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- Kuwano Lidén, Mitsuyo, 1969-
(author)
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Deictic Demonstratives in Japanese, Finnish and Swedish : First and Third Language Perspectives
- 2016
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The goal of this thesis is twofold. Firstly, it investigates the actual, native use of spatial-deictic demonstratives in Japanese, Finnish and Swedish. Secondly, it investigates and elucidates the interlanguage of Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking learners of Japanese regarding their use of Japanese spatial-deictic demonstratives in the light of respective native use and, in comparison to the descriptions of demonstratives in the teaching materials used. Thus, the present study deals with analyses of two sets of empirical data: data produced by native-speaking informants (L1 data) and data produced by language learners (L2 data). These were elicited by Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) designed, collected and analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative methods by the author.The results showed that the actual use of demonstratives by the native informants was not always in accordance with the way described in grammars. The typological similarities between Japanese and Finnish were in this study not reflected in the native use of demonstratives, and some uses were not solely based on the spatial relations between the referent, the speaker and the addressee, but rather on social-interactional factors. The main findings regarding the learner data revealed some differences in the usage rate of the demonstratives between the two Finnish-speaking groups and the one Swedish-speaking learner group studied. There were, however, no particular differences found between them regarding the type of demonstrative used. It is suggested that these differences are first and foremost connected both with the teaching materials used and the more or less heterogeneous linguistic environment in which the learners reside, and only thereafter with the typological similarities or differences between their respective native languages, Finnish and Swedish, and the target language, Japanese.It is further argued that the learners’ use of the different Japanese demonstratives, that is the type of demonstrative used, could be explained in terms of familiarity with the grammar. That is, when the situations used in the DCTs were exemplified in teaching materials and were familiar to them, the learners seemed to use Japanese demonstratives as they are described in the teaching materials and as the native Japanese speakers use them. When the situations used in the DCTs were not exemplified in the teaching materials, the learners seem to rely more on their native language. The results, thus, suggest that the learners’ interlanguage is influenced by the grammar of the target language known to the learners, but also by the number of languages (or varieties) that the learners have contact with at the time of learning.The results of the present study have implications for the teaching of Japanese in at least two ways. Firstly, the importance of grammar instruction must be emphasized since its effect on the learners’ language is apparent. Secondly, the contents of teaching materials should be revised on the basis of the native speakers’ actual use of the grammar.
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| 2. |
- Trampe, Peter af, 1943-
(author)
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Two experimental studies in foreign language learning/teaching
- 1982
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The case for experimental research on the efficiency of methods of foreign language teaching is pleaded. In the first study, the effects of different practice materials on beginners' word-decoding ability in Russian was examined. The Russian words were divided into three categories: 1. The KTO-type. These words are in conflict with Swedish phonotactic rules and their meaning is not evident to a Swedish beginner. 2. The MAKET-type These words are phonotactically non-contrastive. To a Swedish learner, they are semantically opaque, however. 3. The ATOM-type. These words are also phonotactically non-contrastive and their meaning is potentially transparent to the Swedish beginner. Three groups of subjects were formed — each group practising on one and only one of the word-types. All subjects were then given a decoding test on all three types. No significant differences between groups were found, but there was significant interaction to the effect that the group that had practised on the more difficult KTO-type of words was better at decoding that type than the other groups. This group got the decoding of the MAKET and ATOM types into the bargain. Thus, in this case, progression need not be ' from the simple to the difficult ". In fact, it seems preferable to start with the more difficult words In the second experiment, two different ways of learning vocabulary in a foreign language (English) were compared, viz. concept learning in 11 with subsequent memorization of the L2 labels vs. concept learning in L2 with subsequent memorization of the L1 labels. The concepts and vocabulary of heraldry were used. With a group of university students of English, the English labels were learned more efficiently in the L2 concept learning case. With a group of 17-year-old high-school pupils, however, the results were inconclusive. It is suggested that the outcome in the latter case is due to language (LI) preference in connection with, or rather than, poorer foreign language proficiency The results indicate, then, that concept learning as a means to foreign language vocabulary acquisition will be effective in many cases, where the learning situation is comparable to the present experimental situation: i.e. where it is possible to combine the learning of L2 with the acquisition of new knowledge about the world. The L2 proficiency and language preferences of the learners must be taken into account, however
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