Exploring the Mother Tongue of Bilingual Children and their Language Acquisition

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19K23322
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: :Education and related fields
• Research Institution: Dokkyo University
• Principal Investigator: Nishi Kaori 獨協大学, 法学部, 特任助教 (50844198)
• Project Period (FY): 2019-08-30 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: 日英語二言語話者 / 言語習得 / 足場かけ / 社会構成主義

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study investigates and analyzed the transcripts of recordings of natural conversations in Japanese between an elementary school-aged child and an adult tutor, and a junior high school-aged child with the adult tutor, based on the previous researches done in the field of bilingual language acquisition between Japanese and English to seek their language use of their Japanese learning process and their possible mother tongue. Data was analyzed with the CHAT Format of CHILDES (MacWhinney & Miyata, 2004). The findings include the children’s increased utterances over time and their positive attitude to carry on the conversation with the adult. Their positive attitude development in accordance with their language development could be supported by the Scaffolding from Socio-Cultural Theory.

Free Research Field

教育学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

日英二言語話者の先行研究においては、幼児を対象とするものが多々ある一方で、小中学生を対象としたものがほとんど見られないことから、本研究より得られる知見を今後の小中学生の年齢にある子供達の日英二言語話者の教育に活かすことが学術的にも社会的にも考えられる。