MA and AGC Scholarly Papers
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Non-thesis MA and all AGC students are required to write a Scholarly Paper (SP) before completing their degree and certificate, respectively. This SP is usually based on previously written term papers which have been subject to review and criticism. The quality of a SP should reflect that of articles normally appearing in the standard research journals of the field. Scholarly papers are evaluated by two faculty members in terms of the significance of the problem addressed, scholarship, objectivity, soundness of procedure and method, clarity of presentation, insight and perspective.
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ItemReclaiming the "true" Hawai‘i in a podcast: A discourse analysis of decolonial practices( 2023-07-01)Due to Western colonization, traditional Hawaiian cultural practices and language were suppressed from the Native Hawaiian community. In the 1970s, a cultural uproar of sovereignty and cultural revitalization emerged, reviving Hawaiian practices, language, and identity for Native Hawaiians. Alongside this, the movement developed a trend of decolonial practices in Hawai'i. Utilizing discursive tools of tactics of intersubjectivity (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005) and stance (Jaffe, 2009), this study examines a podcast hosted by two diasporic Hawai'i locals (referring to people born and raised in Hawai'i) to answer the question: how do Hawai'i locals discursively reclaim and decolonize Hawai'i history and practices from the continental United States? The results found that through affective, epistemic, and dialogic stance-taking, the two hosts of the podcast used their social identities to assert authority and authenticate and reject colonial narratives. Also, the diasporic placement of the participants showed some effect on their affective stance-taking. The findings concluded that the podcasters use their platform to educate their listeners about the "true" Hawai'i, presenting a decolonial narrative to a broad audience. Through the discussion of Hawai'i innovation and indigenous knowledge, the podcasters highlight the injustice the Hawaiian community faces due to Western colonialism. Their podcast contributes to a larger discourse of decolonial efforts in Hawai'i.
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ItemAudience Members as Language Brokers in Live Streamed Gaming( 2023-07-01)In this paper, I use multimodal Conversation Analysis and the concept of language brokering to investigate how online audience participation resolves the lack of comprehension exhibited by a focal live streamer and helps him participate in ongoing interactions. The analysis illustrates how the live chat messages from the audience enable a focal live streamer to manage oral interactions with his co-players. More specifically, the focal live streamer either solicits repair or directs their gaze to the chat box where the audience enacts as language brokers online. The audience gives the focal live streamer two types of comments: (i) words they address and (ii) topics they yield. Various modes (e.g., spoken and written) and multilingual practices (e.g., code-switching, English translations) are employed within the interaction among participants in live streaming. With a greater understanding of the participation framework between a focal live streamer and his audience on live streaming, this paper highlights multimodal analyses of digital interactions where oral and written communications coexist.
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ItemL2 Learners' Perception of Long Vowels and Geminates in Japanese Dialects( 2023-07-01)Learners of Japanese are well known to have difficulties acquiring geminates and long vowels. What affects the perception of these has yet to be determined, with various studies coming to different conclusions about what cue learners use. In addition to these more difficult phonological features of the language, Japanese has a few different dialects that may play an additional role in perception. This study focuses on the Standard Japanese, Okinawa, and Kansai dialects. Participants completed two tasks in addition to a background questionnaire. The main task in this experiment required participants to transcribe nonwords that they heard in Hiragana. The nonwords included either a long vowel, geminate, or their minimal pairs which were short vowels and singletons, respectively. Results were analyzed in R through mixed-effects logistic regressions. The results from the main task found that perceptual accuracy dropped when learners transcribed words containing long vowels, however the dialect in which they heard the long vowels did not cause a difference in perception. In terms of geminates, participants did not perform significantly different between geminates and singletons, but similar to the results for long vowels, participants were found not to perform differently due to any of the dialects.
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ItemEFL College Students' Perception of English Writing Activities in High School and College( 2022-06-27)This paper explores to what extent the shifts in the types of English writing activities and instruction from secondary school to college can explain English as a foreign language (EFL) college students’ motivation, self-efficacy, and apprehension toward writing in English. Studies in the second language (L2) writing field suggest that previous writing instruction affects L2 writers’ performance and their beliefs. Students’ motivation and apprehension are also susceptible to the learning environments and the types of writing tasks. Given that college writing tasks are more demanding than high school writing, it can be hypothesized that college students have different degrees of motivation, self-efficacy, and writing apprehension from when they are in high school. A total of 101 Japanese college students participated in this survey study. The survey inquired about the types of writing activities the student participants experienced in high school and college as well as their motivation, apprehension, and self-efficacy in terms of writing in English with a 5-point Likert scale. The results showed that high school English-language writing tended to be de-contextualized such as translation activities from Japanese to English, while college writing was composition-based. The gap in writing tasks between the two institutional levels can explain the increase in students’ motivation for writing in English. Contrary to the hypothesis, however, the participant students maintained writing apprehension and low self-efficacy throughout high school and college. The results of this study can inform EFL instructors, policy-makers, and writing researchers of effective writing activities and curricula that may help student learners keep motivation for English writing, and transition smoothly from high school to college.
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ItemSecond language teacher beliefs about written corrective feedback: Diagnostic, reflective, and developmental tools( 2013-06-13)There have been a number of studies on the effectiveness of written corrective feedback (WCF) for L2 writing. The results are complicated and varied, depending on contextual variables, but the demands of stakeholders (students and institutions) on teachers are simple: they want teachers to use WCF. Teachers do not ask ‘whether’ but ‘how’ to use WCF. Researchers have formulated WCF guidelines for teachers, but these recommendations lack consideration for individual development in teachers’ mental lives and context. Reflection is considered crucial for teachers to become effective in using WCF because it recognizes the teachers’ role in their own learning. By using reflection, teachers can adapt and evolve their teacher cognition to fit their context and raise their awareness to generate knowledge. It is thus necessary to apply reflective tools to foster development in the writing teachers’ use of WCF. This paper recognizes previously developed guidelines, addresses contextual variables, and promotes reflective practices to perpetuate writing teachers' development in the utility of WCF. It reviews the literature on WCF and proposes reflective materials that could be utilized in teachers’ WCF pedagogical development.
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ItemThe Effect of a Classroom Environment of Mutual Visibility, Transparency, and Sharing on ESL Students' Writing( 2022-05-13)This study explores how an “open” classroom environment, one in which participants are given unrestricted access to look at and learn from the writing of their classmates, affects the writing development of ESL students. Shared Google Docs were used in an ESL writing class at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa as an accessible repository for all written work done by six advanced level students while writing five progressively more difficult academic essays. Although instructed not to copy or plagiarize specific content, students were explicitly given permission and encouragement to look at and learn from their classmates’ writing in shared Google Docs as they had need or desire to do so. Data was collected by means of focus group interviews, questionnaires, and journal notes to ascertain what effects this “open” classroom environment had on students’ perceptions of their own writing and the writing process. Although some challenges to the environment were acknowledged, results suggest that all students benefited from being able to look at the writing of their peers, all learned specific points they could use in their own writing, and all acknowledged that being able to look at and learn from the writing of others this way helped them improve their own writing more than they would have been able to do otherwise. This suggests potential educational and pedagogical benefits associated with such an “open” classroom environment when it comes to the development of ESL students’ writing.
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ItemThe Use of English Loanwords in Question-Answer Sequences of Question Time in the Japanese Parliament( 2022-04-24)This paper analyzes the use of English loanwords in question-answer sequences of Question Time (QT) in the Japanese Parliament. Research on English loanwords has been done in several areas, however, none has been conducted in political settings. QT is a dyadic political debate between prime ministers and other Parliament members in the Diet of Japan. I will describe how their lexical choices of English loanwords orient towards certain institutional goals, and how the choices are aligned with dimensions of questioning and answering. Through this analysis, I conclude that English loanwords can function as not only the part of political questions in a formal and professional way to elicit a clear answer but also a technical term to construct a question and highlight a political argument in the process of questioning. In addition, they are also used to diminish negative images of political claims, and also form more favorable grounds in order to display political arguments in the process of answering. It can be said that lexical choices of English loanwords in a question sequence and following answer sequence are deeply interrelated to each other.
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ItemTalking sustainability: Shaping environmental narratives on Reddit( 2022-04-15)Social media and virtual communities are becoming increasingly important spaces that shape narratives around the issues of environmentalism and sustainability. These serve as educational tools, and as spaces for sharing ideas and opinions on topics of interest. Reddit is an example of how individuals from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds can utilize a common space for meaning-making on relevant issues. This research aims to establish how participants frame themselves as members of the online community, r/Sustainability, and how they utilize the virtual spaces to enact their narratives on real-world environmental issues. An investigation of why and how users are framing these narratives based on their personal experiences is a topic addressed in this study. Using a critical ecolinguistic approach, the use of linguistic and semiotic resources within the virtual space are analyzed to establish how participants are negotiating their understanding of environmental sustainability.
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ItemIs CLP Possible for Korean Law Professionals to Develop Their Multicultural Competence? A Critical Study of Korean Lawyers' Views towards Multiculturalism( 2022-04-14)Responding to the increasing global integration and diversity in the Republic of Korea, this study reports a critical needs analysis to investigate possible changes to professional education in hopes of fostering Korean lawyers’ cultural sensitivity through Critical Language Pedagogy (CLP) for English for Specific Purposes (ESP). Data was collected from ethnographic interviews with five Korean lawyers with significant experience of working with foreign clients, litigants, and colleagues during their practice of law ranging from 9 to 16 years. Data was analyzed using values coding, and themes were derived from the coding. Results suggest that views toward multiculturalism were divided along the theoretical distinction of normative multiculturalism and descriptive multiculturalism. Respondents’ beliefs followed the reasoning of their professional values, and this in turn affected their attitudes and beliefs about their own cultural sensitivity. In order to encourage critical engagement with multiculturalism, it is recommended that CP be integrated into ESP for Korean lawyers.
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ItemHomeless in Hawai‘i: Developing Critical Materials for an Intensive English Program( 2021-12-06)Within the overall perspective of critical language pedagogy (second language teaching for social justice), this project presents a small example of materials development, my own work as a teacher of adult ESL learners in a short-term intensive English program in Honolulu. It explores how to develop empirically-grounded teaching materials for ESL students that would help them understand the plight of marginalized people, specifically the homeless. A class of international students studying English at a public university in Hawai‘i were surveyed regarding their attitudes toward homeless people. The results indicated a consistent theme of negative stereotypes which lacked empathy for the homeless. This presented a learning opportunity for humanizing a commonly disparaged part of society. To ensure an accurate and locally-grounded understanding of the topic, the author conducted an interview with a homeless person in Hawai‘i. The recorded interview was transcribed and analyzed for themes which were then used in the development of ESL materials. The paper concludes by presenting an analysis of these sample materials that could be used in critical dialogue with the students.