Pragmatic Awareness of Japanese EFL Learners in Relation to Individual Differences: A Cluster Analytic Approach
Date
2013
Contributor
Advisor
Department
Instructor
Depositor
Speaker
Researcher
Consultant
Interviewer
Narrator
Transcriber
Annotator
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
National Foreign Language Resource Center
Volume
Number/Issue
Starting Page
Ending Page
Alternative Title
Abstract
This study investigated the relationships between pragmatic awareness and learner types drawn from pro les of learners’ motivation and pro ciency, thus providing insight into the interplay of learner factors in contrast to previous studies describing the relationships between single variables. In addition to a modi ed replication of Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) study in the Japanese EFL context, this study incorporated measures of motivation based on Self-Determination Theory and learners’ pro ciency. Cluster analysis sorted 69 Japanese EFL learners into three distinct subgroups based on their con guration of motivation and pro ciency; in particular, they differed on their levels of intrinsic motivation and pro ciency. Their pragmatic awareness was later compared by use of one-way ANOVA. The results illustrated that two groups with more self-determined motivation showed sharper perception of pragmatic inappropriateness than the group with lower intrinsic motivation, even though its pro ciency was higher. Based on the “noticing hypothesis” (Schmidt, 1995), we propose that intrinsically motivated learners are likely to process L2 pragmatic input at the level of ‘understanding,’ whereas those with lower motivational pro les only ‘notice the form’ but do not process it at the ‘understanding’ level. Proficiency is not in itself a suffcient condition for enabling ‘understanding.’
Description
Keywords
Motivation (Psychology), Pragmatics
Citation
Extent
245-266
Format
Geographic Location
Time Period
Related To
Related To (URI)
Table of Contents
Rights
Rights Holder
Local Contexts
Collections
Email libraryada-l@lists.hawaii.edu if you need this content in ADA-compliant format.