| This dissertation is a longitudinal case study of the natural second language acquisition of Japanese by two speakers of English in Japan. The two female adult learners, instructors in English at junior high school in Japan, knew no Japanese on their arrival in Japan and received no formal instruction thereafter.; The researcher (a native speaker of Japanese) met with each of the subjects once every two weeks for approximately a year. During these sessions, the learners performed a number of tasks in Japanese (making origami, describing pictures, teaching cooking and so on). In addition to transcribed data from those sessions, other sources of data included their scores on three tests (GEFT, MLAT and PLAB), questionnaires that they answered on affective variables and diaries that they kept throughout the study.; The development of linguistic output by the two learners was very similar to the composite picture of the interlanguage continuum described by Ellis in 1984 (Classroom Second Language Development). At the end of the study, both learners were in the third stage of the continuum, just short of Ellis' last stage.; The two learners' initial test scores were the same, and the questionnaire administered at the beginning of the study showed them to be very similar in attitude and other cognitive variables. The diaries kept throughout the study, however, showed differences in their reactions to their naturalistic language learning experiences in Japan. One learner reported feeling more confident and hopeful, less frustrated and angry, than the other.; The two learners' developmental patterns in the acquisition of (a) negative inflection in Japanese and (b) Japanese particles were compared to the developmental patterns of Japanese children learning their first language. Both similarities and differences were found.; The nature of the input received by the learners (i.e., the "foreigner talk" used by the researcher) was also analyzed. Not all features of typical foreigner talk were present at the beginning; some features increased in frequency as the study progressed, some features decreased, and some features remained constant. |
