Sessions

Bilingual graded readers, literature circles, and identities

Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University is a dual-language university where half the students are domestic Japanese and the other half are international students. This presentation introduces examples of discourse in international-domestic bilingual discussion of an interlinear bilingual graded reader. Examples of text and resulting bilingual discussions aim to exemplify some affordances that bilingual texts offer learners in text-based exchange discussions in Japan. The study takes a discourse analytic approach (Gee, 1999) to investigating the ways the participants move from attempted interpretation of micro-level linguistic elements in the text to negotiating and constructing connections and interpretations of their lives and worlds.