1. to r.: Junko Tsukayama, Ryan Ottley, Dami Lee, Lynne Hansen, Hideyuki Taura

Although the gradual loss of a language learned abroad is a common outcome for returnees back in their homeland, there are enormous individual differences in the extent to which this occurs, just as there are individual and group differences in the learning of a second language. At a number of recent conferences of applied linguistics (AILA, 1996; AAAL, 1997; PacSLRF, 1998; AILA, 1999; SLRF, 2000), colloquia have examined the nature and extent of language attrition in various populations. With a focus on the spoken language of returnees, this colloquium will continue in the same vein, but with an emphasis on successful language maintenance. While elaborating on issues raised in the previous language attrition literature (the regression hypothesis, literacy effects on retention, the measurement of fluency), the panel will also address a question that will surely assume a central place in the study of returnee language in the new millenium: What does a returnee have to do to be a good "language keeper"?

Summaries:
Title: Hesitation and laughter in L2 Japanese attrition  
Presenters: Lynne Hansen, Junko Tsukayama & Ryan Ottley,  Brigham Young University, Hawaii
        This paper reports on a cross-sectional study of hesitation phenomena and laughter in the L2 Japanese of adult learners and attriters. The targeted speech behaviors are examined in oral narratives, both quantitatively and in terms of discourse function. Attrition rate, as revealed in the dependent variables, is then related to personal and social variables which may affect language maintenance.

Title: L2 Retention and attrition of Korean/English Bilingual Children     
Presenter: Dami Lee,  Hanyang University                                                                                
         This study examines the maintenance and decline of L2 knowledge over time among eight Korean/English bilingual children, aged from 9;0 to 12;11. The purpose of the study is to examine the validity of the regression hypothesis, which holds that "first learned is last forgotten." Data indicate that the best predictor of L2 retention/attrition is the subjects' pre-disuse attainment, which is consistent with the regression hypothesis.

Title: The non-attrition of returnees' productive skills   
Presenter: Hideyuki Taura, Fukui Medical University, Japan                                                                                            
         This study examines the L2 attrition of Japanese returnee children from English speaking countries. Two sets of production data were elicited through oral story-telling and writing tests. The results were discussed in light of two questions: (1) Does attriton take place when the returnees use English for only a few hours a week? (2) What is the relationship between attrition and the time back in Japan.

Abstracts

Title of Proposal: Hesitation and laughter in L2 Japanese attrition
Presenters: Lynne Hansen,  Junko Tsukayama, & Ryan Ottley, Brigham Young University, Hawaii
           This paper reports on a cross-sectional study of hesitation phenomena and laughter in the L2 Japanese of adult learners and attriters. The learners were Americans in Japan over a two year period, the attriters were returnees back in the United States for times ranging from one to forty years, and a control group was comprised of Japanese native speakers. The purpose of the study was to examine, both quantitatively and in terms of function in the discourse, the development of pause behavior and laughter in second language progression and regression.
           Following up on earlier analyses of hesitation phenomena in narratives (Hansen & Stokes, 1997; Hansen, Gardner & Pollard, 1998), we focus on silent pause and fillers, both Japanese and English, in a Japanese story. The pauses are quantified, timed, and categorized according to target language adequacy of the immediately following discourse. Laughter, a seemingly invisible yet ubiquitous feature of oral communication, largely ignored in previous research, is also quantified, and categorized according to apparent communicative function. Finally, attrition rate, as revealed in the hesitation variables examined, is related to personal and social variables which may affect language maintenance.

Title of Proposal: L2 retention and attrition of Korean/English bilinguals

Presenter: Dami Lee, Hanyang University
           This study examines the maintenance and decline of L2 knowledge over time among Korean/English (K/E) bilingual children. The purpose of the study is to examine the validity of the regression hypothesis, which holds that "first learned is last forgotten."  The study is based on an experiment in which subjects were tested and re-tested on a wide variety of strutures of English grammar in a comprehension task and on English grammatical morphemes in a production task. A pre-test was given 8 K/E bilingual children 6 months after they returned to the L1 environment and a post-test to the same subjects one and a half years later. These subjects, aged from 9;0 to 12;11, had been exposed to L2 English for two to six and a half years.
           With regard to the results, only one child demonstrated a considerable decline in English grammar andmorphemes over one and a half years of non-use. The majority of the children, on the other hand, did not show any significant attrition or showed a slight gain over the same period of time. The data also showed that the structures characterized by weak performance in the pre-test tended to decline after one and a half years of non-use, while the structures characterized by strong performance on the same test appeared to be resistant to loss.

Title of proposal: The non-attrition of returnees' productive skills                                                                                   

Presenter: Hideyuki Taura, Fukui Medical University, Japan
        This study examines the linguistic attributes of L2 (English) language attrition of Japanese returnee children from English speaking countries. Although a few case studies have been conducted on this matter to date (Cohen, 1989; Tomiyama, 1998, 1999; Yoshitomi,1994, 1999), there is scant research (Olshtain, 1986; Reetz-Kurashige, 1999) targetted at a group of subjects, enabling researchers to generalize over a larger population. Therefore this study investigates a group of returnee children by comparing their language skills with two control groups of native speakers of English and Japanese EFL learners in the same age bracket. Two sets of data (productive skills rather than receptive skills such as listening and reading comprehension) were elicited from the individual subjects through (1) oral story-telling using Frog, where are you? (M. Meyer, 1969) and (2) Test of Written Language (D. Hammill & S. Larsen,1996). The results, together with the subjects' language background data, were analysed and discussed in light of the two research questions raised in this study: (a) Does attriton take place when the returnee children stay in touch with English in only five one-hour long lessons a week ? (b) Is the amount of attrition observed related to the length of time since leaving an English speaking country,? The outcome of this study is expected to be of some help in developing practical measures to help Japanese returnee children maintain their L2.