Date of Graduation
1993
Document Type
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
This study is an ethnographic investigation of learning strategies employed by unsuccessful learners of beginning Japanese at the college level. Twelve participants, four each from successful, moderately successful, and unsuccessful learner categories, were selected from the pool of American undergraduate students studying second-semester Japanese with their assigned native Japanese tutors in and out of the classroom. Data obtained through interviews with the participants and their tutors, observations of classroom performance and out-of-class tutoring sessions, and Japanese-language elicitation tasks were subjected to a Domain Analysis. Cognitive, metacognitive, social and affective learning strategies were identified and compared among the three language skill levels. It was found that unsuccessful learners used cognitive and metacognitive strategies infrequently and that their learning strategy repertoires were limited. They used well-developed memorization strategies not only for learning new material but also for preparing for tests without much understanding. Comparison of strategy use by the three language skill levels indicated that unsuccessful learners lacked practicing and had poor structural understanding. Due to lack of structural understanding, the use of metacognitive strategies such as monitoring and selective attention were not reported. These cognitive characteristics indicated that unsuccessful learners could produce sentences verbatim when solicited, and yet could not construct Japanese sentences on their own. These unsuccessful learners took Japanese because of previous language learning failure or difficulty. They decided to take the beginning Japanese course, thinking that all the students would be taking it for the first time. Affective factors were found to hinder some unsuccessful learners' language learning but affective strategies were rarely employed. Because of lack of confidence in their language skills, unsuccessful learners did not seek social interaction with peers or native speakers other than their own native tutors, despite critical importance of social strategies to enhance their language development. The tutor system was found to be effective for enhancing the learners' use of social strategies. These findings were integrated, and a model of unsuccessful learners' strategy use was constructed.
Recommended Citation
Takahashi, Yuriko, "Learning strategies of unsuccessful beginning students of Japanese." (1993). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 9873.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/9873