The family of languages and second language acquisition

Graduation Thesis

Presented to

the Faculty of the Department of

English Language and Literature

Notre Dame Seishin University

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirement for the Degree

Bachelor of Arts

by

Michiyo Omoto

2005

Contents Abstract 1

Chapter One: Before research

1.1. Introduction 2

1.2. Family of languages 3

1.3. About Japanese 5

1.4. About Korean 6

1.5. About Tagalog 7

1.6. The focus of the thesis 8

Chapter Two: The study

2.1. Introduction 9

2.2. The experiment 9

2.2.1. Introduction

2.2.2. Method

a) Subjects

b) Test design

c) Procedure

2.2.3. Results

2.3. Summary 19

Chapter Three: Discussion

3.1. Introduction 21

3.2. Summary of the Experiment 21

3.3. Discussion of the results 22

3.4. Implications 24

3.5. Limitations of the Experiments 24

3.6. Further research 25

3.6. Conclusion 26

Appendices 28

The list of reading for this thesis 31

Abstract

Most Japanese have been learning English as a second language since they were in

elementary or junior high school, but they are not good at English. Why are the Japanese

poor at learning English? Most Europeans can speak two or three languages.

When I visited the Philippines, people there taught me some of their language, but it

was really hard to understand the structure. On the other hand, when I visited Korea, I

learnt a little Korean, and then it was really fun and easy to understand. Why did I feel

differently? I realized Korean and Japanese grammar or words are quite similar.

Moreover, these two languages belong to the same family of languages, the Altaic family of

languages. So, I decided to find out whether the family of languages affects second

language acquisition.

Three subjects were asked to learn Korean and Philippine language, Tagalog. They

studied the Korean words and the Tagalog words for 30 minutes everyday for a month

each, and they also studied the grammar. They studied the words by using word cards, and

they studied grammar with grammar book, so they educated themselves.

The subjects said that it is easier to understand the Korean grammar than the Tagalog

grammar, but it is difficult to remember in both of them. Moreover, the subjects also said

that Korean has similar words to Japanese, and Tagalog have similar words to English, so it

helped them to learn words.

Frankly speaking, the results of the experiments were different from my expectation,

because there are some limitations in this study. Now we will show you this study

including the explanation of limitation.

1

Chapter One: Introduction

1.1 Introduction

When I was traveling to foreign countries, a question came across my mind. It was

whether a family of language affects second language acquisition or not. As I was traveling

in the Philippines, my Philippine friends there taught me their language, Tagalog or Ilongo,

at that time. It was very hard for me to understand or remember the grammar or

pronunciation, because it was very different from Japanese. On the other hand, when I

traveled in Korea, my Korean friends taught me Korean, and then I thought it is not so

difficult to understand because there are a lot of similar or identical words between Korean

and Japanese, in addition, their word order or grammar are almost the same. Why are there

such differences though it is the same second language learning?

Most Japanese have been learning English as a second language since they were in

elementary or junior high school. However, most of them are poor at English even if they

have been learning English for over 10 years. However, most Europeans are able to speak

some languages of their neighboring countries including English. Moreover, there are a lot

of people who can speak Japanese with fluency in Korea and to my surprise, some of them

have learnt simple Japanese grammar or sounds or vocabulary in only a few months. Is this

caused just by their great facility in learning languages, or are there other obvious reasons?

So, I considered what I should notice when I was taught these two languages.

Tagalog and Japanese word order are very different, though Korean and Japanese word

order is almost the same. Moreover, Korean and Japanese grammar are very similar. Why

are Korean and Japanese so similar? Are these languages from the same original language?

Or, are they from the same route?

2

When I went over Korean and Japanese, interesting fact came up. It is said that Korean

and Japanese belong to the same family of languages, the Altaic family of languages, and

as I also studied European languages, I also found that most European languages such as

French or Spanish or Italy or English belong to the Indo-European family of languages.

We can think that each language is similar, because those languages may belong to the

same family of languages; this is to say that they might be derived from a common parent

language.

It is said that the Japanese are poor at learning foreign languages, especially English,

and I felt Tagalog was very difficult to learn, it may happen because the Japanese family of

languages is different from English or Tagalog. In short, I considered that the difficulty of

second language acquisition is concerned with the family of languages.

Now we will compare the language belonging to the different family of languages with

the languages belonging to the same family of languages to find out the differences of

acquisition as we deal with Japanese, Tagalog, and Korean. We will now explain what the

family of languages is and the languages we will deal with in this thesis

1.2 Family of languages

Generally, it is said that there are more than 3500 languages in the world. On the

other hand, as the research develops, we have found that the number of languages has been

increasing to 5000 or more. However, most of the languages are spoken by less than

10,000 people in minority groups, so we have identified more in recent years. Such a

difference in the number of languages happens because there are some areas that are

difficult to research because of war or the harsh climate or because they are inaccessible

mountainous areas. What is more, there are some people that are nomadic. Another reason

3

is that we do not have a standard way to identify the language as a dialect or as a separate

language, so we are not able to show clear number of languages in the world.

As we mentioned above, there are over several thousand languages in the world, and

those have different structures or character, besides they are complicated, and distributed

widely throughout the world. So, languages were classified into language groups derived

from a common parent language. This group is called a family of languages, and

moreover, some of them are classified into the branch of languages under the family of

languages.

For example, French is the Indo-European, Italic, Romance language, and Spanish

belongs to the Indo-European, Italic, Romance language too, so these languages are derived

from the same protolanguage, and they are in the same family of languages. In Europe,

most languages belong to the Indo-European family of languages except languages in

Finland, Estonia, Hungary, Kavkaz, and Basque.

As we consider these points, it may be natural that some European can speak some of

these languages. For example, as compared French with Spanish have a lot of similar or

identical words. For example, think is pensar in Spanish, and it is penser in French, or lose

is perder in Spanish, and it is perdre in French. What is more, one two three is uno dos tres

in Spanish, and it is un deux trios in French. The word order of both languages is basically

the same, subject-verb-object. Besides, nouns have gender in both languages. For

example, book or piano is masculine in both languages and snake or pen is feminine in both

languages.

Of course, even though they belong to the same family of languages, they are different

languages, so they have a lot of different points too. However, we can suppose that it

would be easier to learn similar language than very different language.

4

Anyway, as I was taught Tagalog in the Philippines, I felt I was completely lost and it

was too difficult. On the other hand, when I was taught Korean in Korea, I felt it was very

fun and easy to understand. It may happen because of the effect of difference between

families of languages. Korean is a member of the Altaic family of languages as well as

Japanese, but Tagalog is different, it belongs to the Austronesian family of languages, so

the mother tongue may affect the second language acquisition. We can also guess it from

the fact that Japanese are not good at learning English.

To prove this hypothesis, I selected 3 languages, Japanese, Korean, and Tagalog for this

thesis, then I will explain these 3 languages first, and next, I will explain what I will do in

this thesis in detail.

1.3 . About Japanese

Japanese is spoken and written by about 120 million people in Japan, but it is

sometimes spoken in Korea, Taiwan, and China too, because Japan occupied those

countries in the early 20th century. People in those countries were forced to speak Japanese

during that period. Consequently, there are still some people who can speak Japanese in

these countries. Besides, in the United States of America, and Brazil, there are some

immigrants from Japan, so they also can speak Japanese.

As it is under investigation, Japanese is said to belong to the Altaic family of languages.

There are about 60 languages in this group such as Turkish, Mongolian, Tungusic, Korean,

Ainu and Japanese. Especially, Japanese has the closest relationship to Korean.

5

Japanese grammar has the following features. The basic structure of Japanese sentence

is that the subject comes first, and then the object comes next, and finally comes the verb.

In addition, the subject and the object are accompanied by particles. For example,

Watashiwa ringo wo taberu, it means I eat an apple in English. Watashiwa means I, and

ringo is apple, wo is the particle and taberu is eat. The subject comes first as well as

English, but next comes the object in Japanese, and the verb usually comes to the end of the

sentence.

The next feature is about politeness. Japanese has honorific system to express

politeness or formality or decency. For example, by the addition of “o” or “go” to nouns,

they changed into honorific words like “Okyaku” (o-kyaku, kyaku means customer) to

respect the customer.

There is another feature. Japanese nouns do not have number or gender. Thus, “ringo”

meaning “apple” can be used for the singular or the plural.

Japanese is written using Chinese characters and syllabaries. Syllabaries are such as

Hirakana or Katakana. These letters can express one sound for one letter. Generally,

people use Katakana in order to express foreign loanwords like fork or spoon, and Hirakana

usage is for inflectional ending or particles.

1.4 . About Korean

Korean is spoken by 78 million people in South Korea and North Korea and also in

Yanbian of China. Korean is called Chosonmal( 조 선 말 ) in North Korea, but it is

called Hangungmal( 한 국 말 ) in South Korea though they are the same language in

linguistic. However, in general in the world, it is called Korean. In this connection,

Hangul is the letter to write Korean.

6

Over 50 percent of the Korean vocabulary comes from Chinese. Korean speakers

use Hangul to write something today though originally they had used Chinese character

with Hangul like Japanese use Chinese character and Hirakana and Katakana.

The Korean letter, Hangul was made by the emperor in the 15th century to help the

people popularize reading, because most of the people in this period could not write letter,

so Hangul is very simple and easy to use for them. Hangul is very alphabet. The shape of

Hangul letters were designed to model the tongue, palate and teeth. For example, ㄷ

sounds m, ㅏ sounds a, then put them together, it becomes 마 (ma). ㅎ sounds

h, ㅣ sounds i, put them together, then it becomes 히 (hi).

Korean is classified in the Altaic family of languages as is Japanese. This is to say, both

Korean and Japanese are agglutinative languages, so their grammar is very similar to each

other. The agglutinative language is a kind of language that can express tense or case to put

function word or affix to nouns or verbs. In addition, the basic word order of Korean

sentence is subject-object-verb like Japanese, and we use particles to connect subject and

object. We also abbreviate subjects if we already know what the subject in a sentence is.

We will give an example. 저 는 학 교 로 간 다 . It means I go to school,

but the word order is I school to go. In Japanese, 저 는 학 교 로 간 다 is

watashi wa gakkou he iku, 저 is watashi, 는 is wa, 학 교 is gakkou, 로 is he,

간 다 is iku. As we can see, basic word order is subject-object-verb. The word order

and particle usage are the same.

Korean has an honorific system. They use honorific words to speak to elderly people or

people who are in high position. Moreover, Korean does not have articles, and nouns do

not have gender or number like Japanese.

1.5. About Tagalog

7

Tagalog is one of the official languages of the Philippines. The Philippines consists

of more than 7,000 islands, and there are more than 80 dialects in the Philippines. People

can not understand each other’s dialect in this country. So, the nation decided to select

Tagalog as the national language in 1939. The reason why Tagalog was selected as the

official language in the Philippines is that spoken Tagalog area was superior in economy to

the others. However, it was about 30 years as about 50 percent of people understand

Tagalog as the official language, and they can speak.

Now, Tagalog is generally spoken all over the Philippines, and 15 million people use it

as a mother tongue, and about 50 million people speak it as a second language.

Due to the colonization by Spain in the 16th century and the occupation by the United

States of America from 1899, English also became one of the official languages in the

Philippines, and Tagalog has been affected by English and Spanish very much. Words of

the week and months and number have been directly come from the Spanish, and there are

other examples. Teacher in English is titser in Tagalog, or effect is epekto, advertisement is

adbertisment, category is kategorya. The alphabet consists of 31 letters which include the

26 letters of the English alphabet plus some Spanish letters and ng of Tagalog.

Tagalog is a member of the Austronesian family of languages. This family is one of the

largest families of languages in the world. The name of Austronesian means southern

islands in Greek. The Austronesian languages are widely spread over the islands of

Southeast Asia. This family includes Bahasa Indonesia, Buginese, Malay, Javanesenese,

Malagasy, Tagalog, Ilocano, Ceburano, and many others.

The word order of Tagalog is very different from European languages or Japanese or

Korean. Sentences of Tagalog are often predicate-subject order. Almost all sentences can

be put into the subject-predicate order, but people usually do not do that, and do it for

8

emphasis. For example, “Hindi ako titser” means “I am not teacher.” But the word order

is “am not I teacher” in Tagalog. In addition, “Inhinyero ang anak ko” means “my son is

an engineer” but the word order is “engineer the son my”. It is very different from the

Altaic languages.

1.6. Focus of this thesis

In this chapter, we explained what the family of languages is, and the three

languages I will deal with in this thesis. Then, we looked at the basic features of these

languages and the family of languages.

In this thesis, the keywords are the family of languages and second language learning.

In the next chapter, I will conduct on the experiment on the three subjects with the two

languages of the different family of languages.

We will research whether only motivation or great faculty of language learning

affects second language acquisition, or not. We would like to find out how different of

language acquisition between two languages of different families, or effect of the family of

languages through this experiment.

9

Chapter Two: The study

2.1 IntroductionIn the previous chapter, I explained why I am interested in this theme, and why I

decided on Korean and Tagalog. We also saw what the family of languages is, and learned about Japanese and Korean and Tagalog simply. We will research how different learning Korean and Tagalog is for Japanese native speakers. Therefore, we saw what points are different or same between the same family of languages, Japanese and Tagalog in the Chapter One.

In this chapter, we will see their reaction through word learning and grammar learning with Korean and Tagalog on three subjects.

2.2 The experiment

2.2.1 Introduction to the experimentI will now explain the aim of this study. It would be good to find out whether the

family of languages of a mother tongue and the target language affect second language acquisition, so we will see language learning of two languages of different family of languages, and check how the subjects react. Three subjects were asked to remember words in both languages for a month, and study grammar from a textbook by themselves. The word learning is for 30 minutes everyday, and grammar study is one unit everyday. Everyday, after finishing the grammar study, they were asked to write things they noticed or their feelings such as what was difficult or easy to understand or remember. On the other hand, in the word learning, they need to write down how much vocabulary they learnt everyday. Then, they also needed to write down what kinds of words were easy to remember or the word they can not remember even though they checked them many times. Then, we will compare which language can be remembered well to see comments or notes or diary and solve our question. In the previous chapter, we mentioned there are a lot of similar features between Korean and Japanese, it can be said also about words. For example, Kaban (bag) in Korean is Kaban in Japanese. Kosokudoro (freeway) in Korean is Kousokudouro in Japanese. In addition, SankakuKwankei 　 (the eternal triangle) 　 in Korean is Sankakukankei in Japanese. We will now check if those similarities affect word learning, and how the similarity of grammar affects, the language of different family of languages, Tagalog. We will see how they react compared with Korean case.

2.2.2 Methoda) Subjects

We will discuss the three subjects separately. The first subject is Akiko. She is 22 years old, and graduated from the English Department of Shujitsu University last year. She

-10-

has studied English since she was 10 years old, and she studied abroad for a month in Australia when she was in the second year of college, so she has the ability to speak English for daily life. However, she has never studied foreign languages except English until this study. Her major is English literature, and has mainly studied Mother Goose. The second subject is Mai. She is 20 years old and belongs to the Modern Society Department of Notre Dame Seishin University. She has studied English since she was a junior high school student. When she was a high school student, she went to Canada to study English for a month, and she met a lot of Asian people at that time, and so she had lively interest in Asian countries, especially Taiwan. After this experience, she started educating herself to get Chinese. Sometimes she goes to Taiwan to study Chinese for a month, so she can understand basic Chinese grammar or pronunciation. In addition, her English skill is quite good, so she has no problems communicating with English speakers in daily life. The last subject is Michiyo. She is 21 years old, and she is in the English Department of Notre Dame Seishin University. Her major is linguistics, and has studied the second language acquisition. She started studying English when she was 10 years old, and went to New Zealand for 3 weeks to study English, so she can understand daily English conversation. She studied French as second language in the college for a year. However, she understood only simple grammar and vocabulary. She also has studied Turkish and Vietnamese on her own.

b) Test design The subjects were asked to study words and grammar of Korean that belongs to the

same family of languages as Japanese, and Tagalog that belongs to the different family of languages to Japanese in this experience. We will see the differences of the results or reaction of learners in case that we learn the languages of the different family, and the language of the same family to compare with learner’s mother tongue as a second language. Through we see the reaction or results, we will find out whether the difference of my reaction when I learn Korean and Tagalog was affected by the family of languages. This is to say, we will research if family of languages affect second language acquisition. Therefore, subjects need to study Korean and Tagalog for a month each, then we will compare with them. As we choose words, if subjects saw the words before the experiment, it would be not fair, so the words were selected by a Korean speaker and a Tagalog speaker. They chose useful and daily words for the experiment.

c) ProcedureFirst of all, I needed to choose words which I will use for this experiment. The

words must not already be known, and they should be useful. Moreover, it is better to keep our motivation as constant as it is possible. The Korean and Philippine assistants selected about 300 words to remember for each subject. The reason why we used assistants was because three subjects were asked to not see the words before the study in order to keep them fair. If the subjects see the words before the study, it would be not fair, and would affect the results, so we used assistants to select the words. The words they selected are

11

verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, numerals, and greetings. After selecting the words, the assistants made word cards, and then Tagalog was written in the Roman alphabet, so we can read it, but Korean was written in Korean characters, Hangul, so some people can not read it, so they wrote the pronunciation on it. Now we will explain the procedure of word learning. They studied 30 minutes each day for a month. The subjects were asked to remember Korean words first. First, they made sets of 10 cards from all the Korean words, and checked if they knew these words. They then classified them into 2 categories, remembered or forgot as they looked at each card. After dividing them in to 2 groups, they took the forgotten words, and checked them again, and divided them again. If there are not 10 cards in their hand, they should add new cards. During this study, it is very important to shuffle both sides of the cards every time before check the words. It helped us to remember words from Japanese to Korean or Tagalog, or from Korean or Tagalog to Japanese, then we can answer if the word if they appear in any order. After 30 minutes, the subjects were asked to stop studying and write how much vocabulary was learnt this day, and all the cards that we remembered were put into a box that allowed them to remember which words they had learnt. The next day, before they started studying, and classify the all cards they remembered last day into remembered or forgotten words, they needed to write down how much vocabulary was forgotten for each of the languages. If they found some forgotten words, they were not allowed to put them back into store box. They could put only remembered cards into the box. After finishing checking all cards they remembered the day before, they could start study again, and count 30 minutes, and check forgotten and new words. For the first one month, we studied Korean. On the other hand, next month was Tagalog. We were not allowed to study Korean while the studying Tagalog, it means it took a month after studying Korean. Then they checked all the words in the box, and wrote down how much vocabulary they still remembered after a month. This was the word learning. Next we will look at the grammar study. Korean and Philippine assistants selected textbook educate themselves. Subjects were asked to study one unit everyday. For example, first day they learnt particles, the next day they learnt declarative sentence, and following day they learnt negative sentence. After finishing one unit, the subjects were asked to write their feeling or difficult points or the things they could not understand in a diary.

2.2.3 Results We will now explain the results of the Korean word learning, the Tagalog word learning, the Korean grammar learning, and the Tagalog grammar learning. Three subjects were asked to learn Korean words and Tagalog words for a month each. First of all, we will show the results of Korean word learning, and next, we will show the results of Tagalog word learning.

12

2.2.3.1 The results of Korean word learningFigure 1

This is the graph of the Korean data for three subjects, Akiko, Mai and Michiyo. The horizontal axis shows the days, and the vertical line shows the number of Korean words the subjects remembered over 30 days. The subjects had learnt Korean words for 30 minutes everyday. The particular number of words the subjects remembered is shown in Table 1 in the Appendix. The inclinations of the lines are very similar for Akiko and Michiyo. However, it is a little different for Mai result. She remembered more than 100 words within a week, but suddenly, she forgot many words.

The number of remembered words (Korean)

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31

Days

Numb

er of

wor

ds

AkikoMai Michiyo

13

Figure 2 Before starting word learning, the three subjects were asked to check all the words which they had learned already, and they had to write down the number of remembered words. Figure 2 shows the percentage of their memory. For example, Akiko remembered 21 words on the first day, but the next day she checked words learned on the previous day, then she remembered 10 words, and she forgot the rest of the words, so the retention rate shows 48 percent. The retention rate became better day by day, because they checked all the words remembered the day before, so they would meet the same words many times. It helps their memory. After 2 weeks from starting this study, the number of mistakes decreased.

Figu re 3

The

s

Retention Rate(Korean)

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31

Days

Perc

enta

ge AkikoMaiMichiyo

The number of words three subjects remembered (Korean)

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

Akiko Mai Michiyo

Name of the subjects

The

num

ber o

f wor

ds

The number of wordslearnt for a month

The number of wordsremembered one monthlater

14

ubjects were asked to check all the words remembered one month later. Figure 3 shows the data of number of words the subjects remembered. As you can see, the subjects forgot about half of them. The detailed percentages are shown in Table 4 in the Appendix. Akiko remembered 17 percent of them, Mai remembered 55 percent of them, and Michiyo remembered 64 percent of them.

2.2.3.2 The results of Korean grammar learning I will now explain the results of Korean grammar learning. The three subjects were asked to study the Korean grammar for a month. They used the grammar book, and there are no teachers or assistant to teach them. We will describe the learner’s reaction on their diary. All three subjects felt the Korean grammar learning is a lot of fun and easy to understand. However, they also said that it is easy to understand, but it is difficult to remember. It may be problem of memory, because they can understand the grammar. The subjects said Korean to Japanese is easier than Japanese to Korean, because if the learner has a dictionary, they can read the sentence so that the word order is almost the same, but a subject said that Korean to Japanese is easier than Japanese to Korean, but Japanese to Korean is also not so difficult. When we asked them which is more difficult to translate, English to Japanese or Japanese to English, then all three subjects answered English to Japanese is easier than Japanese to English. As you can see, it is difficult to create the sentence from new. However, in this case, Korean and Japanese word order is very similar and grammar is also similar, so if they have dictionary, they can make sentences from Japanese to Korean, so one subject thought Japanese to Korean is also not so difficult.

2.2.3.3 The results of Tagalog word learningFigure 4

The number of remembered words (Tagalog)

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31

Days

Num

ber o

f wor

ds

AkikoMaiMichiyo

15

Now we will explain the results of Tagalog word learning. As you can see from Figure 4 above, the lines look very smooth. The inclination is more gradual than for the Korean one. There is no big stagnation for all subjects through the 30 days.

Figure 5 Figure 5 shows the retention rate of Tagalog word learning. Akiko shows a very different line from the others. She remembered well, but forgot much too. However, after 3 weeks, her line became flat. On the other hand, Mai’s result is unusual. Her retention rate is really good from the beginning, but gradually, the percentage decreased. We can guess it happened because of her motivation. She said she was really busy to study Chinese to become an overseas student, so she was exhausted from studying on the comment book for this study. There is a strong relation between motivation and memory. However, her retention rate was really good. It was always more than 90 percent even though she also had been studying Chinese. Michiyo’s line is not flat from the beginning to the end, but after 15 days, the number of words she forgot decreased day by day.

Retention rate (Tagalog)

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31

Days

Perc

enta

ge AkikoMaiMichiyo

16

Fig ure 6

Fig ure 6 shows the number of words learnt in the month and the number of words remembered one month later. As we can see above, the three subjects forgot about half of the words they remembered as they did for Korean. Mai’s retention rate was more than 90 percent, but her line slants slightly to the right.

2.2.3.4. The results of Tagalog grammar learning The three subjects had learnt the Tagalog grammar with the grammar book. They wrote comments on the diary, and then they said it is very difficult to remember the word order, but this study is the beginner’s level, so they are able to understand. However, as compared with the Korean grammar learning, it was very difficult and uncomfortable to learn. 　 　 The subjects have never learnt this word order, verb-object-subject, and the grammar system is all new for them, so they felt both Tagalog to Japanese and Japanese to Tagalog are difficult.

2.3 Summary Tables 1 and 2 in the Appendix show the number of the Korean and Tagalog words the subjects remembered. Two of the subjects remembered more Korean words than Tagalog words. On the other hand, only one subject remembered much Tagalog words than Korean words. In this experiment, the subjects were asked to check all the words they remembered after a month from the first experiment. The number of the words they remembered one month later was shown in Table 3 in the Appendix. These data are shown graphically in Figure 3 and Figure 6. As we compare the data of Table 3 in the Appendix, we can find out the retention rate. We can see it in Table 4 in the Appendix. One of the subjects remembered only 17 percent of the Korean, but she remembered 52 percent of the Tagalog,

The number of words three subjects remembered (Tagalog)

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

Akiko Mai Michiyo

Name of the subjects

The

num

ber o

f wor

ds

The number of wordslearnt for a month

The number of wordsremembered one monthlater

17

so she remembered about three times more Tagalog words than Korean words. One of the other subjects shows the opposite results. She remembered 55 percent of the Korean, but she remembered 24 percent of the Tagalog. She remembered about two times more Korean words than Tagalog. The last subject also shows different results from the others. She remembered 64 percent of the Korean, and 63 percent of the Tagalog, so her results were almost the same in both languages. Next, we will look at figures in Chapter Two. Figure 1 shows the number of Korean words the subjects remembered everyday in a graphic form. Figure 4 shows the number of Tagalog words the subjects remembered everyday in a graphic form. In addition, before starting the experiment, the three subjects were asked to check all the words they remembered at the last day, and they must do it everyday. Figure 2 and Figure 5 show the percentage of how many words they remembered after a day.

First of all, we will look Akiko's data in Figure 1. She could not remember many Korean words for the first two weeks, but she remembered well after two weeks. The number of forgotten words also decreased. As you can see it in Figure 2, we can say the same for all three subjects. In Figure 2, the line is not flat for the first 15 days, but it became flat 15 days later. It shows their memories settle down. In Figure 4, the graph of Tagalog results look all similar. On the other hand, the curve of the graph is very different in Figure 5. The retention rate of Tagalog words moved very differently for each subject. Mai's result is really good from the start to the finish, but the curve of the line went down to the right. However, the percentage was always more than 90 percent. On the other hand, Akiko's result is opposite to Mai. Her Tagalog result and Korean results are very similar. As you can see in both results, her line is not flat for the first 15 days, but it became flat after it, and she could remembered well in the last two weeks. I will explain the grammar learning briefly. Subjects were asked to study one unit of grammar book everyday, and write a diary. The summary of their diary were itemized in the Table 5 in the Appendix. According to the questionnaire, all subjects said that it is natural to feel it is difficult to learn a second language. However, all of them felt Korean was easier than Tagalog to study, because Japanese and Korean have a lot of common features, and grammar is also similar, so it was easier to understand than Tagalog. On the other hand, they said that the grammar of Tagalog is difficult from Japanese or English, so it was very difficult for them to understand. However, in case of word learning, they felt the difficulty of memorize was almost same in both languages. In Chapter 3, we will discuss these results in detail.

18

Chapter Three: Discussion

3.1 IntroductionIn Chapter One, I introduced Korean and Tagalog, and we also explained the

subject’s mother tongue, Japanese. In addition, we looked the focus of this thesis, the

family of languages.

In Chapter Two, we carried out the experiment on the three subjects. The subjects were

asked to learn words and grammar for a month in Korean and Tagalog to search if the

family of languages affects second language acquisition.

In this Chapter Three, we will analyze the results of the experiment and discuss them.

3.2 Summary of the experimentWe will describe the result of this experiment in detail. Before looking at the general

transition of the graph, we will write the number of the results. First, we will look at the

Korean results. Akiko remembered 211 Korean words, Mai remembered 249 Korean

words, and Michiyo remembered 276 Korean words in a month. After a month, they

checked how much vocabulary they still remember, and Akiko remembered 37 words, Mai

remembered 136 words, and Michiyo remembered 177 words. It means that Akiko forgot

83 percent of words she learnt, and Mai forgot 45 percent, and Michiyo forgot 36 percent.

Akiko remembered 222 Tagalog words, Mai remembered 218 words, and Michiyo

remembered 268 words. One month later, the numbers of words they still have

remembered are as follows. Akiko remembered 116 words, Mai remembered 56 words,

and Michiyo remembered 171 words. This is to say that Akiko forgot 48 percent, and Mai

forgot 76 percent, and Michiyo forgot 37 percent.

We will look at the results in detail one by one. First of all, as we see in Figure 1 and

Figure 3, this is Akiko’s data. This figure shows the progress in the number of Korean and

Tagalog words she remembered everyday. As compared with the two figures, both lines are

upward slanting to the right. However, Figure 3 shows the inclination of the line is loose

until 15 days, then after 15 days passed, suddenly the number of words she remembered

increased. As we see from Figure 4, she forgot words soon though she remembered them

until 15 days passed, so the line is not flat.

On the other hand, as we see in Figure 1, the number of words she remembered had

been increasing favorably in the case of Tagalog. However, we can find that she

-19-

remembered well, but she also forgot a lot too, but after 2 weeks passed, the number of

forgotten words had been decreasing, and the line became almost flat.

Mai remembered a lot of Tagalog words for the first week, but soon it stagnated after a

few days, and then she remembered a lot of words suddenly, and after it, it became gradual.

Same thing happens to her in the Korean case. Figure 6 shows the retention rate is really

good. The percentage is almost 96 to 91 in Tagalog. On the other hand, looking at the

Figure 8, the line is very similar to Akiko. After two weeks passed, the line became almost

flat.

Michiyo’s line is very constant in both languages. Figure 2 and Figure 4 show that she

also made a lot of mistakes in the first two weeks.

3.3. Discussion of the resultsWe will now discuss the results of the experiments. Two of the subjects remembered

more Korean words than Tagalog words. However, there are not so big differences,

because Michiyo remembered only 8 Korean words more than Tagalog words, and Mai

remembered 31 Korean words more than Korean words, on the other hand, Akiko

remembered 11 Tagalog words more than Korean. According to the subject’s comments

for the word learning, she said there are a lot of similar words in Tagalog to English, so it is

easier to remember than Korean. On the other hand, Korean was easier to remember than

Tagalog, but also Tagalog has similar words to English, so it is not so difficult to remember,

so both Korean and Tagalog has similar words to compare the language subjects know.

This created a problem to compare the different family of languages.

As we look at in Figure 2, we can see the inclination of the line is gradual until 15 days.

According to the subject’s comments, they could not remember numbers or months in

Korean even though she checked several times, so she could not go on the next, then she

said it is not useful to shuffle cards, because if she shuffle cards, it became more difficult to

remember numbers or months. She suggested it is easier to remember numbers or months

in order. As she remembered the other words, shuffling cards become useful, but as she

remembered number or month, it was big trouble.

As we look at from Figure 5, Akiko forgot words soon though she remembered them

until 15 days passed, but after that, the line became almost flat. We can think it because the

subjects checked the words many times, so at first they made many mistakes, but when

they checked the same words several times, gradually they remembered them completely,

20

so the line became flat.

Figure 4 shows Akiko remembered Tagalog words well for the first week, but soon it

stagnated for a few days, and then she remembered a lot of words suddenly, and after it, it

became gradual. It might be happen because of motivation. At first of the experiment, she

commented the word learning was very fun, and she wanted to remember as many words as

possible. However, after 1 or 2 week passed, she sometimes commented it is too hard to

learn them everyday for 30 minutes, and she did not want to study anymore, so we can

guess the number of the remembered words decreased because of lower motivation.

Finally, we will see Michiyo’s data in Figure 1 and Figure 4. Her results were very

similar in both languages. According to her comments, she likes word learning, and

Korean has many similar words to Japanese, and Tagalog has many similar words to

English, so these similarities helped her remember. Moreover, her motivation in the

experiments was very strong, and she really wanted to learn these two languages, so we can

guess her motivation helped her to really remember words.

We will now look at the summary of the comments. All subjects said it was difficult

to remember numbers, months and week in Korean, and one subject said verbs and

adjectives were also difficult to remember. The easiest one was nouns because they have a

lot of similar or same words to Japanese. On the other hands, they said Tagalog is easier to

remember times, numbers and months to compare to Korean. However, all the subjects

said it was really difficult to remember verbs in Tagalog, because there are too many verbs

that begin “ma” in Tagalog. For example, close in English is magsara in Tagalog, and open

in English is magbukas in Tagalog. Search is magnahap, and live is mabuhay and so on.

The subjects felt Tagalog to Japanese is easier than Japanese to Tagalog. We can

think because they have Japanese schema in their head, but they do not have strong schema

in Tagalog, so we could not remember Tagalog words soon when they saw Japanese words.

3.4. ImplicationsThe results of this study mean that each language learner is very different. It means

some people like language learning, but some people do not, and some people are good at

learning languages, but some people are not. Moreover, learner’s motivation is also

different, and the reason why people study foreign language is different, such as for job, for

interests, for travel, for money, for lover, for test, there are infinite reasons.

However, the motivation is very changeable, so it is very difficult to keep the learner’s

21

motivation constantly. As we can see the results of the word learning, the number of words

the three subjects remembered decreased day by day. The subjects might be tired of

studying to the end.

As we mention about the language learning, if the learners do not have time to use the

language they learnt, they will forget them very fast. The language must be used.

For example, one of the subjects, Michiyo remembered the most of the three subjects

after a month, because she really does not forget them and she has a chance to go these

countries to visit her friends, and she really want to use words she remembered. It shows

motivation is really important, and the learner needed a chance to use language they learnt.

3.5. Limitations of the ExperimentsThere are limitations even if we try to find the correct data or answer. One of the

causes is internal such as the subject’s motivation or feeling. The subjects had homework

or classes in their life, so sometimes they were very busy or tired physically or mentally.

On such days, people can not concentrate on the experiments. In addition, the motivation

for the experiments is very different for each of them. One subject thought this word

learning or grammar learning was very useful for her, and she really wanted to get those

languages. An other thought it might be interesting and she likes studying foreign

languages, so she did this experiment and other one, she just did it for money and she

wanted to help her friend, so their motivation is very different, and the results clearly

reflected their motivation. Besides, there are comments that subjects could not remember

words when they are tired or they have trouble, so it may be not fair that we used the

subjects of different motivation or different life.

Moreover, there is a different limitation of the experiments. We are searching whether

the family of languages affect second language acquisition or not in this thesis. However,

the study of the family of languages is still under study. It is said that Japanese belongs to

the Altaic family of languages in general, but depending on some linguists, it is not

accepted because of any obvious evidence. It is also said that Korean belongs to the Altaic

family of languages in general, but some linguists deny it. However, Korean is the most

similar language to Japanese in the world now, so it is said this theory is the strongest.

Whether this is true or not, we can not confirm that Korean and Japanese belong to the

Altaic family of languages, so this experiment was carried out as we supposed that they

belong to the same family of languages.

22

There is another limitation. The Philippines was occupied by the United States of

America or Spain before, so there are so many words borrowed from English or Spanish.

The subjects have been studying English for more than ten years, so they know a lot of

English words, so there are some words they can guess the meaning from English. It helps

them to remember words, especially Tagalog words.

Moreover, in the grammar learning, three subjects were asked to study by themselves

with the grammar book, and they used the grammar book for the beginners, so that was

very easy to understand. In addition, the length of the study was only one month, so it was

difficult to learn a lot of grammar, so the subjects only found Korean is easier to learn than

Tagalog, or they found out some different points or some similar points between these

languages.

3.6. Further researchThere are limitations of this experiment, because the family of languages of Japanese

is not determined now as we already mentioned above. So, are there other ways to solve

the question? We should not select Japanese as subjects because we are not able to choose

the language of the same family as Japanese.

In Europe, most of the classification of the family of languages is determined, so we can

ask European to be subjects, especially English speakers or French or Spanish, because

these are clearly known as Indo-European languages.

For example, we could choose English speaker as subjects and we are able to select

French as the same family of languages and Turkish as the different family of languages as

the three representative languages.

The experiment in this thesis did not provide clear data, because Tagalog was affected

by English or Spanish, and subjects know English. We have to study carefully when we

choose languages we deal with in the experiments so we do not make same mistake.

Besides, we need a lot of subjects, and we need to collect various data from the people

of same background or different background, and we should analyze the data from various

angle.

3.7. Conclusion In the previous chapter, we saw the results of the experiments. However, the results

were different for the each subject, so we could not find out whether the family of

languages affects second language learning or not, because there are some problems in this

23

experiment.

One is that the family of languages of Japanese is still under research, so some linguists

believe it belongs to the Altaic family of languages, but some linguists do not, just

supposed that it may be in the Altaic family of languages, and carried out the experiments.

Differences in the results come from the difference of motivation of the subjects, and

third is the influence on Tagalog from English or Spanish. So, we could not find out the

answer, but we could see the how motivation works to learn language, or we could say

differences of the language to get second language are not important. Through this

research, I noticed several things. Especially, I am really interested in the derivation of

languages. While I was researching Korean and Japanese, I could find that there are so

many similar points between them, so I would like to research these languages more and

prove their family of languages.

24

Appendices

Table 1: The number of Korean words remembered for 30 days

Akiko Mai Michiy

o

April17th 10 19 23

18th 20 24 33

19th 26 53 39

20th 31 83 51

21st 33 100 63

22nd 36 107 66

23rd 43 102 75

24th 46 96 89

25th 47 101 93

26th 53 98 101

27th 59 135 99

28th 63 172 114

29th 68 185 123

30th 73 199 127

May1st 102 203 132

2nd 116 213 151

3rd 121 208 159

4th 139 203 166

5th 151 224 173

6th 153 220 188

7th 157 227 202

25

8th 159 231 208

9th 166 235 215

10th 168 241 222

11th 182 234 243

12th 190 244 236

13th 196 239 245

14th 207 241 259

15th 209 245 266

16th 211 247 272

17th 211 249 268

Table 2: The number of Tagalog words remembered for 30 days

Akiko Mai Michi

yo

June 3rd 6 29 17

4th 23 49 20

5th 35 64 29

6th 49 80 37

7th 51 92 44

8th 59 100 51

9th 85 106 66

10th 83 110 73

11th 108 115 80

12th 99 120 92

26

13th 101 127 100

14th 114 133 116

15th 110 141 121

16th 118 146 130

17th 134 152 134

18th 150 155 144

19th 147 159 152

20th 155 168 163

21st 154 170 177

22nd 164 177 184

23rd 165 180 190

24th 175 184 197

25th 177 190 207

26th 188 193 214

27th 195 200 220

28th 200 203 236

29th 197 208 240

30th 203 210 251

July 1st 205 214 255

2nd 209 216 260

3rd 222 218 268

Table 3: Number of remembered wordsKorean Tagalog

27

Akiko 211 (37) 222 (116)

Mai 249 (136) 218 (53)

Michi

yo

276 (177) 268 (171)

The number of ( ) shows the number of words subjects remembered one month later

Table 4: Retention rate one month later

Korean Tagalog

Akiko 17% 52%

Mai 55% 24%

Michiyo 64% 63%

Table 5: Comments for grammar learning

Korean TagalogIt is easy to understand the word order, particle.

It is difficult to understand irregular verbs.

Abbreviation is hard to remember, because too many.

It is too difficult to understand the word order.It is very hard to remember the gender of nouns.It is hard to remember the article, because it changes depending on subject.There are too many grammar rules.

28

The list of reading for this thesis

Hakuno, S. 2001. Philippines, Tagalog. Jyoho Center Shuppankyoku.

Hosokawa, H. 1987. Parino Nihongo Kyoshitukara.Sanseido.

Kim, Y. 1999. Shikkari Manabu Kankokugo. Bere Shuppan.

Kitamura, H. 1981. Sekaino Gengo. Taishukan Shoten.

Lee, K. 1975.Kankokugono Rekishi. Taishukan Shoten.

Lee, S. 1977. Kankokugo Kyohon. Maruzen.

Marinet, A. 1972. Sekaino Gengo. Kinokuniya Shoten.

Miller, R. 1981. Nihongo To Altaic Shogo. Taishukan Shoten.

Nakamoto, M. 1992. Nihongo No Keifu. Sakurakaede Sha.

Oue, M. 1997. Introduksyon Sa Gramatikang Filipino. Hakusuisha.

Rubrico, J. 1998. The Languages Of The Philippines. Language Links.

Sanada, Y. 2002. Hayawakari Kankoku. Nihonjitugyo Shuppansha.

Shibata, T. 1993. Sekaino Kotoba Shojiten. Taishukan Shoten.

Suzuki, M. 1999. Korea. Jyoho Center Shuppankyoku.

Yim, Y. 2004. Hashito Chokkaraku. Taishukan Shoten.

29