Japanese students' Romaji strategy when reading words in english as a new language
Doki, Noriko
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Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/125879
Description
Title
Japanese students' Romaji strategy when reading words in english as a new language
Author(s)
Doki, Noriko
Issue Date
1996
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Davidson, Fred
Yamashita, Hiroko
Department of Study
Linguistics
Discipline
Teaching English as a Second Language
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
M.A.
Degree Level
Thesis
Keyword(s)
Teaching English as Second Language
Language learning
Grapheme-phoneme
Romaji strategy
Pronunciation rules
Language
eng
Abstract
To read words in a new language requires a learner to know the grapheme-phoneme relationship in the language. When a learner's L1 has a grapheme-phoneme relationship different from the new language, the process of learning to read the new language is arduous. One of the Japanese students' L1 orthography systems, Romaji, uses the Roman alphabet as does the new language, English. But Romaji is read syllabically whereas English is read morphophonemically and phonemically. Romaji keeps a one-to-one letter-sound correspondence, whereas English does not. This research studies whether Japanese Romaji-literate students depend on Romaji strategy whereby they read unfamiliar English words as they read Romaji.
The research results illustrate that Japanese students are in general dependent on Romaji strategy. The research analyzes intergroup differences of reading strategies. The students at an early stage of learning English (Group 1) do not try to read unfamiliar English words by using any orthographic strategies to pronunciation. The students at a later stage of learning English (Group 2) depend exclusively on Romaji strategy. The students at a more advanced stage (Group 3) avoid Romaji strategy hypercorrectly when asked to choose between Romaji reading and nonRomaji readings. The responses of the students in Groups 1, 2, and 3 illustrate that they do not know the general English orthographic rules. The students at a very advanced stage (Group 4) finally can predict the pronunciation of English words without depending on Romaji strategy and without hypercorrection. They respond this way, not because they have learned the rules exclusively but because they are aware of the rules through their many years of exposure to English.
These results suggest that Japanese students need to learn English grapheme-phoneme correspondences at early stages of English learning. It is up to the individual teacher whether to teach Phonics (phoneme grapheme patterns) or orthographic rules (grapheme-phoneme patterns). Nevertheless, Japanese students need to know that orthography can be a clue to the pronunciation of unfamiliar English words. English L1 users depend on two mechanisms when reading English words: the lexical mechanism and the orthographic mechanism. Japanese learners of English can activate the lexical mechanism to greater advantage by learning words morphologically. Similarly, if they learn to use the orthographic rules as a clue to predicting pronunciation, Japanese students will also be able to activate the orthographic mechanism more efficiently. Once they learn to use the orthographic mechanism, they will become more proficient readers of English.
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