Second Language Acquisition Research and Japanese Language Teaching: A Functionalist Approach

要旨

This article examines the mechanism of grammar acquisition in a second language and explores how linguistic categories can be acquired effectively. Currently, the mainstream second language teaching approach is the communicative approach. As far as the acquisition of linguistic categories is concerned, however, the communicative approach is based on a ‘learning by doing’ model, which assumes that learners will acquire linguistic categories through exposure to language input and interaction. Therefore, insights into how individual grammatical items should be taught are still quite limited, and thus investigation concerning effective methods of teaching linguistic categories based on second language acquisition research is sorely needed. Here, I examine two linguistic domains (tense-aspect and relative clauses) for which the acquisition process has been researched and understood to some degree both in Japanese and other languages. I will also consider how acquisition can be facilitated, in particular from a functional-cognitive linguistics perspective.

主題