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Item Acquisition of the English Dative Construction by the Japanese(1992) Yoshinaga, Naoko; University of Hawaii at Manoa. Department of English as a Second Language.This study investigates the acquisition of the English dative constructions by Japanese speakers. The Thematic Core Theory (TCT) holds that the double object dative construction is subject to a possession constraint, a morphophonological constraint, and a narrow semantic constraint. Second language acquisition theory, based on the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (SLA-TCT) predicts that Japanese speakers will succeed in acquiring the possession constraint but not the narrow semantic constraint. In a test of the possession and morphophonological constraints, 64 native English speakers (NSs) and 66 native speakers of Japanese (JPNs) were asked to rate the acceptability of dative constructions with novel verbs. A second experiment, NSs = 85, JPNs = 85) tested the nanow semantic constraint using both novel and real verbs. The data were analyzed using repeated measures ANOVA. The results supported the TCT and SLA-TCT. This suggests that universal grammar may not be available to adult learners oxcept through their native language.Item Form Explanation in Modification of Listening Input in L2 Vocabulary Learning(1993) Toya, Mitsuyo; University of Hawaii at Manoa. Department of English as a Second Language.The effectiveness of vocabulary explanation as modifications of listening input - explicit (EE) and implicit (IE) - were investigated in contrast to unmodified (baseline, BL) condition. One hundred and nine university students from Japan listened to two texts, which included different vocabulary elaborations for 12 items. Students listened three times to each text. After each listening, they indicatec the meanings of the items. Four weeks later, a delayed posttest was administered. Positive effects of multiple listenings were found in vocabulary learning from listening input. As hypothesized, the EE condition resulted in significant superiority over the other two on the immediate posttests. However, IE was not significantly better than the BL. The findings suggested that the IE mostly remained unnoticed during the listening. On the delayed posttest, the score of EE dropped and there was no significant difference among the three conditions, though all conditions resulted in a significant increase from the pretest.Item Agreement and Disagreement: A Study of Speech Acts in Discourse and ESL/EFL Materials(1985) Pearson, Eloise; University of Hawaii at Manoa. Department of English as a Second Language.The purpose was to formulate a description of the speech act agreement/disagreement and the rules of use under which it occurs in native speaker conversation. This was done by surreptitiously recording natural conversation, transcribing it and examining it for agreement/disagreement. It was found that it occurred only as a response related to a prior initiation move and it occurred on a scale of politeness from the most polite forms of agreement to the least polite forms of disagreement. The description was compared to two ESL/EFL textbooks to determine the degree to which the presentation matched that of native speaker use. The result was that the textbooks presented formulaic expressions which occurred infrequently in conversations among native speakers.Item Compliments and Gender(1994) Miles, Peggy; Kellerman, Eric; Bley-Vroman, Robert; University of Hawaii at Manoa. Department of English as a Second Language.Item The Effects of Negotiated Interactioni and Promodified input on Second Langauge Comprehension and Retention(1989) Loschky, Lester C.; University of Hawaii at Manoa. Department of English as a Second Language.This experiment tests hypotheses that premodified input and negotiated interaction facilitate comprehension and SLA (Krashen, 1980; Long, 1981) with Japanese as a foreign language. 41 beginning learners at the University of Hawaii had three listening tasks treatment sessions with native speakers in a pretest/posttest design. Treatment groups were 1) baseline input; 2) premodified input; 3) negotiated interaction. The tasks contained new vocabulary items and two locative structures, and were both learning treatments and on-line comprehension measures. Pre- and post tests included two vocabulary recognition tests and a sentence verification test. The hypothesis that negotiated interaction facilitates comprehension was supported (p< .05), but that for premodified input was not. No main effect for treatment was found for posttest gains in lexis and morphosyntax, though significant gains (p< .05) were found overall. The study thus supports the importance of negotiated interaction for on-line comprehension; however, task-focus on form-meaning relationships may have caused the posstest gains.Item Academic Listening Comprehension: Does the Sum of the Parts Make up the Whole?(1985) Haper, Andrew G.; University of Hawaii at Manoa. Department of English as a Second Language.A listening test administered to eighty-five non-native speaker students demonstrated that: (a) a significant relationship exists between global academic listening comprehension (ALC) and a subset of four microskills –inferring the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary, and recognizing the respective functions of referential devices, conjunctive devices, and transitional devices; (b) each microskill tested is related to global ALC at p < .001 (correlattions ranged between .377 and .477); (c) common factors are involved in the skills of recognizing the functions of markers of cohesion and markers of coherence; (d) the relationship between global ALC and the ability to identify the main idea in short listening passages is significant but not particularly strong (r = .462). These findings imply that it might be useful to include microskill exercises in materials used for teaching and testing ALC.Item A Study of Requests by Two Native Speaker Groups: University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Graduate Students & the American Military Speech Community of Oahu(1994) Hageman, Marybeth; Kellerman, Eric; Bley-Vroman, Robert; University of Hawaii at Manoa. Department of English as a Second Language.The fields of Linguistics and ESL frequently use English spoken by native speakers as the target language for ESL learners or for comparative studies with interlanguage. Is it possible to claim that one English native speaker group represents all native English speakers? This paper illustrates similarities and differences in the English of two American native speaker groups in Oahu and by the genders of both groups: the American military speech community and graduate students at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I present the data of 20 men and 20 women from each native speaker group, with a total of 80 participants. A questionnaire collects native speaker perceptions of the appropriate level of directness of requests to be used in encounters with personnel of both genders who serve the public. The native speaker groups choose directness of requests equivalently, but the genders show some significant statistical differences in choices with women choosing more direct requests than men. Different situations and addressee genders also are factors in request directness choice. The findings indicate that it is important for researchers and teachers to pay attention to accuracy in representing native speaker language.Item Male/Female Language – Is this an ESL Concern?(1994) Goedjen, Devon; Kellerman, Eric; Bley-Vroman, Robert; University of Hawaii at Manoa. Department of English as a Second Language.Six areas of folk linguistic beliefs about male/female language - verbosity, politeness, expertness, swearing, prestige, and lexicon - were selected for this study. People have retained the same folk linguistic beliefs in these six areas for centuries; data from a 200-subject questionnaire and eight interviews are presented to answer the following questions: (1) Do American adults in the 1990's hold these same six folk linguistic beliefs about male/femde language? (2) Do variables of gender, age, or geographic location affect these beliefs? (3) Does the speech of American adults reflect these believed male/female differences? (4) Are there any implications for the ESL classroom? Subjects included equal numbers of males and females and young adults and senior citizens from the states of Washington and Hawaii. Results indicate that high percentages of Americans do hold these same folk linguistic beliefs; that gender, age, and geographic location do not influence these beliefs (according to chi-square tests), with two exceptions; and that "masculine"/"feminine" features reflecting these beliefs can be found in adult speech. The main purpose of this paper is to raise the consciousness of ESL teachers and administrators about the importance of the sex variable in language teaching and learning and to suggest applications for the ESL classroom.Item Criticism in English and Thai: A Pragmatic Analysis(1993) Ercanbrack, Jay; Wichitwechkarn, Jongkonrat; University of Hawaii at Manoa. Department of English as a Second Language.Utilizing two separate data collection techniques, i.e., Discourse Completion Tasks (DCT) and multiple-response rating scales, this study explored Thai and American use of criticism in business interactions. The study attempted, firstly, to reveal and describe the strategies of criticism employed by each group; secondly, to determine the influence of interlocutor status on level of face-threat contained in criticisms; and lastly, to advance knowledge of the comparability and suitability of various data collection methods within the field of pragmatic and speech act realization research. A two-part questionnaire in the subjects' native languages was distributed to 45 Thai and 42 American business majors at universities in Thailand and the U.S. Nine identical items involving problem-oriented business situations were used in the DCT and rating scale portions of the questionnaire. The variable of interlocutor status was manipulated across items to stimulate a variety of critical responses. Analyses of data included chi-squares and ANOVAs as well as descriptive statistics. Results reveal areas of both conformance and non-conformance in Thai and American realizations of criticism strategies and the ways in which choice of these strategies are influenced by interlocutor status. However, the significance of the findings is to some extent mitigated by incongruities in results produced by the two data collection procedures. Implications of the findings for intercultural business encounters are discussed, and recommendations are made for future pragmatic research focusing on the area of criticism.Item Native and Non-native Reactions to ESL Compositions(1990) Kobayashi, Toshihiko; University of Hawaii at Manoa. Department of English as a Second Language.This study investigated how English native speakers (ENSs) and Japanese native speakers (JNSs) of professorial, graduate, and undergraduate levels evaluate and edit ESL compositions written by Japanese college students. A total of 274 subjects first evaluated each of two compositions in terms of grammaticality, clarity of meaning, naturalness, and organization, using 10- point scales. ENSs were more strict about grammaticality and naturalness than were JNSs. Among the ENSs, the higher the academic status of the group, the more positive evaluation they made. The subjects then edited the composition, correcting everything that seemed ungrammatical, unacceptable or unnatural. ENSs provided far more corrections and corrected errors more accurately than did the JNSs. In both L1 groups, the higher the academic status, the more accurately the group corrected errors. JNSs left many errors uncorrected, especially errors involving articles, number, prepositions, and lexical items which occur in Japanese as loan words from English.
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