The Differences in Communication Style between Japanese and American College Students and the Development of Data-based Teaching Material

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This research is a combination of a comparative study on the communication styles of Japanese and American students and the development of data-based teaching materials. The procedures and results are as follows :(1) A Discourse Completion Test, consisting of twenty common conversational situations, was designed in Japanese and English. The Japanese test was given to L1Japanese-speaking college students and the English version to L1English-speaking college students.(2) The responses (data) were analyzed and discussed. We found that cultural background could explain the differences.(3) Teaching material based on the differences in communication style between Japanese and American college students was produced and tested on students at Hakuoh University and Shinshu University in Japan and Wellesley College in the USA.We found that the data-based teaching material was very effective and welcomed by most of the students in discussion-style classes. The teaching material is now being prepared for publication.(4) As a further development of this research project, we have started to investigate the degree of pleasantness or unpleasantness Japanese and Americans feel in the conversational situations we have been studying.