The significance of developing teaching materials based on an analysis of BTSJ Japanese Conversation Corpus : Focusing on teaching incomplete utterances and co-constructed utterances
The present study analyses the functions of incomplete utterances and co-constructed utterances in natural conversations taken from BTSJ Japanese Conversation Corpus (BTSJ-JCC). Although these phenomena are commonly perceived in natural conversations, they are not found in the textbooks; therefore, it is difficult to integrate them into the Japanese language education. However, these two utterance types have various functions and play an important role in smooth and naturalistic communications; (i) many incomplete utterances have hedging functions (negative politeness), (ii) they trigger the addressee to complete the speaker's unfinished utterance (co-constructed utterance), (iii) the addressee indicates understanding by finishing the unfinished utterance. Incomplete utterances trigger addressee's positive politeness in this manner, and thus, they facilitate smooth conversation.Since native speakers of Japanese employ these strategies according to the social factors of the addressees, it is almost impossible for the learners of Japanese in Europe to acquire them sorely from the existing Japanese textbooks. Based on these situation, a multifunctional database Natural Conversation Resource Bank: NCRB, a platform for collaboratively-constructed WEB teaching materials using natural conversations has been developed. As the NCRB has support functions for developing teaching materials for natural communication, the users can develop WEB teaching materials with explanations of these conversation strategies as well as those of grammatical explanations by following the simple illustrations built in the program.Finally, I insist that the platform such as NCRB for utilizing teaching natural conversation resources is essential to improve the Japanese language education in Europe.