Project Investigator(s): Saori Hoshi, Instructor, Department of Asian Studies
Project Description
This project investigates the development of conversational skills by L2 learners of Japanese in an explicitly instructed setting, focusing on their use of incomplete sentences in free conversations with Japanese native peers. While use of incomplete sentences is a fairly common practice that speakers of Japanese employ to sound “implicit” or “less direct” for interpersonal communication, existing textbooks fail to describe the functions of incomplete sentences in Japanese conversation. This study proposes a pragmatic instruction and its effectiveness for the learners’ ability to use incomplete sentences as interactive resources for engaging more competently in peer talk.
Research Questions
- How does an awareness-raising activity as part of the target instruction affect the students’ understanding of the functions of incomplete sentences in
Japanese conversation? - How does the instruction combined with awareness-raising and conversational activities with Japanese native peers impact the development of L2 learners’ use of incomplete sentences as an interactional resource for participating in the preferred communicative practices of Japanese?
Impact on teaching and learning at UBC
This study proposes an instructional approach that promotes teaching and learning of incomplete sentence as an L2 pragmatic feature that is crucial to successful interactive practices of a Japanese speech community. This study underscores a critical role for explicit instruction in learners’ understanding and use of various pragmatic features that are often overlooked in existing textbooks. It also offers new pedagogical insights for teachers of all languages to explore the implementation of discourse-situated instruction and its potential effects on the development of interactional resources for L2 learners to use in real-life interactions.