WHAT CAN YOU DO TO FACILITATE YOUR L2 LEARNING？　

Yukiko A. Hatasa

Hiroshima University

Successful Language Learners

Successful L2 learners are: Highly motivated. Autonomous. Capable of using a variety of language learning

strategies. Select strategies that match with the learners’

cognitive styles, learning styles, and learning contexts and language use.

Able to maximize the opportunities for socialization with native speakers.

Motivation

The strongest predictor of General achievement Oral task engagement Extensive reading Reading comprehension Kanji knowledge(Gardner, 2003; Noels, 2000; Dornyei, 2005; Dönyei & Kormos, 2000; Maclntyre et al., 2003;

Yamashita, 2004. Schmidt,et al., 1996; Schmidt &Watanabe, 2001; Kondo-Brown, 2006)

Types of Motivation (Deci & Ryan,1985)

A) Intrinsic motivation (performing the task because of the inherent pleasure in doing so)

IM-knowledge (The pleasure involved in learning new things)

IM-accomplishments (The enjoyment inherent in mastering challenges or grasp a difficult construct in L2),

IM-stimulation (The general aesthetic pleasure of the experience, e.g., the high that I experience while speaking L2)

B) External motivation 1. Integrated regulation (L2 learning supports a v

aluable component of one’s identity and self-concept.)

2. Identified regulation (L2 learning will help him/her to achieve an important personal goal.)

3. introjected regulation (Imposing pressure on him/herself to perform an activity; e.g., I feel guilty if I didn’t know the L2. )

4. External regulation (An complete external control over the activity by the expectation of rewards or punishments, e.g. to get a job. )

C) Amotivation (absence of motivation. e.g., I don’t really understand what I am doing studying L2. )

Effects of Different Types Motivation

1. Intrinsic motivation is more effective than extrinsic motivation.

2. Intrinsic motivation is a predictor of: 1. Lower anxiety, increased tolerance of ambiguity2. Positive attitudes towards language learning3. Feelings of self-efficacy in language learning4. Increased language use and persistence 5. Increased grammatical sensitivity 6. Improvement on speaking and reading proficiency 7. Language learning strategy preferences8. Motivational intensity

(Ehrman, 1996; Noels et al., 1999, 2000; Ramage, 1990; Schmidt, Boraie, & Kassabgy, 1996; Tachibana, Matsukawa, & Zhong, 1996;Kondo-Brown 2006).

How to maintain your motivation and support strategic learning

1. Identify long-term and short-term goals (IM-accomplishment). Be realistic about your goals. Short term goals should be achievable with efforts and can see outcomes/effects within the time span you have specified.

2. Make an overall plan to achieve your short-term and long-term goals.

3. Choose a task to achieve short terms goals and work on it.

4. Choose an enjoyable task that is slightly difficult but not too difficult, such as reading books, watching anime or drama, listening to J-pop, playing games, etc. (IM-knowledge & IM-esthetics, IM-accomplishment)

5. Regularly check and reflect on what has worked or not worked, using checklists and logs.

6. If your original goals are found to be a bit unrealistic, modify your goals and plans to make them more realistic.

7. Relax and pay attention to the sign of stress.8. Reward yourself when you have done well on a

L2 task.9. Do not compare yourself with others.

Learning Strategies

1. Learning strategies are techniques employed by learners to facilitate learning and support autonomous long-term learning.

2. Learning to use strategies is like learning to drive. It takes practice and time to be good at it. But in a long run, having a good set of strategies will facilitate L2 learning.

3. Learning strategy is not a quick fix, so don’t expect an immediate result.

Types of Strategies

Direct StrategiesStrategies that deal with language directly.1. Memory Strategies

Creating mental linkages, applying images and sounds、 reviewing well, employing action

2. Cognitive Strategies Practicing, receiving and sending messages, analyzing and reasoning, creating structure for input and output

3. Compensation Strategies Guessing intelligently, overcoming limitations in speaking and writing

（ See Handout pp.5-13）

Indirect StrategiesStrategies that regulate your learning process

1. Metacognitive Strategies Centering your learning, arranging & planning your learning, evaluating your learning

2. Affective StrategiesLowering your anxiety, encouraging yourself, taking your

emotional temperature

3. Social Strategies Asking questions, cooperating with others , empathizing

with others

Effects of Learning Strategies

1. The use of appropriate language learning strategies often results in improved proficiency and achievement overall or in specific skill areas.

2. Successful language learners can: Use strategies that work well together in a highl

y orchestrated way, tailored to the requirements of the language task.

Explain the strategies they use and why they employ them.

(Chamot & Kupper, 1989/ Oxford et al., 1993; Thompson & Rubin, 1993;O'Malley & Chamot, 1990; Cohen et al.1997)

3. Well tailored combinations of strategies often have more impact than single strategies. Certain strategies or clusters of strategies are linked to particular language skills or tasks.

: .

Speaking risk-taking, paraphrasing, circumlocution, self-monitoring, self-evaluation

Listening elaborating, inferencing, selective attention, self-onitoring

Reading whispered reading, guessing, deduction, summarizing

Writing: planning, self-monitoring, deduction, substitution

How to Use Appropriate Strategies

1. Know your personality, belief , attitudes, and beliefs about language learning, your learning styles, and general approach to language learning.

Asian students tend not to have strong negative attitudes or belief towards memorization

Negative attitudes and beliefs often causing poor strategy use or lack of orchestration of strategies.

People who are impatient about unknown tend to develop negative attitudes.

2. Know what types of strategy works for different task types.

3. Choose a strategy that fits your learning style and that you think you can handle with reasonable efforts.

4. Limit a number of strategy to practice. 5. As you use the strategy, keep a checklist or log of

what worked and what not. 6. Once you become used to using the strategy,

select another strategy to practice. 7. Strategies should be chosen so that they mesh wi

th and support each other and so that they fit the requirements of the language task, the learners’ goals, and the learners’ style of learning.

Nativelikeness

1. Pronunciation

2. Fluency

3. Accuracy

4. Vocabulary (50,000 or more)

5. Appropriate choice and use of vocabulary and grammar.

6. Sociolinguistic competence

7. Discourse competence

How to Acquire Native-like Control

1. The acquisition of procedural knowledge is essential in order to use the language

2. However, most classroom learners are taught declarative knowledge.

3. Key to successful language learning is how fast you can move from the declarative knowledge stage to the procedural knowledge stage.

Declartive knowledge and Procdural knowledge

Declarative knowledge Knowledge you obtain through explanations,

reading, etc. It helps to understand how a language works

The acquisition of declarative knowledge is unrelated to language proficiency.

The use of this knowledge requires a lot of conscious control and efforts. Thus, language processing with this knowledge is slow.

Procedural knowledge Knowledge about how to do things, cannot be

easily explained verbally, and cannot obtained without a lot of practice in using language.

This type of knowledge is processed unconsciously and automatically, and thus language processing is extremely fast.

The automatization of low-level language elements such as phonology, lexicon, letter and word recognition, and grammar is essential for fluency.

How to automatize low-evel language elements?

Phonology

1. The most sigifiicant factor with which native speakers makes judgment about non-nativeness.

2. Among phonological features 1. Accent & intonation affects native speakers’

judgment more than other features. 2. An inability to differenciate long vowels, double

consonants, and non-special morae causes comprehension and production problems.

How to improve your pronunciation

1. People who can tell the native speaker’s model sound and your own tend to improve those who cannot (Ogawara, 1997).

2. Learning to pronounce correctly requires conscious and focused practice of target phonological features.

3. Repetition of a model sound with self-monitoring of your speech is necessary.

4. Once you get a feel of the correct pronunciation, use it over and over again in communication until it becomes a part of you.

Grammar

1. Grammar explanation helps to acquire the declarative knowledge, but it does not convert into the procedural knowledge without practice.

2. Mechanical drills such as repetitions help improve pronunciation, but no correlation is found between the amount of participation in mechanical drills and grammatical acquisition.

3. Repetition for the purpose of confirmation checks and clarification checks are more effective in internalizing grammar. Beginner should be encouraged to use this type of repetition.

4. Students tend to acquire grammatical competence more readily when they engage in tasks where they have to process information and use the language functionally.

5. When students take an initiative in conversation, grammatical complexity and speech acts vary more than teacher centered classroom.

6. Students tends to acquire answers to a problem that they themselves raised in classroom than those presented by the teacher.

(Seliger, 1977;Naiman et al 1978, Strong, 1984; Day, 1984; Ely, 1986, Dekeyser, 2007;

Cathcart, 1986; Ellis, Basturkmen, Loewen, 2001)

How to acquire procedural knowledge of grammar

During speaking:

1. Analyze your own form and the correct form

2. Analyze grammar and hypothesize the correct form using your knowledge of grammar.

3. Speak and try to get some feedback from your listener to test your hypothesis.

(Iwashita 1999, 2003, Philp 2003, Takahashi 2003, Oliver & Mackay 2003)。

4. Learn a lot of expressions that help you to negotiate meanings and use them during conversation in L2 (Long, 1991)

• Comprehension check (e.g.（私がいったことが／いみが） わかりますか？（この表現は／意味は）正しいですか。まちがっていませんか。）

• Confirmation check (e.g., 〜ですね。〜っていうことですか？〜っていいましたか , 〜ですか）

• Repetition• Clarification request （ e.g, あのう、今よくわからなかったんですけど， 〜がわからなかったんですけど , もういちどいってくれませんか， 〜ってなんですか。

5. Try to engage in one-to-one conversation. It increases the amout and complexity of speech, and helps improving the comprehension.

6. Ask your teachers to provide more opportunities for pair work. It should have a specific communicative goal and go beyond pattern practice with gaps or script with blanks. A good pair work should be task-oriented and can be extended to a real-life task.

7. (Pica & Doughty 1985; Pica, Young & Doughty 1987, Gass & Varonis 1994, Loschky 1994, Polio & Gass 1998; Mackay 1999, Ellis and He 1999, Ohta 1999, 2000).

After speaking

1. Try to write down what you have talked about and check the forms on your own.

2. Use check list (noticing log to find out what you have been able to or not able to do during the conversation.

Vocabulary Knowledge

1. Vocabulary knowledge is the key to beginning level conversation.

2. Vocabulary knowledge is the best predictor of reading proficiency.

(Nation, 2001)

Types of vocabulary knowledge

1. Word knowledge 2. Formulaic sequence (multi-word

strings)

Word knowledge (Mental lexicon)(Levelt, 1993)

Mental lexicon: meaning

1. Labeling

Matching the object and the word

2. Packaging Defining the scope of word meaning

3. Network building Paradigmatic relations (table-chair)

Syntagmatic relations (sit-chair)

Characteristics of vocabulary acquisition

1. Most of vocabulary is acquired incidentally.

2. Conscious learning or memorization of vocabulary has a limitation.

3. Many of the vocabulary items are learned through reading in the case of adults.

4. Using vocabulary in context is essential to build appropriate L2 mental lexicon.

(Anderson & Freebody,1981; Ammon, 1987; Garcia 1991; Flood et. al., 1991; Rupley, Logan, and Nichols , 1999)

Japanese word recognition(Kadota, 1998)

Orthographic representation

Visual input

Phonological representation

Semantic representation

Characteristics of Japanese word recognition

1. Visual shapes, sounds, and meanings must be processed in order to recognize words.

2. Processing orthographic information must be very fast for fluent recognition.

3. Use of information is different depending orthographic backgrounds. Alphabetic readers tend to rely heavily on sound information but Japanese readers use graphic information in addition to sounds.

4. Learners tend to be affected by their L1. As they become more proficient, they tend to acquire more appropriate strategies for L2 though they may never acquire native-like strategy

(Chikamatsu, 1996、 2006; Akamatsu, 1998, 1999, 2002;Haynes & Carr, 1990； Mori 1998, Koda, 1989, 1990, 1998)

Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

1. Guessing a word meaning using morphological and contextual information facilitates vocabulary acquisition.

2. An ability to guess the meaning of the word using the morphological information is unrelated to language proficiency.

3. An ability to use context is positively correlated with language proficiency.

4. If sound can be identified in context, it is easier to guess the meaning of a words.

5. Combined use of morphology and context is more effective than a heavy reliance on one of them.

(Freyd & Baron 1982 ; Tyler & Nagy 1989; Mori & Nagy, 1999; Mori 2002a, 2003; Kondo-Brown, 2007

How to increase word knowledge

1. Acquisition of kanji knowledge affects vocabulary development .

2. Learners must have a positive attitudes toward kanji: kanji is useful and has a cultural value and learn

historical significance. The knowledge of kanji component shapes and

morphology helps kanji learning3. Speeded word recognition tasks (e.g., scanning on

the web, speed reading, kanji writing in the air) to develop the skill to process orthographic information fast.

4. (Mori, Sato & Shimizu, 2007)

4. Utilize kanji morphology using kanji games, kanji-matching games, etc.

5. Reading a lot of somewhat challenging but interesting materials on the same topic to increase frequency.

6. Try to paraphrase or define expressions using your own words.

Formulaic sequence

Formulaic sequence are preferred multi-word strings that native speakers use.

Knowing formulaic sequences is particularly important at the beginning level because they reduce memory load and increase a chance of sustained communication.

Native speakers have a large inventory of formulaic sequence, but non-native speakers don’t.

(Ellis, 2004; Wray, 2002,2009; Schmidt, 2001)

4. A lack of knowledge of formulaic sequence are found to cause persistent problem of non-nativeness at an advanced level E.g.) 早速お返事を書いてくださり、どうもありがとうございました。

E.g. ) 正直に話してみますと、僕は韓国で日本語教育を専攻しており、専ら日本語だけを勉強しました。

How to increase the knowledge of lemma and formulaic sequence

1. Study vocabulary in phrases rather than individual words

2. Use vocabulary in phrases in conversation instead of relying heavily on grammar.

3. For advance learners, pay attention to expressions that native speakers use which is new to you. Take a note, and use it in context.

おわり　

ご静聴ありがとうございました。