Summary

Foreigners with various languages and cultural backgrounds are settling in Japanese local communities, as Japan becomes an immigration society. However, the reality of their Japanese language learning and their overall language life is almost unknown. To understand this reality, it will be necessary to rely not only on conventional methods but also on a more applied linguistic approach using theories and knowledge from adjacent fields (the idea of linguistics as social welfare, etc.).

This project will conduct analysis of conversation data (collected using oral proficiency interviews (OPIs)) obtained mainly through longitudinal research (research on the same individual at regular intervals) from the viewpoint of formative evaluation, and will also collect, maintain, and analyze new data using the formative fieldwork method. Based on the above, the project aims to grasp more accurately the reality of language learning and language life for foreign permanent residents in modern local communities, which are becoming more and more multilingual and multicultural, and to build the basis of a (welfare linguistic) research method (approach) to respond to various problems faced by permanent residents who need to use Japanese.

By carrying out this project, it is expected that a new approach and framework will be proposed for how to study the language learning and the language life of permanent residents in local communities.