Academic literature on the topic 'Japanese language Written Japanese Study and teaching (Higher) Foreign speakers Case studies'

This article addresses the issue of native-speakerism in teaching English in the context of Japanese higher education and the privilege arising from it. Previous research has shown that native speakers are often regarded as highly skilled and qualified teachers in teaching their mother tongue. This has often led to the marginalization of teachers who speak the language they teach as an additional language. In the case of Japan, however, there is doubt about the existence of such a privilege for native-speaker teachers and some studies have shown that native speakers of English do not receive preferential treatment in this context as they are often perceived as replaceable and temporary. The present study aimed to further explore this issue by focusing on the varieties of English Japanese universities expect their teachers to speak. In so doing, the study has investigated hiring policies of Japanese universities with reference to the job advertisements they post on a designated portal. The results of the qualitative thematic analysis indicated that the majority of the advertisements demanded prospective candidates to be native speakers of English, which also meant that this subgroup of teachers has a privilege in landing academic jobs by token of the variety of English they speak. The article suggests that the critical pedagogical approach of teaching English as an international language (TEIL) can mitigate such privilege by raising awareness towards the validity and appropriateness of different varieties of English spoken in the world.

The aims of this study are (1) to investigate the frequency, sources, and characteristics of foreign language anxiety regarding speaking activities in the case of learners of the Japanese language at two Croatian institutions of higher education, and (2) to determine which speaking activities anxious learners of Japanese in Croatia would willingly participate in, while remaining sufficiently challenged by the tasks to gain new or reinforce previously acquired linguistic knowledge. A questionnaire was distributed to 65 students at the University of Pula bachelor’s program in Japanese language and culture and the University of Zagreb’s Japanese studies program in February and March of 2018. The results point to lower than expected self-assessment of Japanese speaking competence and high levels of Japanese speaking anxiety, particularly due to the fear of making mistakes, the presence of other individuals relevant to the learning process (classmates, teachers, other native speakers of Japanese), and a lack of activities focused on meaningful interaction. Participant experiences with various learning methods point to their willingness to participate in non-structured, improvisational pair conversation exercises and the potential of these activities to help learners overcome debilitating language anxiety.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of education for sustainable development (ESD) approaches in English as a foreign language (EFL) in Japanese higher education. Design/methodology/approach A content and language integrated learning (CLIL) University-level course was run over two separate semesters: the first as a lecture-based course and the second was a similar course that integrated ESD best-practice. A program effects case study was used to see if any significant changes could be measured between the separate semesters. A mixed-methods approach to data collection was used and student marks, survey results using values, beliefs and norms (VBN) model and reflection tasks were collected across the two courses. Findings A meaningful change in the ascription of responsibility and personal norms was present in the ESD best-practice course. This shows that ESD best-practice integration into language teaching has a positive impact on student environmental VBN and more research is necessary for this area. Practical implications ESD integrated into language teaching correlates positively with environmental behavior change according to the VBN-model. A new field of study is proposed, language education for sustainable development, to better integrate the disciplines of EFL and ESD. Originality/value This study is looking at the integration of ESD in language teaching and CLIL based courses in Higher Education and, at present, there are no other studies of this kind.

AbstractIncreasing numbers of corporations are now operating across national borders as a result of globalization. The “language barrier” is the first and foremost challenge they encounter when starting a business in a foreign market, and many companies are trying to solve the problem by adopting a common corporate language. Using English as an official corporate language is the most common solution for those corporations. The present study explored the impacts of English as a corporate official language policy implemented at a company, a rapidly developed high profile IT Company with 20,000 employees, in Japan, a country often perceived to be relatively monolingual and monocultural. When I started studying the company, I first found that the company’s motive to use English as the official corporate language was different from other instances of corporate language policy making I had come across. In previous studies (e.g., Feely & Harzing 2003; Marschan-Piekkari, Welch, & Welch 1999), the companies implemented common corporate language to solve problems caused by language barriers between employees with diverse linguistic backgrounds. However, the company in this study implemented the corporate language policy to prepare for globalization and recruit talents globally. When the company introduced the English-only language policy, most of the employees of the company were Japanese. Therefore, at the time of implementing the language policy, there was no compelling reason for them to use English. The language policy did not work effectively except for a few departments with non-Japanese employees who spoke different first languages. English functioned as a lingua franca in those departments with multinational employees. The findings indicate that for NNESs (non-native English speakers) to communicate with each other in English, the environment has to be more multilingual, less dominated by a single first language. Although almost all Japanese citizens are required to take intensive English courses in compulsory schoolings, the average level of English proficiency is considered to be relatively low in the advanced economies. The present study indicates that it is not for linguistic competence but a lack of interaction with other ELF speakers. Therefore, for learners of ELF in an intensely monolingual society such as Japan to become competent communicators in ELF, providing multilingual learning environments would be more effective than the prevailing teaching practices of classroom learning in L1 Japanese speaker only environments.

It is my pleasure to introduce this thematic issue dedicated to the lexicography of Japanese as a second or foreign language, the first thematic issue in Acta Linguistica Asiatica since its inception.Japanese has an outstandingly long and rich lexicographical tradition, but there have been relatively few dictionaries of Japanese targeted at learners of Japanese as a foreign or second language until the end of the twentieth century. With the growth of Japanese language teaching and learning around the world, the rapid development of very large scale linguistic resources and language processing technologies for Japanese, a new generation of aggregated, collectively developed or crowd-sourced resources evolving in the context of the social web, a shift from static paper to constantly developing electronic resources, the spread of internet access on hand-held devices, and new approaches to the use of language reference resources stemming from these developments, dictionaries and other reference resources for learners, teachers and users of Japanese as a foreign/second language are being developed and used in new ways in different user communities. However, information about such developments often does not reach researchers, lexicographers, dictionary users and language teachers in other user communities or research spheres. This special issues wishes to contribute to the spread of such information by presenting some recent developments in this growing field.Having received a very lively response to our call for papers, not all papers selected for publishing could fit into this issue, and part of them will be included in the December issue of ALA, which is also going to be dedicated to Japanese lexicography.The first round of papers included in this issue presents a varied cross-section of current JFL lexicographical work and research. All papers in this issue point out the relative scarcity of appropriate reference works for learners of Japanese as a foreign language, especially when compared to lexicographical resources for Japanese native speakers, and each of the endeavours presented here confronts this lack with its own original approach. Reflecting the paradigm shift in Japanese language research, where corpus research is again playing a central role, most papers presented here take advantage of the bounty of newly available corpora and web data, most prominent among which is the Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese developed by the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics in Tokyo, and which is used by Mogi, Pardeshi et al. and Sunakawa et al. in their lexicographical research and projects, while Blin taps data for his research from the web, another increasingly important linguistic resource.The first two papers offer two perspectives on existing Japanese dictionaries. Tom Gally in his paper Kokugo Dictionaries as Tools for Learners: Problems and Potential points out the drawbacks of currently available Japanese dictionaries from the perspective of learners of Japanese as a foreign language, but at the same time offers a very detailed and convincing explanation of the merits of monolingual Japanese dictionaries for native speakers (kokugo dictionaries), such as their comprehensiveness, detailedness and quantity of contextual information, when compared to bilingual dictionaries, which make them a potentially useful resource even for an audience they are not targeting - foreign language learners. His detailed explanation of possible uses and potential hurdles and pitfalls learners may encounter in using them, is not only accurate and informative, but also of immediate practical value for language teachers and lexicographers.Toshinobu Mogi, in his paper Towards the Lexicographic Description of the Grammatical Behaviour of Japanese Loanwords: A Case Study, investigates the lexicographic description of loanwords in Japanese reference works and notes how information offered by currently available dictionaries, especially regarding the grammatical aspects of loanword use, is not sufficient for learners of Japanese as a foreign language. After pointing our the deficiencies of current dictionary descriptions and noting how dictionaries sense divisions do not reflect the frequency of different senses in actual use, as reflected in a large-scale representative general corpus of Japanese, he uses a fascinatingly detailed analysis of the behaviour of a Japanese loanword verb to describe a corpus-based method of lexical description, based on the correspondence between usage forms and senses, which could be used for the compilation of Japanese learners' dictionaries meant for the reception and production of Japanese.The second part of this special issue is composed of four reports on particular aspects of ongoing lexicographical work targeted at learners of Japanese as a foreign language.Prashant Pardeshi, Shingo Imai, Kazuyuki Kiryu, Sangmok Lee, Shiro Akasegawa and Yasunari Imamura in their paper Compilation of Japanese Basic Verb Usage Handbook for JFL Learners: A Project Report, after pointing out - as other authors in this issue - the lack of a detailed and pedagogically sound lexicographical description of Japanese basic vocabulary for foreign learners, propose a corpus-based on-line system which incorporates insights from cognitive grammar, contrastive studies and second language acquisition research to solve this problem. They present their current implementation of such a system, which includes audio-visual material and translations into Chinese, Korean and Marathi. The system also uses natural language processing techniques to support lexicographers who need to process daunting amounts of corpus data in order to produce detailed lexical descriptions based on actual use.The next article by Marcella Maria Mariotti and Alessandro Mantelli, ITADICT Project and Japanese Language Learning, focus on the learner's perspective. They present a collaborative project in which Italian learners of Japanese compiled an on-line Japanese-Italian dictionary using a purposely developed on-line dictionary editing system, under the supervision of a small group of teachers. One practical and obvious outcome of the project is a Japanese-Italian freely accessible lexical database, but the authors also highlight the pedagogical value of such an approach, which stimulates students' motivation for learning, hones their ICT skills, makes them more aware of the structure and usability of existing lexicographic and language learning resources, and helps them learn to cooperate on a shared task and exchange peer support.The third project report by Raoul Blin, Automatic Addition of Genre Information in a Japanese Dictionary, focuses on the labelling of lexical genre, an aspect of word usage which is not satisfactorily presented in current Japanese dictionaries, despite its importance for foreign language learners when using dictionaries for production tasks. The article describes a procedure for automatic labelling of genre by means of a statistical analysis of internet-derived genre-specific corpora. The automatisation of the process simplifies its later reiteration, thus making it possible to observe lexical genre development over time.The final paper in this issue is a report on The Construction of a Database to Support the Compilation of Japanese Learners’ Dictionaries, by Yuriko Sunakawa, Jae-ho Lee and Mari Takahara. Motivated by the lack of Japanese bilingual learners' dictionaries for speakers of most languages in the world, the authors engaged in the development of a database of detailed corpus-based descriptions of the vocabulary needed by learners of Japanese from beginning to advanced level. By freely offering online the basic data needed for bilingual dictionary compilation, they are building the basis from which editors in under-resourced language areas will be able to compile richer and more up-to-date contents even with limited human and financial resources. This project is certainly going to greatly contribute to the solution of existing problems in Japanese learners' lexicography.

It has been widely recognized that Chinese and Japanese languages are exceptionally difficult to learn. One of the reasons is their logographic characters (i.e. hanzi in Chinese, kanji in Japanese) that are extremely different from alphabet-based orthography (Tong & Yip, 2015; Xu & Padilla, 2013). Accordingly, there have been research investigating how L2 learners of Chinese and Japanese deal with the difficulty by exploring learners’ strategy (Gamage, 2003; Shen, 2005). However, learning strategies for a certain aspect of characters (i.e. shape, sound) have not been investigated as much as learning strategies in general (but see Shen, 2005). In addition, there are limited longitudinal research exploring how learners change their strategies. Therefore, the researchers investigate strategies that L2 learners of American university students are using most frequently for Chinese and Japanese character learning. The study had 66 L2 learners taking either Chinese or Japanese course at an American university. They took a questionnaire at the beginning and at the end of a semester. It was found that reading, context, decomposition, rote-writing, and listening were the most frequently used strategies. Moreover, the results indicated that strategies vary depending on which aspect of characters they learn. Furthermore, learners did not change their learning strategies over three months to a notable extent. References Chikamatsu, N. (1996). The effects of L1 orthography on L2 word recognition: A study ofAmerican and Chinese learners of Japanese. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18,403–432. Everson, M. E. (1998). Word recognition among learners of Chinese as a foreign language:Investigating the relationship between naming and knowing. The Modern LanguageJournal, 82, 194–204. Everson, M. E. (2011). Best practices in teaching logographic and non-Roman writingsystems to L2 learners. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 31, 249–274. Haththotuwa Gamage, G. (2003). Perceptions of kanji learning strategies: Do they differamong Chinese character and alphabetic background learners? Hayes, E. B. (1988). Encoding strategies used by native and non‐native readers ofChinese Mandarin. The Modern Language Journal, 72, 188–195. Ke, C. (1998). Effects of language background on the learning of Chinese charactersamong foreign language students. Foreign Language Annals, 31, 91–102. Liskin-Gasparro, J. (1982). ETS Oral Proficiency Testing Manual. Educational TestingService, Princeton, NJ. McGinnis, S. (1999). Student goals and approaches. Mapping the course of the Chineselanguage field, 151–188. Mori, Y., Sato, K., & Shimizu, H. (2007). Japanese language students' perceptions on kanjilearning and their relationship to novel kanji word learning ability. LanguageLearning, 57, 57–85. Packard, J. L. (1990). Effects of time lag in the introduction of characters into the Chineselanguage curriculum. The Modern Language Journal, 74, 167–175. Rose, H. (2013). L2 learners' attitudes toward, and use of, mnemonic strategies whenlearning Japanese kanji. The Modern Language Journal, 97, 981–992. Shen, H. H. (2005). An investigation of Chinese-character learning strategies among nonnative speakers of Chinese. System, 33, 49–68. Tong, X., & Yip, J. H. Y. (2015). Cracking the Chinese character: radical sensitivity inlearners of Chinese as a foreign language and its relationship to Chinese wordreading. Reading and Writing, 28, 159–181. Yuki, M. (2009). Kanji Learning Strategies: From the Viewpoint of Learners with Nonkanji Background. 関西外国語大学留学生別科日本語教育論集, 19, 143–150. Xu, Y., Chang, L. Y., & Perfetti, C. A. (2014). The Effect of Radical‐Based Grouping inCharacter Learning in Chinese as a Foreign Language. The Modern Language Journal, 98,773–793. Xu, X., & Padilla, A. M. (2013). Using meaningful interpretation and chunking to enhancememory: The case of Chinese character learning. Foreign Language Annals, 46, 402–422.

Yet another year has come to its end. It brought us some new ideas and we have spent several months in preparations to realize them.The greatest change is that we may be expecting the new ALA issue within a month, in January 2018 already. From the year to come, we will still be publishing two issues per year, with the winter issue published in January coming first. The second issue will be the summer issue, published in July. At this opportunity we would like to express our gratitude to all the authors in the ALA journal, and alongside send out our call for new articles. All the rest of the changes might only be noticed by our regular readers, while newcomers will hopefully find our e-journal competent, functional, and user friendly. This number of the ALA journal is mostly dedicated to the area of translation studies, however, also contains three interesting works on language. Wing Bo Anna TSO in her work “Repressed Sexual Modernity: A Case Study of Herbert Giles’ (1845 - 1935) Rendition of Pu Songling’s Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (1880) in the Late Qing” attempts the literary-cultural approach and investigates the lost in translation. She focused on examining gender ideologies in the original and translated work to find out that transgressive gender views get strongly repressed in Giles’ English rendition.A similar thought, namely the importance of the cultural background of the text in translation is stressed in the article “Metaphor in Translation: Cognitive Perspectives on Omar Khayyam’s Poetry as Rendered into English and Kurdish”, written by Rahman VEISI HASAR and Ehsan PANAHBAR. As metaphors as cognitive phenomena can not be relegated to linguistic expression only, the research findings reveal that translators have mostly been successful in translating metaphors dependent on shared cultural models, however, have failed to recreate metaphors dependent on non-shared cultural models.Difficulties in translating metaphors were also experienced by Eva VUČKOVIČ and Byoung Yoong KANG, who in their article “Prevajanje Ko Unove poezije iz korejščine v slovenščino” address several major problems they have encountered when translating poetry from Korean into Slovene. The aricle is written in Slovene and is a pionieering work on translation studies from Korean into Slovene.Lija GANTAR wrote an article “Ancient Greek Legend in Modern Japanese Literature: ‘Run, Melos!’ by Dazai Osamu” in which she discusses how the Japanese author managed to retell a Western literature story in a way to succesfully make it a part of the Japanese literature. The following three articles refer to language. Sweta SINHA in her article “Fuzzy Logic Based Teaching/Learning of a Foreign Language in Multilingual Situations” managed to incorporate the concept of Fuzzy Logic (FL), which primarily gained momentum in the areas of artificial intelligence and allied researches, into a foreign language classroom. She describes language pedagogy as more real-like when observed through the lens of fuzzy logic and fuzzy thinking, and claims that in that way language interference is more of a resource than a challenge.Now already a sequential work on adjective distribution was contributed by LI Wenchao, who wrote the article “Revisit Adjective Distribution in Chinese”. In it the author re-classifies Chinese monosyllabic adjectives and verbs in light of ‘scale structure’ and examines how various adjectives are associated with different scalar layers of verbs. Finally, an interesting project report on the development of early Persian vocabulary in the process of first language acquisition was written by Hajar SHAHHOSEINI. The report is entitled “Investigation of Early Vocabulary Development of a Persian Speaking Child at Age 2 Years Old in Iran”.Editors and Editorial Board thank all the contributors to this volume, and wish the regular and new readers of the ALA journal a pleasant read full of inspiration.

Existing research on syntactic complexity tends to examine diversity and complexity embedded in grammatical employments which may well be witnessed in formulations of different syntactic structures. Conceivably, the subject syntactic complexity seems to be exercised mostly by non-native speakers and writers. The present study employs pseudo-longitudinal data: essays written by undergraduate students in different levels collected at the same time. Hence, it aims at investigating the mechanism involved in the L2 production of L2 learners in terms of syntactic complexity by analyzing a corpus of non-native English-speaking learners. The research inquiry is mainly focused on investigation of significant differences in terms of syntactic complexity between writing of Japanese university students and that of native speakers, probing further into the particular dimension and level of difference. The study also traces marked variations in syntactic complexity employed by Japanese university students in different grades. Nagoya Interlanguage Corpus of English (NICE) developed by Sugiura in 2015 was employed to conduct the entire research proceedings. The corpus of the subject study comprises 339 essays written by L2 EFL learners studying in a Japanese university employing a judicious selection of quantitative measures of syntactic complexity. The results exhibited a considerable statistical difference between the writing of Japanese learners and native English writers. The findings of this study provide meaningful pedagogical implications for English teachers and textbook compilers. Japanese university students in higher grades are found to be employing more complicated and diverse syntactic structures. Conforming to the already conducted research studies with almost similar objectives, this study demonstrates the significance of using both general and more particular complexity metrics to assess syntactic development in L2.

05–396Altenberg, Evelyn P. (Hofstra U, USA; sphepa@hofstra.edu), The perception of word boundaries in a second language. Second Language Research (London, UK) 21.4 (2005), 325–358.05–397Baker, Wendy (Brigham Young U, USA) & Pavel Trofimovich, Interaction of native- and second-language vowel system(s) in early and late bilinguals. Language and Speech (Twickenham, UK) 48.1 (2005), 1–27.05–398Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen (Indiana U, USA; bardovi@indiana.edu) & Robert Griffin, L2 pragmatic awareness: evidence from the ESL classroom. System (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 33.3 (2005), 401–415.05–399Barron, Anne (Universität Bonn, Germany; a.barron@uni-bonn.de), Variational pragmatics in the foreign language classroom. System (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 33.3 (2005), 519–536.05–400Barwell, Richard (U of Bristol, UK; richard.barwell@bris.ac.uk), Working on arithmetic word problems when English is an additional language. British Educational Research Journal (Abingdon, UK) 31.3 (2005), 329–348.05–401Benazzo, Sandra (CNRS & U of Lille 3, France), L'expression de la causalité dans le discours narratif en français L1 et L2 [The expression of causality in French narrative discourse]. Langages (Paris, France) 155 (2005), 33–51.05–402Carroll, Susanne E. (U of Potsdam, Germany; carroll@rz.uni-potsdam.de), Input and SLA: adults' sensitivity to different sorts of cues to French gender. Language Learning (Malden, MA, USA) 55.S1 (2005), 177, 79–138.05–403Chamot, Anna Uhl (George Washington U, Washington, DC, USA; auchamot@gwu.edu), Language learning strategy instruction: current issues and research. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (Cambridge, UK) 25 (2005), 112–130.05–404Chen, Aoju (Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, the Netherlands), Carlos Gussenhoven & Toni Rietveld, Language-specificity in the perception of paralinguistic intonational meaning. Language and Speech (Twickenham, UK) 47.4 (2004), 311–349.05–405Cheng, Gao Yihong, Ying Zhao Yuan & Zhou Yan (Peking U, China; gaoyh@pku), Self-identity changes and English learning among Chinese undergraduates. World Englishes (Oxford, UK) 24.1 (2005), 39–51.05–406Chew, Kheng-Suan (Hong Kong Baptist U, Hong Kong, China; kschew@hkbu.edu.hk), An investigation of the English language skills used by new entrants in banks in Hong Kong. English for Specific Purposes (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 24.4 (2005), 423–435.05–407Chieh-Fang, Hu (Taipei Municipal Teacher's College, Taiwan, China; cfhu@tmtc.edu.tw) & C. Melanie Schuele, Learning non-native names: the effect of poor native phonological awareness. Applied Psycholinguistics (Cambridge, UK) 26.3 (2005), 343–362.05–408Clachar, Arlene (U of Miami, USA; aclachar@miami.edu), Creole English speakers' treatment of tense-aspect morphology in English interlanguage written discourse. Language Learning (Malden, MA, UK) 55.2 (2005), 275–334.05–409Clark, Martyn K. & Saori Ishida (U of Hawai'i, Manoa, USA; martync@hawaii.edu), Vocabulary knowledge differences between placed and promoted EAP students. Journal of English for Academic Purposes (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 4.3 (2005), 225–238.05–410Dahl, Tove I., Margrethe Bals & Anne Lene Turi (U of Tromsø, Norway; tdahl@psyk.uit.no), Are students' beliefs about knowledge and learning associated with their reported use of learning strategies?British Journal of Educational Psychology (Leicester, UK) 75.2 (2005), 257–273.05–411Dalton-Puffer, Christiane (U of Vienna, Austria; christiane.dalton-puffer@univie.ac.at), Negotiating interpersonal meanings in naturalistic classroom discourse: directives in content-and-language-integrated classrooms. Journal of Pragmatics37.8 (2005), 1275–1293.05–412DaSilva, Iddings & Ana Christina (Vanderbilt U, USA), Linguistic access and participation: English language learners in an English-dominant community of practice. Bilingual Research Journal (Tempe, AZ, USA) 29.1 (2005), 165–183.05–413Davis, Adrian (Macao Polytechnic Institute, China), Teachers' and students' beliefs regarding aspects of language learning. Evaluation and Research in Education (Clevedon, UK) 17.4 (2004), 207–222.05–414De Angelis, Gessica (U of Toronto at Mississauga, Canada; gdeangel@utm.utoronto.ca), Interlanguage transfer of function words. Language Learning (Malden, MA, USA) 55.3 (2005), 379–414.05–415Dekydtspotter, Laurent (Indiana U, USA; ldekydts@indiana.edu) & Jon C. Hathorn, Quelque chose…de remarquable in English–French acquisition: mandatory, informationally encapsulated computations in second language interpretation. Second Language Research (London, UK) 21.4 (2005), 291–323.05–416Demagny, Annie-Claude (Université de Paris VIII, France) & Urszula Paprocka-Pietrowska, L'acquisition du lexique verbal et des connecteurs temporels dans les récits de fiction en français L1 et L2 [The acquisition of the lexis of verbs and of temporal connectors in the telling of fictional stories in French as L1 and L2]. Langages (Paris, France) 155 (2005), 52–75.05–417Dewaele, Jean-Marc (U of London; j.dewaele@bbk.ac.uk), Investigating the psychological and emotional dimensions in instructed language learning: obstacles and possibilities. The Modern Language Journal (Malden, MA, USA) 89.3 (2005), 367–380.05–418Fleckenstein, Kristie S. (Ball State U, Muncie, USA; kflecken@bsu.edu), Faceless students, virtual places: emergence and communal accountability in online classrooms. Computers and Composition (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 22.2 (2005), 149–176.05–419Goldschneider, Jennifer M. & Robert M. DeKeyser (U of Pittsburgh, USA; RDK1@pitt.edu), Explaining the ‘natural order of L2 morpheme acquisition’ in English: a meta-analysis of multiple determinants. Language Learning (Malden, MA, UK) 55.S1 (2005), 27–77.05–420Grüter, Theres (McGill U, Québec, Canada; theres.gruter@mail.mcgill.ca), Comprehension and production of French object clitics by child second language learners and children with specific language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics (Cambridge, UK) 26.3 (2005), 363–391.05–421Hincks, Rebecca (The Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden; hincks@speech.kth.se), Measures and perceptions of liveliness in student oral presentation speech: a proposal for automatic feedback mechanism. System (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 33.4 (2005), 575–591.05–422Huang, Jing (Zhanjiang Teachers U, China; peterjh@hkusua.hku.hk), A diary study of difficulties and constraints in EFL learning. System (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 33.4 (2005), 609–621.05–423Kempe, Vera (U of Stirling, UK) & Patricia J. Brooks, The role of diminutives in the acquisition of Russian gender: can elements of child-directed speech aid in learning morphology?Language Learning (Malden, MA, USA) 55.S1 (2005), 139–176.05–424Kirtley, Susan (Western Oregon U, USA; kirtleys@wou.edu), Students' views on technology and writing: the power of personal history. Computers and Composition (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 22.2 (2005), 209–230.05–425Kiss, Csilla (Tessedik Sámuel College, Hungary; cskiss@hu.inter.net) & Marianne Nikolov, Developing, piloting, and validating an instrument to measure young learners' aptitude. Language Learning (Malden, MA, USA) 55.1 (2005), 99–150.05–426Krashen, Stephen (U of Southern California, USA) & Clara Lee Brown, The ameliorating effects of high socioeconomic status: a secondary analysis. Bilingual Research Journal (Tempe, AZ, USA) 29.1 (2005), 185–196.05–427Mahoney, Kate S. & Jeff MacSwan (Arizona State U, USA), Reexamining identification and reclassification of English language learners: a critical discussion of select state practices. Bilingual Research Journal (Tempe, AZ, USA) 29.1 (2005), 31–42.05–428McColl, Hilary (Tayside, Scotland, UK; h.mccoll@clara.co.uk), Foreign language learning and inclusion: Who? Why? What? – and How?Support for Learning (Oxford, UK) 20.3 (2005), 103–108.05–429Meiring, Lynne (U of Wales, Swansea, UK) & Nigel Norman, How can ICT contribute to the learning of foreign languages by pupils with SEN?Support for Learning (Oxford, UK) 20.3 (2005), 129–134.05–430Morgan, Brian (York U, Toronto, Canada; bmorgan@yorku.ca) & Vaidehi Ramanathan, Critical literacies and language education: global and local perspectives. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (Cambridge, UK) 25 (2005), 151–169.05–431Mortimore, Tilly (U of Southampton, UK; t.mortimore@soton.ac.uk), Dyslexia and learning style–a note of caution. British Journal of Special Education (Oxford, UK) 32.3 (2005) 145–148.05–432Murphy, Ellen (Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland; igrey@tcd.ie), Ian M. Grey & Rita Honan, Co-operative learning for students with difficulties in learning: a description of models and guidelines for implementation. British Journal of Special Education (Oxford, UK) 32.3 (2005), 157–164.05–433Murray, Denise E. (Macquarie U, Australia; denise.murrays@mq.edu.au), Technologies for second language literacies. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (Cambridge, UK) 25 (2005), 188–201.05–434Myles, Florence (U of Newcastle, UK; Florence.Myles@ncl.ac.uk), Interlanguage corpora and second language acquisition research. 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Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: Through use of a written questionnaire, this article examines the personal opinions of tertiary-level Japanese intermediate EFL students regarding the definition and process of becoming bilingual. Design/methodology/approach: This article takes a critical applied linguistic approach to examining the perspectives of emergent bilingual Japanese EFL learners regarding their own status as bilingual speakers in Japan. Data and analysis: This study employed a questionnaire involving both Likert and open perspective questions. The subsequent data analysis involved quantitative analysis of the Likert questions and qualitative analysis of the open-ended questions, according to emerging themes. Findings/conclusions: The results suggest that most of the Japanese emergent bilingual participants did not view themselves as being bilingual, and instead considered the notion of bilingualism to be an out-of-reach goal at their current level. This article suggests the need to educate foreign language (FL) learners of their emergent bilingual status so they may dismiss the idea of attaining native-like competence and embrace their status as competent emergent bilinguals. Originality: Whereas many studies examine (emergent) bilingualism from the perspective of minorities learning a majority language, this article has expanded upon the current body of bilingualism literature by investigating the perspectives of bilingualism from speakers of a majority language learning a minority language, as is the case in all FL education environments. Significance/implications: This article provides an insight into the issue of FL learners’ lack of recognition of their own emergent bilingualism. It brings attention to the need for FL teachers to inform students of their emergent bilingual status to leverage their bilingual languaging strategies so that they can make meaning, express themselves, and learn in their ever-increasing bilingual worlds.

The effectiveness of language requires that users of a language be provided with the right knowledge to cope with its complexity and demanding nature especially in the area of writing. In this sense, this thesis sought to draw attention to some of the important features of writing and speaking skills in the English language at two higher learning institutions in Namibia. English is a second language for students at these institutions. Articles 3 and 20 of the Namibian Constitution stipulate that the language policy must promote the use of English in schools (The Constitution of Namibia (1990). It is now 24 years since English as medium of instruction was introduced in schools and tertiary institutions, but some students’ English proficiency is still relatively poor, especially in writing and speaking communication skills. This study investigated the barriers that prevent students to write and speak English well at University A and University B. The writing and speaking skills were investigated through the lens of syllabi/study guides, and lack of practical teaching of oral communication and writing skills inter alia morphology and syntax. Fifty-seven respondents took part in the research, comprising Heads of Departments (Language, Communication and Language Centre), Course Coordinators, lecturers and students in the English field at the two institutions investigated. Students were deliberately selected for the questionnaire to illustrate the difficulties they face when writing and speaking English as a second language. The lecturers were also deliberately selected because they were the ones who were with the students in classrooms. This study used qualitative research to gather information through methods such as observation, interviews, open-response questionnaire items, document analysis and verbal reports. The following were the main findings. There was a lack of specific teaching objectives in oral communication and written skills in the syllabi, while the inability of students to write correct sentences, and the limited time allocated to these courses also played a role. The conclusion drawn from this study is that students’ communicative competency is very poor. Therefore, it is the opinion of this researcher that improvement is much needed regarding syllabi content, teaching approaches of speaking and writing skills, students’ admission criteria and the time frame allocated for the different courses. To answer the research question: firstly the time allocated to some of the English courses is short, there is lack of teaching and learning of oral and writing skills approaches and, the syllabi were planned and design in a way that do not enhance much the teaching and learning of the second language. There are not many activities in the study guides that could be used to enhance students’ communicative competency. Such activities should include subject and verb agreement, passive and active form, sentence construction, word-building using prefixes and suffixes, auxiliaries or activities which give the students a chance to practice a certain aspect of language. Also, since English is a second language for students in Namibia, the institutions must seriously look at the time allocated to the courses they offer so that lecturers can appropriately apply proper approaches to teach writing and speaking skills.
Curriculum and Instructional Studies
D. Ed. (Curriculum Studies)