Learning English Through a Japanese Filter - Case Study Example

Learning English Through a Japanese Filter: A Case Study Case study 1: Mari Introduction Mari is a thirty year old Japanese woman, married to an Australian native English speaker named Bill. She has been living in Australia for the last five years, though she had spent a year in the country before this period. This is a report to examine the factors influencing Mari’s course of learning of the English language. Factors Influencing Mari’s Development of L2 Similarities and Differences between L1 and L2 There is literally a world of difference between Mari’s L1 (Japanese) and her L2 (English). These differences influence her ability to learn her L2. Some of these disparities are simple and basic while others are deep and cutting. A good example of a simple basic difference between Japanese and English is in the sentence structure. In Japanese, verbs come at the end of a sentence, utterance or clause while in English, they appear fairly early into the same. For example: in this sentence, “kanojo wa（は）gakuskei”, the verb to be expected at the end of this sentence is “desu” (She is [a] student). This can be thoroughly confusing for an L2 learner who’s L1 is Japanese. It would take a lot of getting used to for the learner to get a firm grasp on sentence structure and where each part of speech belongs in their new language (Kuno 1973). Further, there are no Japanese equivalents for the English articles “a”, “an” or “the”. There is no use of these words in the language as evidenced in the sentence mentioned earlier: “kanojo wa（は）gakuskei desu”… ‘she is student”… the article “a” is missing, which would make this sentence grammatically incorrect if it were written that way in English. To add to the list of words that don’t translate to Japanese from English is the verb “to be”. Whereas this verb is irregular in English and takes after the person they modify (first person, second person, and so on), the same verb in Japanese remains the same throughout these sentences: “kanojo wa（は）gakuskei desu”… “She is (a) student” versus “boku/watashi wa (は) gakuskei desu” … “I am (a) student”. The verb “desu” remains the same despite the change in person (Lightbown & Spada 2013; Suzuki 2006). Possessive forms of pronouns or nouns are also absent in Japanese. The form of the word “I” are used to say “boku/watashi no gakuskei”…“My student”. In this sentence, “boku/watashi” are the male and female forms of the word “I”, and they are used to refer to the possessor. Moreover, the prepositions “on”, “in”, “to” and so on are absent as well in Japanese. The purposes of these words are served by other structural particles instead like “ni” for example, and depending on where they are placed, they dictate the ‘direction’, so to speak, in which the action was done. There are also no plurals in Japanese. Nouns are used in the same form regardless of the amount they signify, and the only way the listener understands whether the noun is singular or plural form the context. An interesting distinction between Japanese and English is that in Japanese, men and women intentionally speak differently. Women speak in a high-pitched, shrill voice while men tend to prefer the lower, gruff types of voices (Deutscher 2010a; Tsujimura 2007). Despite the numerous differences, there are similarities between the two languages. Some English words, bīru (beer) for example, have been adopted into the Japanese language. Others include, aisu (ice), gurasu (glass), and hoteru (hotel) among others. There are also some words which originate in other languages found in the Japanese language. Such words as pan (bread) which has its roots in the Portuguese word pão. Other words found in Japanese are created by combining two English words like sarariman (salaryman) meaning a corporate employee who is male while OL (pronounced like ōeru) is the acronym for “office lady” (Tsujimura 2007; May 2015). These differences in addition to the absence of the sound “l” in Japanese influence Mari’s SLA journey. They influence how she pronounces her words, how she chooses to structure her sentences, her ability to understand others when they speak in English, and how well she is able to disconnect herself from her L1 in order to give her L2 a chance to thrive on its own without the former constantly casting its shadow on the latter. While the differences work against her ability to speak and write grammatically correct English, the similarities help bridge the huge gap between the two languages while helping the new language to appear less strange and intimidating to Mari (Halliday 1993). Psychological factors Psychological factors influencing the acquisition of L2 can be broadly categorized into two main groups: internal and external factors. Internal factors include age, attitude, aptitude, personality, cognitive style, hemisphere specialization, learning styles, as well as motivation and attitude. External factors on the other hand involve the learning and teaching contexts of L2 as well as the interaction to its input and how all these interact with each other (Dörnyei 2005). On age, it has been found that the quickest L2 learners are adolescents (critical age is 15 years), followed by adults, then finally by children. Adults do better overall than children in grammar, though sometimes children may outdo adults in terms of pronunciation (Dörnyei 2009). In formal contexts of learning, adults do better than children on all accounts, even though they tend to perform just below the level of adolescents. Mari, being an adult in her thirties should do well in her quest to learn English if exposure is enough and if her learning is carried out in a formal context (Lightbown & Spada 2013). Aptitude is another factor that plays a role in SLA. Though there is not much research done in this area, it has been demonstrated by Deutscher (2010b) that phonetic coding ability, grammatical sensitivity, associative memory, and inductive language analytic ability contribute in part to a learner’s ability to pick up a second language. Though phonetic coding ability (the ability to isolate sounds in a foreign language and therefore to later recall them) varies from person to person, it has not been proven to sway the process of learning. Associative memory, on the other hand, is defined as the ability to single out similarities between words in the foreign language to those of the native language. This factor was formerly important, but the sway it holds has diminished over time; it is therefore not viewed as a powerful predictor of success. Grammatical sensitivity is the capacity to grasp the role that different words play in sentences (the recognition of linguistic function as opposed to express representation). This plays quite the role in SLA, and the differences between L1 and L2, as well as the variation in grammatical sensitivity work together to influence the fate of an L2 learner. Finally, inductive language analytic ability is the ability to understand the patterns of a language whether in speech or in writing. This predicts the learner’s ability to predict the behavior of the new language, and subsequently influences the pace at which they commit the language to memory. Aptitude can therefore be summarized into three main components: linguistic, memory, and auditory abilities. These three work together to help predict the outcome of the learner in SLA in this way: the higher the learner’s aptitude, the smoother their learning process (Lightbown & Spada 2013). Concerning learner attitudes, it has been evidenced that early learner attitudes show less correlation with SLA success, while conversely; later attitudes do show high correlation with the same (Deutscher 2010a). This can be explained in part by the fact that the duration of L2 learning has the ability to influence learner attitudes—the longer the duration of learning, the more positive the attitude to the foreign language. Also the attitudes of the people the learner interacts with influence the learner’s attitude, and eventually their SLA success. Mari’s community is made up of other women with the same amount or an even less knowledge of English than she has. They speak to each other in their native language of Japanese. Moreover, Mari and her husband speak a concoction of English and Japanese at home, though she has recently seen the need to improve her English. It is possible to draw from the context that Mari originally had a poor attitude to English, but due to a number of reasons (especially the need to perform better her role as a parent to her young son), her attitude has since improved, and with the improvement in attitude, her motivation has gone up. The more motivated learners are, the more likely they are to succeed in SLA (Dörnyei 2009). It can therefore be safely predicted, that Mari’s SLA journey is likely to see a change for the better from here on out, if these factors are held constant. Personality differences are able to influence SLA success in the following ways: extroversion has shown a negative correlation with pronunciation, while introversion has been positively correlated with higher grammar and reading scores. Though extroverts do not perform better (simply because of the fact that they are extroverts), they have been seen to be more resilient in their study, thus their SLA success is more likely than introverts. The willingness to take risks and appear to be foolish, gives such learners the advantage over those who are not. In the same vein, lower sensitivity to rejection, higher empathy levels, and lower inhibition helps in SLA success. In general, psychological factors are just as important for L2 success as any of the other groups of factors. Even when it’s all in one’s head, it’s as real as any “real” thing to them (Halliday 1993). Social Factors Communication being a form of social interaction is influenced by social settings. This in turn is bound to influence the process of language acquisition, and in this context, the L2 success or failure. The premise of this argument is built on the foundation of such pragmatists as Thomas (1995), who surmised that language is an inherently ambiguous thing. We have already seen how in Japanese, interpretation and meaning of sentences, not simply words alone, changes depending on context. This context is often subject to social influence, thus proving that social factors do influence languages and their acquisition. A strong social factor—age –has already been discussed before. Other social factors include cultural background and economic status. Cultural backgrounds inculcate specific value systems within the speakers of the languages within those contexts. For example, in a comparative study on the social differences between the Japanese and American English, Hill et al. (1986) reveal that there is a gross difference in the languages used in requesting between Japanese and English. In Japanese, it was found that there was a much wider range of vocabulary for expressing oneself depending on the degree of solidarity and power distance between the two communicators as compared to American English in which this distribution was found to be fairly average. This distinction does not always translate, and this may explain why Asian cultures tend to have such sharp differences in speech across different ranks and societal cadres (Ide 1998). Socioeconomic status often dictates language in terms of vocabulary and accents or pronunciation of certain words. The way a language is spoken tends to vary depending on social context, as does its meaning across these different contexts (Hofstede 1991). Conclusion Following the analysis above, when Mari’s age, social and psychological factors are considered, the success of her SLA seems likely provided her learning is carried out in a formal setting and she is fully immersed in her studies. The future seems bright if she is to fully utilize all the resources available to her, she will be able to learn and quickly succeed in her quest to learn English. References Deutscher, G. (2010a). Through the Looking Glass : Why the World Looks Different in Other Lan - guages. New York: Metropolitan Books. Deutscher, G. (2010b). Does your language shape how you think?. New York Times, [online] pp.52-62. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. [Accessed 19 Oct. 2015]. Dörnyei, Z. (2005). The psychology of the language learner. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum. Dörnyei, Z. (2009). The psychology of second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Halliday, M. (1993). Towards a language-based theory of learning. 1993, “˜Towards a language-based theory of learning, Linguistics and Education,” [online] 5, pp.93-116. Available at: http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Paper/JuneJuly05/HallidayLangBased.pdf [Accessed 17 Oct. 2015]. 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