Pragmatics Examining Learners’ Pragmatic Competence in L2 Japanese more

Sat, Jul 9, 15:15-15:40 Asia/Tokyo

This study explores Japanese as a Foreign Language (JFL) learners’ pragmatic competence in speaking tasks. Speaking tasks are popular assessment tools to evaluate L2 speakers’ language proficiency (e.g., TOEFL, ACTFL OPT). Due to the lack of opportunities to speak the target language outside of classes, it is still challenging even for advanced JFL learners to understand what would be appropriate depending on the situations and interlocutors. Previous studies have looked at ESL learners’ pragmatic competence and created some type of assessment criteria. Yet, it is still uncertain these assessment criteria can be applied to other target languages (e.g., Japanese). Validation of rubrics across pragmatic targets, situations and other L2 is necessary. This presentation demonstrates the assessment rubric to reflect L2 speakers’ competence to achieve a task goal, and important features of L2 pragmatic competence in interaction. The participants are 15 JFL learners. The participants participated in a role play with different situations (e.g, making a request, refusal, complaint). The participants’ performances are video recorded and rated by Japanese native speakers based on the rating criteria adapted from Youn (2015) and Revesz (2016). This ongoing project will show the preliminary findings and possible improvements of the analysis.