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Abstract: There are two distinct styles of predicates in Japanese: the long form and the short form. The former is associated with politeness/formality, while the latter is reserved for more intimate social settings. It is expected that when the relationship of the speakers and the setting remains the same, speakers will use one form. However, studies on native speakers show mixing of the two forms, known as style shifting, occurs even when the factors mentioned earlier remain constant. This study examines short and long form usage and style shifting in conversations between native and non-native speakers. Similar to native speakers, the majority of native/non-native dyads shared a dominant speech style, and all speakers (including the non-native speakers) engaged in style shifting. A closer look at individual conversations showed the non-native speakers’ awareness of what forms they were using, and evidence of style shifting serving specific discourse functions.

Accent and intonation in foreign language instruction tend to be treated in a haphazard manner for two reasons: lack of research analysis that can be applied to the second language acquisition (SLA) situation; and absence of pedagogical materials that effectively train learners on this aspect of the target language. Japanese language instruction at all levels will benefit from both deductive and inductive instructions on accent and intonation at the level of utterance and discourse. Such a seemingly challenging task can be accomplished by using a computerized exercise that involves the effects of various accent and intonation patterns. The experimental study presented in this dissertation examined the processing of three types of prosodically marked syntactic and pragmatic contrasts by native and non-native speakers of Japanese. Three results are salient. First, there was a statistically significant difference between the performance of native and non-native speakers in both the discrimination and the interpretation tasks. Second, while non-native speakers performed equally well in the discrimination task regardless of their proficiency, their performance in the identification task was strongly predicted by their proficiency. Finally, native speakers of the Tokyo dialect and speakers of other dialects performed differently on the interpretation task. As an extension of the investigation, I propose ways to make the topic of accent and intonation a part of the curriculum at all levels of instruction. I will also demonstrate a computer program currently being developed to help Japanese students improve their communicative effectiveness by directing their attention to the effects of variation in accent and intonation patterns.

The problem of this study was to examine the effect of text structure and signaling devices on immediate and delayed recalls of freshman Arabic-speaking students after reading a text. Subjects for the study were forty-five freshman Arabic-speaking students enrolled in three freshman English courses at a state university. All subjects were male students. The subjects-were chosen on a voluntary basis. The subjects were given the Reading Comprehension Section of the TOEFL. They were then divided into groups of good, average, and poor readers according to their performance on the TOEFL. Two well—organized passages of expository text with clearly identifiable top-level structure of problem/solution and appropriate reading levels were selected for the study. Two versions of each passage were adapted — one with the signaling devices included in the passage and the other with the signaling devices deleted. Each subject read one version of each of the two passages. The immediate and delayed recalls of the subjects were scored by an unbiased scorer. The scorer was an expert teacher of English to foreign students. Hypothesis I stated that good readers would be able to utilize the writer's rhetorical mode of the text at a significantly higher level than average and poor readers. This hypothesis was supported. The results of Chi square analysis was significant at the .03 level for immediate recall, and at the .01 level for the delayed recall. Hypothesis II stated that readers of each of the three groups who followed the original rhetorical mode of the text would recall significantly more information than those who failed to do so. This hypothesis was also supported. The results of the Two-way Analysis of Variance were significant at the .01 level for both immediate and delayed recalls. Hypothesis III stated that the students of all three groups would recall significantly more information from the passage with signaling devices than from the passage without signaling devices. This hypothesis was not supported. Signaling devices helped good and average readers to recall significantly more information, while the group of poor readers was not affected by the presence of these signaling devices. The findings suggest that training non-native speakers in identifying and utilizing different rhetorical structures might facilitate their reading comprehension. There is also a parallel need in writing instruction so that writers can . offer this facility to their readers.