PhD in Japanese
Congratulations to Nobuko (Noelle) Kato who will be awarded her PhD in Japanese at the May Graduation ceremonies.
Nobuko’s topic of research was “Authentic Discourse and Model Exemplars in Japanese Language Text books: A Case Study of Apologies and Requests”
The study compares the speech acts of native speakers of Japanese, the discourse presented in model dialogues in Japanese language textbooks, and non-native learners of Japanese. Apologies and requests are the focus, since they present learners of Japanese and writers of textbooks with socio-linguistic and cultural challenges. The analysis identifies new findings about how model dialogues in Japanese language textbooks fail to reflect the natural discourse of Japanese native speakers, and makes recommendations for their improvement.
Her thesis was supervised by Associate Professors Edwina Palmer and Stephen Epstein.