| Project/Area Number |
22K13162
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
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| Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
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| Review Section |
Basic Section 02100:Foreign language education-related
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| Research Institution | Okayama University |
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Principal Investigator |
RENOUD LOIC 岡山大学, 社会文化科学学域, 准教授 (50807964)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2022-04-01 – 2025-03-31
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| Project Status |
Granted (Fiscal Year 2023)
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| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,470,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,900,000、Indirect Cost: ¥570,000)
Fiscal Year 2024: ¥780,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000、Indirect Cost: ¥180,000)
Fiscal Year 2023: ¥780,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000、Indirect Cost: ¥180,000)
Fiscal Year 2022: ¥910,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000、Indirect Cost: ¥210,000)
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| Keywords | FFL / determiners / pedagogical material / material development / Peircean semiotics / grammar / Grammar / Microgenesis / Past tenses / Determiners / Videos / Material development / Oral interactions / Multimodality / Foreign Language |
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| Outline of Research at the Start |
This 3-year project has two components, in Linguistics (French) and Applied Linguistics (French as a Foreign Language at initial levels at university in Japan). The objective is twofold: studying the generation of linguistic meaning in spontaneous oral interactions and experimenting teaching material based on this study. This material, it is hypothesised, helps to visualize how discourse unfolds in time. Data include excerpts from the open access video database CLAPI (France) and videos of learners re-enacting these excerpts, videoed interviews about their performance and a questionnaire.
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
This project aims to design and experiment with pedagogical material for the teaching and learning of past tenses and determiners in French as a Foreign Language. A parallel objective was to deepen the understanding of speech planning, drawing on microgenetic theory. In September at Altinbas University (Istanbul) and in December at Singapore National University, two presentations were given to introduce the material, with some theoretical elements borrowed from Peircean semiotics for the second (see below). Data collection was based on self-study with the help of the material, then on individual verbalizations where the participants would explain how the targeted forms in the video excerpts (included in the material) were used. However, planned for January, data collection was canceled following issues caused by excessive complexity. Regarding theoretical development per se, the core idea in microgenetic theory that the present is remembered into perception was deemed close to the so-called Active Inference framework where a model of the world (me) is recursively checked against new evidence. In turn, the interpretative process so described can be recast in Peircean semiotics. This led to the integration of essential elements of Peircean semiotics within the underpinnings of the current project. As a spin-off, a co-authored research note (with Michel Sagaz, Kumamoto University) where this framework is applied to account for the teaching of predicative structures in the Silent Way will be published in November.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
3: Progress in research has been slightly delayed.
Reason
Elements adopted from Peircean semiotics include the triadic relation between a sign (in the material medium) determined by an object (in the world of thought and desire) and determining an interpretant (a further sign, in the form of an affective and cognitive effect) and the three modes of representation of an object by a sign (icon, index symbol). Part of the work being done now consists of conceiving semiotics of speech planning and drawing conclusions for designing pedagogical material which would help with managing reference in noun phrases. Current ideas still start from microgenesis, with the transition from a simultaneous idea, scene, or situation prompted by the desire or need to speak, to the sequentiality of syntax. Concomitantly, commentators of Peirce underline the importance of a relational iconism between world and language. In microgenetic theory, the imagined idea, scene, or situation remains in the background while speech unfolds, a way of describing reminiscent of Peirce's iconism. In this light, determiners can be considered as icons of fragments of speaker-world past experiences with similar distributions of unknown/known information and the emotions associated with them. A further strength of Peircean semiotics is that the speaker’s utterance is meant to affect a listener, by prompting a similar experience. Visuals for determiners are designed in this spirit, with the limitations that they must be simple and class friendly. The material also includes explanations in Japanese, that sum up those of traditional textbooks.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
This new version of the material is planned to be experimented with before summer. Following the cancellation of the data collection during FY2, both the content of the material and the protocol of data collection were simplified. Past tenses are no longer included, and the stimulated recall has been suppressed from the protocol. The new version is the basis of a communication that will be given at an international conference in May in Okinawa and of a journal article. This paper will include the conventional description of determiners, as well as a contrastive analysis with Japanese (reference in French is expressed by determiners before the head of a noun phrase while there is no determiners as such in Japanese). In the design of the visuals, semiotics gives coherence to the material by enforcing an onomasiological perspective (from the intended meaning to the words that express it), which is deemed well suited for Foreign Language pedagogy. A description of the protocol itself, which draws on ideas in the Sociocultural Theory of Second Language Acquisition about languaging, will also be included. Data analysis is planned after summer, taking the form of qualitative multimodal analysis (video) and content analysis (questionnaire), looking for cues to determine whether the knowledge represented in the material (adequately described as “external memory”) is internalized. This part of the research should be reported in the form of case studies. Another paper could be envisaged to expand on the semiotics of speech planning per se (see Current status above).
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