Oral Proficiency of Foreign Children upon Entering Elementary School

An Analysis of Data From Interview Tasks

Abstract

Recently, attention has been focused on issues in Japanese Language Education for foreign children who were born and brought up in Japan. It is believed that understanding the characteristics of these children's language development in Japanese is essential for ensuring the quality of their education. In this article, language data from interview tasks was analyzed by comparing foreign children and Japanese native speakers in the same year group. The interview tasks were conducted in June (two months after entering elementary school). According to the results, foreign children got lower scores than the native speakers in task achievement. There were distinct differences between them in fluency and complexity of the sentences they produced. The results show that the foreign children seem to have weaknesses in the following areas: 1) producing sentences; 2) understanding utterances within conversation; 3) giving additional information or reconstructing information in responding to the other person's utterance. However, this analysis was based on conversation within a fairly restricted context. More respondents and a more refined method of analysis will be needed in order to raise the validity of this approach.