Strategies for Learning Speech Acts in Japanese
Information about this Website
These modular units are specifically designed for intermediate to advanced-level learners of Japanese by Noriko Ishihara (石原紀子), Associate Professor of EFL at Hosei University, Japan (email: ishi0029@umn.edu, website: http://www.i.hosei.ac.jp/~ishihara/), and by Andrew Cohen, Professor of Second Language Studies, University of Minnesota (email: adcohen@umn.edu; website: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~adcohen/).
Please read the following information prior to the use of the curricular materials.
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 NOTE: Some of the exercises include MP3 audio files. If you are not able to hear the audio in the exercises, check to see that you have either QuickTime (Mac) or Windows Media Player (WIN) installed. If Japanese characters are not readable, click "View" on the tool bar, select "Encoding," and select "Japanese". |
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.
Compliments/Responses to Compliments 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.