Research Notes: Luft looks into Japanese language learning

Among students who study under the Performed Culture Approach (PCA), the amount of time spent studying outside of class is negatively correlated with in-class performance. In recent research, Stephen Luft (lecturer and academic advisor to Chinese and Japanese majors) investigated if lower performing students spend more time studying because they overemphasize form and neglect focusing on meaning during their out-of-class study. He collected data from 20 first-year Japanese language students by stimulated recall. These data were then analyzed to identify instances of form-focus and meaning-focus.

The results showed that although lower performing students do not focus on meaning less than higher performing students, form-focus and meaning-focus were very strongly correlated. This suggested that not only lower performing students but also PCA students in general were not neglecting meaning-focus in favor of form-focus in their out-of-class study.

For future research, he suggests looking into the extent to which prior language study, language aptitude, and language strategy use and see if these factors can explain why lower performing students spend more time studying outside of class than higher performing students in PCA.

The study was the core of his dissertation at the Ohio State University. Dr. Luft gave a talk about this research at December 13, 2014 EALL Colloquium.

Research Notes features EALL faculty members' recent research findings.