Theory, Research and Pedagogy in Learning and Teaching Japanese Grammar

231 Pages·2016·8.76 MB·English

by  Alessandro G. Benati, Sayoko Yamashita (eds.)

Theory, Research
and Pedagogy in
Learning and Teaching
Japanese Grammar
EDITED BY ALESSANDRO G. BENATI
& SAYOKO YAMASHITA
Theory, Research and Pedagogy in Learning and
Teaching Japanese Grammar
Alessandro G . Benati • Sayoko Yamashita
Editors
Theory, Research and
Pedagogy in
Learning and
Teaching Japanese
Grammar
Editors
Professor Alessandro G. Benati Sayoko Yamashita
Head of School of Languages and Area Studies, Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Portsmouth, Jissen Women’s University
Portsmouth , United Kingdom Shibuya-ku , Tokyo , Japan
ISBN 978-1-137-49891-5 ISBN 978-1-137-49892-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-49892-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016936729
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Acknowledgements
F irst, we would like to express our gratitude to the Great Britain Sasakawa
Foundation for fi nancially supporting our research project aimed at mea-
suring the eff ectiveness of input manipulation pedagogical interventions
on the acquisition of Japanese morphology and syntax. One of the out-
puts of this project is this edited volume.
Special thanks to the contributors to this volume and to the reviewers
who examined the content of the book. We are also grateful to Joseph
Tabolt, Kentaro Kamimura and Benedetta Basile for organising a work-
shop at Waseda University in May 2014, and at the Daiwa Foundation
in September 2014.
A fi nal thank you to Palgrave for accepting, supporting and producing
this volume.
v
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Alessandro G. Benati and Sayoko Yamashita
Part I Th eoretical Perspectives 5
2 Th eoretical and Pedagogical Views on the Role of
Grammar Instruction 7
Alessandro G. Benati and Benedetta Basile
3 Review of Classroom-Based Research on the Acquisition
of Japanese Grammar 39
Sayoko Yamashita
Part II Research and Pedagogical Applications 71
4 Processing Instruction and the Acquisition of Japanese
Morphology and Syntax 73
Alessandro G. Benati
vii
viii Contents
5 L2 Learners and the Apparent Problem of Morphology:
Evidence from L2 Japanese 99
Megan Smith
6 Th e Role of Linguistic Explanation in the Acquisition
of Japanese Imperfective -t eiru 127
Yumiko Nishi and Yasuhiro Shirai
7 Grammar for Reading Japanese as a Second Language:
Variation of Stance Expressions Using t o omou in Diff erent
Written Registers 157
Noriko Iwasaki
8 An Integrated Grammar-Pragmatics Approach:
Teaching Style Shifting in Japanese 187
Sayoko Yamashita, Noriko Ishihara and Alessandro G. Benati
Index 219
Notes on the Contributors
Benedetta   Basile is a Ph.D. student at the University of Greenwich, UK. Th e
title of her research project is ‘Th e relative eff ects of Processing Instruction and
re- exposure on sentence and discourse-level interpretation and production: Th e
case of the Japanese Past Simple’.
Professor Alessandro G.   Benati i s Professor of Second Language Acquisition
and Head of School of Languages and Area Studies at the University of Portsmouth.
He is internationally known for his research in second language learning and
teaching, with special emphases on processing instruction. He has a strong publi-
cations record with 12 established monographs, chapters and articles in interna-
tional journals (Language Awareness, IRAL, and Language Teaching Research).
Noriko   Ishihara is Professor of EFL/TESOL at Hosei University, Japan. Her
research interests include instructional pragmatics, identity, and language
teacher development. She is a co-author of Teaching and Learning Pragmatics :
Where Language and Culture Meet (with Andrew D. Cohen, 2010/2014) and the
editing author of its second edition in Japanese, (cid:3914)(cid:3914)(cid:7095)(cid:7095)(cid:2374)(cid:2374)(cid:10806)(cid:10806)(cid:16403)(cid:16403)(cid:515)(cid:515)(cid:16590)(cid:16590)(cid:4502)(cid:4502)(cid:7049)(cid:7049)(cid:14050)(cid:14050)(cid:450)(cid:450)(cid:16590)(cid:16590)
(cid:11096)(cid:11096)(cid:16646)(cid:16646)(cid:11444)(cid:11444)(cid:6455)(cid:6455)(cid:4670)(cid:4670)(cid:525)(cid:525)(cid:515)(cid:515)(cid:6411)(cid:6411)(cid:5557)(cid:5557) (2015).
Noriko   I wasaki is Senior Lecturer in Language Pedagogy in the Department of
Linguistics at SOAS, University of London, UK. She served as the Chair of the
Association of Japanese Language Teachers in Europe, e.V. from 2011 to 2014
and currently serves as Deputy Chair. Her research interests include language
pedagogy, second language acquisition and psycholinguistics. She has recently
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x Notes on the Contributors
co-authored, with Yuri Kumagai, Th e Routledge Intermediate to Advanced Japanese
Reader: A Genre-based Approach to Reading as Social Practice (Routledge, 2015).
She has also published articles in such journals as A pplied Linguistics, Foreign
Language Annals, Japanese Language and Literature, and Language and Cognitive
Processes .
Yumiko   Nishi is Assistant Professor of Japanese Linguistics and Pedagogy at
the University of Iowa, USA. Her primary research areas are verb semantics and
the second language acquisition of aspect. She also investigates how the research
fi ndings can be applied to language pedagogy; in particular, the teaching of
Japanese as a second/foreign language.
Yasuhiro   Shirai ( Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics, UCLA) is Professor of Applied
Linguistics, Eirik Borve Professor in Modern Languages, and Chair of the
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Case Western Reserve
University, USA. His research interests include fi rst and second language acqui-
sition of grammatical constructions, in particular of tense-aspect morphology,
and cognitive models of language acquisition and processing. He is co-editor of
Studies in Language Sciences, an associate editor of First Language, and serves on
several editorial boards, including Studies in Second Language Acquisition , IRAL ,
and J ournal of Cognitive Science .
Megan   Smith is a Ph.D. student at Michigan State University, USA. Megan is
interested in the acquisition of second languages. Recent projects include inves-
tigating the acquisition of syntactic and discourse properties of null subjects in
Turkish, and investigating whether beginning L2 Japanese learners are able to
generalize the word order of declarative sentences to polar questions and embed-
ded clauses. She is currently working on a project involving the acquisition of
case morphology in L2 Japanese. Her dissertation investigates near-native
Japanese speakers’ acquisition of Japanese morphosyntax and discourse
knowledge.
Sayoko   Y amashita i s Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences at Jissen
Women’s University, Tokyo, Japan. Her research interests include Language
Pedagogy, SLA, Cross-cultural and Interlanguage Pragmatics, and Politeness.
Her publications include Politeness in Classrooms: Comparison between JSL
and EFL Classrooms (2014); ‘Investigating interlanguage pragmatics ability:
What are we testing?’, in Investigating Pragmatics in Foreign Language Learning,
Teaching and Testing (Multilingual Matters, 2008). She currently edits J ALT JSL
SIG Journal .
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Example of traditional grammar instruction 12
Fig. 2.2 Example of a paradigm 13
Fig. 2.3 Example of input enhancement 16
Fig. 2.4 Structured-input task (referential) 21
Fig. 2.5 Structured-input task (aff ective) 22
Fig. 2.6 Consciousness-raising task 24
Fig. 2.7 Jigsaw task 26
Fig. 2.8 Structured-output task 28
Fig. 3.1 Distribution of teachers, by region (Japan Foundation 2013: 6) 42
Fig. 3.2 Distribution of learners, by region (Japan Foundation 2013: 6) 43
Fig. 4.1 Structured input activity 80
Fig. 4.2 Traditional instruction practice 81
Fig. 4.3 Structured input activity 88
Fig. 4.4 Traditional instruction practice 90
Fig. 6.1 Schematic representation of the four inherent lexical aspect
classes (Li and Shirai 2000) 129
Fig. 7.1 Proportions of d esu/masu , detached plain form and
informal plain form 171
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