Budget Amount *help |
¥2,860,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥660,000)
Fiscal Year 2014: ¥910,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000、Indirect Cost: ¥210,000)
Fiscal Year 2013: ¥910,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000、Indirect Cost: ¥210,000)
Fiscal Year 2012: ¥1,040,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000、Indirect Cost: ¥240,000)
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Outline of Final Research Achievements |
This project investigated the overall patterns of variation across seven proficiency levels of 1,263 Japanese EFL learners and native English speakers. The methodological approach combined a learner corpus, language processing techniques, and multivariate statistical analyses to identify patterns of language use. The largest spoken learner corpus in Japan, NICT JLE Corpus, was used for the analysis. The study found interesting rising, flat, and falling frequency patterns in how several linguistic features are used in different oral proficiency levels. Some linguistic features (e.g., phrasal coordination and nouns) were frequently used by the learners at a low level. The frequencies of some others (e.g., contraction, pronoun it, and emphatics) increased as oral proficiency increased. The study identified a set of linguistic features that differentiate among second language proficiency groups as well as between non-native and native speakers of English.
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