Enhancing student schematic knowledge of culture through literature circles in a foreign language classroom

• Authors: Alastair Graham-Marr
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Improving student understanding of a foreign language culture is anything but a peripheral issue in the teaching of a foreign language. This pilot study reports on a second year required English course in a university in Japan that took a Literature Circles approach, where students were asked to read short stories out of class and then discuss these stories in class. Although students reported that they did not gain any special insights into the target language culture presented, they did report that reading fiction as source material for classroom activity helps with the acquisition of a vocabulary set that is more closely associated with lifestyle and culture. The results suggest that further study is warranted. Procedures of this pilot study are described and interpreted in the context of the English education system in Japan.

Keywords

EN

literature circles; vocabulary acquisition; intercultural communication; Japan

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Journal of Language and Cultural Education
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 85-92

Dates

published

2015-01-01

online

2015-06-08

Contributors

author

Alastair Graham-Marr

• Tokyo University of Science, Japan

References

• Altman, R. (1997). Oral production of vocabulary: A case study. In Coady, J. & Huckin, T. (Eds), Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition (pp. 69-97). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Barrette, C., Paesani, K.. & Vinall, K. (2010). Toward an integrated curriculum: Maximizing the use of target language literature. Foreign Language Annals, 43(2), 216-230[WoS][Crossref]
• Coady, J. (1997). L2 vocabulary acquisition: a synthesis of the research. In Coady, J. & Huckin, T. (Eds.), Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition (pp. 273-290). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Ellis, R. & Xe, H. (1999). The roles of modified input and output in the incidental acquisition of word meanings. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 21, 285–301.
• File, K. A. & Adams, R. (2010). Should Vocabulary Instruction be integrated or isolated? TESOL Quarterly, 44(2), 222 – 249.[Crossref][WoS]
• Furr, M. (2004). Literature circles for the EFL classroom. Proceedings of the 2003 TESOL Arabia Conference, Dubai, United Arab Emirates: TESOL Arabia.
• Gorsuch, G. J. (1998). Yakudoku: EFL instruction in two Japanese high school classrooms: An exploratory study. JALT Journal, 20(1), 6-32.
• Krashen, S. (2004). The case for narrow reading. Language Magazine, 3(5), 17-19.
• Joe, A. (1998). What effects do text-based tasks promoting generation have on incidental vocabulary acquisition? Applied Linguistics, 19(3), 357-377.[Crossref]
• Laufer, B. & Hulstijn, J. (2001). Incidental vocabulary acquisition in a second language: The construct of task-induced involvement. Applied Linguistics, 22(1), 1-26.[Crossref]
• Modern Language Association. (2007). Foreign languages and higher education: New structures for a changed world. Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages. Retrieved from
• Murphey, E. (1988). The cultural dimension in foreign language teaching: Four Models. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 1(2), 147-163.[Crossref]
• Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Schmitt, N. (2008). Review article Instructed second language vocabulary learning. Language Teaching Research, 12(3), 329-363.[Crossref]

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/jolace-2015-0008