Developing a System to Support the Practice of Language Adjustment in Classrooms

An Evaluation Focused on the Attitudes and Language Use of Student Teachers

抄録

In this study, Teacher Talk Trainer (T3), a system which supports the practice of language adjustment in classrooms, was developed to examine how lessons taught using T3 can influence the attitudes and language use of Japanese language student teachers (participants). A training course in methodology for Japanese language teachers was offered in universities and included a subject focused on simulated teaching. Students enrolled in the subject were divided into two groups: one that received ordinary lessons using T3 (T3 Group) and one that did not (NT3 Group with complementary lessons). Questionnaires and teacher talk tests were then administered to both groups in order to measure and analyze the students teachers’ attitudes toward language adjustment, their adequacy of assumed speech in the teacher talk test, and the subsequent linguistic changes. According to the questionnaire’s results, the T3 Group demonstrated improved awareness of gestures during teaching. Furthermore, the results of the teacher talk test revealed that the assumed speech of the T3 Group increased in both the adequacy of their language adjustment and the rate of their use of vocabulary and sentence patterns that had already been taught to their target learners.