A longitudinal study of the development of expression of alignment in Japanese as a foreign language

Abstract

Introduction Foreign language curricula have traditionally focused on the grammar, sound system, and vocabulary of the target language, but with the advent of communicative language teaching, time has increasingly been devoted to activities which promote the ability to accomplish tasks in the target language, and to interact appropriately in different situations. Pedagogy texts encourage teachers to provide learners with authentic listening and speaking opportunities, and to teach them how to use the language for natural interactional processes, such as repair (Hadley, 1993; Lee & VanPatten, 1995). Little work has investigated, however, how participation in communicative classrooms relates to the development of learners' interactional competence. This chapter attempts to fill this gap by examining how two adult learners of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) develop the ability to use listener responses in Japanese, in particular expressions of acknowledgment and alignment. Facility with these is an important area of pragmatic competence in Japanese, where such expressions occur considerably more frequently than in English (Maynard, 1989; Strauss, 1995). The study draws on longitudinal data from a corpus of Japanese classroom interaction (Ohta, 2000b) which allows observation of how interactional style develops over time. Findings show the variability of the developmental pace of the two learners, but suggest that they follow a similar developmental sequence moving from expressions of acknowledgment to alignment. The results help in understanding pragmatic development in the FL classroom, and the role that the activities of the classroom setting and intervention of the teacher play in developmental processes.

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