Effects of Providing Scripts in Shadowing Practice on Learners’ Japanese-language Acquisition

要旨

In order to determine the need to provide scripts in shadowing practice for learning Japanese as a second language, a 10 week-long experiment was carried out. 17 volunteer participants who had studied Japanese for just one year at the University of Auckland were divided into three homogeneous groups according to their overall Japanese profi ciency. While the experimental group engaged in shadowing practice without being provided with written scripts of materials, two control groups were given scripts, the former at the beginning of the shadowing lessons and the latter at the end. Their progress was measured by comparing the results of pre-test and post-test applying the Paired Samples T-Test. The pre-test and the post-test consisted of a “SPOT (Simple Performance-Oriented Test)” and extracts from each section of the Japanese Language Profi ciency Test Level 4, “Listening”, “Vocabulary” and “Reading and Grammar”. This examination suggests that the need to provide scripts in shadowing practice depends on the purpose of introducing shadowing into teaching. Shadowing without providing scripts seems to work better if the aim is to extend learners’ reading comprehension ability. However, if the aim is to extend learners’ command of the Japanese language, shadowing with scripts provided seems to be more effective. With regard to when scripts should be provided, a hypothesis can be formed that providing scripts at the end of shadowing lessons will maximize the effectiveness of shadowing. This needs to be verifi ed by a further experiment with a larger number of participants.

主題