Teaching telephone closings in Japanese

This paper aims to examine the ways in which communicative approach is reflected in the content of Japanese language textbooks used for the tertiary level in Australia. It does this by comparing examples of telephone closings in Japanese with the features and mechanisms of actual telephone closings in Japanese based on Conversation Analysis, using naturally occurring data. The textbooks examined were found to ignore the potential to reflect cultural differences in telephone conversations between languages. First of all, compared to conversational openings, telephone closings were largely disregarded or overlooked. Secondly, a lack of variations in settings and terminal expressions were noticed, and thirdly there was a gap between the picture presented by the textbooks and actual conversations in the ways in which participants negotiate closings. Taking the importance of exposing learners to authentic materials into consideration, implications for ways of incorporating authentic telephone closings into textbooks and teaching are also suggested.

Published online: 01 January 1998
https://doi.org/10.1075/aralss.15.03han