Teacher based assessment of l2 japanese

From a teachers’ perspective, we need to know how to implement effective assessment for L2 pragmatics in the classroom; the same concern is true for researchers and teacher educators if

Ishihara, N (in press) DRAFT Teacher-based assessment of L2 Japanese pragmatics: Classroom

applications In S Ross & G Kasper (Eds.), Assessing second language pragmatics

Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan

Teacher-based assessment of L2 Japanese pragmatics: Classroom applications

Noriko Ishihara, Hosei University, Columbian University Teachers College Japan Campus

1 Introduction

In this chapter, the potential utility and limitations of teacher-based assessment are explored in the Japanese-as-a-foreign-language classroom context Teacher-based assessment constitutes “a more teacher-mediated, context-based, classroom-embedded assessment practice,” which is situated in opposition to traditional formal assessment that is often externally set and

administered (Davison & Leung, 2009, p 395) Teacher-based assessment is sometimes termed

alternative (in) assessment, classroom(-based) assessment, or authentic assessment (e.g., Brown

& Hudson, 1998; O’Malley & Valdes-Pierce, 1996; Rea-Dickins, 2008) Despite the rigorous efforts to measure learners’ pragmatic competence (e.g., Ahn, 2005; Brown, 2001; Enochs & Yoshitake-Strain, 1999; Hartford & Bardovi-Harlig, 1992; Hudson 2001; Hudson, Detmer, & Brown, 1992, 1995; Itomitsu, 2009; Liu, 2006; Rintell & Mitchell, 1989; Rose, 1994; Roever, 2005; Yamashita, 1996), their application to everyday classrooms long remained underdeveloped (Hudson, 2001) The assessment of learners’ pragmatic competence in classroom contexts has only begun to be explored recently even though assessment is an integral part of instruction From a teachers’ perspective, we need to know how to implement effective assessment for L2 pragmatics in the classroom; the same concern is true for researchers and teacher educators if pragmatics is to be promoted in L2 instruction and teacher development

I argue that the teacher-based assessment demonstrated in this chapter aims to be

authentic in principle (albeit not necessarily in reality) in a twofold manner Firstly,

teacher-based assessment aims to be reflective of the pragmatic variation that exists in authentic

interactions at multiple levels Secondly, the assessment is made not only of learners’ pragmatic competence but also for its further development in the authentic classroom context (Cumming,

2009; Davison & Leung, 2009; Leung, 2007) I will detail each case in what follows

1.1 Assessing for research vs assessing outside of the laboratory

Although pragmatic norms in the target language are used as a reference point in both instruction and assessment, they can differ depending on interlocutors’ subjectivity and social backgrounds

as well as various (and often subtle) contextual factors and diverse community practices (e.g., interlocutors’ regional, social, gender, ethnic, or generational backgrounds, relative social status, psychological and social distance, interactional structures and sequences, Schneider & Barron, 2008) These multiple layers of pragmatic variation mean that teachers and learners have

multiple moving targets that are both amorphous and elusive, which makes pragmatics-focused instruction and assessment all the more challenging

When learners’ pragmatic performance is assessed by raters as part of the research or test method, a further complication is that pragmatic variation extends not only to the participants but

to the raters as well Interrater reliability is crucial in studies in which learners’ pragmatic

competence is measured with a single yardstick shared among the raters for each measure While

we need to ensure through rater training that raters share the same (or a sufficiently close)

understanding of the assessment criteria, it is possible that even with agreed-upon criteria, raters may make varied assessments by relying on their own range of pragmatic norms In such a case,

different ratings can be seen as a natural consequence of pragmatic variation Roever (2008) acknowledges that raters will have disagreements if they are to assess the politeness and

appropriateness of learners’ pragmatic competence In fact, in Taguchi’s (2011) research, even with an initial norming session in which a five-point rating scale was provided with examples, the four raters, who varied in their backgrounds, took issue with different aspects of the learners’ production and came up with different ratings (e.g., verbosity, clarity of the message, level of directness, use of positive politeness strategies) Taguchi’s post hoc interview data show that the raters also weighed the criteria differently, which contributed to the weak interrater correlations

In the second norming session, the raters formulated their perceptions of appropriateness and politeness and discussed their discrepancies to establish common ground in their rating criteria Taguchi concludes that despite the rater variation, overall interrater reliability was acceptable and that raters with diverse cultural backgrounds and teaching experiences may be normed and trained Thus, in research contexts that require standardization, a balancing act may be

achievable that ensures reliable ratings that encompass some measure of rater variation

In authentic contexts, the learners’ interactants are their real language appraisers, and they may not necessarily share a single yardstick They are likely to assess learners’ language use from a range of subjective perspectives, and they usually will not undergo rater training or

norming This means that they may have different sets of assessment criteria as to what

constitutes appropriate behavior when interpreting learners’ pragmatic language use One rater may notice pragmatic divergence in a learner and take offense, while another may be

unconcerned For example, learners’ interlocutors may or may not interpret learners’ pragmatic behavior based on what they perceive as a range of native-speaker norms (see Iino, 1996;

Ishihara & Tarone, 2009) They may assess leniently based on the perceived level of learners’

pragmatic or linguistic competence, or they may have different expectations based on their perception of learners’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds

Furthermore, because learners’ pragmatic use of language is shaped by their subjective perspectives, the range of the pragmatic norms they choose to utilize in their production may diverge from that of other target language speakers (Ishihara & Tarone, 2009; Siegal, 1996; Taguchi, 2012), which adds another layer of pragmatic variation In such a case, care must be taken in assessment so as not to penalize learners for non-target-like behavior for which they deliberately opted While learners’ pragmatic awareness or comprehension can be assessed in reference to what is typically viewed as appropriate language use in the target language, their production may be assessed appropriately based on the meaning and nuances they intend to convey, rather than on the range of target language norms (Ishihara, 2009) So if assessment of learners’ pragmatic competence is to be made more authentically in the field than in the

laboratory, those layers of pragmatic variation that reside in the learners and their interactants

must be taken into consideration

1.2 Teacher-based assessment in the classroom context

Teacher-based assessment as explored in this chapter addresses teachers’ and learners’ needs in the classroom context Teacher-based assessment is often formative and integrated into

instruction It can be performance-based in that learners produce written or spoken language available for assessment as they perform authentic or simulated tasks In this direct form of assessment, learners draw on their prior knowledge and relevant skills, often in interactive

discourse (Brown, 2004; O’Malley & Valdes-Pierce, 1996) The defining characteristics of teacher-based classroom assessment include (but are not limited to): the use of multiple and

complementary instruments, an active role played by the students, the use of meaningful world tasks, the exercise of higher-order cognition, an emphasis on the process as well as the product, the integration of various language modalities, in-advance presentation of evaluative criteria to the students (as well as to other stakeholders), and the use of feedback as a way of supporting learning (Brown, 2004; Brown & Hudson, 1998; Fox, 2008; O’Malley & Valdes-Pierce, 1996) For instance, evaluative criteria in assessment rubrics can highlight what

real-pragmatic aspects are important and need to be learned The criteria can be weighted differently, indicating the different degrees to which each aspect is viewed as crucial in using language appropriately

In teacher-based assessment, learners’ competences are typically described or

summarized in a descriptive narrative, written in terms of what learners are able to do, as well as what they need to work on further In other words, assessment can provide diagnostic

information regarding the learners’ current state of pragmatic competence, while at the same time assisting teachers in determining the subsequent course of pragmatics-focused instruction Diagnostic information is useful especially in formative assessment, which focuses on the

learning process Meanwhile, teacher-based assessment also includes summative assessment, in which students’ end product is evaluated for the extent of their achievement Formative

assessment aims to determine the level of the students’ learning in progress as part of continued development, and often requires learners’ active involvement in interaction with the teacher and peers (Brown, 2004; Fox, 2008) In contrast, summative assessment is not necessarily designed for future learning but intends to measure or describe how well the learners have accomplished instructional objectives, typically at the conclusion of a course or unit of instruction (Brown, 2004)

On the other hand, it is important not to overestimate the credibility and strengths of teacher-based assessment Validity and reliability of classroom-based assessment has been

discussed among its proponents (for a detailed discussion, see for example, Brown & Hudson, 1998; Huerta-Macías, 1995; Lynch, 2001; Lynch & Shaw, 2005; McNamara & Roever, 2006) While a certain degree of validity tends to be assumed based on the real-world (or simulated) nature of the tasks being assessed directly (e.g., Huerta-Macías, 1995), some have cautioned that validity should not be taken for granted and that there could be threats to (construct) validity (Brown & Hudson, 1998) Meanwhile, the reliability of teacher-based assessment is often

conceptualized differently from traditional standardized testing (Lynch & Shaw, 2005) Rater disagreements may result from differences in raters’ subjective perceptions, and in this case, potential differences in rater reaction can be a natural consequence of pragmatic variation, as argued above In addition, reliability is called into question when a classroom instructor, who may not be professionally trained as a rater, is the sole evaluator of students’ performance

working in a time-constrained manner Finally, teacher-based assessment may be seen as

relatively impractical, as instruments can be difficult to construct and more time-consuming than those of traditional testing (Fox, 2008)

While the implementation of teacher-based assessment can be a daunting task,

particularly when L2 pragmatic competence is to be assessed, the challenge does not make the task any less important in the classroom where L2 pragmatics is taught In fact, a major strength

of teacher-based assessment is that instruction and assessment are inseparable from each other in

a cyclic pedagogical process, serving students’ and teachers’ needs in their immediate

instructional contexts This conceptualization of the role of assessment within the learning

process can be supported by Vygotsky’s sociocultural framework, which I discuss in the

following section

1.3 A theoretical framework for the teacher-based assessment of L2 pragmatics

It is important to stress that instruction and teacher-based assessment are one and the same in that they both aim to facilitate learners’ language development Theoretically consistent with this conceptualization of the role of teacher-based assessment is Vygotsky’s sociocultural framework (Fox, 2008; Rea-Dickins, 2008) While interpretations of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and of its relationship with relevant constructs vary (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006; Ohta, 2005), Vygotsky (1978) originally defined it as the difference between the learner’s developmental level achievable through independent problem solving and the higher level of potential development attainable through problem solving in interaction with others with more advanced cognitive ability, such as a teacher or a more capable peer Closely related to the concept of ZPD is the notion of teacher (or peer) assistance, which is typically mediated by language or cultural

artifacts provided to learners based on observation of their competence (e.g., Lantolf, 2000;

Lantolf & Thorne, 2006; Ohta, 2005; Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976) This notion of mediation is

also a defining concept of sociocultural theory as higher forms of our mental activity are

regulated by symbolic and physical tools developed by human cultures, including language, gesture, music, art, and numbers (Lantolf, 2000; Lantolf & Poehner, 2008) The learner initially performs tasks under the collaborative guidance of more competent individuals, often mediated through language as part of the process of other-regulation This collaborative inter-mental

activity becomes more intra-personal when the learner is capable of self-regulation and achieves independent functioning

In teacher-based instruction and the assessment of L2 pragmatics, external assistance may

be embedded in the instructional process where teachers direct learners to the key contextual features and lead them to select appropriate language forms Teachers may also point out

language features that were not quite appropriate in students’ production to prompt class

discussion or self-reflection for improvement Mediation in the form of teacher feedback is dialogically constructed to facilitate understanding and support cognitive development The dialogue may be realized either orally in classroom interaction or through a written channel in a written assignment, for example Teacher feedback may be individualized based on each

learner's performance or targeted for a group (or subgroup) of learners in a classroom setting Alternatively, this other-mediation may be provided by more competent peers Through

successful other-regulated mediation, learners eventually appropriate and internalize the newly gained knowledge and become self-regulated when they no longer need to rely on outside

resources to carry out the task or access that awareness that has now become part of their

cognitive repertoire (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006; Vygotsky, 1978)

Examples of self- and other-regulation in the area of pragmatic competence can be found

in Tateyama and Kasper (2008) and Ohta (2005) In Tateyama and Kasper (2008), the

microanalysis of the request episode, in which a classroom guest and a student were engaged, abounds in instances of other-mediation both from the co-performing guest and from the

overhearing students While the Japanese native-speaking guest asked the L2 Japanese student to look over her paper written in English, she modified her speech when sensing difficulty More

concretely, she shifted between a plain style and a distal masu style perhaps to accommodate the

student’s limited proficiency, and she reiterated her request directly to facilitate comprehension After an extended silence, the overhearing peer students supplied the English equivalent of the

guest’s utterance and offered the Japanese word with which the student struggled in producing a response The episode demonstrates how these instances of other-mediated assistance guided the student to respond in a more pragmatically appropriate manner in the L2 compared to what the student would achieve without such assistance

Ohta (2005) interprets three existing interlanguage pragmatics studies through the

sociocultural framework An instance of self-regulation can be observed in the performance of Takahashi’s (2001) Japanese college students in the “explicit” control group, who received teacher-fronted lecture and translation exercises about biclausal requests in English In the

posttest discourse completion tasks (DCT), these students showed improvement in their use of the biclausal structures, reaching or approximating the state of self-regulation in terms of

producing the target form In Samuda’s (2001) study, self-regulation was observed among

Korean and Japanese ESL students in their post-instructional performance The students

produced the target modals in both discussion and writing following implicit and explicit

scaffolding by the teacher regarding the target modals Ohta identifies this as effective

scaffolding addressing the ZPD, as the teacher’s focused instruction was based on the students’ pre-instructional performance, where they relied on non-verbal means and lexical expressions of probability rather than on the target modal forms Similarly, in the initial delivery of oral

narratives in Yoshimi (2001), learners of Japanese lacked the use of discourse markers As a result of the teacher’s individually tailored feedback provided in small groups, and of expanded opportunities for the students to compare their own performance with that of expert speakers, the learners’ use of the discourse markers improved While the target discourse markers tended to be phonetically and lexically less salient for learners, the instruction successfully foregrounded these target features and this guided the learners toward self-regulating in the use of these

discourse markers in their conversational storytelling The above-mentioned examples in

Tateyama and Kasper (2008) and Ohta (2005) are successful instances of pragmatics-focused mediation within the sociocultural framework, although the assessment of the learners’

pragmatic development was measured or observed by researchers rather than by the classroom teachers

1.4 The present study

Given the complexities of teacher-based assessment of L2 pragmatic competence as outlined above, exploratory efforts have been made to teach and assess pragmatics in the context of a Japanese-as-a-foreign-language classroom in a U.S university This descriptive case study describes the assessment practices in a regular classroom setting, which were embedded in and inseparable from the instruction It illustrates how learners’ pragmatic development may be born out of written dialogic interaction and how learners’ pragmalinguistic awareness and production might be assessed by teachers at different points in the instruction The instructional and

curricular decisions were made by Teacher A, who elected to engage in written dialogue with individual learners about their demonstrated pragmalinguistic competence Written instruments can efficiently elicit learners’ pragmalinguistic awareness, and written records can facilitate both teachers’ assessment and learners’ pragmatic reflective analysis over an instructional period spreading over several weeks Teacher A’s instructional decision appears to be practical in

consideration of the demands of many FL instruction settings in the U.S

In this study, learners’ language use during the first seven weeks was assessed

formatively with the intention to explore how the teachers’ supportive assistance may have mediated the learners’ pragmatic development through written collaboration over this period In

contrast, the students’ language production during the final eighth week was assessed

summatively because it was viewed as the end point of the instruction on making requests in Japanese and the teachers were required to quantify the learners’ performance in order to assign grades Examples of learner language, their guided pragmatic analysis, and written interaction with the instructors were analyzed in order to address the following research questions:

1 How do the learners demonstrate their pragmalinguistic development in written dialogic interaction with the teachers in the process of formative assessment?

2 How can teachers quantify learners’ pragmalinguistic competence through the use of summative assessment instruments?

The learners’ pragmatic development as demonstrated in the assessment instruments was

mediated through classroom-based interaction and interpreted through Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (1978) While peer interactions can provide effective mediational space for language development as shown by Ohta (2000) and Yoshimi (2001), for example, the details of each interaction are usually not observable for classroom teachers In research contexts, investigators typically select a few peer groups from the entire student group in a classroom in order to

examine those group interactions in detail For teachers’ classroom-based assessment, however, such selectivity is not pedagogically viable Interacting with each student through writing is therefore an effective and practical option in authentic classrooms The following section reports

on the instructional context, the participants, and the process of data collection and analysis

2 Methods

2.1 Participants

Two instructors of Japanese collaborated with me, a researcher in TESOL and L2 pragmatics, in designing and implementing the instruction and assessment and in conducting part of the study Teacher A was the instructor of record at a U.S university, whose professional training was in psycholinguistics Teacher B was a volunteer teaching assistant, who was an MA student in TESOL at the same university and was studying second language pragmatics During the sixth semester of university Japanese, when the data being reported in this paper were collected, there were eight students, and they all consented to participate in the study There was an equal divide between male and female participants One was a freshman, two were sophomores, and the rest were a mix of juniors and seniors Two (Learner #1 and Learner #4) were native speakers of Arabic and Vietnamese respectively, two (Learners #5 and #8) were heritage learners of

Japanese, who may have had more exposure to Japanese culture, and one (Learner #7) had

studied in Japan for one year The rest were native speakers of English with little previous

exposure to Japanese language and culture The learners had received approximately 300 hours

of class instruction or had equivalent proficiency in Japanese before taking this elective course, a requirement for a minor in Japanese Their level of proficiency, as described by the teachers, was novice high to intermediate high according to the ACTFL Oral Proficiency guidelines (1999), with the majority in the category of intermediate low

2.2 Curriculum and instruction

Teacher A had discretion over the third-year curriculum and decided to focus on language use in

sociocultural context through the instruction of speech acts and keigo honorifics in the academic

year during which the data were collected Classes met for 75 minutes twice a week for 30 weeks, totaling 75 hours of instruction During the fifth and sixth semesters of Japanese, pragmatics-

focused instruction was given The six-unit curriculum consisted of an introductory unit followed

by five units focusing on speech acts in Japanese (i.e., giving and responding to compliments, thanking, requesting, refusing, and apologizing, adapted from Ishihara & Maeda, 2010) The

instruction, in which assessment was often embedded, utilized activities and instruments

including the following:

 learners’ observation of L1 and L2 pragmatic norms in the given dialogues

 analysis of the contextual factors (e.g., relative status, social and psychological

distance, and the level of imposition)

 analysis of the context-language relationship in the L1 and L2

 whole-class discussion of sociopragmatic norms in the L2

 learners’ written production

 teacher’s feedback about specific learners’ production

 learners’ response to the teachers’ feedback (guided self-assessment of their earlier

work)

 learners’ analysis of peer1

discourse

 learners’ written and oral production, followed by teachers’ assessment using rubrics

Instruction was normally conducted in Japanese but English was also used to facilitate written and oral discussion on the meta-pragmatic level (e.g., instructions for pragmatic analysis and assessment criteria) Learners elected to produce written reflections, self-assessment, and

pragmatics-focused analysis in their dominant language, English

1 The elicited discourse segments selected for this instructional material were excerpted from the work completed by equivalent students of Japanese in the previous semester

The instructor utilized classroom-based assessment tools, such as reflective writing, oral role plays, written DCTs, collaboratively written and orally presented skits, self-assessment and peer-assessment, analysis of peer pragmatic language use provided by the teacher, and whole-class discussion.2 These assessments were designed to: (1) elicit the learners’ pragmalinguistic competence in using L2 norms; (2) elicit their sociopragmatic awareness of the consequences of their own pragmatic language choices; and (3) evaluate the extent of the match between the learners’ intentions and interlocutors’ interpretations (See the following section for the types of data collected.)

2.3 Data collection

Assessment instruments often doubled as instruction tools and were designed by the researcher and collaboratively revised with the teachers, adapting the principles of classroom-based

assessment of pragmatics recently proposed (Ishihara & Cohen, 2010) During the fifth semester,

a collaborative pilot study was conducted by the teachers and myself as researcher This chapter reports on the data collected during the first half of the sixth semester (Weeks 1−9) In

conjunction with the instructional activities and instruments listed in the preceding section, the data collection instruments used for this study include:

 written multiple-rejoinder DCTs (see Appendix)

 analysis of peer discourse

 reflective writing

2 Although whole-class discussions were audio-recorded, they were excluded from this report for two reasons Firstly, the teachers decided to assess pragmalinguistic competence individually in writing to facilitate the learners’ linguistic analysis Secondly, the teachers also opted to deal with sociopragmatic aspects in whole-class discussions, and as a result, the audio-recordings did not yield the pragmalinguistic feedback being analyzed in this study (Also see the

 assessment rubrics for the DCT items (see “Findings” section)

 sets of assessment criteria for learners’ analysis of peer discourse

Because the assessment criteria were repeatedly negotiated among the teachers and the

researcher and evolved over the entire course (a feature relevant to the second research question

in this study), this process along with the final version of the assessment criteria will be reported

in the Section 3, below In order to ensure authenticity in the classroom data, student work was collected as part of the day-to-day instructional routine

2.4 Data analysis

In order to demonstrate the process of learning pragmalinguistics as it became manifest to the classroom teachers in the assessment, the written data listed above were analyzed deductively The researcher first sought evidence of noticeable pragmalinguistic development or its absence

by analyzing each learner’s pragmatic awareness and use of language demonstrated at different stages of instruction Special focus was placed on the interaction that occurred between the learners and the instructors in order to trace the ways in which the cognitive development came about through instructional mediation In an attempt to triangulate the data and the instruments, data from each assessment instrument and each learner were analyzed pragmalinguistically Then

a variation of the constant comparative method (Merriam, 1998) was utilized to identify

tendencies in the pragmalinguistic development that cut across the participants or the

assessments Through this cross-case analysis, similar pragmalinguistic patterns of development (or non-development) emerged as preliminary themes Subsequently, emerging findings and cases of particular participants were further examined

3 Findings

In this section, representative evidence of the learners’ pragmalinguistic use and awareness will

be reported in order to answer the two research questions First, a record of the dialogic

interaction between the learners and Teacher A will be described to address the first research question Then, illustrations of the learners’ pragmatic development will be reported in response

to the second research question, in accordance with exactly how the teachers identified them in

their assessment toward the end of the instruction on making requests

3.1 Research question 1: How do the learners demonstrate their pragmalinguistic

development in written dialogic interaction with the instructors in the process of formative assessment?

During the first week of instruction on requests, learners were asked to respond to two rejoinder DCTs (see (1) below; also see the chapter Appendix for the scenarios) The responses provided the teachers with some initial diagnosis, but no assessment was provided to learners at this point as the teachers wanted the students to take the initiative in noticing L2 pragmatic norms in the upcoming instruction Six weeks later, when the instruction on requests was about

multiple-to conclude, these responses were assessed using a rubric (see the following section for the criteria) and Teacher A’s narrative comments ‒ (2) and (4) ‒ were provided to the students as a form of collaborative guidance Learners were asked to follow up on this collaborative dialogue

by responding to the instructor’s feedback ‒ (3) and (5) The teacher assistance was intended to mediate student learning and to support learners’ independent pragmalinguistic functioning A week later, the learners responded to the same DCTs (6), at which point the responses were assessed summatively

Learner #1 was identified as one of the weaker students at the start of instruction In a DCT, he was playing a role of a college student, Shinobu, asking a close friend, Satomi

(speaking pre-determined lines; see Appendix on pages 194-5), for her cell phone in order to call his boss at his part-time job to notify the boss of a change in his schedule.3 Below are his initial responses to the multi-rejoinder DCTs in Week 1:

(1) Shinobu: A! Buchauni denwa surunoga wasurete shimaimashita ‘Woops, I forgot to

call my department head.’

[Satomi: Aa, iikedo, isoideru? ‘Sure, but are you in a hurry?’]

Shinobu: Un, Satomino keitai denwawo tsukatte kuremasenka? ‘Yeah, can you [sic]

use your cell phone?’

[Satomi: Jaa, kore Owattara kitte oitene ‘Here it is Turn it off after you.’]

Shinobu: Hai, arigatou ‘Yes, thank you.’

Other than the few grammatical errors (e.g., the spelling of bucho and the use of particles),

Learner #1 used the wrong perspective in his request in the second turn (can you use your phone instead of can I use your phone), which in fact proved to be a common error in this class In

addition, compared to the response made by 12 native speakers of Japanese to the same DCT item in Ishihara (2007), the level of politeness as demonstrated through his consistent use of

desu/masu style, would be less likely to suit the situation than the plain style.4 The learner may not have noticed his equal-status interlocutor’s use of plain style, or he may have felt that he

3 The parts of the data originally provided in Japanese have been translated into English using the back translation technique

4 While baseline DCT data were available, the teachers in this study assessed the learners’ pragmatic

language use according to their own intuition On the one hand, this is problematic since intuition and ideology have been shown to be at odds with actual sociolinguistic practices (Cook, 2001, 2008; Ishida, 2005; Maynard, 1991; Tateyama & Kasper, 2008) On the other hand, language teachers routinely rely on their intuition as a source for assessing students’ language use (see the Discussion section)

needed to use the distal desu/masu style while asking for this favor He is also performing

somewhat out of turn at the beginning where his first line does not quite match the

pre-determined Satomi’s line that immediately follows it perhaps due to carelessness During Week 7,

Teacher A underlined Learner #1’s use of desu/masu sentence finals and commented on a

separate sheet of paper:

(2) In this situation, you are supposed to have a conversation between close friends Is it

likely that they would use the desu/masu form, such as wasurete shimai mashita ‘I

happened to forget (distal form)’ or kure masenka ‘can you (distal form)’?

Here, Teacher A directed the learner’s attention to the interlocutor’s level of acquaintance in an attempt to facilitate the selection of the more context-appropriate pragmalinguistic form, rather than by telling him to use a particular style or providing the specific target structure Learner #1 responded to this comment, demonstrating his pragmalinguistic ability to use the informal plain style, during the same week:

(3) No, the use of desu/masu form was inappropriate because they are close friends

Instead of wasurete shimai mashita ‘I happened to forget (distal form)’, I could have used wasure chatta ‘I happened to forget (plain form),’ which is less formal

In her feedback in Week 7, Teacher A also attempted to elicit the correct use of perspective in the request:

(4) tsukatte kuremasenka ‘can you use (distal form)’ is an expression you use to ask

someone (Satomi in this case) if [she] can use the cell Read the situation again and

understand that Shinobu himself wants to use it How would you say, ‘let me use’ in a request statement?

In this formative assessment, Teacher A explains the implications of the perspective the learner used and brings his attention to who needs the phone in a step-by-step manner Then, the teacher avoids giving the correct form but instead asks for a more suitable form, perhaps based on her judgment that this is sufficient to guide the learner to a more appropriate form Such

collaborative teacher assistance is qualitatively distinct from the traditional IRF

(initiation-response-feedback) or IRE (initiation-response-evaluation) pattern, in which learners are

corrected on their pragmatic errors In the Vygotskian framework, divergent learner performance

is not viewed as a flaw or an imperfection but as an attempt to “establish (new) identities and gain self-regulation through linguistic means” (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006, p 275; Kinginger, 2002) Similar to his response above, Learner #1 again responds to this guidance successfully and

demonstrates his pragmalinguistic control during Week 7:

(5) Instead of using tsukatte kure masenka ‘can you use (distal form)’ for my request, I should have used tsukawasete kurenai ‘can you let me use (plain form)’ in the permission form instead of just using the regular form of tsukau ‘to use’

It is notable that both instances of teacher assistance, which were tailored to the learner’s needs (2 and 4), appear to have successfully mediated Learner #1’s pragmalinguistic learning in this interaction A week later, Learner #1 responded to the same DCT item as follows:

(6) Shinobu: A, pinchi dakara, Satomino keitaidenwawo kashite moraenai ‘Ooops, I’m

in a pinch Could I borrow your cell phone?’

[Satomi: Aa, iikedo, isoideru? ‘Sure, but are you in a hurry?’]

Shinobu: Un, buchoni denwa suru wasurete shimatte Sorekara, raishuuno

sukejuaruwo ienakucha [sic.] ikenai ‘Yeah, I happened to forget to call my

department head And I have to be able to say schedule [sic.] to him.’

[Satomi: Jaa, kore Owattara kitte oitene ‘Here it is Turn it off after you.’]

Shinobu: Hontouni tasukaruyo! Arigatou ‘That helps me a lot! Thanks.’

According to Teacher A’s assessment, Learner #1’s post-instructional performance in Week 8 shown in (6) indicated improvement in his pragmalinguistic competence as compared to his earlier performance during Week 1 demonstrated in (1) He appropriately utilized more

elaboration in giving his reason for the request, even though wasurete shimatte ‘I happened to

forget (distal form)’ maybe slightly formal for the occasion Although the learner may still be going through the process of other-regulation in producing the plain style of this particular form,

he may have internalized much of the teacher mediation provided earlier about the request

perspective and the general use of the plain style After the request is granted, he succeeds in emphasizing his gratitude in a manner suitable for use with a close friend, a strategy discussed and practiced in the class instruction between Weeks 2 and 7

The assessment made in Week 8 was summative in nature, intending to determine the extent to which the learners gained self-regulation (For further discussion of summative

assessment, see the following section on Research Question 2.) Apart from the interactive