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Our presentation: Analysis of L1-Influenced Syntactic Errors in Japanese University Students’ Writing
Uchida & Yamauchi, 2012, January 5
Abstract:
The authors have been building a small-sized learner corpus of their students’ writing as part of an ongoing study (2010-2013, supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Grant-in- Aid for Scientific Research: 22520573). This study aims to (i) identify and describe major features of Japanese EFL learners’ interlanguage grammar at an earlier stage in development, focusing primarily on errors possibly influenced by L1 syntax, and (ii) develop a practicable way for language teachers to progressively build learner corpora using data from their own classes.
During the 2010 autumn and 2011 spring semesters, the authors set up several writing tasks for their classes using Moodle, and the students performed these tasks online, which yielded a small-sized learner corpus including instances of errors that reflect features of the students’ interlanguage.
The focus of this presentation is on common errors that have been identified so far in the students’ writing that strongly suggest the influence of Japanese syntactic patterns, including: (a) mapping topic-comment structure in Japanese directly to subject-predicate structure in English; (b) omission of reference to known information, where zero anaphora is preferred in Japanese; and (c) confusion of predicate-argument relations, especially with psychological predicates. The advantage of sharing the students’ L1 on the part of teachers, as well as that of explicit introduction of some typological linguistic knowledge in classrooms, will also be discussed.
My presentation: Blogs in L2 Classroom: Maximizing Meaning-Focused Output
Yamauchi 2012, January 7
Abstract
Opportunities to produce comprehensible output, as well as exposure to comprehensible input, are necessary for successful L2 learning (Swain 1985, 1995; Krashen 1985, 1994). However, average Japanese EFL learnershave few opportunities to use English outside the classroom as in other EFL countries, and tend to lack opportunities to express themselves in English even in the classroom, as CLT has not taken root in schools yet. After six years of studying Enlgish in such an educational setting, many college students, especially those not majoring in Enlgish, are still at the false beginner level, seeing the language as just another subject to study, not as a tool for communication, and/or having negative feelings about using/learning English after many years of unsuccesful effort.
In order to provide those false beginners with more ooportunities to produce comprehensible output, in a non-threatening way for weaker students, the author started by integrating student blogging into her language classrooms in 2011 Spring Semester, which was part of an ongoing project to develop an online communicative/collaborative language learning environment for Japanese EFL learners (2011-2013, supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research: 23520696).
Based on the 15-week classroom practice, this presentation outlines keys to effective implementation of online activities, including ease of accessibility and use, meaningful links between in- and out-of class activities, and face-to-face or online activities for focus-on-form, and discusses how student blogging can facilitate L2 learning by motivating learners to communicate with each other, and maximizing the three functions of comprehensible output (Swain 1985, 1995). The next phase of the project, with more focus more on collaboration and communication between students, will also briefly discussed.
References
Campbell, C., Kikuchi, A., & Palmer, R. (2006) Bridging the Gap Between CLT Theory and Practice in a Japanese Junior High School. (中学校での英語コミュニケーション授業: 理論を実践に結びつける) 『関西大学外国語教育研究』第12号 2006.10, pp.1-20
http://hdl.handle.net/10112/1466
Swain, M. (1985) Communicative competence: Some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensible output in its development. In Gass, S. and Madden, C. (Eds.), Input in Second Language Acquisition, pp.235-256. New York: Newbury House.
Swain, M. (1995) Three functions of output in second language learning. In Cook, G. and Seidelhofer, B. (Eds.) Principle and Practice in Applied Linguistics: Studies in Honor of H.G. Widdowson, pp.125-144. Oxford: Oxford University Press.