Exploring the Sources of Communication Breakdown : Native Speaker Reactions to the Errors Produced by Japanese Learners of English

本研究调查了日本英语学习者在交际语境中所犯二语错误的相对严重性。在实验一中，研究者考察了请求和道歉情境中语音、词汇、句法和语用错误的相对严重性。实验二旨在考察学习者在请求情境中使用的三种语用策略（言语行为、开场白和话语策略）中错误的相对严重性。在这两个实验中，本研究从日本英语学习者和一名本族语者的角色扮演对话中选取了两个请求对话和两个道歉对话，并进一步考察了本族语者对日本英语的不同接触程度的影响。这些错误已被两位英语语言学家证实为导致严重交际障碍的错误。受试者 ...更多信息 是69名以英语为母语的美国大学生，根据日本英语的接触程度，他们被进一步分为两组。研究结果表明，被试对交际效果的判断依赖于语境，尤其是受言语行为类型的影响。在请求情境中，不恰当的请求实现模式和语音偏差被认为在更大程度上阻碍了交际。然而，在道歉情境中，词汇语法错误更容易导致沟通失败。本研究还发现，本族语者对日本英语的接触程度并不影响他们对交际效果的判断。总体而言，错误的严重性倾向于由包含错误的词、短语和句子在整个语篇中的功能决定。少

The present study investigated the relative gravity of L2 errors made by Japanese learners of English in communicative contexts. In Experiment 1, an effort was invested in examining the relative gravity of phonological, lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic errors manifested in the request and apology situations. Experiment 2 was set up to take a closer look at the relative gravity of errors in three pragmatic strategies (speech acts, gambits, and discourse strategies) performed by the learners in the request situations. In both experiments, an attempt was further made to examine the influence of differential degrees of native respondents' exposure to Japanese English.From the role-play dialogs between Japanese EFL learners and a native English speaker, two request and two apology dialogs were selected, which contained the errors in the four linguistic domains. These errors had been validated by two English-speaking linguists as those inducing serious communication breakdown. The subjects … More were 69 native-English-speaking college students in the U.S., who were further divided into two groups in terms of the degree of exposure to Japanese English. They were requested to listen to the tape while reading the role-play transcripts and to rate the seriousness in communication problems inherent in the designated erroneous expressions.The results indicated that the judgments of communicative effects were context-dependent and were paiticularly influenced by the types of speech acts. In the request situations, inappropriate request realization patterns and phonological deviations were judged to impede communication to the greater extent. In apology situations, however, lexico-grammatical errors were more likely to induce cominunication breakdown. It was also found that degrees of native speakers' exposure to Japanese English did not influence their judgments of communicative effects. On the whole, error gravity tended to be governed by the functions of the words, phrases, and sentences containing the errors in the whole discourse. Less