Abstract:The main goal of the study is to critically investigate the major elements of the political speeches of the Thai Prime Minister, Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha. Informed by van Dijk's (1997) concept of Political Discourse Analysis, a corpus, composed of 10,672 word types and 325,398 word tokens, was examined for keywords related to the addressor, the addressee, and the political speech itself. The words with the highest relative frequencies were iteratively categorised into themes and a dialogic investigation was conducted on a portion of the original Thai version. The findings reveal that keywords relating to information conveyed by the addressor accounted for 62.86% (N=154) followed by keywords relating to functions of language at 22.04% (N=54). The high frequencies of these words shed light on the justification of the political, economic and social agenda, which were conveyed by the junta government using deontically modalised language. The quantitative and qualitative data analysis also indicate that the English and Thai speeches target different audiences. This discrepancy implicitly reflects an awkward situation where the military government attempts to present a good image to the international community while imposing actual military governance in the country.

Although Kanji is widely recognized as the most difficult hurdle to overcome in learning Japanese, little research has been undertaken on the selection and order in which Kanji are taught to Japanese students from non-Kanji backgrounds. In this study, the criteria for different orders of kanji are analyzed in respect with their pedagogical merits in teaching Kanji to students of Japanese from non-Kanji backgrounds. The principal objective of this study is to redress the lack of research in this area and the lack of uniformity in Kanji education. Overall, the orders Kanji are taught seems to be mostly arbitrary and is not considered to be of any great importance in aiding students attain Kanji proficiency. This paper examines the difficulty of Kanji for non-Kanji background learners and finds that Kanji order is indeed a vital consideration in developing more efficient Kanji teaching and learning strategies for students from non-Kanji backgrounds.

Shadowing has increasingly been recognized as an effective practice for developing listening skills in second language learning. However, there is very little study focusing on learners' psychological aspects in implementing shadowing practice. The aim of this study is to explore second language learners' psychological factors, from the motivation framework point of view, in relation to shadowing practice in Japanese as a foreign language context. This study addresses research questions regarding: (1) perceived effectiveness of shadowing; (2) differences in perception depending on the shadowing performance skills; (3) factors that encourage continuing of shadowing; and (4) perceived positive and negative aspects of shadowing. The participants were 36 university students who were enrolled in an advanced Japanese language unit at an Australian university. They were asked to complete a written survey containing 35 questionnaire items and 3 open-ended questions at the end of the study period. The study employs mixed methods, of quantitative and qualitative approaches, to analyze the results and findings. The results indicate that the majority of participants perceive shadowing as effective for both listening and speaking skills, and agree on the usefulness of feedback. However, individual differences were found in how they favor the shadowing speed in relation to their comprehension of the content. The implication of classroom applications is also discussed.

No abstract

No abstract