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Grammar Instruction of the Connective Shi in Japanese

Kageyama, Risa
http://orcid.org/0009-0000-1277-2225
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1721325991101608

Abstract Details

2024, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, East Asian Languages and Literatures.
The connective shi in Japanese makes a connection between reasons or between reasons and a conclusion. English-speaking learners of Japanese learn the connective shi through a variety of simple grammar instructions with a few examples, and they are often said to use it erroneously. Previous studies have explained how Japanese speakers use the connective shi, but few have compared the connective shi used by native speakers of Japanese and English-speaking learners of Japanese based on large-size conversation data. I used the International Corpus of Japanese as a Second Language (I-JAS) (Sakoda et al., 2020) to examine how native speakers and learners use the connective shi in the interview task about the same topics in the same amount of time. I found that both native speakers and learners used the connective shi equally well, providing reasons first and then giving a conclusion. However, when giving a conclusion first and then providing reasons, learners could not add reasons accurately with the connective shi compared to native speakers. I analyzed learners’ errors and found that they made these errors due to coming up with more than one conclusion or providing wrong reasons for a conclusion. I propose that we can understand what learners are doing in those errors if we use Schiffrin’s (1987) idea structure, which divides a paragraph into a position and supports. A position is the speaker’s commitment to his opinion, and supports are the explanations of his commitment. I also propose that we can assist learners in explicit instruction. The instructor can explicitly present different patterns of the connective shi in the basic grammar rules with examples. After learners can use the explicitly presented information to identify a conclusion and reasons at the sentence level, they can organize the idea structure with the connective shi and other connectives at the paragraph level. They can express their opinions about debatable topics in the idea structure.
Etsuyo Yuasa (Advisor)
Mineharu Nakayama (Committee Member)
112 p.
Pedagogy
grammar instruction; corpus study; idea structure; discourse marker; connective

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Kageyama, R. (2024). Grammar Instruction of the Connective Shi in Japanese [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1721325991101608

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Kageyama, Risa. Grammar Instruction of the Connective Shi in Japanese. 2024. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1721325991101608.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Kageyama, Risa. "Grammar Instruction of the Connective Shi in Japanese." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2024. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1721325991101608

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1721325991101608
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.