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Strategies for Learning Speech Acts in Japanese

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These modular units are specifically designed for intermediate to advanced-level learners of Japanese by Noriko Ishihara, a doctoral candidate in Second Languages and Cultures Education at the University of Minnesota under the direction of Professor Andrew D. Cohen, Director of the Language Resource Center and Professor in the MA in TESL Program at the University of Minnesota. This effort has received financial support from the National Language Resource Center, from the Graduate School, from the CLA Infotech Fees Committee of the University of Minnesota, and from the Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL) project at the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA). We wish to acknowledge the assistance of Japanese language instructors, input from other native Japanese speakers, and feedback from students of Japanese at the University of Minnesota at various pilot and research stages in the development of these materials and in the conducting of research on them. In addition, we wish to thank the technology experts at CARLA and the Language Center for their support on this project. Finally, we extend a most heartfelt thanks to our curriculum advisor, Prof. Elite Olshtain (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and our research advisor, Prof. Gabriele Kasper (University of Hawai’i).

More information for language teachers, researchers, and material developers can be found at the CARLA Speech Act Website. Also, please note that there is a link at the end of each speech act page to an annotated bibliography on the realization of that speech act in Japanese.

The information about the research study determining the effects of these curricular materials can be found at Learner Strategy Training in the Development of Pragmatic Ability at CARLA.

Please read the following information prior to the use of the curricular materials.

Information for Student Users

Information for Teachers

Information for Researchers

NOTE:

The exercises can be viewed best by the Internet Explorer Version 5 or higher on a PC. If you do not have this program currently installed on your computer, you are strongly encouraged to download a free copy from the Microsoft site. After downloading, please follow the instructions on the site for installation.

Some of the exercises include MP3 audio files. If you are not able to hear the audio in the exercises, depending on the configuration of your computer, you may be able to download a free MP3 player from one of the following sites: http://www.winamp.com/, http://download.com.com/3150-2199-0.html?tag=dir.

If Japanese characters are not readable, click "View" on the tool bar, select "Encoding," and select Japanese fonts. The exercises function better by using the Internet Explorer Version 5 or higher on a PC, instead of on a Mac.

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Exercises for Learners of Japanese

Let’s start by doing the exercises in Introduction to Speech Acts!

In these introductory exercises, you will be asked to write down your observations in each situation. Your responses will be e-mailed to us as soon as you finish with all each question and click on "Submit" at the end. Then, you will be able to see some comments regarding the question.

Situation 1 Situation 2 Situation 3 Situation 4

Situation 5 Situation 6 Situation 7 Situation 8

After finishing the Introductory exercises, move on to exercises for each speech act.

Apologies in Japanese

Compliments/Responses to Compliments in Japanese

Refusals in Japanese

Requests in Japanese

Thanks in Japanese

In concluding all speech act strategy exercises, you are invited to view an additional set of strategies for learning how to perform or enhance your performance of speech acts in a second language.

NOTE:

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