and Japanese can acquire and adopt pragmatically correct refusal and indirect opinion …