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A CASE STUDY OF A JAPANESE BOY LEARNING ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE : An acculturation process

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Kobe Shoin Women’s University Repository

Title

A Case Study of a Japanese Boy Learning English as a Second Language — An Acculturation Process- 第二言語としての英語習得-ある日本人の子供の事例研究-

Author(s) 菊池 真理(Mari Kikuchi)

Citation 研究紀要(SHOIN REVIEW),第 29 号:69-84

Issue Date 1987

Resource Type Bulletin Paper / 紀要論文

Resource Version

URL

Right

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A CASE

STUDY

OF

A JAPANESE

BOY

LEARNING

ENGLISH

AS

A SECOND

LANGUAGE

---An acculturation

process---理

  本 稿 は1982年9月 か ら1983年7月 迄 の10ケ 月 に亙 る期 間 に お け る 一一人 の 子 供 の 第二 言 語 習 得 過 程 を社 会 言 語 学 の 立 場 か ら考 察 した 記 録 の要 約 で あ る。 そ し て そ の 観 察 に 基 ず き言 葉 の 習 得 は そ の 個 人 の 所 属 す る 言 語 社 会(1anguage community)の 文 化 と同 化 す る過 程 で もあ る こ と を述 べ て い る 。 こ の 異 文 化 へ 同 化 して ゆ く過 程 で 言 語 習 得 者 は 様 々 な 葛 藤 を経 験 す るが こ の 過 程 を"順 調" に辿 っ た もの こ そ母 語 話 者(native  speaker)に 近 い 言 語 習 得 の 段 階 に 達 す る こ とが で き る と推 定 して い る 。 こ の こ とは 言 語 習 得 に 於 け る 境 界 城(critical period)の 決 定 に は生 理 学 的 、認 知 的 、情 緒 的 要 素 に加 えて 社 会 文 化 的 な 要 素 が 大 き く作 用 す る とい うH.D,  Brownの 主 張 と も合 致 して い る。

  本 稿 の 英 文 に つ い て は本 学 のMiss  Ashlea  Haselgroveか ら 多 くの 助 言 を 戴 い た。 深 く感 謝 の意 を表 す 次 第 で あ る。

Introduction

A)

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study how a Japanese child acquired

a degree of communicative skills in a second language during a ten

months stay in the United States. Starting from almost zero, he attained

a much higher level of L2 communicative skills than his peers or the

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other members of his family. In order to find the cause of his early development in L2, his socio-linguistic environment is studied in terms of formal and informal settings. The study shows that the subject was en-dowed with more opportunities for exposure to the target language in his speech community and had a much wider range of speech community which provided him with enough materials to build his new language sys-tem. At the same time this study shows his early development was attained only through the process of 'acculturation'; a lot of conflicts he experienced shows us the natural and 'healthy' process of 'acculturation' without which, according to H.D. Brown, a real mastery of a second lan-guage in a second culture would not occur.

B) Environment of the study

Our family stayed a whole academic year in East Lansing, Michigan from September 1982 through 1983, when my husband, the subject's father was given a chance to do his research in the Depamtment of Math-ematics in Michigan State University. Shin, the subject of the study, was nine years old and his sister was a senior and a violinist in the school orchestra.

We lived in one of the on-campus apartments for faculty members, in each block of which there were five or six families. There were about ten Japanese families in our neighboring apartment buildings. However, we were the only Japanese family in our own apartment blocks. Vari-eties of facilities were available for the families living on campus: a hos-pital, banks, a post office, dairy shops, and so forth. It might have been possible for us to survive without stepping out of the campus boundary if we hadn't wanted to.

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Subjects'

Development

in L2

A)

Previous knowledge of L2

Shin had been taught English at home by me with five other students

of his age on an-hour-a-week basis for four years before he left his native

country.

However, the language lesson for small children in the EFL

environment was of minimal benefit; it wasn't meant for their acquisition

of communicative competence; it was rather meant for cultivating the

learners' attitude for accepting an unfamiliar culture and language. The

students were taught English through singing English songs, playing

games, painting pictures and writing letters.

The number of the English words the subject learned during these

four years was estimated at approximately 200. He also learned several

simple expressions used in daily conversation and a few simple

struc-tures. Since he had no chance to use his second language in his native

land, it may well be said that he had no communicative skills in that

language at the time of his departure.

B)

Stage 1 --- Non verbal communication period

On September 12, we arrived at San Francisco to stay overnight.

The three of us, Shin, his sister and I enjoyed a half-day tour there. On

our way back to our hotel, when Shin was on the verge of falling asleep

in the cable car, he noticed an old lady standing in front of him. Pulling

her clothes, he gestured with his eyes to show that there was enough

room for her to be seated next to him.

The woman appreciated his

kindness and explained him that she was going to get off at the next

stop.

This might be too trivial an incident to be recorded here, but it

shows the lack of proficiency in L2 at that point and at the same time

it shows his positive attitude in communicating by any means possible.

This suggested to us the possibility of his early acquisition of the target

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language.

Soon after his enrollment in Red Cedar Elementary School in East Lansing, Shin began asking questions about the meaning of the English words he heard in his class. The first word he was anxious to know about was 'oops.'; he explained that his classmates often uttered some strange sounds which sounded like /ps/. He seemed to be enjoying using English words which he had learned at school or on the streets; he tried to use those words at every possible opportunity. In one of his letters to his grandparents in those days he wrote every place name in English, although the rest of the letter was written in Japanese characters.

After about a month, his sister who shared the room with him told me that he kept murmuring in English most of the time when he was working or playing alone in their room. His mind seemed occupied with the English utterances he had heard during the day. This phenomenon, his monologues, reminded me of the so-called 'crib-phenomenon' which often appears at the beginning level of any language acquisition, either in Ll or L2.

It was also about this time that one of our Japanese friends in our neighborhood told me that Shin used a lot of English vocabulary in his Japanese utterances while he was playing with his Japanese playmates at her house. However, no spontaneous English utterances were recorded at home during this period of time.

C) Stage 2---Emergence of a new language system

The first meaningful English utterance appeared on Oct. 21. Answer-ing my question, in Japanese, "Where...?" Shin said, "Not here, here." A number of English utterances began to emerge after that. The sentence constructions developed from telegraphic to well-formed. The number of English utterances reached its peak in January. After Feb. 6 it began to decrease suddenly. He seemed determined not to use English at home

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except for the occasions he couldn't help but use it. For example, he used Japanese when there were only Japanese playmates and switched to English when a non-native speaker of Japanese, e.g. a Korean, joined them. He spoke English when his family had guests who could not com-municate in Japanese.

At the end of the fall term, he was told that his teachers had decided to transfer him from the ESL classroom he belonged to to a regular class; he was the only Japanese student among the five that had been enrolled in the ESL in September 1982 to be transferred. According to the ESL teacher Shin's was really an early graduation considering that some students take more than two years to reach the lowest level of proficiency which is primarily required for communicating in a regular class.

D) Stage 3 --- Transition to a regular class

At the beginning of June, when we left East Lansing, Michigan, we received the final student evaluation from the elementary school. It said that Shin's achievement in reading and language arts was excellent except for the two items: 'research skills' and 'spelling applications.' The comment was that he really had made a good transition into English.

The composition in Appendix 1 (omit.) is the draft for his classroom presentation called 'Centers', shows his final stage of performance in writing. What is characteristic of the composition is its cohesiveness. One can understand at least the message he wanted to deliver to his readers in spite of the tremendous errors.

Two things can be pointed out from analyzing those errors. First, he was much more involved in conveying the content than producing

well-formed sentences. Secondly, spelling errors seem to be attributed to the wrong guesses he made on auditory input; he just tried to spell out the word as he had heard it.

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In terms of listening and speaking performance, he attained a certain level of proficiency which enabled him to enjoy his life in the L2 environ-ment. He showed no hesitancy in answering the phone, finding new friends, and going on errands, all of which his elder sister did only unwill-ingly because of her language barrier. His reading proficiency made him the best navigator when family had a long-distance drive.

In the middle of April, he was interviewed by a doctorate candidate of psychology who was collecting data from children with ethnic back-grounds. The interview went smoothly in English for an hour and half. Only a part of the transcription from interview is shown in Appendix 2. (omit.) The longest, well-formed complete utterance he made during this interview consists of 12 words; "My friend say that lunch is good but person is not good." (He meant to say that though the hot lunch at his school was good, the person who served was not good.)

Now, I would like to give some comments on English pronunciation especially in terms of language transfer. Judging from the tape-recorded data and my daily observations, his English showed less Japanese accent than his peer Japanese children who were enrolled at about the same time. When those loan words from English such as 'television', 'airplane', 'milk

, and 'green' appeared in the Japanese children's English utterances, they were likely to be pronounced with a Japanese accent. Shin pro-nounced those words without a Japanese accent when he was asked to read them: he made a clear distinction between 'milk' and Japanese / miruku/. His acquisition of English sounds could be shown in his ESL teacher's comments; she said that Shin differentiated /r/ from /1/ in his natural speech, and that was quite difficult for the other Japanese chil-dren.

I had also noticed that he could pronounce the glottal stop / ? / when he mentioned the nickname of Michigan State University, 'Spartan'/spa?

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tan:/; the Mid-Western accent often enabled my friends who are Amer-icans, to make an easy guess where he learned his L2.

It has been said that good pronunciation is not always a good indica-tor of overall language proficiency. It is, however, obvious in his case that his near-native accent was regarded as one of the positive factors by his teachers, and one which may have moved them to decide on his early transition to the regular class. And I think this early transition is the most powerful factor which accelerated his acquisition of English.

A) ESL classroom---Formal setting

Almost twenty students from all grades were studying in Red Cedar Elementary School ESL classroom when Shin was enrolled. The number of the ESL students was not consistent, since there was always the possi-bility of new enrollments or withdrawals. Students were arriving from

every corner of the world and leaving throughout the term.

At the time of Shin's enrollment there were students from twelve countries and the nationalities of their grandparents extended over thirty-eight countries. The classroom was completely heterogeneous in terms of the students' language backgrounds. The majorioy of the studests were initially Japanese but they were later replaced by Koreans. Five Japanese students were newly accepted into the ESL program in the fall of 1982: one sister and brother from Tokyo, another couple from Osaka, the latter having moved from another state after a year's experience of American school life there, and lastly, the subject.

The ESL class was taught by a regular teacher and two assistants. Every lesson was taught completely in English, which, so far as I obser-ved, was grammatically sequenced. The native tongues of the students were prohibited in class. Since the students lacked a common language, the teacher was seen employing all possible means of communication as

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well as the spoken language, e.g. reailas, pictures, gestures and so forth. She was seen jumping up and down, running around or laughing when she was teaching 'present progressive.' The classroom was full of the teachers ideas which made the atmosphere familiar, comfortable and even stimulating; the pictures of the students' families, portraits of each student drawn by the assistant teacher and maps were on the walls and books and stationery were close at hand in the shelves.

The ESL student had to stay in the ESL class the whole morning and in the afternoon they attended their grades' regular classes where they learned other subjects. During the breaks and noon recess, students played in the playground when it was warm enough. I observed that they tended to play with peers from the same country with the same language background.

In terms of the formal setting there was no meaningful difference between the subject's environment and that of other children until he was transferred to the regular class.

B) H ome- - -Informal setting

At home, the Japanese students mostly spent their free time after school in the same way. They were living in the on-campus apartments, the buildings of which were located in close proximity to each other. Most of their fathers were university faculty members with doctorates, their mothers were university graduates. The children used to play together at one of the members' houses or in the playgrounds near their apartment houses.

The subject, however, had the advantage of having more free time than the other Japanese peers at home. Since our sojourn in the states was limited to a ten months' period of time my husband and I had decid-ed not to assign our children any extra homework to cover their Japanese school subjects. What we wanted for both of the children was

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to let them enjoy their experince in the different culture, which meant a complete liberation from the Japanese education system. Accordingly , Shin could spend all his free time after school as he liked. It turned out sometimes, however, that he was unable to find any Japanese friends to play with; they were too busy studying Japanese school subjects at home.

Thanks to his hobby, stamp collecting, new friends with different language backgrounds began to visit our house to trade their stamps . Shin sometimes went out with them to collect stamps and visited other houses in the apartment buildings. He became more and more energetic in collecting stamps. During our trip out of the state, we were often asked to stop in front of a building where he had found the Stars and Stripes fluttering. He knew where there was a national flag, there was surely a post office.

His passion for collecting stamps grew to involve other items such as matches, small cakes of soap given at motels and even varieties of cou-pons on newspapers or magazines. He went to shopping with me in order to make sure that those coupons would be accepted at super-markets as had been advertised.

There were other chances for him to be exposed to the target lan-guage through his violin lessons, sport activities at night, and church meetings, which most of his Japanese friends were not given. Through these activities he came in contact with more native English speaking people.

It is true that learning a new language is not like collecting small items at all. However, what is really necessary for a learner is to be given enough materials with which he/she can build his/her own new language system. The biggest difference between ESL and EFL lies in their different environments with different amounts of materials available for the learner. And even in an ESL situation the amount of useful

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materials depends on the learner. I think it was Shin's constant exposure to L2 that finally brought him a higher rate of L2 acquisition than rea-ched by Japanese peers and his family.

His ESL teacher once told me that one of the Japanese children coud not get rid of her over-practiced, prefabricated patterns such as "There

is a...", "This is a...", "I have a...". On my observation the child was heard using these patterns without realizing that they were only appli-cable to singular cases. In the applied linguistics term these patterns were almost 'fossilized' in her language behavior. Later I found that the

child had to stay in the ESL class for over a year in spite of the fact that she had lived in another state for about the same time before she had moved to Michigan, and that she was a rather talkative child at home. Though I have no knowledge where the child had learned those patterns, what is clear to me is that she had not been given the exposure to L2 that might have been enabled her to build a more creative system.

C) Identity in L2 community

The subject's L2 community provided him with a great amount of exposure to that language but it also resulted in his having more conflicts than other members of his family. In the ESL classroom he was more conflict-free than in the grade class where he was required to perform at a higher level of L2 proficiency.

His problem in the grade class didn't result only from his lack of language skills but also from other causes. To search these causes, I would like to consider and analyze the cultural aspect of his conflicts. First of all, in the ESL class the teacher was completely dominant over the students, all of whom lacked L2 proficiency. Secondly, the teachers (including assistant teachers) in the ESL were empathetic to the students with different language and different culture backgrounds, while the regu-lar class had a dominant culture which almost of all the students in the

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class shared, that is the culture of the United States .

According to my observation, he seemed to be frustrated and angry with himself as well as with the teachers and his classmates who had expected a different pattern of reaction or interaction from him. In one of the troubles in his classroom, he refused to obey the teacher's request or to work with some of his classmates. At the same time he seemed to be frustrated and impatient with himself for his incompetence in the L2 classroom; he had always been one of the best students in his homeland classroom. How different his present status in the L2 classroom looked to him!

However, this frustrated situation of him with the feeling of social uncertainty or dissatisfaction, mixed with a slight anticipation of being accepted by a new community was just like the one which Lambert labels 'anomie' referring to Durkheim's concept. (Lambert 1967) Citing Lambert's research Brown contends that "anomie might be described as the first symptom of the third stage of acculturation, a feeling of homelessness, where one feels neither bound firmly to a native culture nor fully adapted to a second culture." He also describes the four stages of acculturation which have been generally identified in the field of socio-logical research as follows:

The first stage is the period of excitement and euphoria over the newness of the surroundings. The second stage---culture

emerges as the individual feels the intrusion of more and more

tural differences into his own image of self and security. In this

stage the individual relies on and seeks out the support of his fellow

countrymen in the second culture, taking solace in complaining about

local customs and conditions, seeking escape from his predicament .

The third stage is one of gradual, and at first tentative and

ing, recovery. This stage is typified by what Larson and Smalley

(1972) call culture stress: some problems of acculturation are solved

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while other problems continue for some time. But general progress is made, slowly but surely, as the person begins to accept the differences in thinking and feeling that surround him, slowly

becom-ing more empathetic with the persons in the second culture. The fourth stage represents near of full recovery, either assimilation or adaptation, acceptance of the new culture and self-confidence in the "new" person that has developed in this culture .

According to Brown (Brown 1980 B) no one would go into the final stage of full attatinment of L2 acquisition without passing through this third stage. He suggests that there may lie the basis of the optimal distance model and a socioculturally based critical period. He writes " for one type of second language acquisition---the case of second (not for-eign) language acquisition within the second culture---the critical period hypothesis can achieve explanatory adequacy by including the socio-cultural factors at play. Such factors are independent of age, for they describe the process that persons, regardless of age, universally go through in acculturation... The interaction of language and culture pro-duces a syndrome which gives rise to a certain stage during which lan-guage learning achieves an optimal level. At that critical stage, adults, and children, have an optimal chance to become fluent in the second lan-guage." (Brown B p.158)

Brown's hypothesis successaully explains why the other members of the subject's family did not suffer from a violent feeling of culture-bound conflicts and at the same time didn't attain to such a high level in the L2 acquisition. The subject's sister was accepted as a senior in a public school and also a member of the school orchestra. Her situation there was much freer than the other regular, native students; her status in the school could be described as a "visiting" student. Besides, thanks to her telent as a good violinist, the possibility of her self-esteem being hurt was

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very rare. In a sense, she could 'communicate' through music but not through the second language. It means that although she was accepted as a member of her music community, it doesn't follow that she was really given membership in the L2 community. In her private life, her friends were only a few Japanese or Japanese-Americans.

Her situation as a 'visitor' to a L2 community was quite similar to that of her father who was accepted as a 'visiting professor'. Though both of them were welcomed as visitors in the L2 community, it didn't result in their full membership in that community. It means that they enjoyed their visit and at the same time, they could be free from the conflicts which the subject was afflicted within his new language commu-nity. From Brown's viewpoint both his father and sister were staying in the first or the second stage of acculturation which doesn't provide learners an opitimal chance to become fluent in the second language.

Thus the subject was the only person in his family who was passing through the third stage of acculturation, and this in turn caused him to experience such violent conflicts in the new language community. So from sociocultural viewpoint the subject was in rather a 'healthy' or natu-ral stage of L2 development.

Just as a bilingual child who begins to learn two different language systems by first mixing one into the other the subject could not construct a L2 identity separated from his Ll identity. By overcoming a lot of conflicts and assimilating to the new culture he gradually began to build

a new identity in the new language community: the full membership in the new language community demanded of him a new identity separated from his native Ll identity. Overcoming frustrations, stresses, conflicts and loneliness and by the assistance and support of his friends, his teachers and his family, he grew to be an accepted member of the L2 community, which resulted in a higher level of proficiency in the target

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language. He began to speak and behave like his peers in the classroom and on streets.

Conclusion

Starting from an almost zero level of proficiency, Shin developed an efficient system of communication in a short period of time. I think what is clear from my study on him is that the real mastery of L2 in an L2 environment occurs in accordance with the process of acculturation. His early transition to the grade class caused him to experience a lot of conflicts: sometimes he fought against his classmates and other times he disobeyed his teachers, both of whom had expected him to behave like the other members of the class. In the grade class where the L2 culture was dominant, he was forced to leave behind his old self and rebuild a new identity with the second culture. However, the transition seemed to have accelerated his L2 acquisition as well as his agony. Both his ac-culturation and acquisition processes were at first gradual and later hasty; he seemed to have moved through the first stage gradually and all of a sudden was forced to hit the pace in the second through the third into the final stage.

Generally speaking, children are more likely to be provided with opti-mal chances to meet such socioculturally-rich environment in formal or in informal situations. Besides, they are more `socioculturally resilient' and 'have fewer perceptive filters to readjust.' (Brown 1980 B).

In order to place the model of the socioculture-based critical period hypothesis, I think, more empirical researches are needed. Besides, there should be a means of measurement to assess what stage the learner is in, or how strong his culture shock is. Nobody knew exactly how much the subject struggled between the two languages, two cultures and two iden-tities; what we could surmise was only from guessing.

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I have not discussed the problem of age in my research, either.

Therefore I'm not sure if the subject's agony was stronger than that of

adult's cases; what is clear to me now is that it is surely easier for young

children to adapt to a new environment and acquire a sufficient level of

proficiency enough to communicate with other members of his new

lan-guage community than the other members of the family.

Conversely, however, it is also easier for young children to lose what

they have acquired. Leopold who has accomplished a monumental work

in the field of child language acquisition and now called as the father of

language acquisition research writes, "the walls between the two systems

are brittle, unless bilingualism is cultivated with effort." (Leopold 1978)

Bilingualism seems to me hard to attain and easy to lose without

continual, social and linguistic reinforcement.

REFERENCES

Brown, H. Douglas. 1980 A. Principles of Language Learning and

Teach-ing. Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Brown, H. Douglas. 1980 B. The optimal distance model of second

lan-guage acquisition.

TESOL Quarterly 10:221-239.

Krashen, Steven D. The din in the head, input, and the language

acquisi-tion device.

In Method That Work, 011er, Jr., and Patricia A.

Richard-Amato (ed.). Newbury House Publishers, Inc. 1983.

Lambert, Wallace E. 1967. A social psychology of bilingualism.

The

Journal of Social Issues 23: 91-409, cit. in Brown 1980 B.

Leopold, W. F. 1887. A child's learning of two languages.

In Second

Language Acquisition. Evelyn Hatch (ed.) 23-32.

Newbury House.

Roberts, Paul. Speech Communities. In Language, Virginia Clark, Paul

A. Eschholz and Alfred F. Rosa (ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press,

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1985. Swain, Work.

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