This study (a) examines the structure of language learners' beliefs about learning in general and beliefs specifically about language learning and (b) explores the relationship between the 2 belief domains. A belief questionnaire was administered to 187 college students learning Japanese as a foreign language. Factor analyses identified 5 dimensions of general epistemological beliefs comparable to those reported by Schommer (1990Schommer ( , 1994b, and 6 dimensions of language learning beliefs. Although there were some significant correlations between these belief factors, students' beliefs about learning in general

S This study examines the degree to which English‐speaking students learning Japanese utilize information from word elements and contextual clues in interpreting novel kanji compounds (i.e., words consisting of two or more Chinese characters). Fifty‐nine college students inferred the meanings of novel compounds consisting of familiar characters under three conditions (i.e., words in isolation, contextual clues only, and both). Students were most likely to obtain correct answers when both types of clues were available, demonstrating their ability to combine information from multiple sources to interpret unfamiliar words. Furthermore, use of kanji clues and context use are not correlated, and proficiency correlates with context use, but not with kanji use. Thus, morphological analysis is an independent strategy from guessing word meanings from context. Este estudio examina el grado en el que estudiantes hablantes de inglés que aprenden japonés utilizan la información sobre los elementos de la palabra y las pistas contextuales en la interpretación de compuestos nuevos en kanji (i.e., palabras consistentes en dos o más caracteres chinos). Cincuenta y nueve estudiantes universitarios infirieron los significados de compuestos nuevos formados por caracteres familiares en tres condiciones (i.e., palabras aisladas, sólo pistas contextuales y ambas). Los estudiantes obtuvieron más respuestas correctas cuando disponían de ambos tipos de pistas, demostrando la habilidad de combinar información de varias fuentes para interpretar palabras desconocidas. Más aún, el uso de pistas kanji y del contexto no están correlacionados y la habilidad correlaciona con el uso del contexto, pero no con el uso de pistas kanji. Por lo tanto, el análisis morfológico es una estrategia independiente de la predicción de los significados de las palabras a partir del contexto. Diese studie untersucht den Grad mit welchem Englisch sprechende Studenten, welche Japanisch lernen, Informationen aus Wort‐Elementen gebrauchen und textinhaltliche Hinweise bei der Auslegung neuerer Kanji Komponenten (d.h. Worte bestehend aus zwei oder mehr chinesischen Schriftzeichen) verwerten. Neunundfünfzig College‐Studenten machten Vorschläge zur Bedeutung neuer Komponenten, welche aus vertrauten Schriftzeichen ‐ eingeteilt nach drei Bedingungen ‐ bestanden (d.h. isoliert stehende Worte, nur Inhaltshinweise, und beides zusammen). Die Studenten gewannen die richtigen Antworten am besten, wenn sie über beide Arten von Hinweisen verfügten, und dabei demonstrierten sie ihre Fähigkeit, Informationen aus einer Vielzahl von Quellen zu kombinieren, um ungewohnte Worte zu interpretieren. Ferner ist die Benutzung von Kanji‐Hinweisen und der Gebrauch von Kontext ohne Bezug zueinander, und die Fertigkeit hängt ausschließlich von Gebrauch und Verstehen des Textzusammenhanges ab, nicht jedoch mit dem Kanji Gebrauch. Folglich ist die morphologische Analyse eine in sich unabhängige Strategie, die sich vom Erraten der Bedeutung von Wörtern aus dem Zusammenhang absetzt. Cette étude...

This study examines the transfer of learners' first language (Ll) orthographic processing strategies to second language (L2) processing. Two groups of college students learning Japanese, a group of learners whose L1 writing system is phonographic and another group whose L1 employs a morphographic writing system, were tested on their ability to represent novel kanji characters in short-term memory. For students in the phonographic language background group, phonologically accessible characters (i.e., characters whose inner radical was a pronounceable katakana character) were easier to remember than phonologically inaccessible characters (i.e., characters whose inner radical was not pronounceable). In contrast, the absence of the pronounceable elements in the stimuli did not hinder the memory performance of the morphographic language background group. This interaction between L1 background and the phonological inaccessibility of stimuli is interpreted as showing that, due to their L1 experience, L2 learners from a morphographic language background use more flexible strategies for phonological decoding for new characters than learners from a phonographic language background. THE PURPOSE OF THE PRESENT STUDY is to investigate the effects of learners' first language (Ll) writing systems on the strategies they use to obtain phonological information from a second language (L2) orthography.' This study was motivated by two theoretical issues, the first of w&ch stems from the language transfer hypothesis, which predicts that L2 learners will use the orthographic processing strategies specific to the L1 while processing different linguistic features in L2. The second theoretical issue concerns the role of phonological recoding in word recognition in both alphabetic and logographic languages. Research in experimental psychology has established that acoustically encoded stimuli are more advantageous than visually encoded stimuli for short-term information storage and The M o d a Language Journal, 82, i, (1998) 01998 The Modern Language Journal 0026-7902/98/69-82 $1.50/0that readers of any language construct phonological codes from visual representation in order to access short-term memory. Given these empirical findings, this study tests the hypothesis that learners from different language backgrounds will use different strategies for deriving phonological representations for new words in L2. The rationale for this hypothesis is described briefly below.

This study examines individual differences in the ability to integrate information from word parts and context in interpreting novel kanji compounds (i.e., words consisting of two or more Chinese characters). To account for different approaches that students take to infer the meanings of unfamiliar words, the study also investigates the relationship between students' beliefs about the effectiveness of using kanji and/or contextual clues and their abilities to use the clue(s). A total of 74 English-speaking college students learning Japanese inferred the meanings of unknown compounds consisting of familiar characters under three conditions (words in isolation, contextual clues only, and both). The effects of the two sources appeared additive when examined across all participants. Further analysis, however, indicated that nearly half the students did not combine the two sources and overrelied on either kanji or contextual clues. The inability to integrate information and overreliance on kanji clues modestly but statistically significantly correlated with belief in the efficacy of an integration strategy. The combined effect of multiple sources of information, therefore, must be interpreted in terms of individual differences.

This study explores quantitative and qualitative differences between context and word morphology as determinants of students' guesses of the meanings of novel kanji compounds (i.e., words consisting of two or more Chinese characters). In this study, 74 Japanese language learners interpreted unknown compounds consisting of familiar characters under three conditions (i.e., words in isolation, contextual clues only, and both). When the students' guesses were compared against the actual meanings, context and word morphology were equally effective. However, the combined effect of both sources was the best, suggesting that the 2 sources provide information that does not overlap. Students expressed higher confidence in their context-based guesses than in their words-in-isolation guesses. Furthermore, contextual clues generated more syntactically related guesses than did kanji clues, whereas kanji clues yielded more semantically related guesses than did context. In general, the strength of contextual support and morphological transparency worked additively when combined but sometimes affected each other negatively. These findings suggest that context and word morphology play different roles in word inference.IN THE PAST 2 DECADES, A GROWING number of studies have examined the strategies that language learners use to learn new words. When second language (L2) readers encounter an unfamiliar word while reading, they often infer its meaning using available information and knowledge without referring to a dictionary (Hulstijn, Hollander, & Greidanus, 1996;Schmitt, 1997). Contextual information and word morphology (e.g., word roots, affixes, and inflectional suffixes) are two major sources that readers use to interpret novel words (De Bot,