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2 Literature Review
The first definition of second language acquisition can be traced back to Bill VanPatten, former chair of second language acquisition (SLA) and teacher education program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1999). VanPatten wrote: “SLA is concerned with how people learn a language other than their first”. (VanPatten, 1999, P. 49-50) This is the basic definition about SLA. The second definition is dated from the original proposal for the Graduate Program in SLA in the Department of Modern Languages at Carnegie Mellon University. According to it, SAL is pided into two parts: basic and applied second language acquisition. Basic SLA refers to the theoretical knowledge which students should understand, while applied SLA focuses on how to use second language students studied in society. It is broader than the first definition. The third definition states the linguistic structures of learners’ first and second languages. It not only requires learners to study language itself but also can cognize the language from linguistic aspects so that students can learn more about the structures of the language. “Foreign Language Learner in Japanese Society: successful learners of Japanese respond to Miller’s ‘Law of Inverse Returns’” was written by Snyder Ohta, Amy. In this essay, five exchange students who come from different country are interviewed. And finally they can not only adapt to live in Japan, but also can communicate with native speakers fluently in Japanese.
Generally speaking, second language not only refers to the language which people learn except their native language, it can also be a third or fourth language that people have never learned. Then learning second language requires learner to study its background, history, culture, politics and everything connected with this language. In other words, what people speak should make others understand well. Second language in this thesis refers to a broaden concept.
3 Methodology
This chapter contains three sections: research questions, subjects and questionnaire.
3．1 Research Questions
This survey adopted a questionnaire to address the following questions: 1. Why do so many English major students want to learn Japanese? 2. Which factors will affect Japanese study?
3．2 Subjects
The subjects are English major students who study Japanese in the University. The number of students is 30. They are all junior students who have learned English more than 10 years, but they learn Japanese for only one year.