1997 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
AComparative Study on the Acquisition of Japanese as a First and Second Language
| Project/Area Number |
08680319
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Japanese language education
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| Research Institution | Aichi University of Education |
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Principal Investigator |
INABA Midori Aichi University of Education, Education, Associate Professor, 教育学部, 助教授 (50273298)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1996 – 1997
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| Keywords | first language acquisition / Japanese / language development / local structure / narrative / discourse / global structure / second language acquisition |
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| Research Abstract |
This study investigated the development of first-and second-language narrative structure to show similarities and differences between them. The narratives produced by Japanese children from ages 3 to 11 and adults and JSL (Japanese as a Second Language) learners at five different levels of JSL proficiency (ten subjects in each group) were analyzed with particular attention to the global structure of the story.
The background of this study is Berman and Slobin's crosslinguistic study of the development of children's narrative discourse competence in the field of first language acquisition. Their study manifests that the development is a joint process of event comprehension and language production (Berman and Slobin, 1994, p.50).
The main concern of the study is L2 learners, who are supposed to have mature narrative discourse competence in their L1 but do not have full L2 linguistic command present. The results of the present study indicate that Japanese children and adults showed a clear age-related development in constructing the global structure of the story. In the case of L2 development, on the other hand, the knowledge of narrative structure or mature narrative competence does not suffice for JSL learners to produce well-constructed narratives. Rather, whether they can construct a narrative with thematic organization largely depends on L2 linguistic command itself.
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