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- Convenor:
-
Mayumi Usami
(National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics)
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- Stream:
- Japanese Language Education
- Location:
- Torre B, Piso 3, T14
- Sessions:
- Thursday 31 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This panel proposes some potential utilizations of NINJAL's "BTSJ-Japanese Conversation Corpus" (BTSJ-JCC) for improving the situation where learners find hard to become able to communicate naturally and their teachers continue to teach unnatural Japanese examples without noticing the issue.
Long Abstract:
It may be a commonly shared experience among Japanese language teachers being troubled with handling unnatural conversations and exercises in textbooks. In the regions such as Europe where Japanese is not the second language but a foreign language, language learners often find hard to understand communicative functions of grammatical items and hard to become able to communicate naturally; without noticing the issue, their teachers continue to teach unnatural Japanese examples.
In the present panel, three presenters will propose some potential utilizations of NINJAL's "BTSJ-Japanese Conversation Corpus" (BTSJ-JCC) for improving this situation from their points of view respectively. The first presentation, entitled "Improving grammar education from a perspective of the 'context' of natural conversations", focuses on 'contextual dysfunctionalities' found in the drill exercises of elementary Japanese textbooks, which might hinder the realization of plurilingualism in Europe. Specifically, the presenter shows how the grammatical items used for supposition or condition, for example, are given in sentence examples or for drills in textbooks. He compares these usages of grammatical items with those in the "BTSJ-JCC" and reveals that there is a wide divergence between them. With this research result, the author argues possible ways of making a good use the corpus for designing teaching materials of Japanese in Europe. The second presentation, entitled "Textbook conversations vs. natural conversations - a pragmatics of kara and node", will point out (i) concerns in pragmatics necessary for conversation drills and (ii) issues in conversation teaching, both by investigating the usages of kara and node suggested by the examples taken from the teaching materials of conversations through the examples of (BTSJ-JCC), and by visualizing the pragmatic knowledge. The third presentation will first focus on "incomplete utterances" and "simultaneous utterances", and discuss some possible teaching methods for these phenomena. It will then introduce how to use the "Natural Conversation Resource Bank: NCRB" as "WEB communication teaching materials using natural conversations," and propose how it can be effectively used in Europe. Finally, with our pre-appointed discussants, we will discuss "the education for natural communication" in the Japanese language education in Europe.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 31 August, 2017, -Paper short abstract:
The author of the proposal shows that the usages of grammatical items in textbooks are often "insufficiently contextualized" compared with those in the "BTSJ Conversation Corpus". He also argues possible ways of making a good use of this corpus for improving teaching Japanese grammar in Europe.
Paper long abstract:
This proposal deals with the issue of "insufficiently contextualized" sentences often found in elementary Japanese textbooks, which might hinder the realization of plurilingualism in Europe. The author of the proposal shows how the grammatical items used for supposition or condition, for example, are given in sentence examples or for practices in textbooks. He compares these usages of grammatical items with those in the "BTSJ Conversation Corpus" and reveals that there is a wide divergence between them. With this research result, the author argues possible ways of making a good use the corpus for designing and improving teaching materials of Japanese grammar in Europe.
Paper short abstract:
The presenter argues the importance of natural conversation data, focusing on teaching "incomplete utterances" and "co-constructed utterances" by NCRB. She also insists that the NCRB as a platform for utilizing teaching resources is essential to improve the Japanese language education in Europe.
Paper long abstract:
The present study focuses on "incomplete utterances" and "co-constructed utterances" taken from BTSJ Japanese Conversation Corpus (BTSJ-JCC), and analyses how these utterances are behaved in natural conversations and what kinds of functions they have. Although these phenomena are commonly perceived in naturally occurring conversations, they are not found in the "textbooks" for Japanese language education; therefore, unlike other types of utterances, it is not possible to compare them with phenomena observed in natural conversations. However, the analysis of the corpus reveals that these two utterance types have various functions and play an important role in smooth and naturalistic communications; for example, (i) many"incomplete utterances" not only have an "hedging function" (negative politeness), but also (ii) they trigger a "co-constructed utterance," which invites the addressee to complete the speaker's unfinished utterance, therefore, (iii) when the addressee is in a close relationship with the speaker, she/he perceives this signal immediately and indicate that she/he "understands" the speaker's intention. Incomplete utterances trigger addressee's positive politeness in this manner, and thus, they facilitates smooth conversation. Therefore, whereas the native speakers of Japanese employ various strategies such as incomplete utterances and co-constructed utterances according to the social status and/or social distance of the addressees, it is almost impossible for the learners of Japanese as a foreign language such as those in Europe to acquire these phenomena sorely from the existing Japanese textbooks. Based on the current situation introduced above, we have developed a multifunctional database "Natural Conversation Resource Bank: NCRB", which at the same time is a platform for collaboratively-constructed "WEB teaching materials using natural conversations". As the NCRB is equipped with "support functions for developing teaching materials for natural conversations" - for example, it automatically generates a natural conversation text associated with a specific video-clips - the users can develop "WEB materials" with instructions of conversation strategies as well as those of grammatical items by following the simple illustrations built in the program.
Finally, I insist that the platform such as NCRB for utilizing teaching resources is essential to improve the Japanese language education in Europe.
Paper short abstract:
An investigation of natural conversations reveals that pragmatic knowledge, which cannot be acquired from the existing textbooks, is essential in Europe where Japanese is not the second language but a foreign language.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation focuses on the conjunctional auxiliaries kara and node manifested both in teaching materials for conversations and in natural conversations. It explores what the usages of these grammatical items suggest regarding the subjective and objective behaviors. It also points out that a choice between kara and node presupposes the vertical and horizontal relationships (power and solidarity) between two speakers. This study then investigates the validity of the reversal usage of kara and node through an examination of Lakoff's (1973) statement that a polite conversation exchanged between given two speakers with close relationship widens their psychological distance.
It is generally perceived that kara is subjevtive and node is objective (Nagano, 1952). Researchers employ this framework for understanding the choice between kara and node. For instance, Daijirin and The Dictionary of Japanese Sentence Structure state that kara is stronger than node in terms of subjectivity. Some researchers, however, are in direct opposition to this view and define kara as objective while node as subjective (Yamashita, 1986; Makino, 1996; Makino, 2007). This proposal begins by summarizing the preceding studies using "assertiveness". Employing an original scale "± assertiveness", it first investigates six textbooks for conversation to explore the presence of pragmatic knowledge. It then generates a check sheet for guiding a choice between kara and node in order to compare and contrast the textbooks for conversations and natural conversations through an investigation of the "BTSJ Conversation Corpus": 1) Thesis instructions between college professors and students, 2) Casual conversations between those who met for the first time and between friends, 3) Telephone conversations where female speakers declining a request, and 4) Telephone conversations including requests between the same sex (male/male and female/female).
CEFR indicates "socio-linguistic appropriateness". Yet, it does not seem to shed light on the role of pragmatic knowledge. An investigation of natural conversations reveals that pragmatic knowledge, which cannot be acquired from the existing textbooks, is essential in Europe where Japanese is not the second language but a foreign language.