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Week 3 Hello, Mr. Meyerhoff. Let me introduce my favorite sports. It is walking. When I entered
Saga University, I thought I would like to find some new hobbies, so I thought of walking. It
is free and good for health. I often walk about one hour in the evening. Walking helps reduce
stress, and I enjoy it. It is my hobby in now. I can go to see healthily in the first term two
kilometers. I’m very happy, so I would like to continue it. I think sports is good for keeping
health, and it is very good for keeping the health, and I’d like to enjoy various sports.
On week 3, Y’s accuracy has dropped slightly to 81.25%, yet her lexical density has
increased to 1.65. Her lexical complexity has decreased somewhat over the previous week. Noteworthy, she has complete communication breakdown with the following sentence:
I can go to see healthily in the first two kilometers.
In natural speech, a speaker would normally apply one or more CSs in case of
communication breakdown such as pausing, rephrasing, repair, abandonment, and so forth. The fact that she applied no CSs, and simply continued with her speaking without a pause or
even acknowledging her breakdown, indicates lack of metacognition, and is a strong
indicator that the speaker is simply speaking without thinking about what she is saying.
Week 4 Hello, Mr. Meyerhoff. This is Y. If I had one million dollars, this money has lots of uses. In
the first place, I will present something for parents’ desire as a farewell party. It is because I
offer a lot to my parents. I’m most grateful. I would like to make my parents glad. In second
place, I would like to use money for my purpose. I have a license so I would like to buy a car,
and I would like to go out and play at the various places. I would also like to go to
accounting school, and also obtain a license for bookkeeping. I would like to save remaining money. When being necessary, it’s used. Maybe my how to use is glamorous, but I’m also
happy enough by the condition now. Therefore, I don’t want to break the life now by a large
sum of money. I think a camera is best. Let me finish my speaking with this.
On Week 4, Y’s accuracy has improved remarkably to 55.5%. Her lexical density, though,
is about the same at 1.62. Once again, she is integrating more complex structures, such as207
subordinate clauses, into her speech. Further, she is demonstrating richer vocabulary, and
even making use of CSs.
Of note is the following extract:
Maybe my how to use is glamorous
Obviously, instead of “how to use”, she wanted to say “way of using”. Still, her meaning was conveyed, albeit a little awkwardly. Similarly, there were incidents in the above passage
in which Y had gotten her meaning across through substitution or approximation.
Week 5 Hello, Mr. Meyerhoff. My name is Y. I was born in Oita. I have lived there for 18 years. Oita
is famous for hotsprings. They are inexpensive and wonderful. Famous food is toriten and
kabosu. I’m glad to be able to eat toriten in Saga. I love them. Near my hometown is the Yuki
Fujisawa’s home. He is the person of the 10,000 yen bill. I respect him. I have visited his
home twice. Oita is country, but I think a good place for living.
Compared to earlier weeks, Y’s Week 5 performance is disappointing, indeed. It is true
that she has displayed an accuracy of 100%, but her lexical complexity is 1, meaning that she
has used no subordinate clauses and only simple active voice sentences. Further, her lexical
density is only 1.39, and she has used no difficult vocabulary. The passage does reaffirm the assertion that high complexity leads to lower accuracy, and
low complexity results in greater accuracy (Crookes 1989). However, Y’s rather simplistic
performance on Week 5 leads to the question: Why did she not perform up to her previously
displayed ability? Although the answer cannot be ascertained completely, it would appear,
for whatever reason, that she was not intrinsically motivated to give a more detailed answer.
8.4 Use of Academic Vocabulary over the Five Weeks
As can be seen from the chart below, the use of academic vocabulary increased over the five
weeks. However, the researcher is reluctant to draw conclusions from this finding, as
students speaking will obviously improve if it has been scripted. One is led to wonder whether students are able to retrieve vocabulary, lexical items, and grammatical knowledge208
when speaking is spontaneous as it is needed for reallife communication.
Further, it can be questioned whether language skills are retained only in short term memory,
or long term memory, as well.
8.5 Influence of Questiontype on Responses
It is difficult to say exactly to what degree questiontype influenced responses, although week 4 showed a marked increase in speaking rate. Perhaps this type of hypothetical
question engages students, and stimulates intrinsic memory. Also, of note, Question 2 brought out the most lexically complex, and texturally rich
response from Y. Similarly, there was a noted increase in academic vocabulary on the
responses to Question 2. Interestingly, Question 2 was the only question that asked students
to explain a personal experience.
According to Deacon and Murphey (2001):
Stories, a form of narrative, help us to make sense of our world. Even in academic research,
they have been given a higher status.
(Deep Impact Storytelling, Deacon & Murphey, p. 10)
Therefore, asking students to explain such experiences could increase intrinsic motivation
as they are negotiating meaning from real life experience. However, it could, also, require
sophisticated procedural skills to tackle these tasks. On one hand, students at a procedural
level are more engaged as they are interested in the task; on the other hand, students who are
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