A Comparative Study of the Use of Request Strategies by Learners and Native Speakers of Japanese.

摘要

The present study examined the request strategies of advanced learners of Japanese, by comparing those of native speakers of Japanese. The investigation focused on the following aspects: discourse structure, sentence types, strategy types, and reasoning behind the speakers' choice of strategy. The participants for this study were five learners and six native speakers of Japanese. Data were collected through role plays and a retrospective verbal report. The distribution of the types of responses was compared. Results showed that the request realization of learners of Japanese and that of native speakers of Japanese were similar at least in the use of the supporting statements in the discourse structure and use of indirect strategies; in contrast, they differed in the use of sentence types to realize indirect requests and types of intended strategies. Findings suggest that the learners' deviations from native speakers were caused by their inadequate grammatical skills.