Being and Becoming a Speaker of Japanese
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- ISBN 9781847693617
- Weight: 397g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 15 Mar 2011
- Publisher: Channel View Publications Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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This autoethnographic account of the author’s Japanese as a second language learning trajectory is an important and unique addition to diary studies in SLA and applied linguistics qualitative research circles. In-depth ethnographic details and introspective commentary are skilfully interwoven throughout Simon-Maeda’s narrative of her experiences as an American expatriate who arrived in Japan in 1975 – the starting point of her being and becoming a speaker of Japanese. The book joins the recent surge in postmodernist, interdisciplinary approaches to examining language acquisition, and readers are presented with a highly convincing case for using autoethnography to better understand sociolinguistic complexities that are unamenable to quantification of isolated variables. The comprehensive literature review and wide ranging references provide a valuable source of information for researchers, educators, and graduate students concerned with current issues in SLA/applied linguistics, bi/multilingualism, and Japanese as a second language.
Andrea Simon-Maeda is an Associate Professor in the Department of Early Childhood Education at Nagoya Keizai University where she teaches English as a foreign language. She has published articles in TESOL Quarterly and the International Multilingual Research Journal and served as a coordinator and editor for the Gender Awareness in Language Education Special Interest Group of the Japan Association for Language Teaching. Her main research interests are bi/multilingualism and gender issues in societal and educational contexts, and her professional educator career in Japan spans 35 years of tertiary level EFL instruction.
