Prosody and Reading Comprehension in L2 Japanese

Prosody and Reading Comprehension in L2 Japanese

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Goss, Seth Joshua
Language:English
Published: The Ohio State University / OhioLINK 2009
Subjects:
Linguistics
prosody
reading comprehension
JFL learners
Online Access:http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1250603347
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spelling ndltd-OhioLink-oai-etd.ohiolink.edu-osu12506033472021-08-03T05:57:06Z Prosody and Reading Comprehension in L2 Japanese Goss, Seth Joshua Linguistics prosody reading comprehension JFL learners <p>Foreign language learners (L2 learners) have often been observed to lack a natural “rhythm” when reading aloud. This rhythm of speech, referred to as prosody, has been shown to reflect syntax in certain grammatical structures. Learner’s prosodic errors in oral reading may be due to a lack of comprehension of these syntactic structures. As little research on prosody in L2 oral reading exists, the current study attempted to describe the relationship between prosody and comprehension in Japanese as a Foreign Language (JFL) learners by posing the research questions: 1) How do JFL learners apply prosody when reading aloud? and 2) Does this prosodic phrasing match their interpretation of the sentences? </p><p>The experiment conducted in this thesis presented subjects with a series of sentences each followed by a comprehension question. Two groups participated in the experiment, JFL learners (experimental group) and native speakers (NS) of Japanese (control group). Test sentences contained both unambiguous and ambiguous branching modifiers, and the location of prosodic breaks in oral reading were the prosodic feature under analysis. Results indicated that prosodic preferences differed between the JFL learner and NS groups when reading unambiguous sentences aloud. These preferences corresponded to attachment patterns in the L1 of each group, suggesting the possibility of L1 transfer in the application of prosody in oral reading. Overall, both groups performed well on the comprehension questions, indicating little difficulty in understanding the branching modifiers contained in the test sentences. However, we found that the match between prosody in oral reading—as evidenced by the location of a prosodic break—and the answers to the comprehension questions were low. This indicated that although the JFL learners were able to understand the target syntactic structures, their ability to produce the correct prosody has not fully developed. Therefore, we concluded that production errors were not necessarily due to the inability to comprehend the syntactic structures in the test sentence types used in this experiment.</p> 2009-09-25 English text The Ohio State University / OhioLINK http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1250603347 http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1250603347 unrestricted This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.
collection NDLTD
language English
sources NDLTD
topic Linguistics
prosody
reading comprehension
JFL learners
spellingShingle Linguistics
prosody
reading comprehension
JFL learners
Goss, Seth Joshua
Prosody and Reading Comprehension in L2 Japanese
author Goss, Seth Joshua
author_facet Goss, Seth Joshua
author_sort Goss, Seth Joshua
title Prosody and Reading Comprehension in L2 Japanese
title_short Prosody and Reading Comprehension in L2 Japanese
title_full Prosody and Reading Comprehension in L2 Japanese
title_fullStr Prosody and Reading Comprehension in L2 Japanese
title_full_unstemmed Prosody and Reading Comprehension in L2 Japanese
title_sort prosody and reading comprehension in l2 japanese
publisher The Ohio State University / OhioLINK
publishDate 2009
url http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1250603347
work_keys_str_mv AT gosssethjoshua prosodyandreadingcomprehensioninl2japanese
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