Exploration of an effective way of teaching the aspect marker -tei(ru) to learners of Japanese adopting a cognitive linguistics approach

Abstract

This dissertation explores a new way to teach the use of the Japanese aspect marker -tei(ru) which occurs in various aspectual contexts (e.g. progressive, resultative, and perfective), to learners of Japanese by adopting a Cognitive Linguistics approach advocated by scholars like Langacker (2008), Lakoff (1987), Tayler (2003), Boers & Lindstromberg (2006), Niemeier, (2008), Tyler (2012), etc. A general finding of previous L2 studies that examined the acquisition order of the progressive and the resultative use of this aspectual marker (e.g. Sheu, 1997; Shirai & Kurono, 1998; Sugaya & Shirai, 2007) is that learners have more difficulties in learning the resultative use over the progressive use. I argue that one source for this reported difficulty may come from the way -tei(ru) is conventionally introduced in many textbooks. This dissertation holds the view that the aspectual meanings associated with -tei(ru) belong to a super-category “continuity”, and within this super-category they themselves form sub-categories which are linked with each other. Based on these assumptions, a new CL-based method of teaching -tei(ru) is developed, in which -tei(ru) is introduced as a “continuity” marker and the resultative is used as the exemplar, anticipating that learners can generalize the use of -tei(ru) to other aspectual contexts. A quasi-experimental study was conducted involving two groups of learners: one group received the CL-based instruction and the other group a conventional textbook-based instruction. Two research questions were addressed (i) whether the CL-based instruction is indeed effective and (ii) whether the effect of the CL-based instruction of one usage allows learners to go beyond that usage and facilitate or support the learning of other usages. The results show that the CL-based instruction is more effective than the conventional instruction for teaching resultative -tei(ru), and that the benefit of the CL-based instruction did extend beyond the original usage covered.