FLEAT IV
The Fourth Conference on
Foreign Language Education andTechnology
July 28 to August 1, 2000

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In Commemoration of the 40 Years of theLanguage Laboratory Association of Japan

Proceedings
Hosted by theJapan Association for Language Education and Technology (LET), theInternational Association for Language Learning
Technology (IALLT), andthe Korea Association of Multimedia Assisted Language
Learning (KAMALL)

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Except for the Plenary Sessions and Citizen Seminars, all of the presentations,regardless of type, are in alphabetical order by the first major word of the title.
The FLEAT IV Proceedings may be either viewed on screen or printed out either inpart or in its entirety. The document has been formatted for US letter-sized paper but will
also print out on A4.
A number of navigation aids have been incorporated into the document for ease ofviewing on screen. Some are in blue and therefore obvious, but some are not immediately
visible. Watch for the cursor to change from an open hand to a pointed finger as you passover the paper titles and author names.
Choosing Bookmarks (Japanese Acrobat = Shiori) within Acrobat will show a listof contents on the left of the screen. Clicking on any of these entries will take you to that
section or paper. From the Contents you may click on any title or page number to go tothat paper or on the author’s name to go to the Author Index of names, affiliations, addresses
and e-mail addresses. From the Author Index you may click on a name or page number to
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number. Please note that page numbers in bold indicate the primary speaker while theother page numbers indicate a secondary speaker.

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Editorial Note
While presentations at FLEAT IV were selected through an adjudication process
based on submitted abstracts, papers submitted to this volume have undergone neither
adjudication nor thorough editing. The responsibility for the accuracy and completenessof each paper remains with the authors.
Some of the articles are partly or fully in Japanese and therefore not all of them may
be readable without the Japanese version of Acrobat. This is also true for some of thereference notes which were not completed in accordance with APA standards.

 2001 The Japan Association for Language Education and Technology,
the International Association for Language Learning Technology, andthe Korea Association of Multimedia Assisted Language Learning
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review,no part may be reproduced by any means without written permission from the publisher.
First Published July 2001 (PDF document).

FLEAT IV Proceedings
Editor: Jim White
Associate Editors: Donna Tatsuki, Dick Schaepe, Osamu Takeuchi, Juichi Suzuki andJudy Noguchi
Cover design, text design & layout by Jim White
Published by the Japan Association for Language Education and Technology
Correspondence to the FLEAT IV Organizing Committee.
FLEAT IV Office
Attn. Prof. Jun Arimoto, Conference Vice-Secretary
Kansai University of International Studies
1-18 Aoyama, Shijimi-cho, Miki-shi
Hyogo-ken, 673-0521, JAPANE-mail: fleatQ&A@kuins.ac.jp3Previous page

Proceedings of the FLEAT IV Conference

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Preface
Morio Kono
Conference Committee Chair
Kobe Kaisei (Stella Maris) College, Japan
This volume brings together many of the lectures and papers given at FLEAT IV—the Fourth International
Conference on Foreign Language Education and Technology co-sponsored by the Japan Association for Language
Education and Technology (LET), the International Association for Language Learning Technology (IALL) andthe Korea Association of Multimedia-Assisted Language Learning (KAMALL), which took place at Rokko Island
City, Kobe, from July 28 to August 1, 2000. The central theme of the Congress was "Language Learning andMultimedia: Bridging Humanity and Technology."
Bridging humanity and technology implies that the use of the multimedia should be established on the
research of the neuro-scientific and psycholinguistic mechanism of language acquisition. In general and wider
meanings, the most advanced technology of language learning should be in harmony with humanity—in the spiritof social-mindedness, cooperation, benevolence and self-control concerning others.
The conference was also held in commemoration of 40th anniversary of the Language Laboratory Association (LLA), renamed the Japan Association for Language Education and Technology (LET) on the occasion of thisconference.
FLEAT IV was, in the true meaning of the word, an international conference. One hundred and twenty-one
foreign scholars gathered in Kobe, from the USA, Korea, Taiwan, Canada, the United Kingdom, Iran, Israel,
Brazil, Austria, Australia and other countries together with 385 Japanese scholars. The other related projects werealso great successes—the Satellite Seminars for high school teachers, for example, had 169 partipants and the
Public Seminars opened to the general public had a total attendance of over 200 people. We are very happy andproud that FLEAT IV was expanded so much in these ways.
The publication of these Proceedings will not only provide the conference participants with a written recordof the papers, but will also offer the results of this conference to a much wider academic community by providing
access to research that we believe to be of great importance. We should like to emphasize the role of this volume as
an example of the vitality of a rapidly expanding academic field.
We hope our effort and contribution will prove to be useful to the wide variety of specialists from dozens ofinstitutions and countries who work daily in a serious and dedicated fashion to further our knowledge and skill inareas which are crucial to the general understanding of language education.

4

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Contents(Clicking on the title or page number will go to that paper;
clicking on a name will go to the Author’s Data.)
Page

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2

Editorial Note and Copyright Information

3

Preface
FLEAT IV Conference Committee Chairman

Contents

45Letters
President of LET

14

President of IALLT

15

President of KAMALL

16

Plenary Sessions
Networked Multimedia as Tools for Educational Purposes

17

Hermann Maurer, Gras University of Technology, Austria

Sociocultural Perspective on Transfer and Transfer Studies, A

34

Giyoo Hatano, Keio University, Japan“The Geeks Must Be Crazy!” The Ecological and Educational Validity of Techonology-Rich
Environments

41

Leo van Lier, Monterey Institute of International Studies, U. S. A.

Public Seminars
Networking Society and Education [in Japanese]

51

Takashi Sakamoto, National Institute of Multimedia Education, Japan

Starting Over: Tips on Learning English [Abstract only in English]

58

Masa-aki Ohsugi, Seisen University, Japan

Other Presentations
Action Research: Four Skills Integrated Teaching for High School Students in Osaka

60

Yasuyuki Mizohata, Oral Communication SIG,
All Osaka Senior High School English Teachers’ Association, Japan

Contents

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Assessing a Computer-Assisted Training Program for the Acquisition of Japanese Pitch:
Cooperation among Foreign Language Instructors, Linguists, Lab Directors/Managers
and Technology Specialists

69

Yukari Hirata, Colgate University, U. S. A.
Karen L. Landahl, University of Chicago, U. S. A
Mike S. Ziolkowski,″
Barbara Need,″

Bilingual Voice-Synthesis Multimedia Mirror-Dictionary for International EFL/JFL
Education, A

77

Richard Gilbert, Prefectural University of Kumamoto, Japan
Ryoji Matsuno,″
Yutaka Tsutsumi, Kumamoto Gakuen University, Japan

Building Bridges to Inclusive Foreign Language Education through Appropriately
Applied Technologies

84

David R. Wilson, Harton School, United Kingdom

Building Bridges: Using Email and Video to Promote Intercultural Communication

91

Martha Robertson, Aichi University, Japan
Kristi Joba,″
Jean Simonian,″Collaborative Teaching of Debate and Discussion through SCS

98

Masako Sasaki, Akita University, Japan
Michiyo Hirano, Ibaraki University, Japan
Yasuko Shiozawa, Shumei University, Japan

Composing on Computer: English Foreign Language Speakers Discover Hidden Treasure

105

Monica van Heerden, Da Yeh University, Taiwan

Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL)

112

Massoud Rahimpour, Tabriz University, Iran

Computer-Aided Prosody Training for Perception of English Syllables

117

Donna Erickson, Gifu City Women’s College, Japan
Keiichi Tajima, Information Sciences Division, ATR, Japan
Reiko Akahane-Yamada,″
Tsuneo Yamada, Nattiona Institute of Multimedia Education, Japan

Computerized Vocabulary Levels Test as a Placement Tool for EFL Learners

125

Howard Hao-Jan Chen, National Taiwan Ocean University, Taiwan

Contribution of Virtual Language Center on Foreign Language Education, The

135

Howard Hao-Jan Chen, National Taiwan Ocean University, Taiwan

Corpus Tools in Language Teaching and Learning

146

Monika K. Szirmai, Hiroshima International University, Japan

Course Syllabus for ESP Classes Using Multimedia CAI Materials, A

152

Hisako Yamauchi, Kurume Institute of Technology, Japan

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Design of a Multimedia Language Learning Center and its Applications, The

160

Harold Hendricks, Brigham Young University, U. S. A. [Moderator]

Design of a Multimedia Language Learning Center and Its Applications, The

161

Akira Morita, Waseda University, Japan

Designing an Effective Multimedia Language Learning Program: A Pilot Study of
Designing DV Movie News

165

Hideko Nakano, Kyushu Kyoritsu University, Japan

Developing Culturally-Sensitive Teaching Materials for the EFL Classroom in Japan173

Christopher A. Bradley, Fukuoka University of Education, Japan

Developing Listening Skill Using Video Drama Materials—Focusing on the Improved
Teaching Procedure of an English Class—

179

Hatsumi Kuniyoshi, Chiba Institute of Technology, Japan

Development of a Multimedia Program for the Acquisition of Noun Phrase with
Restrictive Modifier

187

Reiko Kodama, Kogakkan University, Japan
Shoichi Fujikake, SF Learning Systems, Japan

Development of an Automatic Pause Controller: What We Can Learn by Controlling
Speech Rate and Pause Length

195

Yutaka Kitamura, Kansai University, Japan
Tomohiro Kohno,″
Ken Horii,″
Kentaro Kotani,″

Development of KUIS On-Line Self-Study System for False Beginners

203

Takeshi Nozawa, Kansai University of International Studies, Japan
Jun Arimoto,″
Mari Katayama,″
Miho Kadono,″
Midori Sasaki,″

Development of Multimedia CD-ROM for English Learning: The Evaluation of the
CD-ROM on the Significance of Listening Compared the CD-ROM Material
and the Video Material, The

210

Sachiko Takana, Kanagawa University, Japan

Discourse Analysis in the Classroom: Working with Student-Generated Texts

214

Michael Carroll, Kyoto University of Education, Japan

Discipline-Specific CyberNeeds for Reading and Writing Instruction

221

Thomas Orr, University of Aizu, Japan

Effects of Controlled-Speech Rate in Video Materials for Listening Comprehension Practice227

Yasuyo Edasawa, Doshisha Women’s Junior College, Japan
Machiko Yoshimura,″
Yumiko Imai,″
Kuniko Nishikawa,″Contents

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Effects of Schema-Building Tasks on Reading Comprehension for Japanese Learners of EFL

237

Yuko Matsumura, Kinki University, Japan
Naoko Yamamoto, Kyoto Girls’ Senior High School, Japan

Effects of the Use of the English Material: ALC Net Academy and the TOEIC Test, The

245

Yoko Watanabe, Nagasaki Junshin Junior College, Japan
Shota Yoshihara, Nagasaki Junshin Catholic University, Japan

English Teaching through Internet: A Web-Assisted Course Design

253

Aili Hsin, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan

English Teaching Using CALL Software

260

Etsuko Watanabe, Kinran Junior College, Japan

Evaluating Student Proficiency in the Language Laboratory

268

June-ko Matsui, Meikai University, Japan

Evaluation Study of CALL Software for EFL Learners, An

272

Huei-Chun Teng, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan

Exploration of the Relationships Among Test Taker Characteristics, Test-Taking Strategies,
and Test Performance, An279

Liju Yien, National Lien Ho Institute of Technology, Taiwan

Forty Years of the Language Laboratory Association of Japan

289

Hikaru Iteya, Sonoda Women’s University, Japan

Globalization and Education

292

Setsuko Hirao, Aichi University, Japan [Moderator]

Home, Sweet Home, on the Internet—Homepage Making Project at a Junior College—

294

Kiyoko Kinugawa, Saitama Women’s Junior College, Japan
Naoko Matsumoto,″

How Do Pre-intermediate Learners of Japanese Read Passages? —Exploring the Eye
Movements of JSL Learners—

300

Mika Suzuki, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, JapanHow Effective Is a CALL System When Promoting TEFL Methods?

307

Mika Kawanari, Meikai University, JapanHow Far is Language Learning by CALL from First Language Acquisition?

317

Yukio Ikari, Osaka City University, Japan

How to Use PowerPoint (Abstract only in English)

323

Shinsuke Yoshida, Setsunan University, Japan

Importance of Learning Environment: A Case of an International Collaborative Project, The

329

Atsuko Kuramoto, Osaka Sangyo University, Japan

Instructors’ and Students’ Perception and Utilization of Technology

338

Inge Brown, Dartmouth College, U. S. A.
Otmar Foelsche,″

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Integrating the Internet into English Language Teaching

347

Setsuko Hirao, Aichi University, Japan

Interactive Web Pages for Cross-Cultural Learning

360

Seiko Oguri, Chubu University, Japan
Tetsuo Kato,″

Intercultural Understanding: Factors Influencing Transculturation and Ambiguity Tolerance
in a Study Abroad Program

365

Ken Matsuta, Asia University, Japan

International Student Exchange and Intensive Chinese Courses in China

371

Setsuko Hirao, Aichi University, Japan

Introduction to Streaming Multimedia: Utilizing Real-Time Resources in the Language
Classroom, An

377

M. D. Depoe, Kanazawa Institute of Technology, Japan
N. T. Edwards,″

Investigating Comprehension Strategies by L1 and L2 Readers Using an Internet-Adapted
English Cloze Test

386

Haruyo Yoshida, Setsunan University, Japan
Shinsuke Yoshida,″

Issues and Aspects Surrounding English and the English Education of Children in
Asian countries.

394

Miyuki Takahashi, Chubu Gakuin University, Japan

It’s Not Just a Language Lab Anymore: IALL’s Perspective on Trends in Language
Learning Technology

401

Otmar Foelsche, Dartmouth College, U. S. A.

Japanese Reading Support System Focusing on Learner’s Needs

408

Riko Wakita, Fukui University, Japan
Youji Ochi, Tokushima University, Japan
Yoneo Yano,″

Joint Venture in China: A Simulation for Teaching Chinese Business and Language

414

Robert Hart, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U. S. A.

Language Learning Strategy Use and Learning Achievement by High School EFL Learners:
An Analysis of Latent Factor Structure421

Hiroaki Maeda, Hiroshima University Graduate School, Japan

Laputa Project: The Potential of the 3D Interactive Education System in College
English Education

429

Satomi Takahashi, Kyushu University, Japan
Toshihiro Shimizu,″
Narahiko Inoue,″
Yubun Suzuki,″
Shoichi Yamauchi,″

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Large-Scale Implementation of Computer-Based, Multimedia Achievement Testing

436

Harold H. Hendricks, Brigham Young University, U. S. A.

Learning English through Web-based MOO Activities

438

Seikyung Cho, Kyung Hee University, Korea

Learning Strategies for Technical Terms without Context

444

Koji Hirose, Meirin College, Japan

Lexical Analysis of Oral Communication A/B Textbooks for Japanese EFL Learners, A

452

Naoki Sugimori, Osaka Electro-Communication University, Japan
Akinobu Tani, Hyogo University of Education, Japan
Toshiko Koyama, Ohtani Women’s College, Japan

Making and Using Teaching Materials on the Internet

459

Mitsuaki Hayase, Mie University
Akihiro Mikami, Suzuka National College of Technology, Japan
Yasuki Kondo, Mie Prefectural Kawagoe Senior High School, Japan
Hideki Yokota, Mie Prefectural Kawananishi Senior High School, Japan
Kenji Hirabayashi, Aichi Prefectural Shinkawa Senior High School, Japan
Shoji Nakagawa, Kuwana Municipal Ryosei Junior High School, Japan
Takayasu Hayashi, Matsusaka Municipal Chubu Junior High School, Japan

Making More Effective Use of On-line Reading Material

468

Joyce Maeda, Tokyo International University, Japan
Yoshiko Kawamura,″
Kumiko Kaneniwa,″

Maximizing Potential in the Design of Multimedia Environments

475

Gordon B. Liversidge, Otsuma Women’s University, Japan

Motivational Aspects of Using CALL for Reading and Writing in EFL

479

Kazunori Nozawa, Ritsumeikan University, Japan

Operation and Effectiveness of Individual Learning of Technical English Words on a
WWW-Based CAI System

486

Takayoshi Yoshioka, Toyota National College of Technology, Japan
Shinya Kojima,″
Hitoshi Nishizawa,″
Tsutomu Saito,″

Parser Program as a Tool for Learning Verb Complements, The

492

Toshiko Sakurai, Kobe Shoin Women’s University, Japan
Robert Hart, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U. S. A.

Phoneme Acquisition Models

498

Kaoru Iseno, Osaka Gakuin University, Japan

Practical Advice on Administering Internet Servers for Language Education

504

Shigeru Takeno, Miyazaki Municipal University, Japan

Practical Report on Written English Communication Training: Using the BBS on the Internet

512

Yoko Kobayashi, Aichi Shukutoku University Graduate School, Japan
Yoshikazu Yanagi, Nagoya Gakuin University, Japan
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Proposal of a Writing-Support Tool for Research Journal Papers in English

519

Judy Noguchi, Mukogawa Women’s University, Japan

Proposal to Integrate Computers in Language Instruction, A

526

Miho Fujieda, Tokai University, Japan
Hiroko Suzuki,″

Prosodic Variables as a Cue for Japanese EFL Learners’ Listening Comprehension

533

Kaoru Tomita, Yamagata University, Japan

Prospects and Issues in integrating a CALL Methodology into the English Curriculumof Korean Elementary Schools, The

540

In-Seok Kim, Dongduk Women’s University, Korea

Prospects of Computer-Assisted English Teaching in Japanese Elementary Schools, The

548

Yuri Kuno, Bunka Woman’s University, Japan

Raising Students’ Textual/Pragmatic Awareness Using Online Resources

551

Eiichi Yamamoto, Kansai University, Japan

Ready, Set, Go: An Update on Using Web Technology for Successful Study Abroad

557

Judith M. Gallian, Miyazaki International College, Japan

Reappraisal of the Effectiveness of Pausing on the Development of Students’ Listening
Comprehension Ability and Reading Speed, A

562

Juichi Suzuki, Kyoto University of Education, Japan

Reflecting on Learning Process: The Benefits of Self-Evaluation and Grading with
Progressive Rate

571

Ching-Min Sun, Jin-Wen Institute of Business and Technology, Taiwan

Relation Between Improvements of Perception and Production Ability During a
University English Speech Training Course

579

Mayumi Hamada, Ryutsu-Kagaku University, Japan
Teruaki Tsushima,″

Repeated Presentations of Material: Is It Effective for EFL Students’ Listening?

583

Maiko Ikeda, Setsunan University, Japan
Osamu Takeuchi, Kansai University, Japan

SaMOOrai: A Virtual Japan for Language Learning and Cross-Cultural Exchange

592

Hideto D. Harashima, Maebashi Institute of Technology, Japan
Yoshimasa Awaji, Takushoku University, Japan
Shuji Ozeki, Chubu University, Japan

Solutions For Limited Resources In Language Labs

587

Monika K. Szirmai, Hiroshima International University, Japan

Some Characteristics of Prosody in Japanese Speakers’ Reading of Japanese andEnglish Passages

601

Kazuo Kanzaki, Osaka Electro-Communication University, Japan

Some Keys to Moving from Bottom-Up to Top-Down Reading

606

Shian-jung Chen, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan

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Speech Technologies and Pronunciation Teaching in Japan

613

Veronika Makarova, Meikai University, Japan

Strategic Effect of Shadowing on Listening Ability

620

Ken Tamai, Kobe Shoin Women’s College, Japan

Streaming Audio And Video—The End of The Traditional Language Lab—

626

Otmar Foelsche, Dartmouth College, U. S. A.

Student-Centered Multimedia Exploration of Code Choice in Indonesia, A

633

Paul Black, Northern Territory University, Australia
Zane Goebel, La Trobe University, Australia

Student-Constructed Web Rescources for Intercultural Understanding

639

S. Kathleen Kitao, Doshisha Women’s College, Japan
Kenji Kitao, Doshisha University, Japan

Students’ Feelings About a Writing Class in a Junior High School Computer Room

647

Hiroshi Oota, Tokyo Gakugei University Affiliated Setagaya Junior High School, Japan

Students’ Opinions of FL Teachers Across Cultures

650

Veronika Makarova, Meikai University, Japan
Stephen Ryan, Eichi University, Japan

Study of Foreground and Background Structures in English Written Narratives by
Teacher College Students in Taiwan, A

656

Daniel Yu-ching Chan, National Taipei Teachers College, Taiwan

Style Elements in Foreign-language Writing among Japanese College Students

665

Sandra Leishman, Chiba University, Japan
Chikako Nishigaki, Chiba University, Japan

Task-Based Instruction in Large EFL Classes

675

Meili Yeh, National Lien Ho Institute of Technology, Taiwan
Liching Hung,″
Liju Yien,″

Teaching English in a Multimedia Classroom: Nurturing Self-Study Abilities with
Modern Technology

684

Hisako Okuda, Hiroshima Shudo University, Japan

Text, Video, and Strategy: A Survey of Junior College Students’ LLS Use with aVideo-Equipped Textbook

691

Kaoru Kobashi, Kobe University, JapanTOPLINE Telementoring: On-Line Teacher Development

698

Daniel T. Kirk, Prefectural University of Kumamoto, Japan
Paul A. Beaufait,″‘TOWUMI’ and its Effectiveness Diagnosis Based on Whole Language and Learner
Differences

707

Chang-in Lee, PaiChai University, Korea

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Use of English News Programs and Internet for English Classses at a Japanese University, The

715

Kazumi Araki, Saitama Prefectural University, Japan

Using DVD in the Classroom

718

Harold H. Hendricks, Brigham Young University, U. S. A.

Using the WebLEAP (Web Language Evaluation Assistant Program) to Write English
Compositions

720

Takashi Yamanoue, Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japapn
Toshiro Minami, Kyushu University, Japan
Ian Ruxton, Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan

Visualization and Modeling: Analysis of Code Switching and Modes of Communication
in a Beginning Chinese Class Facilitated by Electronic Network

728

Hui-Mei Hsu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U. S. A.
Cheng-Hui Chen,″

Washback Effect of the Introduction of a Listening Test into a National University
Entrance Examination

738

Hiroshi Shimatani, Kumamoto University, Japan
Terry Laskowski,″

Web-CALL: An Authoring System for Implementing Web-Based CALL

745

Jun Iwata, Matsue National College of Technology, Japan
Satoru Fujii,″

Web-Coursed Contexts Delivered by the CLIM between on-line and Conventional Modes

752

Der-li Chiao, Republic of China Air Force Academy, Taiwan

What Spiders Forgot to Weave on the Web: Synchronous Text-Based Environment for
Language Learning

762

Yoshimasa Awaji, Takushoku University, Japan
Hideto D. Harashima, Maebashi Institute of Technology, Japan
Shuji Ozeki, Chubu University, Japan

Worldviews and the Internet

767

Hiroyuki Obari, Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan

Author Index

773

Executive Board and Committees

784

Fleat IV Photo Album

786

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From the President of theJapan Association for Language Education and Technology (LET)
Hiroshi Asano
Toyo Gakuin University, JapanAt the opening ceremony I talked about the necessity of looking at both the past and the future like Janus,
who is a Roman god with two faces. Our FLEAT Conference is generally thought to aim at discussing solving thepresent and future problems of technology and education, and, of course, it is the right purpose in that our teaching
techniques have been changing rapidly with the progress of technological devices and that we have to improve ourtechniques according to progress in technology. I just wanted to say that it is as important to remember what we didin the past. As a matter of fact, our association changed its name from LLA (the Language Laboratory Associationof Japan) to LET (the Japan Association for Language Education and Technology) on the occasion of LLA’s 40th
anniversary. I suppose we would not have been able to step forward as a new organization without long andstrenuous efforts on the part of our predecessors.
I believe that FLEAT IV was a great success. With more than 150 presentations, three plenary addresses by
the distinguished guest speakers, and many other events, the participants were able to collect first-hand information
on what was going on in many parts of the world. By attending some of them I was inspired to make a greater effort
to improve English language education in Japan.
I also liked the general theme of FLEAT IV, “Language Learning and Multimedia: Bridging Humanity andTechnology.” From an educational point of view, advantages and disadvantages of using computers have often
been disputed. We should never forget, therefore, what effects new technology will bring about, especially upon
our mental functions. In this sense, also, FLEAT IV was a success. Some of the presenters eagerly talked about
language learners’ favorable or unfavorable changes in their attitudes.
FLEAT, which so far has been co-sponsored by the LLA and the IALLT, had a new co-sponsor, KAMALL
for this fourth conference. As a result, more people from Asian countries took part in FLEAT IV. I do hope that
another FLEAT will be held not only in Japan, but somewhere else in Asia in the near future.
One more thing I should mention about FLEAT IV is that it was held in the city of Kobe. I am afraid many ofthe participants were ignorant that it was one of the cities that were heavily damaged by a great earthquake only five
years ago. Such surprising recovery was possible owing to progress in technology as well as to efforts on the partof the citizens. Technology seems to have infinite possibility. It is human beings, however, who make it work fortheir welfare and happiness.
I hope more of us will meet again in FLEAT V in Utah, U.S.A. in 2005 to discuss the further possibility ofusing technology for language learning and education. We should help people learn to communicate with andunderstand each other much better, because people in the 21st century will need more linguistic communicativeskills so each of them can be a world citizen.
I would like to thank all the participants for their cooperation, and all the members of the host and supportingorganizations. My gratitude also goes to the Organizing Committee who made it possible to celebrate the LLA’s
40th anniversary by a great and successful event like FLEAT IV

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From the President of theInternational Association for Language Learning Technology (IALLT)
Read Gilgen
University of Wisconsin, U. S. A.
FLEAT IV has come and gone, but the memories linger on. We all owe a debt of gratitude to our Japanese
hosts for organizing an outstanding conference that attracted hundreds of language technology professionals fromaround the world.
If you weren’t among the fortunate ones who could attend FLEAT IV, you can still benefit from these printed
proceedings. Although these can’t convey the beauty of Kobe and Rokko Island, nor the warm hospitality of LET,
they can give you a sense of some of the work being doing by your colleagues.
IALL is pleased to be able to continue its special relationship with LET through these FLEAT conferences.
We’re also happy that KAMALL was able to join us this time around. The spirit of FLEAT remains with us all as
we return to our work, and we look forward to FLEAT V, which is scheduled to be held in the Summer of 2005 at
Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
We’ll see you all at FLEAT V!

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From the President-Elect of the
Korean Association of Multimedia Assisted Language Learning(KAMALL)
In-seok Kim
Dongduk Women's University, Korea
My attendance at the FLEAT conference was a brand new experience. Although I knew the existence of
FLEAT as an internatonal conference long before, I had never had a chance to attend it. But this attendace gave mea real feel of what FLEAT is like. I am proud to mention that I personally learned a lot from this conference. I
believe that this conference was made possible with unreserved efforts from a lot of people who deserve being
mentioned.
First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Professor Kohno (FLEAT Chair) for his invitation to
me to attend the conference. I believe that his dedication to this conference made it run so smooth and efficiently.
I am also grateful to Professor Asano (President of LET), Professor Gilgen (President of IALLT), and other members of these two organizations for their assistance and hospitality which was shown me throughout the conference.
I am glad that the FLEAT IV conference achieved quite a success which any other international conferences could
not attain.
I would like to express a special “Thank you” to the organizers of Kanto Chapter Forum which gave me achance to present the picture of multimedia-assisted foreign language education in Korean schools. This forum
presentation generated a lot of enthusiasms from people present at the forum in that they raised questions and madevaluable comments on my presentation.
Finally, I hope that in the future FLEAT can be restructured into a bigger international organization which is
jointly operated by IALLT (North America), LET (Japan), KAMALL (Korea), POCMELIA (Taiwan), and similartypes of organization of other countries. I take a view that it should also produce a journal as well. By doing this,FLEAT can grow as an international organization that can surely draw much attention among the people engaged inteaching foreign languages through the medium of the computer around the globe.

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Networked Multimedia as Tools for Educational Purposes
Hermann Maurer
Graz University of Technology, Austria
Introduction
I’m going to talk about Network Multimedia as Tools for Education Purposes in a very broad sense. I am notjust talking about applications to language teaching and language learning, but to teaching and learning in general.
I want to try to explain a little bit about the main issues involved when you use network multimedia in the educational process. As a matter of fact, as you will see, I will actually be even a little critical of some of the potential
developments towards the end of my talk.
After a fairly long section on general aspects, which might be a little bit boring but which is also very
important, I will try to explain to you why I think that if we use network multimedia, the communicational and cooperational component is the most important one. After that I will talk a little bit about my research of so-called“Active Documents” and I will try to show how much we have done in this research so far.
Then I will address the problem of feedback in a very specific fashion. Feedback is simply this. If I prepare
some materials for my students, I want to find out how much they like it, where they fail or whether they performbetter than they did without such materials, etc. I will also mention Hyperwave, a system upon which much of mywork is based; a hyperwave training portal that actually embodies many of the ideas that I will have explained
before.
Finally, in the last part of my talk I will pose a few provocative questions. The most provocative of these is,“Should we continue to learn foreign languages in the future?” Maybe this isn’t necessary after all because Siemans
announced a short time ago that as of the year 2002, you would be able to make telephone conversations from
Germany to Japan and the German partner will speak German and Japanese partner will hear a translation into
Japanese and vice versa with an automatic translation software doing the intermediate work. So why should I learn
Japanese? Why should someone from Japan learn English or German if indeed a computer can act as a translator inreal time? Then, I will still be a little bit provocative by asking, “Do we need written language at all?” and I willpose some strong arguments that maybe written language will more or less disappear over next the 50 years. And
if this shocks you a little bit, great, then you will look forward to that part of the talk. I will then try to give somearguments as to why I can make that statement. And this will then lead me to another new area, to the area of source
versus subject knowledge. If that doesn’t mean anything to you at the moment, it will at the end of the talk, I hope.

General Aspects
Now starting with the first chapter—when we talk about network multimedia we usually mean WWW, theWorld Wide Web. If you look at the WWW, there are literally at least 50,000 to 80,000 sites now available thatoffer educational material but most of this material is not really well versed in the aims of valid educational
materials. This is why I am claiming that the WWW is very often misused. It is not used to its fullest extent, but
only used in an arbitrary fashion. Typically, people who put up multimedia WWW pages may incorporate simple
questions and answers, but very often just in the form of multiple choice questions. Maybe they even provide some
simple communication facilities like e-mail. After doing this, they then claim they have put up a site for educational purposes.
My claim is that, yes, such a site maybe useful to some extent, but it certainly isn’t as useful as it could be if
one observes some of the major points I’ll be trying to make in this talk. So, basically, I am claiming that if you justuse the WWW in this way, then you not using it as you should and you are not using it as you should for language
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teaching—even if you add modules that are language teaching specific. There are many such modules and I’m surethat most of you who are sitting here are more familiar with these language specific aspects than I am, so I don’t
want to go too deeply into them.
But a language specific tool includes things like other types of question and answer dialogs. Typically if you
look at a workbook, for example the one for the Cambridge Language Certificate, you very often find problems ofthis kind: Fill in the gap, choose a certain word to fit in the context or sentence, or try to find the right tense or useof a correct verb and things like this. In language teaching, if you look at the ordinary workbooks that are floatingaround on paper or in electronic form, you will find many more sophisticated techniques than just multiple-choicequestions. A number of tools have been around for training in grammar or the retention of words for some time.
For example, one technique that has been around now for at least 40 years is called the three-stack technique. It was
originally done with three stacks of paper as you probably know and now there are electronic versions available.
There are also things like pronunciation trainers. For example, at our institute, they have developed dictionaries for all the European languages which includes not only the pronunciation of a word when you look it up, butwhich also incorporate the possibility of talking into the microphone and letting the computer analyze whether you
have pronounced the word correctly or not by comparing a stored voice against your voice. And it is also doing all
kinds of filtering and adjusting so that even if the voice recorded was female and you are male and your intonation
might be different all this is being taken into account. You know none of these pronunciation trainers work perfectly, but they seem to be working better and better all the time. I know that we will hear about such things during
the course of the next few days.
And of course, there are completely different ways of teaching languages, for example, like just exposing
students to movies and movie clips that are self-explanatory and where they hear the actors talking a foreign
language. Because the movies and clips are self-explanatory, they start to understand what is being talking about.
I know that this list can be continued for a long while and I know from looking at the program that we will hear
many such language-specific techniques during this conference. I’m looking forward to learning more about someof those aspects myself. But I’m not going to go into those but, as I said earlier, will speak about generalities, thegeneral ideas that are necessary and important if you are to use network multimedia for educational purposes.
Let me start with this long list. It is going to be the longest list you will see on the screen today. My claim
is that the basic requirements for any general network training or teaching or language environment are as follows:1.

First of all, when you present some material to a user, to a student, the most important thing to
do first is to determine the level of knowledge of the user. Nothing is more de-motivating thanbeing presented with material that you already know and also nothing is more de-motivating
than to be presented with material that is much too hard for you. One thing that is very often
overlooked is the fact that we actually need a potential for making a pre-test or of finding thelevel of knowledge. This is true whether we teach geography or mathematics or whether we areteaching languages.

2.

Now, there is another issue that is equally important but is much more difficult to handle—thepre-testing of the cognitive style of the person. We know from learning theory that different
persons learn in different styles. That some, for example, learn better by reading, others learn
better by listening or actually viewing pictures and movies, and still others cannot learn at all
unless there are some finger movements or some tactile, active component involved. This
brings me to a very important point that is not on the slide here. When you hear about “virtual
universities” or about e-learning, when you hear about using network multimedia for education,
you have to distinguish two very important things. One method of application that is sometimes called a “Virtual University” or “distance learning,” is to do the following: While I am
standing here and am giving you a presentation, this presentation with my voice together perhaps with my face, and together with these slides, is actually sent via some analogue or digitalmeans to some other lecture room so that other people, not only the 200 or 300 persons sitting

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here, but another 200 to 300 persons sitting somewhere else can listen to what I am saying at
this moment. For me this is almost a misuse of technology. It may be justified in some instances, but the real aim of technology is not to make lecture rooms bigger and bigger so that
one lecturer can suddenly lecture to 10,000 people. The real aim is to use network multimedia
to individualize the teaching style. This is the first of the two points that the slides points out
very well. You have to really look at the level of knowledge and the cognitive styles of theperson, and then you can offer suitable multimedia material in a suitable form, something that I
cannot do here. I am confronted here with you and your levels of expectation, your levels ofknowledge in computer science and your levels of knowledge in language teaching, all of which
are very heterogeneous among us, including myself. So if I give a certain speech or lecture at a
certain level it may be suitable for some of you but for some of you it may not be suitable. And,
unfortunately that is the case whenever we are lecturing to a large group. Hopefully, by using
computer technology, by using network multimedia, we will be able to individualize our teaching process and our learning process much more than we are able to do today.
3.

The next point is, of course, also very important. Early systems using computers for teaching
and training had more or less built in, without intention, what is called a “Tunnel Syndrome” —the fact that the learners always had the feeling that they were sort of caught in the process, they
just had to leaf through some pages and they had to keep learning some words or they had tokeep answering something. Also, at some point they became tired of doing so and they wanted
to do something different. Any good system must make sure that the “Tunnel Syndrome” does
not arise. This means, for example, that you should be able to go back to the table of contents
whenever you want, leaving maybe a bookmark at the point where you have left off so that you
can continue at the same spot later on.

4.

You should certainly have a large database or what I call a “background library” so you do nothave just small modules whatever they may be—training modules for learning words or an
explanation of the geography of Japan. That is not good enough. You must have substantial
quantities of background material. Such background material today can very often be purchased from publishing companies. You can purchase from media companies full-sized encyclopedias that you can actually install on the server for your Internet site or in your universities
or schools. You can purchase, for example, electronic atlases of the world that have ample
details and are background information. You can, of course, purchase back issues of Timemagazine for an English course so that whenever you want to have some additional reading you
can point to a contribution in Time magazine that appeared maybe 10 years ago. Maybe you caneven use it to show that the style of the language has changed in the last 30 years, even in sucha respected journal as Time magazine.

5.

The other thing is that learners should also know where they are. They should know how muchof the material they have covered and how much still lies ahead of them and they should makesure and you should make sure at any point in the material that the learner knows when “I havefinished and I have not forgotten any thing.” This is a problem with the hypertext approach.
Your efforts to navigate around some universe of information leads sometimes to the result thatyou are always unsure of “Have I made it?” “Have I overlooked any important things that I
should have looked at?” So you have to make sure that this kind of problem doesn’t happen andthat has to be built into the system in some way or another.

6.

Now one of the most important aspects in regard to individual teaching and training is the
aspect of personalization. This means that if I read an ordinary book that belongs to me, I feel
free to use a pencil or to maybe make some notes in the book. And of course, when I work
though some materials in electronic form, the same possibility should be there. I should be able
to make notes and I should perhaps even be able to make links to other material, maybe even tomaterial out there on the web. I should be able to attach the added documents to the material so

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that when I read this and my documents, I can find this material again. As a matter of fact, if I
do this in a network environment, then I may actually open my notes to my friends or to myclassmates. So these notes or these links of saved material in the background library may notjust be links that I can see again when I revisit the same material, but links that other students
who come to the same point can find. And of course, we all agree that the user should do morethan mouse clicking and should actually be able to work in a serious fashion with the material.
7.

The main point here is the last one. If we use a network system, we have to use it to break theisolation. When we use a computer-based teaching approach with stand-alone computers, oneof the big problems is isolation, where one learner or just a few learners are sitting in front of adevice. If they have any questions they can’t ask either their peers or their teachers. So we haveto use this network to break the isolation. We can do this by building in chat, by building in
discussion forums that work both synchronously and asynchronously. And of course, we haveto allow the students to ask questions, questions that will be answered immediately or perhaps
later by an expert or by another student. I think this list—if a system for a network teaching andlearning environment doesn’t provide these features, then I think you should forget it. This is
the list of minimum requirements every system must have. If you look at 500 commerciallyavailable systems today for teaching and training learning, depending on what you want toemphasize, you will find very few systems that actually satisfy even this set of minimal requirements let alone any other requirements you may have.

So far this has been from a users’ point of view. Let us very briefly, but much more briefly, also look at theauthors’ point of view and the administrators’ point of view. There is much talk about authoring tools. This, ofcourse, depends very much on the area you are working in. In some areas authoring of material is not so important,because the learning is actually done by doing and the students do the authoring. Therefore authoring by theteachers or by some publishing company is not so important. In many cases the authoring of educational materials
is important. We all know it is very time consuming if you want to produce, so-called, high quality course work.
One of the things we have to learn is to reuse existing modules.
If you look at today’s standards, developments occurring both here and I guess all over the world, you willfind there is a lot of progress being made in the area of “meta-information.” The main idea is to break up learning,to break up big learning chunks into smaller modules so you can associate meta-information and additional information with these modules. This is because only if you have this additional information will you be able to actuallyfind those modules you are interested in from among, let us say, 5,000 little modules that are floating aroundsomewhere on paper. Maybe you are only interested in modules at a certain level of complexity for a certain
subject area. You can only do so if you not only break up the learning material into small chunks and small modules
but you also have the techniques to relocate or to find these modules again.
It is my experience that this is the reason why videotapes in many areas of teaching have never attained theprominence that could have had. I have, for example, in computer science teaching, tried to use some of hundreds
or literally more than hundreds of videotapes available from high-class institutions such as MIT or Stanford andfrom institutions in Europe and Japan. I have almost given up because it meant that I had to wade through hundredsof hours of material and then I would find that I could only use minute 82 to minute 84 of one of those videos in myclass. So I ended up really wasting weeks and weeks just to put together a few video clips from various videos.
What is the reason for this? The reason is because these videos are one to two hours long—they are not small
chunks, they are big chunks and there is not enough meta-information associated with them. So it is difficult to findwhat we actually want within a particular context.
We have to make sure this does not happen again with the network multimedia. Remember, just putting
meta-information with these modules and developing mechanisms to retrieve those that are of interest to you is notgood enough. It is not good enough because sometimes these modules also do not fit in context—they do not fit inform and annotation—they use different colors. They use different fonts. They maybe even use different terminology. Even though they may fit all the principles of what they convey together, you cannot use them together
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because you cannot be suddenly switching from a green background to a blue one or to a different kind of terminology, etc. This reuse of models is something many people are working on. The problem has not really been solved
but the process is getting better and better. In addition to reuse, we should be able to customize material to the useof the groups that we are trying to teach.
Now, these are all sorts of standard issues that I want to deal with a little bit more rapidly. Of course, we haveto have some kind of structural administration—in learning you do not just have students you also have tutors, youhave authors, you have supervisors. You have a whole hierarchy of people involved. Of course, these people haveto have different kinds of access rights and different kinds of rights to manipulate. You need good student- andcourse-tracking statistics. And you need feedback facilities—a topic with I will address a little bit later.
One of the most important things that I cannot over emphasize is the use of the powers of cooperation
between tools. For example, if you look back at the use of the Internet five years ago, use groups were “in.” Thiswas more or less before the WWW became so widespread. And if you look at some use groups and the ways you
could use them, it is really surprising that, if you then look at the discussion forums in the current-day WWW
context, these discussion forums are so much more primitive it is incredible. Many of the things we learned withuse groups are not used in the WWW. This is nearly a joke. If you go to some of these web sites you will see onlyprimitive discussion forums. This is in despite of the fact that in use groups you already had very sophisticatedfacilities available.
What do I mean by sophisticated facilities? Well, first of all, I mean if you have some kind of discussion,then maybe you want to display this discussion in different forms. At some stage you may be interested in thehistory of the discussion, the original proposition and the various arguments and counter-arguments that occurred.
And you may be interested in seeing it in kind of a tree form or maybe in some other kind of graphical presentation.
At some other stage you may want to see the same contributions but have them sorted by date, for example, so thatyou can see only the most recent form or, still better, only the ones that you have not seen yet. The system actuallykeeps track of all the contributions you have not yet seen and shows only those and not the others to you. Therefore
you do not have to wade through all kinds of raw material.
Or, perhaps one of the people writing in this discussion forum may really start getting on your nerves because they are always bringing in the same old arguments. So you want to say “I do not want to see contributions
from this person anymore.” Conversely, others may obviously really write intriguing remarks even in areas that are
only of slight interest to you. So you may want to say that whenever that person writes a contribution no matter
whether it is language teaching or history I want to see it. That is because that person always has somethingoriginal to say. There are many ways here that are usable for displaying information, such as bulletin boards,
discussion forums or whatever you want to call them. But unfortunately in most of the WWW environments that
I am aware of this is very restricted, much more restricted than it should be. Of course, you should have searchfacilities so you can do full-text search of part or of the entire discussion forum. You should also be able to edit thediscussion forum and edit ordinary documents. Of course, you should be able to edit pictures and convert files orwhat have you.
Another very important issue is that of different levels of anonymity. There is this misunderstanding thatpeople are either anonymous or identified. As a matter of fact, you can find a real hierarchy between those who arecompletely anonymous and those who are completely identified. For example, if you have a public discussion in
the university, you can allow students or participants to be completely anonymous. They just select their own
penname and own password and nobody ever knows what that penname is—they do not know the connection
between the penname and the real identity. That permits free discussion without fear of recrimination. But it also
leads to misuse—perhaps people say some thing that should not be said. So sometimes restricting anonymity isquite useful. For example, in some of the public forums that we are using in our country, people can choose theirown penname and identity. The connection between the penname and the actual person is known only to thesystem. There is a guarantee that this relationship between penname and actual identity will be opened only by alegal or court order and only in those cases where somebody is violating some of the laws in Austria like right-wing
activism or pornography for instance. So this is another level of anonymity.
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Another level of anonymity that I have found very useful is as follows: When I teach a course on the societal
implications of computer science, I grade the students on the basis of the value of their discussion. But I do notwant to know which student is saying what or using a particular argument. So students are allowed to choose
pennames. Any one student can choose, if desired, up to three different pennames and may write under all of thesepennames. I also usually choose two or three pennames for myself. I even built a style scrambler so the students do
not know when Hermann Maurer is writing. The style scrambler permits me as one person under one penname tocapitalize everything and to always make a particular grammatical mistake. This is done by the system on purpose.
Students start to identify that penname with certain kinds of mistakes and another penname with other kinds of
mistakes. The reason I choose different pennames or, so to speak, different personalities, is because I sometimes
want to give forceful counter arguments. I sometimes want to argue against my own points if nobody else is doing
it. The point is the students are anonymous to me, but my secretary knows their identity. Toward the end of theterm I have a long list of pennames. I assign marks or points to these pennames and then my secretary, knowing thatperhaps three pennames that the student selected are the same person adds them up and calculates the grade—the
final grade from the total number of points. So I am involved in the marking process but for me these pennames arecompletely anonymous. If somebody has viciously attacked me in the discussion, I cannot be insulted. I am
insulated against this person because I do not even know who this person is.
Now I will talk about notification mechanisms. This is something that is growing in importance, meaningthat if I put a question or contribution to a discussion forum or on a bulletin board, I want to be notified whensomeone comments on it. Or maybe I am very interested in a particular topic; let us say, irregular verbs in language
teaching or something like that. Whenever some new entry is made in some part of the forum I want to be notified
immediately. This is what I mean by a powerful notification mechanism.
Here is one example of the use of such cooperative tools being carried out in a large European project
involving 15 schools scattered all over Europe, and one that does involve English language teaching so it may bepertinent for this group. Basically what we did is form groups of 20 students, usually from different schools. They
had to write an essay about some topic—politics, Shakespeare—you name it. The point was that after each of thesestudents had written their essay, all of the other students had to comment on it. Of course this again means that you
have to have an ability to make notes in a document that doesn’t belong to you. You are not destroying the
document; you are just overlaying your notes on top of the document. After this second round the students had theoriginal essays as well as all the notes and observations, encouragement and suggestions of the other 19 students
involved. For example, “Why do you formulate it that way?” or “Why do not you talk more about this?” and so on.
In the third round the students had to take these annotations into account and prepare a new version of their essay.
This, by the way, is where version control becomes so important to the system I am talking about and thesystem you may be using in such a context. What you want, of course, is to have the old document with theannotations displayed and on top of that the new, resulting document. And when you read the resulting document,
you should have tools that at anytime will allow you to see what the old document looked like and how these notes
and annotations of the other students were taken into account. So this is where you need version control just as youneed it in many other contexts.
This was the third round—the first round was writing the essays, the second round annotating them and thethird round improving. But the fourth round is also interesting. We gave every student 100 points and they had to
distribute these points according to what they felt were the better essays. So this introduced a ranking for these 20
essays. Again, the essays were edited using pennames. You could not do favors to your friends because you
usually did not who was hiding behind which penname. Anyway, doing this gave us a ranking for these essays andthis ranking was actually taken into account by the teachers for the grades for that particular English class. What
was interesting in a sense was that no authoring was involved. I mentioned before that sometimes there is noauthoring involved. And, in this example that was the case. The students did everything—they did the essay
writing, the annotating, the new essay and even the grading. Of course the teachers still looked at the results anddetermined the final grade, but there was no authoring involved in the usual sense of the word.

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The Communicational and Co-Operational Component in Network Multimedia
Now, after this sort of fairly lengthy general introduction, I now want to tell you a story, to sort of interrupt
this rather boring listing of important features. I want to tell you a story that I have stolen from a book for children
in Italian. The story is called “Fish is Fish.” I modified the story a little bit to fit what I want to get across.
Here is the story of a very curious fish, a research oriented fish. This fish is swimming in the water anddiscovers at some stage that there is something outside of the water. Obviously sometimes the fish hits the shore so
the fish is getting curious and wants to find out what is outside the water. What can the fish do? The fish can jumpout of the water for a moment. The trouble is, first of all, the fish can jump out for only a very short time and,secondly, as soon as the fish jumps out every thing gets blurry. After all when you submerge you head in water
without diving glasses, your view gets blurred, right? This fish keeps jumping and jumping, but even after many
jumps the fish still does not really know what is going on outside the water.
Now the fish is lucky, because the fish has a friend, a frog and the frog can live on the land and in the water.
So the frog tells the fish what life is like outside the water. But please observe what the frog is saying, what the frog
is thinking, and what the fish is thinking. The frog, for example, says, “There is a flying animal” while thinking ofa beautiful swan but the fish is thinking of a flying fish because it is the only flying animal the fish knows. Or thefrog talks about animals with four legs and an udder with milk while thinking of a cow. The fish, of course, thinks
of a frog with an udder with milk because it is the only four-legged animal the fish knows. Or the frog says, “Thereare even intelligent animals out there and sometimes they wear something on their heads, they wear silver hats.”
The frog may be thinking of a man with a silver hat but the fish is thinking of an upright walking fish with a silver hat.
I think it is clear what this story is trying to get across. It is a story we all know but sometimes forget. When
we tell something to a group of people or even to a single person, if we just tell it, if it is just one-way communication, then the knowledge does not arrive in the same form in the other person’s head as it resides in our heads. How
information is understood when it is transported through my speech for example today will always depend on the
background of those receiving this information, on their cultural background, their previous knowledge, etc. As amatter of fact, before I continue the fish story (it has a continuation, otherwise I wouldn’t have told it—it is too
trivial. But it will become a little bit less trivial in a minute.) But before I continue this story, another story comesto mind, one that I think I will just insert here because it is a sort of a fun story as well as a true story.
After the Second World War there were many GIs, American soldiers stationed in England. And there weremany love affairs between these men and the English girls but funnily enough these affairs turned sour very rapidly
in most cases. It was such a strange occurrence that happened so frequently it was finally examined. Why would
these love affairs turn sour so rapidly? The situation was investigated and it turned out you can distinguish 15 stepsof courtship, so to speak. The first step is typically, say, the guy invites the girl for a cup of coffee. That is the very
initial step. Inviting the girl to dinner is farther down the line. And maybe inviting the guy to meet the parents ofthe girl is much farther down the line, etc.
It turned out that these 15 stages of courtship could be distinguished and identified in both the English
culture and in the American culture. They are the same except (and this is the interesting part) the order is different.
For example, kissing in American culture comes fairly early. So to give a kiss in America really does not meanmuch, just to say good-bye or hello, or something like that. On the other hand, even a small peck in English culture
comes very far down the line just before you start to be intimate. This difference explains what actually happened.
What typically happened was that a GI would take a girl to the cinema and after the movie he would take her
to her house and would say good-bye and give her a kiss. At that point tragedy happened because no matter how thegirl behaved, it was wrong. What were the options for the girl? The English girl was very surprised to get a kissbecause they were just out for the first evening, and a kiss is very far down the line of courtship. So to her this guy
is really being very fresh, really jumping ten steps of courtship. So what should she do? One reaction would be toslap the guy in the face. But if she did this, the guy would walk way and think, “This is a strange girl. I have notdone anything wrong. We had a nice time in the cinema and I say good-bye, and she slaps my face. I do not want
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to see her anymore.” So, that was the wrong reaction. On the other hand, if the girl really liked the guy and said,“Well I have perceived that this guy has jumped nine stages of courtship and I really like him” she might invite him
in for a cup of tea or maybe a little bit more. The next day, the guy might say, “What kind of girl have I picked up?
You know, I just wanted to take her to dinner and to the cinema and she invites me in to her house.” So no matter
how the girl behaved it would be wrong, and would be wrong just because of the differences in cultural background. Yet they are really very similar. They speak the same language and even have the same rituals of courtshipbut in a different order. This is just an example of how greatly influenced we all are by background when we
receive information.
This is what this fish story is also bringing out in a very clear fashion. Now as I have said, I would not tell
you this story if there were not more to it. The point is that this fish is a research fish. So the fish eventually builds
a television set. Through this television set the fish can now see what the swan looks like, what flying animals look
like, what four-legged animals with udders for milk look like, or what an intelligent being with a hat walking
upright looks like. So this, of course, means this new way of transporting information, not just by words as the frog
had done but by using pictures, has improved the understanding of the world for the fish a little bit. But my pointis this: It really has not helped the fish at all. The fish does still not understand the world at all. And I want to showat least two examples of why that is the case.
Think of it this way. When the fish for the first time sees a person on television drinking a glass of water, thefish is completely puzzled. What does a glass of drinking water mean to a fish? It clearly does not make any sense.
Or, imagine the following scene: The fish is seeing a father and a son walking with some fishing equipment. They
are walking with some fishing equipment and look very sour because it is early in the morning. They sit down andeventually they pull up a tiny little fish and start to murder it, to cut off the head, slit open the belly, all kinds ofgruesome things and they laugh and smile. But it is not very funny for the fish at all. So you can see that despite
the fact that the frog has explained some things, despite the fact that the television has shown some pictures, the fish
still does not understand the world. Why is this? Because it is one-way information. So the punch line of the storyis that you cannot really get information across just by talking or just by showing pictures or something. You can
only really get knowledge across if you have a strong interaction between people. And this is why these cooperative tools or these communication tools are the keys to success when you use network multimedia. And whenever
you do not use them in a solid way you are doing something dramatically wrong as I have tried to impress on you
by telling you these rather trivial stories.

The Importance and Problems of Feedback
Here is my vision—a vision that I started to discuss and work on a few years ago. My vision looks andsounds very strange. I want to develop a system which has the following property: Whenever you see an entry
document on the screen, you can ask it questions and the document will immediately give the correct answer toyour question. Sounds like science fiction, does it not? Well, the answer is it is not really science fiction. We
implemented a good part of this with Motorola a number of years ago and it works really very well.
Motorola is running a network, a WWW network of 70 educational institutions, which they call Motorola
Universities. It runs on a system that we have developed. All of the employees of Motorola have a two-way
contract which works as follows: When you become an employee of Motorola, you have to sign that you arewilling to take two weeks of training every year, refresher training or something like this. At the same time, thecompany signs that they are going to provide the means to take this training by sending you to a seminar or
conference or by provide in-house training in their Universities. For cost reasons Motorola has decided to try toprovide some of the training in electronic form using network multimedia. So what they do is from time to time toput out a new module of information, maybe about failure review or maybe about some new company strategy orsome new rules for applying for your holidays, whatever it may be. They put this new module on their WWW
network and notify the employees. The employees have to look or work through this module within the next two or
three months. They have a certain time limit and the system actually keeps track of who does it and who does not.
If you do not do it within, say two months, the system will slap your fingers and say “Wait a minute, wait a minute,Networked Multimedia as Tools [Plenary Presentation]24

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you have not looked at this at all yet and you had better start to look at it.” So the system really makes sure thateveryone works through this material.
The important thing is the follow-up done during the first few days after the module is put into the system.
There is a team of experts available around the clock, 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Whenever someone
asks a question, usually a typed-in question, this question is immediately answered not by the document, but by theexpert. We have found that after the first 1,000 users, the questions tend to stabilize. There are no new questions.
This means that these experts can go home after a few weeks. So, for the first 1,000 persons, the experts answer
their questions. For the remaining 149,000 employees of Motorola, the system is answering the questions. Thismeans that when you ask a question usually the document gives you the answer. And the reason is, of course, thatwhenever questions are asked and answered, the system stores away both the question and the answer. When asimilar question comes in the system just has to decide if the question has been asked before and give the answer
that has been given before, and the answer may be appropriate to whatever the question was.
Here is a little bit more detail. If you are using a network environment, like those that are now in school
systems in Japan and university systems in Austria, or whether it is the Internet or Motorola, many hundreds ofthousands of users are looking at the same document. Therefore, if you make sure that when the documents are first
put up someone answers the questions, and if you make sure that the questions and answers are stored away in thesystem, then the problem is reduced by the similarity of simple questions. When are two different questions, X andY, semantically the same? This is, of course, a serious problem. I may need to ask one question, and Professor
Azuma may soon be asking the same question but using a different formulation. How does the system find this out?
Well, there are number of tricks, so to speak. One trick used by a number of companies is fuzzy comparison.
Basically, you just compare where the same words occur. In this case, the system never knows whether this is reallythe same question or not and the system should not pretend that it knows if it is the same question or not. But thesystem should react as follows: “Thank you for this question. Do you really mean the following?” and then show aquestion that was asked by another person. If the person says “No, that is not what I meant.” the system will offer
another question if another, similar question is available in the system. And eventually, either the system finds theright question and the user has used human intelligence to decide if it is the same question or not, or if the systemdoes not find any more similar questions. It that case, the system will say, “That is a very good question. Thank youvery much. We will answer as soon as possible and send you an e-mail when we know the answer.” Then the newquestion and answer will be stored away. That is the fuzzy comparison approach.
Now the other approach is one that we are actually carrying out together with a group in New Zealand. I
happen to still be a professor at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and this is one of my co-projects.
Massey University, on the northern island of New Zealand, has developed a rather nice technique as follows: If you
restrict the grammar to a reasonable extent, and if you find an area-specific semantic network, then the system wehave developed is now powerful enough that if you put in two different questions that are formulated differently,
the system can actually tell whether they are identical or not. For restricted areas and for restricted grammar, thisis possible. Now for a general user, this is not user friendly enough because you have to get used to the restricted
grammar and you have to know a little bit about this semantic network to be able to work with it.
However, if you have a connection to experts this works great. Initially these experts are working 24 hours
a day and seven days a week. That clearly means there are probably ten experts and these experts, of course, caneasily be taught the restricted syntax and the area-specific semantics. So this means that if I am one of the experts
and I get a new question, first I would reformulate that question using the restricted syntax and the area-specificsemantic network and when I do so, very often the system comes back immediately saying “Oh, yeah, it is an oldquestion.” I think “Just great” and it gives the correct answer. So this means that for certain applications like this,or for help applications, despite the fact that this it not terribly user friendly it still works quite well.
Now, what we first actually implemented for Motorola is, if you want to trivialize it, a location-specific,
frequently asked question-and-answer corner. But, as trivial as it sounds, this is what we did for Motorola and it
works pretty well. Here is how it works. Suppose the student or the employee has a question about media compression
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and he activates a button that says “Question.” When the button is activated the student automatically gets a formand enters the question and can say it is just a remark or, in this case, it is a question and sends it out. When thestudent does this, the question is automatically sent to an expert. The expert gets an e-mail and in this e-mail isembedded a URL generated by the system. This e-mail is sent to me Professor Hermann Maurer, and so I click on
this URL. By clicking on this URL, despite the fact that I am working on a completely different subject, I see thecontext in which the question was asked, I see the question that the student asked and I can now answer using asimilar form of this question. This then goes back to the student. So the student receives the answer maybe half a
day later, maybe immediately, depending on when the student asked the question.
This section has also been changed a little bit. There is a new question mark icon and an exclamation markicon, and “video compression” is now marked. This means, to the next employee or student, that somebody has
asked a question concerning video compression and an expert has answered it. That was one of the first things we
did for Motorola and it worked wonders. Because, first of all, it meant that on some of these pages there are theseicons, and if the next employee did not understand video compression, rather than typing in the question the firstthing the employee can do is click on the icon and see the question and answer dialogs that have already taken placeconcerning video compression. In a certain sense it is, of course, a very trivial trick. It is really just a kind of“frequently asked question,” but in the right place—not a long list where you never find what you are asking for but
at a point where it is important.
The other thing is that it is an incredibly nice feedback mechanism. Because the system keeps track of how
many of these icons are floating around on a page, you can say, “Three icons on that page! Probably something iswrong with the page.” Maybe it isn’t explained well enough, because many people keep asking questions about it.
So, not only is it useful for the students because they get an answer immediately, it is also useful for the authors, forthe designers of educational material, because they find out where the weaknesses in the educational material are or
maybe where students are interested in finding out more information.
Now the next thing I would like to briefly mention, because it’s one area where we have had many failures is
how to obtain feedback on the quality of materials. Of course obtaining this kind of information is crucial but how
do you get it—by interviews? Well, first, it is cumbersome to conduct interviews. If you do this, say if you present
a course and at the end of the term you conduct interviews on the course, the learners will already forgotten many
features. The students won’t remember all of the information you want to get. The same thing, of course, happens
with questionnaires. Many students are so fed up with questionnaires that they really fill out questionnaires moreor less arbitrarily. Actually we have made some intriguing tests. We have taken a questionnaire and given to agroup of students and then a week later given it to the same students again and have gotten completely different
answers. This shows how randomly sometimes questionnaires are filled out. So what we are trying to do isintroduce techniques for what we call unobtrusive feedback collection. We try to find techniques where we cansolicit information on how students like the material without having to go to the trouble of actually filling out
questionnaires or having a two-hour interview.
One of the things we did is use so called “cluelets.” These are just questionnaires consisting of a single
question which are thrown in randomly by the system and in such a fashion that no extra click is necessary.
Typically at the end of an educational module the screen will say “Continue” and “Did you like that pair?” or “I
liked that page.” or “I liked that background color.” or “I found the material of good quality.” While the second partsays, “Continue, but I really didn’t like the quality of the material.” or something similar. So rather than justclicking at one place to continue the students would choose between one of two alternatives.
We also started to use location sensitive areas for buttons, so rather than just clicking on “Continue,” if you
clicked to the right side of the continue button you would signal some kind of satisfaction. But on the left side you
will signal that you were not satisfied and in the middle you would signal, “I don’t care” or “I’m neutral about it.”
Of course, you have to instruct the students in how to do this properly but it really works quite well. It just means
that, in the student profile, you keep track of whether the student has used this facility before or not and the first few
times when they click on the right side of the continue or another button you ask explicitly, “Thank you very much.
Do you really mean you liked the material or did you just click there by chance?” So you remind them initially a
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few times that where they click on the button makes a difference and from then on they know it. Or, at least theyknow it during that session.
Now when we introduced these feedback mechanisms into some of the course material that we use at our
technical and other universities in Europe, we got lots of interesting feedback. At the same time when we lookedat the grades that students obtained in the courses where we used this technique, strangely enough the grades
dropped. So we got the feedback but worse results. And that is how I painfully found out, as I have a number oftimes in my life, learning just in one area like computer science or mathematics is not good enough. Sometimes
you really have to know other areas well also and, for example, I did not know enough about cognitive psychology.
Of course I’ve learned a bit over the years. But, I should have known that this would happen and I didn’t.
It’s a well-known cognitive phenomenon that if you are interrupted during a learning process that part ofyour short-term memory is wiped out. This means, for example, that if you are reading a book and the telephonerings, and even if the telephone conversation is just “This is a wrong number,” even if you have no conversation at
all but have just the disturbance of the telephone ringing and your answering “Oh, no. You’ve got a wrong number.”means that actually the last few lines that you have read are wiped off your short-term memory and therefore do not
migrate to your long-term memory. If you continue reading from the point where you left off, you have made makea mistake. You actually have to go back three lines and reread them.
Here is a most dramatic example of this. A simple computer program scrolls twenty words on the screen—
everyday words—house, cats, snow, Japan, whatever. And after twenty words have been quickly shown on thescreen, you are asked to write down all the words that you remember. Depending upon the person and the situation
one would write a certain number of words. When I did it, I would typically remember twelve words or so. Next
the computer program does exactly the same as before—again it scrolls twenty random words on the screen. After
doing so, the program then asks you how much is seven times three. So you type in the answer, “twenty-one.”
Then again, you are asked to type all the words that you remember. In my case, the number of words I remembered
dropped on the average from twelve to seven. So even this slight interruption of a multiplication problem erased agood part of my short-term memory.
This is what happens with these “cluelets” and the location-sensitive buttons. The students were in theprocess of learning information and this information or knowledge always passes through short-term memory into
long-term memory but they had to suddenly think about something else. Answering simple questions or clicking
on the left or right wiped out part of the short-term memory even though it seemed as if nothing had happened. The
program would just continue with the next module. But quite a bit had happened. What they’d actually learned
didn’t stay in their heads. So this is one of these typical cognitive pitfalls that one runs into if one tries to work withthese things without the support of cognitive psychologists. From this we have learned so that we have now
founded an institute for knowledge management that includes cognitive psychologists and other non-computerscientists.
At the beginning I gave a list of typical minimum requirements that you need for a good working “general
networked teaching, training, and learning environment” that we call, in abbreviation, “GENTLE.” We have
implemented this environment based on hyperwave. Hyperwave is a powerful service system, as was kindly
mentioned by Professor Azuma earlier, that we have developed at our university using a staff of something like 200
people. It was a major effort and by now is actually a company with headquarters in Germany and offices in many
countries of the world. Hyperwave is sort of a WWW system but it’s much more than that. It can do much more
and we are now using what call “knowledge management.”
I want to just briefly say few words about knowledge management because all this educational stuff that weare talking about here in our heads today is just one little puzzle, one little piece within a much larger context andthe context of knowledge management. It all starts with this phrase, which you may or may not have heard before.
I heard it the first time from one of the board members of Daimler-Chrysler. “If our employees only knew what ouremployees already know, it would be a much better organization.” This is an old story about an organization thathas lots of reasoning power, lots of knowledge, sitting in the heads of the people but unfortunately others do not
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know all that everyone else knows. These lamps of knowledge are sitting in our heads here as we sitting in thisroom but they separated from my head and each other’s. If we could only combine them we would be a powerful
team, if we really combined them well.
So the challenge is for knowledge management to collect without molesting, to unobtrusively collect, asmuch knowledge as possible from each person and to store the sum in a computer system so the knowledge will be
more easily available to all. If you think about it, this is all that networked multimedia technology for learning is allabout. After all, all we are trying to do is to get knowledge out of people who know something into the heads ofother people—so in that sense it is knowledge transfer. This network supportive education that I’ve been talking
about for quite some time now is really just one typical issue within this larger concept of knowledge management.
And it is really rather intriguing as how much one can do these days with knowledge management. That would bea different talk and another presentation. However you should be aware of the fact that when we talk about any
sort of education in the network environment, we are really talking about one tiny facet of this much larger area ofknowledge management.
It may be of interest to you, because maybe not all of you are aware of it, but in Europe knowledge management is a fairly big issue and includes, not just management but also knowledge assessment. For example, eachyear, the largest insurance company in Scandinavia, Scandia, is not just providing a statement about the financial
affairs of the company but also providing a statement about the knowledge affairs of the company. So there are
gimmicks like the so-called balance scorecards that you can use to assess the level of knowledge of workers andemployees in a company. Therefore you can actually find out that, during the past year the knowledge level of acompany increased 3% or perhaps dropped by 11%. Typically, clever people will leave a company and the level
would drop but if the company hires more clever people then the level would go up.
I just want to make this one point. When we are talking about education, we are really talking about one
aspect of knowledge management and we should generally not think of it in isolation, as we usually we do. I
mentioned hyperwave before. Basically it’s a sophisticated WWW server offering much more than the usual WWW
servers. It offers built-in databases, full text searching, etc. I just sort of made a few more points. I mentioned a few
but this list could be continued for a long time. If you are really interested in hyperwave I suggest that you look at
it on one of our websites. I will repeat the URL at the end of my talk. But let me just talk briefly about it just a little
bit more. [N.B. URL not furnished.]
In the computer science world, if you store information and if you then retrieve the information, there are anumber of possible paradigms for how you store it and how you find it again. Among these paradigms, the mostcommon ones are based upon having some kind of directory or menu structure on your PC. There are some
generalizations of this and hyperwave uses such a generalized version. However, hyperwave doesn’t use just one
directory but many overlapping directories. This means that you can access one item by several completely different bases. That’s a fairly important feature. If you cooperate with many people, maybe one person poses animportant piece of information from one point of view but another person who wants to find that piece of information has a completely different view of the world but still wants to find that item of information. That is only
possible if you allow a combination of arbitrary overlapping directory structures.
This method of accessing information is one that you are familiar with from the directories on PCs with froma menu-based structure. Of course you are familiar with links used in WWW hypermedia systems, you are alsofamiliar with searches, full text searches and you may also be familiar with attributes or meta- information. So you
store not just the document but also this information about the document. For computer scientists we would say weare using a relational approach but here I’m using a somewhat simpler terminology by calling them attributes of theinformation in the document.
Assigning such meta-information to a document is very important and slowly the world of the WWW isrecognizing this fact. It was first recognized ten years ago and it’s slowly being recognized today so you may run
into it more and more often. You see, if you put a document into a WWW server without information about the
document, you are doing just about the same as if you glue a photograph into a photograph album without writing
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down when the picture was taken, who is in the picture, where was it taken, etc. If you collect your photos in aphoto album in this way and without this meta-information, without this additional information, your photo album
is probably not worth very much after some time because you don’t remember the details connected with thispicture anymore. And that of course is what many people have been doing for a long time with WWW servers—
they have fed in information but no information about the information. Therefore it is never clear if the informationis still up to date and it also is not so clear if you could now delete it or not.
So the point is that, in most systems that we encounter today, some of these properties, some of these accessparadigms are implemented but, except for hyperwave, there are really none that implements all of them systematically together in an arbitrary picture and that is really important. I can explain it this way: what if a student or somefriend comes to me and says, “I’m going on a holiday. What kind of sweater should I take along?” This question
is stupid because I have to know whether this person is going to Antarctica or to Fiji and depending on this I mightrecommend a fairly warm sweater or no sweater at all. Or, what if someone comes to me and says, “I’m building
some kind of static database or some kind of server. What kind of techniques should I usually use for links ordirectories or searches?” This is also a stupid question. It depends really on the application and every application
requires a different mix. This means that if you want to deal with this kind of thing systematically, you need asystem that allows you all these kinds of mixes.
Now another thing that we desperately need for the WWW, one that was implemented already half a dozen
years ago in hyperwave, is automatic link and data management. Jacob Nielsen, one of the gurus in the World Wide
Web technology of open web applications, keeps estimates of how many broken links there are on the web. Today
we have reached 8% and he is predicting that we will soon exceed 10%. Of course all of you have all found manybroken links when you work with the web. What’s the reason for this? The reason is that when you make a linkfrom one page to another page in your web system, the page you are linking to, doesn’t know about the link. Thismeans if that page is removed or something, you have a broken link. In hyperwave we implement this knowledge
and the document that is pointed to, knows which documents are pointing to it even if it is from a server sitting theother side of the world. Therefore, if the document is moved, the old links are adjusted automatically and if the
document is removed all the links all across the world are automatically deleted and deactivated. Unfortunately, I
can’t go into the technical details even though how this is done is intriguing. I just want to say that this is possible.
There are many other things in hyperwave. I’ve already mentioned the importance of taking notes, making
notes when I explained the essay-writing example. And not just in this connection, we you all need this capability
when working with information. If you have one server and you find some interesting information on anotherserver, you may want make a personal link from one server to the other despite the fact that you are not entitled towork with either of these servers. One can do this and one should be able to do this. This feature is supported bysound systems but it’s not in general use yet and I would guess that only 10% of those of you who are sitting here
today have ever tried to do this—to link two servers together when they have no access rights to either server, but it ispossible. As I said before, if you are more interested in advanced systems of this kind, look up the URL later.

Some Provocative Questions
Now let me turn to the last part of my talk. Here I am going to be a bit provocative. The first question that
we have to consider seriously is should we still learn foreign languages. The point is that the mobile phones thatmost of you are carrying today, five years from now, maybe eight years if you want, will actually work as reasonably good translators. You just take out your mobile phone, switch on the translator function and then talk into it inEnglish and it comes out in Japanese or it comes out in Greek or it comes out in whatever language that you havechosen. These translators won’t work perfectly. We are far from having perfect language translators as you all
know. As a matter of fact we may never have such translators. I forget now where this quote is from but I like itvery much. It says, “Who understands the language understands the world.” It means that you cannot reallytranslate anything fully correctly unless you really understand life completely and the world completely and we are
far away from doing this with computers.

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On the other hand we are very close, and not just close in that we have constructed translation software that
does a fairly good job. My claim is that the better translation software that will soon be available will do a betterjob than any student after he or she has learned a foreign language for three years. If this is the case, if one day wehave devices as small as this little pointer pen which I can just switch on to German and Japanese and then I talk inGerman and the person standing next me speaks Japanese, then why the heck should we still bother about learning
foreign languages? I really think I am challenging you since you are all in language teaching. That’s one story, butwhat about foreign language teaching?
One argument for foreign language teaching is that we need it because of globalization and because we are
getting closer and closer and therefore it gets more and more important. I think this is a phony argument. Thatargument will be killed by technology. If your argument for foreign language teaching is we want to teach foreign
languages because we want to understand people, the culture, the society, and the history, then I think that you havea valid argument. But I think we shouldn’t cheat ourselves. Please realize that this is a message from an outsider.
I’m convinced that we will have such translating devices available within the next ten years so I think we have torefocus our goals for foreign language teaching. Foreign language teaching makes sense for its cultural implications. But, as I have explained, I doubt that it will make sense for communication.
Since I am already trying to be little provocative. I would also like to say in fifty years written language will
be as important for archiving and keeping ideas and emotions as knitting today is for the textile industry or phones
are for communication. In other words, I believe that written language, as we know it today, is basically just a brief
episode for humanity and will again more of less disappear. Of course a little bit of reading and writing will still
exist for a long time, but only a little bit. Now I would like to briefly say why I dared to make such a provocative
statement. I want to argue on the basis of, first on my historical, then my statistical, then my biological, and finally
my technical reasons. In other words, I am about to give you four different arguments.
The first is historical. Many people think that having a high culture is connected with being able to read andto write. I would say that’s not the case and I think you can prove it historically. Depending upon whom you
believe, mankind is between one million and one point five million years old. Language is only six thousand years
old. The first language signs as far as I know were discovered in Mesopotamia about 4,000 B.C. This is 6,000
years ago. At that time language existed and some people used some kind of a chisel to make signs on stone. But
this wasn’t widespread. But for those of you who may have learned Latin, Greek or Ancient Greek, at least in
Europe, there is this little idea that in those days—in Ancient Grecian and Ancient Roman times—reading andwriting were widespread. But that’s not the case.
For example, the famous philosopher Socrates, refused to write. He always said that written forms killed thelanguage. He said that as soon as you wrote something down, you froze it. You can no longer argue. He said that
if I am with a person, I can see by the smile on their face or by the shaking of their head, their opinion and also thisperson can interrupt me. As soon as I write something down, I freeze the ideas and the language is dead. This is
why he always said that it is very dangerous to use writing. Writing was known in his time but he refused to use it
because he said that if write things down we start to look at things very one-sidedly. And this is exactly what
happened. Socrates was absolutely right. If I write paper today and I want to express a certain thesis, I emphasize
the positive ideas. I never tell you all the topics that I’m aware of. I look at my thesis very one-sidedly. I do notgive an objective opinion. Even as I talk to you now I am in a sense selling you some idea. I’m not being objective
and you are not immediately giving counter arguments. So we have learned to freeze our ideas and present only avery lop-sided, one-sided view.
The irony of this is that Socrates didn’t write down what he was thinking and preaching. His student, Plato,
did and if Plato hadn’t done so, we wouldn’t know what Socrates taught. But Plato was also very bright, Plato said
something like this: “Those who learn to read and write—into those souls forgetfulness will enter.” And this istrue. If you tell me your phone number, or your name and if I don’t write it down immediately, I will have forgotten
it within five minutes. We have such a beautiful instrument in our head but we are not using it for remembering
anymore because with writing we started for the first time to use an external memory. To actually put things into an
external memory. I’m using this word very purposefully because we are now continuing to do so with computers,
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but on a much larger scale. We are storing more and more, not in our heads but in an external memory, more andmore not just on paper but in computers.
Let me briefly continue with this historical argument because it is important. People will say “Well, reading
and writing became widespread and the printing press was invented by Gutenberg in the 1500’s.” That is not true
either because at that time only a small elite knew how to read and write. Excuse me if I’m not talking on a global
scale. I am basically presenting you the European situation and there is variation with cultures. But in Europe
reading and writing was not widespread, not even after the invention of the printing press. It only became widespread after obligatory education was introduced European-wide after the Napoleonic Wars. This was about 1825.
So the majority of people in Europe have known how to read and write only since 1825 or thereabouts. This is lessthan 200 years. I want to tell you that in another 50 years we’ll be back to where we were before 1825. Somepeople will know how to read and write but most people won’t be able to anymore. That’s the historical argument.
There were high cultures and flourishing societies that did not have a written language in widespread use but used
it only for certain applications.
Then there are the statistical arguments. I know the numbers only for Canada, but in Canada, if we look at
those people who do not need reading and writing for their job, only 20% of all of the people are still actively using
reading and writing. This means that all of the other people are fulfilling all of their communicational needs
through radio or the telephone. And, at Christmas they don’t send letters to Grandmother anymore but send avideotape of the baby or something like this. Even today, perhaps reading and writing from this point of view isn’t
as widespread as it once was. This doesn’t mean that Canadians do not know how to read and write, they are justnot using it anymore. They still know that “Coca Cola” is coca cola but maybe they don’t read the letters. Perhaps
it is almost like a symbol mark. That is the statistical argument.
Perhaps my most interesting argument is the biological argument, one which I call the “missing organ thesis.” I want to discuss it with you. I claim that we humans are missing one very important organ. Let me explain.
We have ears to listen and they are passive instruments. We have an active counterpart for the ears—the mouth.
My mouth is currently making noises for your ears. But the most important sensory organ we have is not our ears
but our eyes. Our eyes are passive instruments. They accept moving pictures, images, etc. And here is my punch
line. We don’t have a “mouth” for the eyes. We do not have a “picture-generating organ.” I can generate real timenoises for your ears but I cannot generate real time pictures for your eyes.
If I want to show you the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen in my life, how can I do it? Even if I have thephoto with me and even if I showed it to you on the screen, it wouldn’t convey what I want to convey. Perhaps alittle deer in the right hand side of the picture will distract you. But I don’t want to talk about the deer. I want to talkabout the sunset. When I talk to you, when I generate noises for your ears, I can emphasize things, I can abstract oromit things, and I can exaggerate. So then I want to communicate with you using pictures I would also like to do
this with pictures. I don’t want to just use some stupid photo. I want to get my points across in real time but I can’t.
I have plenty of trouble even when not doing it in real time. The point is that we are missing many organs. We
don’t have wings to fly so we have developed airplanes. We don’t have gills to swim under water so we havedeveloped scuba diving and the submarine. We don’t have a picture-generating organ either so what should we do?
We should develop a “prosthesis,” a crutch just as we have developed for these other missing organs.
My claim is that we are going to do so, and we are even in the process of doing so, by using computers. But
here is one important point. If you believe in this little idea of the missing organ and that we are only starting toarchive ideas and things not just in words but also in pictorial form, then let me make one thing very clear. Speech
is something very natural because we have a mouth and we have ears. However coding speech into written form isalmost unnatural. Maybe it is an historical accident because we had no other way for recording our ideas. I claimthat in the future we will have other ways of recording our emotions and ideas and that new kinds of multimedia
documents will include speech but not in written forms. They will be in spoken forms that include pictures andsounds and that also include also something that most people haven’t thought about at all yet but what I call abstract
movies.

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This is maybe the last important thing I would like you to take home from this talk. If you read a book andyou liked it that is great. But if you have seen the movie about this book, you very often won’t like the movie. Whyis this? The reason is the level of abstraction has shifted. In the book you have read about this beautiful dog, ablack man or this nice snow-peaked mountain, and built up certain images in your mind. In the movie, you get a
concrete specimen of the dog, the black man or of the mountain and the movie doesn’t leave room for your imagination. What we have to learn when we work with multimedia, when we work with movies and with pictures, is wehave to learn to develop some new ways of doing this kind of abstraction so we can do with words what, at the
moment, we can’t do with pictures. We are not using pictures except in the very concrete and specific way and thatis ruining our imagination, or at least limiting it and that is not good. There is a need to develop completely new
notions for abstract motion, for abstract movies. This is a new way of communicating and archiving ideas andemotions that we will see in the future. It will involve speech so of course language is important, but will it include
writing in the sense of how we know writing today? I seriously doubt it. It will be a completely new way of writingthat will be much more dynamic and which will have pictures that change over time, diagrams that change, etc.
Such abstract means of presentation which we will be using in pictorial form in the future, will of course have to betaught just as we are teaching reading and writing today. Please envision a time, in maybe 30 years or so, when
students will not learn how to read and write for twelve years but will learn how to understand and compose the
new kinds of multimedia documents that I am talking about. Mind you, I am not talking against language, I am
talking about the way we code it today. We are still coding it today in a rather primitive fashion.
The reason this trend will be accelerated greatly is because computers will become omnipresent. When I
talked to my students 15 years ago, I told them that in 2005 computers would be small and that they will incorporate
the functions of the mobile phone and have Internet access. They will include translator functions and, of course,
will really be videophones. They will be electronic wallets and you will be able to pay for things with them. They
will operate as photo or movie cameras as well as as radios or TV. They will be very powerful with access to a
network. (The WWW had not been invented yet). And, finally, they will also incorporate some kind of global
positioning system. The students would always ask “But wait a minute, if the computer is that small or evensmaller, how can I read something on it?” I replied that that is very simple. You just unfold it and then you have anice screen, that surely some new kinds of display technology will be available by then.
Throughout my life I have made many predictions. Some of them have been wrong and some of them havebeen right. I made a prediction in 1962 when I was a student at Berkley that by 1990 men would no longer wear
ties. I lost that bet and that’s the reason why I have thrown away all of my ties and now wear only chains. With thatbet I was certainly very wrong. With the small computer, however, I’m certain that I am right. This small computer
will come your way via the mobile phone. Your mobile phone within a few generations will incorporate all thefunctions that have been addressed.
So the technology is now that of an omnipresent computer. The menu will be small enough that you caninsert it as tooth filling. Energy consumption will not be a problem. Energy technology will be far enough developed that you will have a small turbine built into your belt and as your belt expands and contracts with you
breathing it will generate a few milihertz of power for your computer. There will be completely new screen
technology and there will be new input output devices. The foldable screen is already available. That’s a pull out
screen. It rolls up. You can roll it up like a curtain by pressing a button and it is still a full color screen. If you press
the button again the screen appears again. But this is old stuff. The real thing is that you don’t have any screen at
all but you actually get information through your glasses. You have an optical fiber that communicates sounddirectly into your ears as well s communicates directly through projection from your pupils on to the retina. The
picture on the retina of your eyes is projected on to the screen of some of these glasses. But here is one of the mostmodern ideas. If you cut away the cable on the right hand side and this is the kind of glasses that I’m wearing, thislittle spot here is where the pictures are projected through the pupil on to the retina of your eyes. Now you arereally seeing three-dimensional pictures in full colors without anyone else even noticing that you have it turned on.
The screen has completely disappeared.
Here is another model. I like this stylish green. This is much like an ordinary pair of glasses. This man iswearing ordinary glasses but here they provide hearing and actual project on he glass rather than on a screen. This
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is what mobile phones of the future are going to look like. This is how you will hear and you will speak with yourmouth closed. If you cannot already speak with your mouth close, then please start practicing now. You will need
to be able to do this sooner or later. It will be completely obsolete to talk into your mobile phone by actually
speaking. You will close your mouth to use this kind of mobile phone. If you can speak with your mouth closed
then you will not bother others when you are using your mobile phone.
Other input devices—and there are many of course. This is a quite cute one. You have a little ring on yourfinger and depending on how much you bend it you will actually see what you are doing in your glasses, which you
will be using in place of a screen, your cursor or letters or whatever you are doing. That’s my favorite one. Thisring consists of two pieces. One piece is fixed on your finger and has a little arrow. You can turn the second part.
As you turn it, you will see on the screen or on your glasses, the letter A, letter B, and so on. When you see what
you want, you will push it a little bit, making it an input device. Perhaps you are in a restaurant and under the table
you are inputting a message and the person sitting across from you may not even notice that you are writing an email message. I also like this one. It’s a fabric keyboard that’s already available in prototype. You just stitch it on
your sleeve and then you feel along here. How do you connect all these things to the computer that is imbedded inyour tooth and to your glasses? You can use contact with the human body. You don’t need any wires nor do you
need any wireless communication. Our skin conducts enough electricity that you can send all the signals throughthe skin.
These omnipresent computers will mean that all information will be easily available. What does this mean?
Does it mean that we will still have to memorize things? Will we still have to learn facts? The surprising andinteresting answer to this is “Yes.” There is some new research about this called “source versus object knowledge.”
I just want to give you one example. Perhaps you read in The Japan Times this morning that Prime Minister Moriwants university information technology to help sustain economic growth in Japan. If you read this and, when you
stored it, you also stored the content of what I just said and you also stored the location, Japan Times and the time
and the date, July 29th, 2000. The interesting thing in the development of the human brain is that the content lobe,
which stores the content information, is much older than the temporal and the location specific lobes of our brain.
So when you store away this information the fact of what the Prime Minister said will be stored in one part,the old part of your brain, (older in the sense of the development of the human brain) and stored the time andlocation elements in the newer parts of the brain. But these newer parts of the brain are not as stable and this is why
this location information actually disappears more rapidly than the content information. That’s why you can haveso many problems remembering the simplest URLs. That’s the way one finds that in older people memories always
deteriorate. They still remember the stories but they don’t remember the time and place. There is a very biologicalbasis for this. And this means that we still have to remember the source even we use have a relatively good external
memory on our computers. We still have to remember the source and fortunately or unfortunately, depending on
your point of view, that’s actually the most difficult thing part.
Now this omnipresent computer may also have some drawbacks and I’d like to finish my talk this picture
showing you these drawbacks. You can see this family of cave people sitting around a fire and grilling a piece ofmeat. The father has his son sitting on his lap and is telling a nice story. The point of his story is that “And then one
day the Internet collapsed.” So let’s just hope that we are not going to become so dependent on the Internet thatindeed if it does collapse at some stage that this is what will happen to us. We have already had some scary
experiences—any of you here from Auckland? During the energy shortage one and the half years ago, Auckland
lost all electric power for six weeks, six continuing weeks. You cannot imagine what this meant to the city. A
situation like this is, to an extent, almost unimaginable. All of Auckland was without electricity for six weeks.
Finally, I can only say thank you for your attention. It’s really quite something that you stayed with me formore than one and a half hours. I really appreciate it. I also hope you got a little bit out of it. Thank you very muchindeed.

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A Sociocultural Perspective on Transfer and Transfer Studies
Giyoo Hatano
Keio University, Japan
Introduction
The title of today’s talk includes the term ‘transfer.’ Maybe you are more interested in the transfer of cancer
than that of learning. But I would claim in my talk that learning transfer is a very important issue for all people whoare interested in foreign language learning and also in educational technology.
The issue of transfer is one of the classic issues in psychology and researchers on transfer regularly conclude
that transfer is very hard to induce. For example, the famous psychologist, Detterman (1993), commented, “if you
want people to learn something, teach it to them. Don’t teach them something else and expect them to figure out
what you really want them to do” (p. 21). Maybe this is true. If we are able to teach something, which is really
important to students, we might do so, because transfer is hard to induce. According to Alexander and Murphy(1999) transfer of schooled knowledge and skills occurs far less often than educators and educational researchers
hope.
This certainly poses a challenge to foreign language learning researchers. In foreign language learning, weusually try to teach something at school, expecting that students can apply the knowledge and skills to everyday
situations to communicate with other people on general topics. But if transfer seldom occurs, especially the transfer
of schooled knowledge and skills are very difficult to induce, then how could foreign language learning or teaching beeffective? According to Detterman, we might send our children to foreign countries where the target language isspoken. I think that spending a few years in a foreign country where the target language is spoken probably gives
enough experience for most children to be able to use that language effectively. But this is certainly impossible.
Even though Japan is a rich country, we can’t afford to do that. So we have to expect, if we teach the target foreign
language at school, it can be applied to everyday communication.
What I’m going to talk about today is basically simple. I would maintain that, unlike the claims of Detterman
or Alexander and Murphy, transfer is ubiquitous: When trying to solve a problem or comprehend an unfamiliar
phenomenon humans always rely on their previous experience that seems relevant, unless they come to believe thatsuch attempts are useless in particular sociocultural contexts like school. In other words, I am going to emphasize
the importance of sociocultural contexts in the issue of transfer, as the title of my talk suggests. Although we
psychologists have advocated a cognitivistic view in recent years, I am convinced that now we are at the time toshift the view from cognitive to sociocultural, or more precisely, the time to combine cognitive and sociocultural
views to build a more powerful educational theory (Hatano & Greeno, 1999).
The cognitive view assumes that if you have right knowledge, then you are supposed to be able to use it inany situation to solve transfer problems. In contrast, the sociocultural view denotes that knowledge and skills reflect
the history — how knowledge and skills were acquired and have been used. We should not only consider thecontent of the knowledge and skills but also pay attention to the context in which knowledge and skills are acquired
and used.
I would further assert that unfortunately school practice, at least traditional school practice, does not provide
a good context for acquiring communicative competence in foreign languages. Why? This is because in the conventional school practice of foreign language learning, interesting ideas are not exchanged among students. Yet thelanguage is basically a medium of communication. So in order to really motivate students to acquire a language as aSociocultural Perspective on Transfer and Transfer Studies [Plenary Presentation]34

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medium of communication, that language should be used as a means for exchanging interesting ideas. But in most
schools, we seldom observe students engaging in conversation in a foreign language about interesting topics.
When I was a schoolboy we started foreign language learning with a textbook, something like “ I am a boy,”“ She is a girl.” Maybe the current textbooks are much better, but it is very rare that we can exchange interestingideas using a foreign language in the classroom. This is one of the reasons why students are not motivated to use a
foreign language as a medium of communication.
Another reason is that, in the conventional school practice, students’ performances are evaluated by teachers. And teachers do not pay attention to the content of their speech. Even when students are required to write
something in English, teachers are more interested in whether the sentences are grammatically correct or difficult
words spelled in the correct way and so forth. The teachers do not care the content of what students are proposing
in the essay. So students often pay too much attention to the correctness of their use of the target language such ascorrect pronunciation, correct sentence constructions and correct spellings, ignoring the aspect of exchanging interesting ideas with others. As a result most Japanese students are really afraid of speaking a foreign language unlessthey believe they are good at it. When foreigners come to their campus, many students want to avoid contacting
them even if the foreigners can speak Japanese. Students are afraid of speaking English in an incorrect way
because they have been punished so many times by making slight mistakes in examinations.
I have just heard at this meeting a couple of presentations, which tried to use news programs in English
teaching. I believe that this kind of attempt should be encouraged. My proposal is that foreign language learning
should be done in the context of meaningful activities in the target language.
My talk will consist of five parts. I’ve already talked about pessimistic views on transfer held by a majority ofinvestigators and my own optimistic view. To support my view, I would like to present a few of our researchfindings. First, I will talk about the case of transfer in abacus, my preferred example of automated skills. Then I am
going to talk about the use of the person analogy by young children to predict and explain the behaviors of animals
and plants. Next I would like to offer three educational examples in which the use of good contexts really changed
the pattern of transfer. Finally I would like to propose some general theoretical ideas about expertise in schools andeveryday life.

Transfer of Automated Skills: The Case of Abacus Operation
I would like to talk about transfer of automated skills. Many of you are familiar with abacus. An abacus isbasically a device for representing and computing numbers. It can represent a particular number in terms of thebead configuration. Just by manipulating those beads it is possible to find an answer to addition, subtraction andother calculation problems.
You can learn how to operate the abacus just in a few hours. It’s quite simple to use the device itself. So,
abacus learning at the later stage is almost completely geared to speed up the calculation. As a result, expert abacus
operators have highly automated skills. Interestingly they gradually internalized the abacus operation so that they
can operate the mental abacus, that is, the mental image of the abacus. In the end it’s not necessary for them tocarry the instrument anywhere. They have the instrument in their mind. The internalization serves to speed up theoperation, because when you move fingers, the calculation speed is constrained by the speed of muscle movement,but our mental operation is generally much faster than our physical operation. So by internalizing the abacus operation, experts can calculate extremely fast.
You may not observe the abacus quite often in the daily life in the present Japanese society but abacus skills
have survived as a kind of special skills among a small number of enthusiasts. For example, many high schools andjunior high schools have abacus clubs and if you visit that club you can see more than ten players practicing abacus
operation for hours everyday. There are also tournaments and matches for these enthusiasts.

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My collaborator and I studied a ten-year-old girl who was a junior national champion of the abacus operation
at that time (Hatano, 1997). She was given thirty problems of multiplication of four digits by two digits (e.g., 3519 x42) and three digits by three digits (148 x 395), respectively. She needed just 58 seconds to solve these thirty
problems. She needed this amount of time to write down digits — since each answer usually included 6 digits, 180
digits had to be given altogether. So, for problems requiring the inverse operation (a 6 digit number is divided by a 2
digit or 3 digit number), where the answer should be just 3 digits instead of 6, she needed half the time, 31 seconds
for 30 problems. And for these 60 problems, she made just one error. She calculated very fast and quite accurately.
Her skills were highly automated. This means that she can do other things while calculating numbers. You can
see abacus players making conversation to each other while they are trying to find answers for problems. Of course,
the conversation should be simple like “Which do you like better, cats or dogs?” However, they have some extra
working memory by which they can do simple things while trying to find answers to calculation problems.
More interestingly, abacus operation is transferred almost automatically. Whenever expert abacus operators
are given a number of digits, they try to retrieve their mental abacus to register them. Transfer is thus guaranteed.
It is also observed among expert operators that the mental abacus is sometimes used for memorizing digits. Thus
abacus skills are transferred to new situations — even though you study abacus at an abacus school, you can usethat skill at a supermarket or anywhere.
Maybe some teachers are tempted to teach skills for using a foreign language in a similar way to teaching of
abacus skills. A good example is a patterned daily conversation practice like “How are you?” Students are expected
to answer in a mechanical way, “I am fine, and you?” After repeating this hundreds of times, they are quite good at
repeating that pattern just like abacus operators can use the abacus automatically. Yet this kind of skill is not very
useful in exchange of ideas. I often observe my students having great difficulty in answering when they are not fine.
Some of them may invent an “innovative” combination like “I am fine but I am suffering from cold.”I think that difficulty of foreign language learning lies in the fact that it doesn’t consist of a small number of
fixed skills. Whereas you can learn abacus operation just in few hours, you need at least a few years for acquiring
good command of a foreign language. Moreover, the language should be the medium for exchanging an infinite
number of ideas. We cannot rely too much on the analogy between abacus learning and foreign language learning inour discussion of transfer, though highly automated skills are often transferable.

Spontaneous Person Analogy in Young Children’s Biological Inference
Now I am going to present another set of studies that show frequent transfer. That is the spontaneous use of
the person analogy in young children’s biological inference (Hatano & Inagaki, 1996). Without any training young
children often rely on the person analogy, that is, applying knowledge about humans to other animals and plants. For
example, a 5-year-old girl remarked after having experienced growing flowers, “Flowers are like people. If flowers
eat nothing (are not watered ) they will fall down for hunger. If they eat too much (are watered too often), they will
be taken ill.” It’s a nice person analogy that summarizes her experience of watering to flowers.
This tendency for personification is often observed in other situations as well. We asked questions like thefollowing in our interview study: “Suppose someone is given a baby rabbit (or a tulip bud) and wants to keep it
forever in the same size because it’s so small and cute. Can she/ he do that? Why do you think so?” Children often
give answers like this: “We can’t keep it forever in the same size because, like me, if I were a rabbit, I become 5years old and become bigger and bigger.” This is a very inventive answer. We asked about a rabbit. Of course,
children don’t know the correct answer for a rabbit because they have never tried to keep a baby rabbit in the same
size as before. But instead of answering, “I do not know” or “I have not learned that in school,” young children often
volunteer to infer that a rabbit cannot stay in its small size, based on their knowledge that they are now 5 years oldand bigger than before. By making use of the knowledge of themselves as human beings, those children can makeeducated guesses about rabbits. This is also a beautiful example of transfer.
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We found for the case of a rabbit that 70% of the 5- and 6-year-old children interviewed made at least one
personifying response to four questions, and for a tulip, 63%. In another experiment, we examined this phenomenon
a little more systematically, posing different types of situations. We found that young children do not always rely on
the person analogy. They selectively use the knowledge about humans only when the knowledge leads to an answer
that seems plausible to them. In other words, the use of the person analogy is constrained by their knowledge about
the target entity.
What lesson can we learn from this study? Now we are pretty confident that transfer itself occurs very
often. Even young children try to apply knowledge about those familiar things (e.g., humans) to new situations.
And their use of analogy or pattern of transfer is constrained. This certainly gives us some hope in the case offoreign language teaching. If transfer is seldom induced, there is no hope for the teaching of a foreign language.
Students cannot use the foreign language learned at school as a medium of communication in other situations thanschool. But if knowledge is transferable, what is required is to find a situation in which students are really motivatedand encouraged to use what they have learned as to the foreign language.

Three Example Practices that Enhanced Productive Learning
Let me move on to the more educationally relevant domains to see what determines whether transfer occurs
or not. I’m presenting three examples, only the last one of which is about language learning.

Boaler’s study.
The first one is a study by Boaler (1997). She compared two junior high schools in England. These twoschools were pretty similar in their characteristics of students (e.g. socio-economic status, ethnicity, etc.), but wereteaching mathematics in very different ways. In one of the schools, mathematics was treated as a set of welldefined rules and procedures represented in the textbook. In other words, “textbook mathematics” was taught inthat school. In the other school, students engaged in a project and, in order to successfully complete the project they
were expected to learn some mathematics. In short, both schools learned the same mathematical formulae, equations, concepts, and so on, but in totally different contexts.
In the first school, Boaler found that the students didn’t see any relevance of mathematics to their out-ofschool problems. That is, the students thought that mathematics was just a subject in which they had to solve
presented problems, and that their performance was evaluated by the teacher — whether they understood thecontent of the textbook, applied the notion described in the textbook correctly to problems, etc. In contrast, in thesecond school, the students took mathematics as a tool for solving real problems. This, at least, suggests that if
knowledge or skill is acquired to achieve some goal, that knowledge or skill is likely to be used to solve similar goals.
Similarly, we can teach a foreign language in quite different ways. For example, we can teach a foreign
language as a textbook subject, in which students’ performance is rated as accurate-inaccurate or correct-incorrect. Or a foreign language is taught as a tool for understanding or as a means to communicate with friends speaking
that language. Students will take the foreign language quite differently, and accordingly use the foreign language infuture quite differently.

Oura and Hatano’s study.
The second educational practice is about music. My collaborator and I (Oura & Hatano, in press) studied theexercise process of two groups of piano students. The first group of students might be called “novices” in thiscontext. The second group of students was called “junior experts.” They were not experts yet, but they had had
extensive practice in piano and some performance at a concert. They were given a short piece of piano music andrequired to exercise it until they thought it was ready to perform.

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The novice students tried to exercise it repeatedly. All of them said that they should be able to play it moresmoothly without making errors. So their primary concern was to play the piece accurately and smoothly, but nomore than that. When they found that they could perform it smoothly without errors, they believed that they wereready to perform it. The junior experts were very different. Of course they were technically more advanced, butthey needed even a longer time to practice the piece, because they tried to explore some new combinations ofexpressive devices like dynamics, tempo, and phrasing.
Interestingly the junior experts often referred to the perspective of the audience. That is, they often said that
this pattern should be clearer or that the audience might not grasp this relationship, if they played the piece in thisway. In other words, the junior experts were experimenting various ways of performance, so that their understanding of the musical piece could be conveyed to the audience. They had the notion of the audience — the audience
usually do not know much about the piece, so playing the piece for the audience is certainly different from playing
the piece for themselves.
I think this study tells us something about foreign language learning. Beginning foreign language learners areinterested in the correctness, smoothness, naturalness of pronunciation and so on. If they produce correct sentencesmoothly, they believe that their job has been done successfully. They have no notion of the listener. They are notinterested in whether the produced sentence is comprehensible to the listener. More advanced learners are certainly interested in communication. How to convey ideas to listeners should be the primary concern for them.
In the Oura and Hatano study, some of the novices had practiced piano playing more than ten years. How
could they stay in the stage of the novice for more than ten years? I think that their performance was somewhat
similar to many Japanese students who have learned English for more than six years, but still are interested in thecorrectness, smoothness of their production, not in communicative competence. I would imagine that “experienced
novices” are produced by two factors. One would be the teacher’s attitude. If the teacher too much emphasizes
correctness and smoothness of the production, students may pay attention to that aspect as well. As a result, they
are not interested in listener’s perspective nor in developing communicating competence. In contrast, if teacher
tolerates some minor mistakes that are OK from the communicative point of view, and responds to the content ofstudents’ speech production, the students are more likely to pay attention to the communicative aspects of foreign
language learning.
The second one is the nature of practice. Novices and junior experts are engaging in different practices.
Novices usually come to the teacher, and teacher gives a piece to practice. Next week or two weeks later, thenovice students are expected, after practicing the piece at home, to play it to the teacher. And the teacher evaluates
how smoothly and how accurately the novice students can play. In contrast, junior expert students may have theexperience of playing the piece in public. So they are exposed to the real audience, not just the teacher.
Suppose this second factor can be applied to foreign language learning or teaching. It’s very important tohave some listeners or readers for the production of students. If just the teacher evaluates the students’ produced
sentences, either spoken or written, and the teacher pays too much attention to the correctness of the students’performance, the students will remain at the novice level. But if we can arrange the setting so that students cancommunicate with some others using a foreign language, they will be able to pay more attention to the listener’s
perspective and eventually they will be interested in developing communicative competence.

Lambert and Tucker’s study.
Our final example of educational practice is a study by Lambert and Tucker (1972). This study was done in
Canada a few decades ago, but its results have some important implications for us. As you know, Canada is abilingual nation. That is, all Canadians are expected to be good users of both English and French. However, even
there, I am sometimes told, it is not quite easy to become truly bilingual. Lambert and Tucker thought that teachinga foreign language as a subject in school couldn’t be very effective. Students often complain that learning foreign
language is hard and time-consuming; it imposes a burden on them; they have no time to study other interesting
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things, etc. So instead of teaching a foreign language, they proposed to teach other school subjects by using aforeign language as a medium of instruction.
These investigators chose about 25 kindergarten children from English speaking families. They weremonolingual and at the age of five or six. While they were in the kindergarten, their teacher who was from France
and could speak just French taught everything in French for one year. Then from grade one on, the teacher taught
most of the subjects using French instead of English. In the later grades some parents complained — teaching
English literature by using French is funny. But still a number of school subjects including mathematics were taught
in French.
This method of teaching school subjects by using a foreign language as a medium of instruction was
remarkably successful. By the grade 4 or 5, those formerly monolingual children became all English- Frenchbilingual; they had mastered basic components of French language, that is, vocabulary, pronunciation, phonology,
syntax, etc; and at grade 7, they could discuss issues in French with native French speaking Canadians. Moreover,their English was not bad at all. Their performance in English was comparable to English monolingual Canadians of
the same age.
It is certainly possible to learn a foreign language by using it as a medium to exchange ideas, to learnsomething new, or to communicate with distant people. It’s a happy marriage between teaching of a foreign language and using a foreign language as a medium of communication. Whether the knowledge and skill acquired in
one situation can be used in other situations depends on how they are learned, in other words, on the socioculturalcontext of the acquisition.

Adaptive Expertise in School and Everyday LifeAs I said earlier, transfer studies have shown that students seldom apply school trained procedures. How
about experts? Can they solve familiar problems quickly but not novel types of problems? Not necessarily. I
proposed a term “adaptive expertise” in contrast to “routine expertise” (Hatano, 1982). Whereas routine experts
have only modest capability in dealing with novel types of problems, adaptive experts can often invent new procedures derived from their expert knowledge. What we should aim at in education is to foster adaptive expertise. Thatis, we should not try to produce students who can answer such question as “How are you?” in a patterned way.
Instead, the ideal students are those who can construct their answers depending on situations and their relationships
with the conversation partner. In many subject-matter domains, I believe, adaptive experts can comprehend why
those procedures they learned work, modify those procedures flexibly when needed, and invent new procedures
when none of the known procedures are effective. The real problem is how we can produce adaptive experts.
School, at least the conventional school practice, is not a good context for acquiring communicative competence in foreign language or adaptive expertise in general, because there is no significant exchange of ideas andone’s performance is evaluated externally just by teachers. I think the key to adaptive expertise is to change these
conditions. In order to gain adaptive expertise, one has to be exposed to some new situations where they are
expected to explore ideas and test them. Also teachers shouldn’t be the ultimate authority in evaluation. Moreflexible, more multiple perspectives on evaluation would be recommended. If we are able to create such situations,foreign language could be learned more effectively and flexible and innovative learning in other domains could be
realized.
Many people in school, I believe, have two conflicting wishes: One is to maintain the traditional cognitive viewof teaching that emphasizes the acquisition of powerful knowledge and skills. And we are quite tempted to use
advanced technologies for that purpose. I think that such attempts are useful but also have limitations. The otherwish, which I have advocated in this talk, is to change our conception of knowledge to incorporate its history ofacquisition and use in its component, in other words, recognizing that not only the content of the knowledge but also
the history are important for its future use.
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To conclude, I strongly believe that we should pay more attention to practices, activities, and contexts in which
new ideas and skills are learned. We should also relax the format of schooling, so that students can be allowed to
explore ideas themselves, instead of just being told the correct answer. They must be given multiple feedback, notjust from the teacher but from others, especially from the partner of conversation. Through that process, they caninternally evaluate their performance, and they can become adapted experts in foreign language and other subjectmatter domains.

References
Alexander, P. A. and Murphy, P.K. (1999). Nurturing the seeds of transfer: A domain-specific perspective. International Journal of Educational Research, 31, 561-576.
Boaler, J. (1997). Experiencing school mathematics: Teaching styles, sex, and setting. Buckingham, UK:
Open University Press.
Detterman, D.K. (1993). The case for prosecution: Transfer as an epiphenomenon. In D.K. Detterman & R.J.
Sternberg (Eds.), Transfer on trial: Intelligence, cognition, and instruction (pp. 1-24). Norwood, NJ:
Ablex.
Hatano, G. (1982). Cognitive consequences of practice in culture specific procedural skills. The Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, 4, 15-18.
Hatano, G. (1997). Learning arithmetic with an abacus. In T. Nunes & P. E. Bryant (Eds.), Learning andteaching mathematics: An international perspective (pp. 209-231). Hove, UK: Psychology Press/Erlbaum
Hatano, G. and Greeno, J.G. (1999) Commentary: Alternative perspectives on transfer and transfer studies. International Journal of Educational Research, 31, 645-654.
Hatano, G. and Inagaki, K. (1996). Cognitive and cultural factors in the acquisition of intuitive biology. In D.R.
Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), Handbook of education and human development (pp. 683-708). Oxford,
UK: Blackwell.
Lambert, W.E. and Tucker, G.R. (1972). Bilingual education of children: The St. Lambert Experiment. Cambridge MA: Newbury House.
Oura, Y. and Hatano, G. (in press). The constitution of general and specific mental models of other people. Human
Development, 44.

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To contents“The Geeks Must be Crazy!”
The Ecological and Educational Validity of Technology-Rich Environments
Leo van Lier
Monterey Institute of International Studies, U. S. A.
Introduction
Is technology transforming the language teaching profession and the language learning experience? If so, in
what ways, and in which direction? To answer these questions we need to do three things: analyze the present,
look into the future, and set aside our preconceived ideas and prejudices. All three tasks are very difficult, but thethird one is perhaps the most difficult one. But let me begin with a brief look into the past, using Larry Cuban andDavid Tyack’s historical overviews (Cuban, 1986; Tyack & Cuban, 1995).
Here is what was said about one earlier technological innovation: “The inventor or introducer of the systemdeserves to be ranked among the greatest benefactors of mankind” (Tyack & Cuban, 1995, p. 121). What was thismarvelous system and when did this revolutionary event take place? It was the blackboard, and the year was 1841.
Other inventions have been similarly hailed but not necessarily as ubiquitously adopted. Radio, film, the taperecorder, television, the overhead projector, the calculator, the photocopier, the language lab, and so on.
In reviewing these educational technologies, Tyack and Cuban conclude that “teachers have regularly usedtechnologies to enhance their regular instruction but rarely to transform their teaching” (ibid, p.122). They suggest
a variety of factors that may help to explain the apparent conservatism of teachers: the topdown nature of manytechnological implementations, problems with hardware, inferior pedagogical quality of content or programs, andmore. But, they suggest, “perhaps the most fundamental block to transforming schooling through machines has
been the nature of the classroom as a work setting and the ways in which teachers define their tasks” (ibid, p. 124).
Enter the computer....
Computers have been used in schools since the early 80s, but the major increase has occurred over the lastten years, and has accelerated since the widespread availability of the Internet and cheap desktop and laptop computers. From the start there have been opposing viewpoints on this development, ranging from techno-optimism totechno-pessimism (to use Mark Warschauer’s terms, 2000), from geekism to luddism, from love to loathing. Interestingly, many commentators and teachers report having deeply ambivalent feelings about technology, harboring
sentiments from both extremes, and suffering alternating spells of geekolia and ludditis. So then, a new neurosis
appears to have sprung up, a kind of techno-schizo, panic-impressive personality disorder. The cure for this iswithdrawal, or perhaps escape into the virtual shopping malls of AOL or MSNetwork. Or for teachers it may bemarching the students down the hall to the computer lab, where full-service integrated courseware will do the job,supervised by TA’s or lab sitters, and allowing the beleaguered teacher to retreat to the safety of the office, theclassroom or the faculty lounge for an hour or so. The students are doing lesson seven, and quiz 2a. The computeras babysitter, as substitute, as drillmaster, as textbook.
On a brighter note, computers have the potential to “blow up the school,” as Seymour Papert (pioneer ofartificial intelligence and creator of the computer language LOGO) once said (Cuban, 1986). The trouble is, when
you blow something up you had better be clear that what replaces it is actually going to be an improvement. Surely,
educational systems all over the world have room for improvement. So does my house, but I don’t want to blow it
up and sleep in a computer box. So perhaps we should interpret Papert’s explosive metaphor as a prediction of
educational transformation in a positive sense. Perhaps what will be blown up is the “2 by 4 by 6” (two covers ofGeeks Must be Crazy [Plenary Presentation]41

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the textbook, four walls of the classroom, six lessons a day) prison in which educational activity has been confined— and stifled, some would say—for centuries. Certainly, there are positive signs in this direction: the computer goes way beyond the textbook, making available a vast expanse of information on any topic under the sun via
the Internet; the computer breaks down the classroom walls by allowing communication between people in different locations, via email, chat, online classes, and videoconferencing; and the computer allows teachers and students
to do their teaching any time of day and night, and any day a week, whenever they want to and have time. In
addition, the web-like nature of the Internet knows no subject boundaries, leading naturally to cross-curricularconnections. So then, content, communication, time and space may be reconfigured dramatically. The teachercentered classroom, with its transmission-based lecture-style approach, its focus on correction, imitation, regurgitation and a docile student body will have to disappear. In its place will be the autonomous, lifelong learner, and theteacher as guide and coach.
We have explored a few thoughts on both sides of the spectrum. I will now look at some much-debatedaspects of the technological revolution, and see if we can glimpse a direction ahead. One of the most important
issues is equality of access, equity, technological democracy, and the specter of the digital divide. Next I will lookat the place of the teacher in this revolution. Then I will look at the learner and the learning process. Finally thetechnology-enhanced, technology-rich, or even technology-driven curriculum will be put under the microscope.
We then send the case back to the people, because I don’t think we are ready for a verdict any time soon.

Some Basic Questions
The following six questions were posited by Neil Postman, noted cyber-sceptic (if not neo-luddite), at aconference on distance learning in New York last year (Postman, 1999). These questions were a source of muchdiscussion on the TESLCA-L list (a well known listserv on computers ans language learning), and a brief overview
can be found in Healey, 2000. Postman takes a dim view of all the hype about technology, and has written several
books on this topic, e.g. The End of Education, and Technopoly. He’s of course also famous as the co-author of aradical book about teaching published in the 60s: Teaching as a Subversive Activity (Postman & Weingartner,1964).
•

What is the problem to which this technology is the solution?

•

Who will benefit and who will pay?

•

What new problems may be created?

•

Which people and what institutions may be most seriously affected?

•

What changes in language are being produced by the new technologies?

•

What sorts of people acquire new political power?

The suggestion in the first and third questions may be that technology does not necessarily address existing problems. According to Stoll (1995, 1999) computers don’t care about exisiting problems: they are perfectly capable ofcreating their own, which they can then fix with more technology, and so on forever.
Who will benefit from technology? Administrators who need to brag and show visitors around? Corporations? Politicians? Teachers? Learners? The money spent on computers must come from somewhere. What partsof the budget are being reduced? What programs are cut? What provisions are there for maintenance, support andreplacement?
Postman’s last question is also an important one. An obvious answer is: the corporations. Or you might say,no, we all get more power, because the Internet is the ultimate democratic tool. Yes but….., when President Clinton
made a highly publicized visit to some high schools to address the Digital Divide, he was accompanied not byteachers, not by teacher educators, not by working-class parents, but by CEOs of several prominent corporations
such as AT&T and AOL. This provides food for thought.
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Across the Great (Digital?) Divide
Basically, schools use technology to control disadvantaged students. Many schools in poor neighborhoods have computer laboratories equipped with drill-and-practice tutorial programs called integratedlearning systems. Students sit in front of these computers and follow the programmed routine, typing
in answers to problems like “12 + 4 + 2 = ?” Critics call this the “drill and kill” approach, and it would
be hard to find a student who would disagree.
In contrast, in many suburban schools, students are likely to be able to manipulate computers,
databases, spreadsheets, and drawing program—all of which allow them to create. They are able toexpress themselves and their thoughts and share that information with each other.
In other words, middle-class students are using technology in ways that will them controllers of
their lives, while poor children are being denied that power. Practices like these serve to divide oursociety (Merrow, 1995:38).
It has been often repeated that half the world’s population has never made a phone call. Whether this is trueor not is hard to tell. But it puts into perspective my insignificant complaint that in my street no cable modems or
DSL, let alone higher varieties of wire, are available, so that I have to make do with a lowly 56K modem. The
commercial puts me firmly in my ridiculously antiquated place:Child (tearful): “Mom! Billy called me a modem!”
Mother (shocked): “I’m going to call his mother!”Well, what can I do? Perhaps I should move to the street where the phone company is? Or should I just put up
with the delays and watch the trees, flowers and birds through my windows while I wait for a Web site to load?
Now consider the following scenario. Confronting the digital divide, there is currently a program underway
in the US, backed by the government and various corporations, to wire the poorest of schools and districts at
significant discounts (the E-rate program). An elementary school in a nearby rural town, populated predominantly
by immigrant and migrant children of poverty, is among the lucky ones to have been chosen to get wired at a
discount. The first-grade teacher is an old friend, so when she told me they were being e-rated, I said, “Great,
finally you are getting a break.” She did not look too happy, however, and I asked what the problem was. She
explained that everyday for several months now she had to teach while walls and ceilings were being drilled
through and knocked holes into all day long. Meanwhile she had one old Apple IIe in her classroom that had
stopped working two years ago, and she had never received either support or training in technology. She was rather
bitter about the whole experience so far.
Well, we might reply. Sure it’s a nuisance now, but once it’s all done you’ll be able to take full advantage of
all the technological innovations and opportunities. Think of the future. Yes, but..... all this wiring is not free
(discounts range from 20 to 90 %). And then hardware and software will have to be bought. And then there must be
teacher development and support. And two years later the whole replacement cycle begins. It is estimated that forevery 100,000 in upfront expenditure an annual cost of maintenance and amortization of around 35,000 must bebudgeted. Who will pay for it all? What will be cut to make money available for these continuous expenses?
Somehow I have a feeling that this teacher, and who knows how many others, would be happier with one decent
Internet-connected computer in her classroom, and with meaningful training and support right now, than withpromises of high bandwidth and the latest technology at some unspecified time in the future.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. The same is true also of digital equity. Let’s explore this briefly.
Bronfenbrenner’s work in educational ecology (1979) proposes a context consisting of nested ecosystems, withvarious links along which decisions and influences can take place. He distinguishes between a microsystem (e.g.
the classroom, the family), a mesosystem ( the school, the neighborhood), an exosystem (the school district, thecommunity) and a macrosystem (society as a whole, the educational system). The above example of e-rate shows
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how top-down (macro → micro) and bottom-up (micro → macro) actions and interests can clash, with potentiallyserious consequences. There are many other scenarios that can be explored within this framework.
Let’s look at the lowest scale, the microsystem. Here we are talking about what happens in the classroom,
betwen learners and teachers, and whoever else ventures upon the scene. The context I want to illustrate is a groupproject underway in a fourth-grade class with both mainstream and minority students in the class. They are designing a website for publishing their English poetry. From several photographs taken in this class, a clear pattern isvisible: a white student sits at the keyboard while Latino students sit behind as spectators (on a positive note, as aresult of noticing this tendency the teacher reconfigured tasks and groupings to ensure equity). It turns out that
middle-class children who have computers at home tend to control the computers at school as well. We therefore
find that even if all other things are equal (hardware, software, etc.), children from certain socio-economic groups
may still have unequal access at the classroom level. Other sources for unequal access may be gender (males havemore access than females), academic subject (science and math classes have more acces than language classes; see
Schofield, 1995, for a detailed account of access patterns in an American high school; see also Bolt & Crawford,
2000). We also see from this example that there are connections between one microsystem (the family) and another(the classroom). When there are computers in the family, children tend to get to use them more at school than when
there are no computers in the family. Parents less familiar with technology (particularly Internet use) also tend to be
more reluctant to have their children use technology at school (in the above classroom, two children were prohibited by their parents from using the Internet at school).
Moving up to the next scale, the mesosystem, we can trace patterns of placement and distribution, curriculum integration, support, and collaboration among teachers, parents, and administrators. On this scale there are
multiple sources of satisfaction and frustration. A very common source of both is the computer lab. Many teachersreport that if they want to use the computer lab they have to book it up to several weeks in advance, making accurate
planning and integration very difficult. A common result of the classroom/lab disconnection is that the “lab hour”
is filled with work that is not or only tenuously related to classwork—usually a drill or language practice programfor individual exercises, so that the computer is used as a tutor, not as a tool (Levy, 1997). On the other hand, where
there is a well-supported and well-equipped lab, it may be a pleasure for teachers and students to take a regular trip
to it. It may then become a place where exploratory learning and creative project work can take place.
The next scale, the exosystem, can be the locus of serious fault lines, gaps, or even chasms between what
teachers and learners can do, and what districts, school boards and local influentia think should be done. Since thisis the area where generally budgets and long-term planning are decided, corporations, politicians and sales people
cluster there like wasps swarming around the queen. Here it may be decided that wires will run from A to B and C
and all over, that X number of Y type computers and software will be bought from Z company, that labs will be
installed in this or that location, with a maximum number of machines per square yard, etc. My observations
suggest that the exosystem scale is usually disconnected, in terms of pedagogical concerns, from the scale below,
the mesosystem (in the US, of course, this divide coincides with the off-site/on-site distinction). That is, concerns
other than the actual teaching-learning process govern the decisions made here, and since the decisions made on
this scale are fundamental and often irreversible, the exo-systemic scale seems to be crucial when we examine
innovation and reform.
Finally, on the macrosystem scale we find governmental policy, funding agencies, mass media, corporate
interests, and large-scale political and social forces. The e-rate program I mentioned above is an example of workon this scale. Other examples are “philantropic” efforts of corporations to offer training, hardware or software (ora combination of these) to teachers. Of course such initiatives are nothing but soft-sell or not-so-soft-sell marketing
campaigns. The corporation’s products are the only ones showcased and promoted, and schools and teachers ought
to be aware that the seductive samples offered may imply a loss of independence and flexibility a short distancedown the road (and perhaps inflated expenses in terms of add-ons and upgrades).
Now let me try to sum up the equity debate. I have looked at the digital divide issue across the various scalesof Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model of nested hierarchical systems. I have also warned that a chain—or a nested
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set of ecosystems in this case—is only as strong as its weakest links. I have exposed just a few glimpses of thevarious links or systems and given some examples of potential mishaps on these various scales, and possible
clashes between one scale and an adjacent one.
Are the geeks crazy? Yes I think so, if they think that, by providing everybody with the same computers andthe same access, educational problems such as systemic inequities can be solved. This does not mean that it is nota good idea to provide the technological infrastructure. That is one link in the chain, but many other links arenecessary before issues of inequality can begin to be addressed. Until then, the wiring and hardware frenzy is
nothing more than political propaganda and corporate advertising.

Teachers and Technology
In this section I will examine some of the ways in which technology affects language teachers. First we will
look at professional development or teacher training (inservice or INSET, and preservice). Next, I will report someways in which the daily life of teachers is affected, and how career prospects and jobs may be affected. Finally,some practical issues of teaching with technology will be addressed
A small-scale survey of language teachers that I conducted in the US three years ago yielded the informationthat basically only a minority of teachers had ever received any professional development in the use of technology.
Furthermore, most of those who reported “some” training said that it was inadequate or useless. The few whoreported that is was useful still indicated that it was insufficient and that more was needed.
It appears that in the last few years considerable efforts have been made to train teachers in the use ofcomputers and other recent technologies. Education Week (Education Week, 1998) reports that “the vast majorityof teachers have had some training in education technology. However, when this figure is broken down into more
specific categories such as “basic,” “multimedia,” or “online activities,” the percentages drop to less than half forteachers who have had training in the more sophisticated aspects of technology use. Moreover, teachers in poorer
districts are less likely to have received any training.
The state of California has published draft standards for technology competencies at two levels of proficiency. Politicians and local leaders constantly emphasize the need for more professional development. Funded
projects now regularly include a budget for teacher training. Corporations such as Microsoft, Macromedia, andApple offer free training to large groups of teachers. And so on… clearly a level of activity that has increased
tremendously over the space of just two or three years, at least in the US. To what extent this is true also of othercountries, if so, which ones, is not clear. I suspect that there is enormous variation from country to country, fromschool type to school type, and so on, along the same lines as the DD discussion above.
It would seem then that one of the key links in the chain: a well-prepared teacher, is being strengthened.
However, there are a few worrisome spots on this rosy picture. Let me list them :1.

Many teachers resist and reject, or are reluctant to embrace, technology, for a number of reasons that cannot be dismissed as irrational luddism.

2.

In spite of reports that indicate ever-larger percentages of teachers that “have received technology training,” the overwhelming majority of teachers I meet and talk to report they have either
received no training or woefully inadequate training. Interestingly, almost all tech-savvy teachers that I meet report that they are completely or mostly self-taught.

3.

Most technology training is conducted as one-shot sessions that focus on technical rather thanpedagogical aspects.

4.

The technology component of preservice teacher preparation is reported to be completely
inadequate.

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5.

Al teachers (I have not encountered any exceptions) want training that is hands-on, on-site,ongoing, and includes a level of sustained in-class support. This type of training is rarely if everavailable.

6.

Teachers report frequent problems of hardware and software failure, oudated equipment, lackof availability of resources, etc.

7.

Working with technology is extremely time-consuming and labor-intensive, far more so thattraditional chalkboard and paper lessons.

It seems reasonable to conclude, then, that the link of teacher development and professional preparation is stillrather weak. Moreover, there is an enormous knowledge and skill gap—among otherwise well-prepared teachers—
between the least and the most well-prepared teachers. Is this problematic? Not necessarily so according the viewsof at least one teacher, who compared computer geekdom to musical ability. He explained that many teachers liketo take a guitar to class and lead the students in song, a highly appreciated and successful practice, but not one that
all teachers can or need to possess. In fact, for a successful institution it is better if teachers are experts at a variety
of different things. So, if there are a few teachers who lean towards geekdom, then that is beneficial and sufficient.
Not all teachers need to be geeks.
This sounds reasonable enough. Yet, we expect all teachers to know how to use the blackboard and theoverhead projector, and be able to manipulate other tools of the trade. Aren’t computers tools that every teacher
needs to be able to work with, at least up to some level of competence? Furthermore, elementary school teachersand secondary subject matter teachers cannot usually rely on colleagues to provide complementary expertise. And,
as a ubiquitous saying goes, computers will not replace teachers, but in the future teachers who cannot use computers will be replaced by those who can.
Thus, we end up with the conclusion that the great majority of language teachers will need to have some sortof knowledge and skills about computer use. The best practice that I know of is to ask them, by way of detailed
needs analyses, what it is that they think they need to know and do, and then design professional development thatassists them in getting where they need to go.
My next question is how technology is affecting the daily life of the language teacher. Whenever I ask thatquestion on surveys and in meetings, the most common answer is that they have made teaching both easier andmore frustrating. Further probing reveals that computers save teachers time but that working with them is also
extremely time consuming. There was also a recent survey that cited technology as the third leading cause of stressfor teachers. In short the issue is not clear-cut: computers are neither universally hated nor universally loved byteachers. They can be both a significant source of professional satisfaction and a major source of stress.
We might go through our nested ecosystems again and see some sources of success and frustration at thedifferent scales. I cannot do this here, but recommend it as an illuminating activity for a teacher or an institution.
Let me just cite a few examples. I have already mentioned the macrosystemic problem of forced consumption of
wiring, (and hardware, courseware) without miscrosystemic support or input. There is also the district that has
decided to buy only Wintel computers and Microsoft software, so as to make support easier and receive “freetraining” from Microsoft in the use of its products. And the school where a new lab has been put in and the teachers
are told to “go and use it.” Set against these frustrations are the successes of teachers who, armed with knowledge,
have gone to their administrators or to funding agencies and specified precisely what they needed and why, andwho have found an unexpected level of willingness to listen, thus ending up with well-designed and pleasantenvironments to work in.
The classroom or lab is the most frequent source of satisfaction or frustration. Teachers who are used toteaching communicatively using collaborative tasks and projects find that it is impossible to work in a traditional
computer lab. Usually such labs are crammed full of computers in rows with hardly any space to move around,work together, or see each other. These labs are only suitable for solitary processing or drill work, but not for theGeeks Must be Crazy [Plenary Presentation]46

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sorts of creative and interactive project work that can make computers a positive force for pedagogical change.
However, working with a few or even just one computer in the classroom can be a positive factor for such teachers.
And labs that are designed to promote social interaction as well as computer interaction can do the same thing.
The most frequent failure reported by teachers and researchers is due to teachers who continue to teach in ateacher-fronted, transmission-style way after they have decided to incorporate computers. This is a sure-fire recipe
for failure, since computers demand a different approach. They demand a more autonomous learner, a learning taskthat is not entirely predictable in terms of procedures or outcome, and a teacher who is not the sole bearer ofknowledge and authority. These are not easy things to adjust to for a teacher who is used to being the center ofattention and the sole locus of authority and knowledge.
Let me illustrate some of the classroom-level dynamics influenced by technology with a few vignettes:
1.
I wrote a proposal for a grant to have two computers in my room and began the process of undoing myclassroom structures so that I could take advantage of those two machines. Gradually, I tried newgroupings, more interaction, less whole-group direct teaching, and I could sense the students' selfconfidence grow as they became more independent ('Marian,' in Newsom 1996: 205).
2.
When I brought that first computer into the classroom I was faced with a problem. Since the kids
couldn't all work on the computer at once, I realized that this was going to infringe on my whole-class
lecture method. The solution was to leave my "sage on the stage" posture, move to a learning centersapproach, that had technology in one or two of the centers, and adopt a "guide on the side" philosophy
that allowed kids to work more independently and allowed me to move about the room and work withsmall groups of children ('Chris,' in Newsom 1996: 204).
3.
The students ... continue to have a lot of very nitty-gritty problems. Kathy can't get the printer going ...
She's scowling and says in an annoyed tone of voice, "Please help me." Mr. East suggests several
things, and after they try out four or five different approaches they finally get the paper to print out.
Ms. Prentiss has been working with Sharon on word processing ... For the last 10 minutes cries like, "I
don't believe it," and "Oh, no. Not again!" have been emanating from both of them ... Finally, Ms.
Prentiss calls Mr. East over ... Sharon is clearly getting anxious, pacing around, picking her nails, andthe like. She takes her disc and inserts it in another computer hooked up to a different printer. She can't
get this printer to work ... Ms. Prentiss rushes over to try to fix it saying, "I just don't believe it!" Ms.
Prentiss comes over to me [the observer] and says, "I feel like quitting this ..." At this point Mark calls
to Ms. Prentiss, "I need help ..." Ms. Prentiss puts her head down on the desk briefly. She looks at mewith what appears to be a mixture of mock and real despair and trudges over to Mark. [Later in thesame period] Dan is trying to use a printer that Mr. East thought he had fixed. Dan's essay comes out
quadruple spaced. In addition, every single word is underlined. Ms. Prentiss looks at it and breaks into
almost hysterical laughter. Dan looks annoyed. Ms. Prentiss says, "I'm sorry, this is just too much—too, too much! ..." Mr. Adams and Mr. East are still working on the second malfunctioning printer. Mr.
Adams says, "You know I have a trick. What I do with my Radio Shack computer is just turn it on its
side and hit it. Maybe that will work here ..." They turn it on its side and give it a whack as one of themholds the tension on the paper feed. The machine begins to work. (Schofield 1995: 126-7).
4.
When I walked into Mr. L's room, I saw 6 late-model Pentium computers lined up against the backwall of the classroom. Mr. L., a high school teacher of Spanish, had written a grant proposal andreceived a donation of six computers and an Internet connection. At first everybody was quite excited,and students were allowed in turns to use the computers to browse the Internet, doing "treasure hunt"
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types of acitivities, while Mr. L. continued teaching the class in the usual way. After a while, hereported, things deteriorated, students ended up on the "wrong" web sites, and the computers becamea disruptive element in the class, upsetting the regular routine. "I'm not letting anybody use them any
more during classes," Mr. M said. "It's just too much of a nuisance."
5.
A writing class in a university ESL program. The computer lab is quite nicely set up, with computers
placed against the walls and a table in the center for regular paper-based work and tutoring. Students
work on their essays individually on different computers, but there is a lot of movement as students
ask each other for advice and help each other. The teacher sits at the center table and works withindividual students in turns, going over their drafts with them.
At one computer a young man sits, motionless, his lands on his knees, staring at the screen. Once in awhile he looks around, but his face appears expressionless and tense. Since the beginning of class he
has neither spoken nor moved a finger towards the keyboard or the mouse. After about ten minutes theteacher asks another student, a young woman, to go over and help him. She suppresses a grimace, getsup, and sits next to the young man, and starts explaining about formatting, centering, paragraphs, etc.
The young man continues to stare at the screen, not looking at her nor indicating that he does or does
not understand. She does the clicking and typing for him.

The Curriculum and Learning
The most urgent problem for educators is not how to operate computers, write activities or learn how to use
various programs and applications. The most crucial task is to learn how to integrate technology into the curriculum in responsible, meaningful, and effective ways. If technology takes time and money away from important
activities and content, and replaces them with inconsequential drilling or fiddling, then it is a detriment to education.
In terms of money, I know many instances where technology has caused the cancellation of worthwhile
programs such as field trips, music, physical education, and so on. In other contexts teachers report that increased
technology has meant decreases in teacher hiring, higher teacher-student ratios, and increases in hiring adjunctrather than permanent faculty (the latter is particularly true of online programs).
In terms of time, every hour of electronic (online) teaching requires up to 100 hours of preparation. Teachers
spend countless hours making interactive activities using HTML, Java Scripts, HotPotatoes, and so on, but eventhough it is immensely satisfying when they “work,” these activities are not necessarily superior, in pedagogicalterms, to the ones that used to be handed out on worksheets. The worksheets took a fraction of the time to produce
compared to web or desk-top based activities.
In class, teachers may spend significant portions of time fixing problems with machines and programs (seevignette 4 above) rather than working with the students on the subject matter. I cannot count the times that I haveattended meetings at conferences where the first 15 minutes or more of a presentation were wasted on trying to geta laptop to work on a projector. In the end the presenter often has to go to “Plan B” and use backup overheadtransparencies, but meanwhile a big chunk of the presentation is gone. In how many cases, across educational
systems, does technology lead to a net reduction in productive instructional time?
So, the question: “Is it worth it?” is certainly a legitimate one. How can technology enhance the curriculumand not interfere with it? Perhaps the first two vignettes above give one of the clues. In both those cases the arrivalof the computers meant a transformation of teaching into a more collaborative, activity-based style. Given thatcurrent perspectives on language learning and teaching emphasize exactly these qualities, computers should be
able to act as catalysts to achieve a change to more effective learning and teaching practices. But they do not do soGeeks Must be Crazy [Plenary Presentation]48

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automatically and inevitably. As we have seen, there are many ingredients that need to be present for the effect tobecome a positive one.

Conclusion
When , in the movie “The Gods must be Crazy,” that coke bottle landed in a community of Khwai (‘Bushmen’) in the Kalahari, it was an unknown and mysterious object to them. They thought it was a gift sent fromheaven. Little did they know it would cause so many problems that their leader had to carry it to the end of theworld and throw it off.
The computer lands in our midst, perhaps in our classroom. Will it be an instrument of mischief just like thatcoke bottle? We do not know.
It is a truism that we cannot turn back the clock and uninvent or disinvite the computer. What’s more, wehave no idea (or only a very dim one, see Gelernter, 2000) of what is in store in the coming years. It is clear that as
language learners, teachers and teacher educators we need to make our accommodations with the new technologies. Our only hope is to control THEM for pedagogical enrichment rather than be controlled BY them withpossibly dire consequences.
In order to do so we need to struggle to understand technology and harness its power in the service of soundpedagogy. This includes at times fighting corporate, political and bureaucratic interests in the defense of goodeducation. It unfortunately means the duty to own our technological knowledge together with our fellow teachers(rather than rely on expertise sold by non-pedagogical interest groups). It is in most cases an extra burden on top of
already excessive work loads, and we should fight for recognition wherever there is a chance, but whichever way
the cookie crumbles, it is essential for teachers to be the guardians of the best possible education for their students.
Fortunately, there are some payoffs. Computers can make our lessons more interesting, they make resources available that are otherwise hard to find, they motivate the students, and they may make teaching and learning more
exploratory and interactive. These are benefits we should be able to capitalize on.

References
Agre, P. (1997). Building an Internet culture. http://communication.ucsd.edu/pagre/
Bolt, D. & Crawford, R. (2000). Digital divide: Computers and our children’s future. New York: TV Books, LLC.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1993). The ecology of cognitive development: Research models and fugitive findings. In
Wozniak, R. H. & Fischer, K.W. (eds.) Development in context: Acting and thinking in specific environments. pp. 3-44. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Carvin, A.. (ed.) (2000). The E-Rate in America: A tale of four cities. The Benton Foundation. http://www.benton.org/
e-rate/e-rate.4cities.pdf
Crook, C. (1994). Computers and the collaborative experience of learning. London: Routledge.
Cuban, L. (1986). Teachers and machines. New York: Teachers College Press.
Education Week (1998). Technology Counts ’98. Education Week, XVIII, 5, October 1, 1998.
Egbert, J. & Hanson-Smith, E. (eds.). (1999). CALL environments: Research, practice, and critical issues. Alexandria, VA: TESOL.
Gelernter, D. (2000). The second coming – A manifesto. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gelernter/gelernter_index.html
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Healey, D. (2000). Computer technology: Is it worthwhile in TESOL? TESOL Journal, 9, 1, 44-5.
Keating, A. B. & Hargitai, J. (1999). The wired professor: A guide to incorporating the World Wide Web in college
instruction. New York: New York University Press.
Kirkpatrick, H. & Cuban, L. (1998). Computers make kids smarter - Right? TECHNOS Quarterly for Education
and Technology, 7, 2, Summer 1998. Downloaded July 20, 2000.
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Engeström, Y. & Vasquez, O. (eds.) Mind, culture and activity. pp. 185-202.Cambridge: CUP.
Levy, M. (1997). Computer-assisted language learning: Context and conceptualization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Merrow, J. (1995). Four million computers can be wrong! Education Week XIV, 27, 52, 38.
Newsom, J. (1996). Integrating technology with instruction: One district’s experience. In Kerr, S.T. (ed.). Technology and the future of schooling. Ninety-fifth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education.
Part II. Chicago: The National Society for the Study of Education. Distributed by the University of Chicago
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Panos (1995). The Internet and the South: Superhighway or dirt-track? Panos Media Briefing No. 16/October
1995. http://www.panos.org.uk/briefing/index.html.
Panos (1998). The Internet and poverty. Panos Media Briefing No. 28/April 1998. http://www.panos.org.uk/briefing/index.html.
Postman, N. (1999). Presentation at Conference: Virtual higher education? Critical perspectives. New York.
Schofield, J. W. (1995). Computers and classroom culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stoll. C. (1995). Silicon snake oil: Second thoughts on the information highway. New York: Doubleday Anchor
Books.
Stoll, C. (1999). High tech heretic: Why computers don’t belong in the classroom and other reflections by a computer contrarian. New York: Doubleday.
Tyack, D. & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward Utopia: A century of public school reform. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Warschauer, M. (2000). The Death of Cyberspace and the Rebirth of CALL. Plenary speech at the “CALL for the
21st Century” IATEFL and ESADE conference, 2 July 2000, Barcelona, Spain. (Downloaded from
PapyrusNews, July 22, 2000).

Some Digital Divide Websites
The Digital Divide Network:

http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org

ChickClick (“Girl sites that don’t fake it”):

http://www.chickclick.com

Girl Tech (educational):

http://www.girltech.com

Institute for Women and Technology:

http://www. iwt.org

LatinoLink:

http://latinolink.com

National Urban League:

http://www.nul.org

Picosito:

http://www.picosito.com

One World:

http://www.oneworld.net

Panos (Information and communication
for sustainable development):

http://www.panos.org.uk

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Networking Society and Education
This article is in Japanese and therefore not all of it
may be readable without the Japanese version of Acrobat.

Takashi Sakamoto

National Institute of Multimedia Education, Japan
Ｇ８教育大臣会合・フォーラムＧ８教育大臣会合・
平成１２年４月の初旬Ｇ８教育大臣会合・フォーラムが東京で開かれた。今日の最重要課題４つのうちに、生涯学習と遠隔教育、教育革新と情報通信技術の２つが入っており、これからの教育において、衛星通信、大容量光ファイバー、インターネット等情報通信技術の飛躍的発展を基盤にした、国内の大学間の協働や国際的なネットワークの構築の重要性が強調された。
議長サマリーでは、生涯学習と遠隔教育に関しては、合意事項として、５項目が指摘された。
１． 児から高齢者まで、生涯を通じていつでもどこにいても教育にアクセス
２． 公的、私的部門による遠隔教育に関する国際協力を奨励
３． 略
４． 遠隔教育に関し、関係機器案と専門が経験を共有
５． 授業、訓練、研究のためにインターネットや衛星を活用、開発途上国との協力、大学での協働
教育革新と情報通信技術（ＩＣＴ）に関しては、「情報・コミュニケーション技術（ＩＣＴ）は、社会全体に対して、学習機会へのアクセスを拡大することや、児童生徒の理解力・創造力を深めることを可能にする潜在力を持つものであり、教育の内容を豊かにし教育機会提供の方法を変える展望を与えるものである。また、情報・コミュニケーション技術は、学校、職場、さらには生涯の全般にわたり、個々人が入手した問題を解決する能力を高めるための道具である。」と述べ、６点について合意している。その第５と第６は次のものである。
５． 教員がテクノロジーを教育に効果的に活用できるような方法や、児童生徒が正確で適切な情報を選んで利用したり、発見や学習や教育上の達成のための適切な道具として技術を利用できるようにするための方法について、情報を共有すること
６． 教員、研究者、技術者、行政関係者などの専門家が、今後新しく開発されるテクノロジー
を実際に教育の課題に活用していくことについて協力できるよう、国際的なネットワークの構築を奨励すること。
情報・コミュニケーション技術を活用した、遠隔教育の重要性が深く認識され、教師教育に活用される可能性を大きく広げる方向の施策が世界的に展開することを示唆している。
教育の場に、大々的に情報通信技術が導入される方向である。
これは、平成１１年６月のケルンサミットでケルン憲章が発表され、すべての子どもにＩＣＴの能力が不可欠であるとされたことの流れを受けている。平成１２年の九州・沖縄サミットでもＩＴ革命
が中心課題の一つとなっている。

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学校への情報通信技術の導入
今や、世界主要国は、国の責任者が先頭に立って、学校教育に情報通信技術を導入しようと、まさに競争状態にある。アメリカでは、クリントン大統領とゴア副大統領が１９９６年２月に技術活用能
力向上策を掲げ、すべての生徒が技術活用能力を持つことを強調している。「すべての子どもがコンピュータに触れ、、理解し、よいソフトウェアとよい教師、そして、インターネットに触れねばならない。そこで、すべての人が自分の人生を最高に創る機会をもつことだろう」という。イギリスでは、ブレア首相が全国学習格子計画を１９９８年より実施し、オンライン学習・教育用教材を探し、活用する手段とし、ネットワークによる教育サービスを提供し、教師と図書館司書の技能を伸ばすことを主張し、２００２年までに、すべての学校が無料でスーパーハイウエイに接続、５０万人の教師を訓練、すべての子どもが卒業時にＩＴを使いこなす能力を身につけることを提言している。
フランスも１９９８年にジョスパン首相が情報国家導入準備計画をうちだし、６つの優先課題の第１に、教育における新情報通
信技術をとり上げている。そこでは、未来の市民に必要不可欠な新しい通信の道具の使い手を育てること、および多様なマルチメディアを教育現代化に役立てることをねらっている。北欧諸国、カナダ、オーストラリア、シンガポール、韓国等も国を挙げて取り組んでいる。
このことは、世界の主要国の学校にインターネットが導入され、お互いに交流可能な環境が整いつつあることを意味している。

高等教育における情報通信技術の活用
高等教育の分野でも、最近では、インターネットや通信衛星を活用した遠隔教育とかバーチャル・
ユニバーシティの展開が著しい。
アメリカでは、連邦政府教育省の教育統計局の調べによると４年制公立大学の７８％が遠隔教育を実施している。多くは、コンソーシアム型で、いくつかの大学を仲介する機構が学習者の要請に合わせて大学の適切なコースにアクセスできるようなサービスをしている。
仲介機構自体が学位などの資格を与える場合もあるが、たいていは、学習者は特定の大学の資格を取ることになる。前者の例は、西部州立大学で、後者の例は、カリフォルニアバーチャルキャンパス、コネチカット遠隔学習コンソーシア
ム、オンラインコネチカット州立大、ニューヨーク州立大学習ネットワーク、ペンシルバニアバーチャ
ルユニバーシティ、テキサス大テレキャンパス、などである。このほかに、独立遠隔大学もある。ジョー
ンズ国際大、フェニックス大である。カナダにもテレラーニング卓越センター、オーストラリアにも遠隔学習連合、ドイツにもベルリンバーチャル大、フランスにもフランスオンライン大、韓国にも公開サ
イバー大などがある。
日本でも、情報通信技術を活用した遠隔教育が始まっている。昨年度から、同時双方向のテレビ
会議形式の遠隔授業で６０単位まで単位認定ができるようになっているが、これが近くインターネット
による教育に拡充される可能性がある。
平成１２年６月１日生涯学習審議会は、「新しい情報通信技術を活用した生涯学習の推進方策について（中間まとめ）」を発表した。そこでは、大学・短期大学・高等専門学校で、「今後は、衛星通信や
インターネットなどを活用して、広く全国に高度な学習機会を提供するなど、より一層地域に開かれた
高度な学習機会の提供拠点としての役割を果たし、高度化した学習者のニーズに十分に対応できるようにすることが重要である」という指摘をしている。
平成１２年６月３０日大学審議会は、「グローバル時代に求められる高等教育の在り方について（審議の概要）」を発表した。そこでは、インターネットを活用した授業で６０単位までを認定できる、外国の大学のインターネットの授業単位を６０単位まで認定できる、
日本の大学がインターネットで海外に大学教育をし、６０単位まで単位認定できる、
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通信制の大学では、３０単位までインターネットで面接授業に変えることができる、という方向の提言をしている。これらが実現すれば、通信制の大学では、１２４単位全部をインターネットなどの遠隔教育で与えることができるようになるし、通学制の大学も海外に一層開かれたものになる。
こうした文教行政の追い風を受けて、いろいろな遠隔教育が展開している。先駆は、メディア教
育開発センターに中央局を置くＳＣＳである。スペース・コラボレーション・システムといって、大学間の同時双方向の授業交換システムである。現在、１２０大学等に１４３の地上局が設置され、講義、ゼミ、研究会等を大学間で交換している。京都大学、東京大学等大きな大学には、複数の地上局が置かれている。私立大学も、早稲田大学、慶応大学、東海大学、法政大学、同志社大学、関西大学等が参加している。放送大学も地上局をもっている。年間３０００時間が使われている。ふつう２チャンネルが同時並列で使えるので、いわば宇宙に２つの衛星教室がある形である。１チャンネルあたり、週日に５時間前後使われている勘定になる。
昨年から６０単位までこの形の遠隔授業で単位をとれることになっているので、単位を出す授業もある。
そのほか、大学病院の間を高精細度画像で結び、医学教育に役立てる，ＭＩＮＣＳ−ＵＨというシステムも稼働している。北海道情報大学は、通信教育部で、全国に散在する１６の分校に通信衛星で講義を送り、同時に地上系のシステムで双方向性を確保し、毎日午後９０分３コマの講義をしている。
東京工業大学と一橋大学は，ＡＮＤＥＳというシステムを使って授業の交換をしている。
１方向ではあるが、放送大学、東亜大学も講義を通信衛星を使って全国放送している。国立教育会館を中央局として、１４００の教育センター、社会教育施設、学校に地上局を置く、エル・ネットも、
オープン・カレッジとして、５０大学の公開講座を放送している。
この２年くらいの間で急速に発展しているのが、インターネットやテレビ会議システムを活用したいわゆるバーチャル・ユニバーシティである。日本でも、海外の大学と連携する事例が目立っている。
三重大学、三重県立看護大学、岩手県立大学、東京大学、ノース・カロライナ大学ウィルミント
ン校の間で、英語、看護学、情報科学の授業、シンポジウム、公開講座、討論などが行われている。英語の場合は、正規の授業の一部としておこなわれ、三重大学、岩手県立大学、ノース・カロライナ大学
からそれぞれ１０人程度の学生が参加した。テレビ会議システムを使うが、情報学は、アメリカからのインターネット授業である。。
青山学院大学では、大学院国際政治経済学研究科国際ビジネス専攻で、アメリカのカーネギー・
メロン大学経営管理研究科と正規の合同授業を行っている。ファイナンス教育を、テレビ会議方式で実施している。また、総合ビジネスの授業を非同期協調学習で実施している。京都大学総合情報メディア
センターは、ＡＴＭ専用線を利用して，ＵＣＬＡと「情報メディア論」を正規の授業として実施している。また、「宇宙物理」、「物理学入門」も正規の授業として実施している。早稲田大学では、海外の大学と、英語、マルチメディア、総合講座等の授業を、ＣＵ−ＳｅｅＭｅ、ＴｅｌｅＭｅｅｔなどを活用
して、授業交流を行っている。国際情報通信研究科では、ベトナム郵電工科大学に、情報通信技術に関する講義をテレビ会議で送っている。富山大学の人文学部では、「比較社会実習、同演習、教養原論演習」をドイツの３大学との間で実施している。方法は、ウェッブ、メーリングリストを中心として、部
分的にテレビ会議を用いている。東京都立科学技術大学とスタンフォード大学は、「協調工学特論」を正規の授業として、インターネット、テレビ会議で実施している。講義ではなく、協同プロジェクトである。中央大学、シンガポール国立大学、シンガポールポリテクニック、大阪府立大学、駒沢大学は、「情報処理」「上級英語」「マクロ経済学」を正規の授業としてＩＳＤＮを用い実施している。そのほか、国内の大学にまたがる遠隔教育を実施している事例もある。ＳＣＳの他に、早稲田大学と１６大学、豊橋技術科学大学と３高専等である。日本大学、慶応大学、高知工科大学等も実践を重ねている。

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これらの教育を充実させるためには、ウェブ教材を整備する必要がある。現在教材作成、管理、評価などのシステムの標準化の研究が進んでいる。また、教材、素材のデータベース、パッケージ型の教材の開発がメディア教育開発センターを中心に展開している。
こうして、バーチャル・ユニバーシティが世界規模に広がると、世界各地の学習者が世界のどの地域の大学の提供するコースを、自由にインターネットなどを通して学習できるようになる。

学校教育におけるインターネット活用
学校教育でも、インターネットの普及は急速に伸びており、文部省の計画では、２００１年には、すべての学校にインターネットを導入するという方針である。平成１１年７月と１２月に発表され、今現実に移されているバーチュアルエージェンシーの計画では、２００５年を目指して、•すべての教室にコンピュータ•

すべての教室からインターネット•

すべての学校から高速インターネットを整備するという勢いである。
新しい学習指導要領での学習は、このようなインターネットを活用したものになってくる。それに今、有効に使われ始めたテレビ会議システムも加わり、学校を巡るネットワーク環境は、充実したものになる。学習指導要領では、教科などでのコンピュータや情報ネットワークの活用、総合的な学習の時間での活用が推奨されているが、さらに、中学校の技術・家庭科の技術分野の「Ｂ情報とコンピュー
タ」および高等学校での「情報Ａ，Ｂ，Ｃ」で情報通信技術が指導される。
学校現場では、これまで、１００校プロジェクト、こねっとプラン、現在進行中のＥスケア、郵政省の補正予算を受けて展開している、先端的な情報通信技術の活用等国家的プロジェクトを中心に、各都道府県市町村がそれぞれ独自にインターネットを導入して、地道な成果を上げてきている。
インターネットには、世界の英知がつながっている。博物館、科学館、大学、研究所、企業、官庁、民間有識者等が、自分の専門に関する貴重で正確な情報を、ウェッブページで公開している。その背後にはそれらの情報を作る人が居る。不明な点があれば、時には、ｅ−メイル等で、直接情報を提供してくれたり、質問に答えてくれたりする。従来なら、自分で出かけ、図書資料、博物館の資料等を調べるだけの時間と労力を必要としていたのが、ネットワークを通して直接海外からでも欲しい情報が即座に手に入る。
ネットワークを通して手に入る情報を、教師は、教材作成の素材として有効に活用できる。Ｙａｈｏｏ，Ｇｏｏ、Ｉｎｆｏｓｅｅｋ等の一般的な検索エンジンをとおして欲しい情報に接近することができるが、欲しい情報に行き着くまでが時には、なかなか大変である。そのような事態に対応して、教材のリンク集もできていて便利である。たとえば、文学、古典、方言、習慣、宇宙、天文、気象、魚、
昆虫、酸性雨、植物、水族館、科学館などのＵＲＬのリストである。
これらのウェッブページの中には、子ども向けの易しいわかりやすい解説を提供しているサイトがある。直接子どもの調べ学習に役に立つ。
行き届いた指導をする教師なら、外部から一旦手に入れた一般向けの情報を、子どもの学習水準にあわせて、内容、表現を変えて、学校のコンピュータに入れておき、授業で子どもに検索させて調べ学習をさせる。準備が大変なので、できるだけ多くの情報の提供者が、一般向け、英文と並んで子ども向けの情報をウェッブ等で提供してくれると助けになる。

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こねっとＧｏｏなどは、子どもの学習向けに作成された検索エンジンである。限られた授業時間の中で、必要な情報を手早く見つけるのに役立つ。動物、植物、昆虫、気象、地震等身近な現象について、いろいろと疑問が沸く。教師の知識だけでは追いつかない場合も多い。そのようなとき、図鑑、資料集等で調べるほか、地域の専門家の応援を受けることがある。動物に詳しい父母、植物に詳しい高齢者、昆虫について博識な人、地域の風俗しきたりに詳しい人、芸術、スポーツに秀でた人、こうした人の助けは大変にありがたい。
このような集団が、ネットワーク上に控えていて、子ども達の質問に応えてくれるとすればすばらしい。全国的な組織になってどの学校からでも対応できるようになれば良い。現在でも、いくつかの研究者仲間やお助けメール等の形で、恵まれた学校が支援を受けることが行われている。
これらは、ネットワークの向こうにいるのが、優れた世界の英知であって、教師や子ども達は、もっぱら知の源泉から学ぶという形である。
しかし、ネットワークの向こうには、学校仲間が沢山いる。これらの仲間が協同、協調、協力した学習する機会は数多い。
身近な地域の特長、社会、しきたり、方言、動物、植物、昆虫、気象、地質、等についてそれぞれが調べた結果をまとめてインターネットやテレビ会議で他の学校と報告し合う。さらに進んで、酸性雨、同じ植物の種の発芽状況、ある日の気象、ある時刻の太陽の位置等を計画的に、各地の学校で一斉に調べて、比較検討する。ネットワークのおかげで、全国的、あるいは、全世界的な観点から、自分の身近な自然現象や社会現象を眺め、その中に自分の身近な現象だけを見ていては分からない大きな自然の規則性を見いだすことができる。
ひまわりの画像と各学校に設置されたカメラからインターネットに送られる当地の気象状況を全国的に眺めるとき、台風や前線の動きが活きて理解できる。
現在のところ、ネットワークを活用して教育の効果を上げている事例の多くは、社会科や理科の第２分野に属する現象についての学習である。社会の名物、風習、しきたり、方言、植物、動物、昆虫、
火山、地震、地形、地質、天候、気象、天体の見え、等は、地域によって大きく違う。その違いがどんな原因によるのかを全国的な見方で総合的に見ると社会や自然界に潜む規則性が生き生きと理解できる。
もちろん、一つ一つの社会的風習、動物、植物、地質等の個々の部位などのしくみや名称を学ぶことも大切ではあるが、
ネットワークはそれよりはもっと広い見方で社会や自然現象を見ることを教えてくれる。同じ季節なのに北と南では着ているものが違う、北海道が暑いのに、九州は、みぞれが降っているという現実が存在しうることが体験でき、それが気象条件の配置と関連して学習できる。図鑑、資料集
や身近な現象の観察記録だけからはとうていとらえられない貴重な経験が得られる。
ＥａｒｔｈＫＡＭというＮＡＳＡの計画では、スペースシャトル・エンデバーのデジカメを遠隔操作して地球の写真を取り、中学生の理科学習に貢献しようとする。日本の中学校も参画して、デジカメの指示を英語で入力し、地球のいろいろな場所の写真をまさに地球規模で手に入れて学習することができる。
ネットワークの長所の一つは、情報を発信するところにある。情報を世界から取ってくるだけがネットワークなのではない。調査結果、実験観察の結果をまとめ、わかり易く表示し、世界に向かって発信する。そのために、慎重に下調べをし、丁寧に厳密に調査、実験をし、現象を記録測定し、きれいに図示し、解説をつける。このような一連の調べ表現活動がきちんとした学習技能を育ててくれる。

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総合的な学習の時間での活用
こんどの学習指導要領では、各教科の授業時間が減り、ともなって、学習内容も減っている。そのかわり、総合的な学習の時間が創設された。
総合的な学習のねらいは、
１． 自ら課題を見つけ、自ら学び、自ら考え、主体的に判断し、よりよく問題を解決する
資質や能力を育てること
２． 学び方やものの考え方を身につけ、問題の解決や探求活動に主体的、創造的に通り組む態度を育て、自己の生き方を考えることができるようにすることである。具体的な学習活動としては、
a．

自然体験やボランティア活動等の社会体験、観察・実験、見学・調査、発表。討論、ものづくり・生産活動等体験的な学習、問題解決的な学習を積極的に取り
入れること

b．

グループ学習や異年齢集団による学習等の多様な学習形態、地域の人々との協力も得つつ、全教師が一体となって指導に当たる等の指導体制、地域の教材や学習環境の積極的な活用等について工夫することが示されている。

ネットワークを上手に活用した事例として、「食べ物が危ない」という有名な実践がある。東京の南砂東小学校と石川、鳥取の小学校の間でインターネット、テレビ会議をとおして、米の栽培をした授業である。
東京の５年生の子どもが、市販のおにぎりに沢山の添加物が入っているのに気づき、調べたとこ
ろ、有機栽培米のお弁当、何も書いてないもの等が見つかった。そこで、食品添加物や農薬について学
習して、その危険なことを知り、なぜ危険なものを使うのかと疑問を持ち、自分たちで有機栽培米を作ることにした。石川の小学校にｅ−メイルで、苗を送ってもらう。その中にヒルが紛れ込んでいるのにびっくり。本格的に苗を送ってもらうときにゲンゴロウやヒルも注文する。石川の方は、なぜヒル等が欲しいのが不思議に思う。こうして子ども達は地域の差に気づいていく。東京、石川それに鳥取の小学校が加わり３校の交流学習が始まった。各校が稲の成長の様子をホームページで紹介した。ある時、鳥取の小学校のホームページに足のないカエルの写真が出た。調べると農薬のせいらしいことがわかり、東京の子ども達は農薬反対のテレビ会議をもちかけた。当然同意してくれると思ったら、鳥取の子ども
は、農薬を使わないと見た目の良い米ができず、都会の人に買ってもらえないと納得してもらえなかった。そこで消費者にアンケートを出したところ、見た目がよく安全で安い米を望んでいることが分かった。
農薬を使った場合と使わなかった場合の良いところだけを要求している消費者のわがままに気づく。石川、鳥取の子どもも、農薬の危険性に気づき調査をする。すると都会と農村で、農薬に対する受け止め方が大きく違うことを見つける。
こうして立場による違いやそれを総合的に判断する必要性を学んでいく。
中干しの水抜きの時には、東京の人工水田はコンクリートの上にビニールで作っているので、虫が死んでしまう。農村では、水路があり虫や魚は逃げていく。そこでまた環境について学ぶ。都会の
水田は子ども達がいつも世話をし、雀よけも張り、まさに過保護水田であった。石川の方は、減農薬、鳥取の方は、ウンカの発生のため農薬を使った。収穫した米を農協で評価してもらったところ、鳥取の米が一番高く、石川が次ぎ、東京の有機栽培米は最低であった。基準には、農薬を使ったかどうかは入っていない。そこでホームページで無農薬栽培の農家を探し、どうしているかを尋ね、生産者の値段を理解して買ってくれる消費者が居る、生産者と消費者の信頼関係が大事ということが分かる。このような学習をとおして、どの立場からも、農薬を減らしていきたいということを考え、それがなぜ実現しないかを追求していく。そしてその疑問を環境庁の方に聞いてもらう。
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このような主体的で活きた学習は、ネットワークがなければとうていなり立たない。
今、大切なこと子どもたちは、インターネットから学んでいる。
インターネットの役割は、•世界の英知を集める•

地域文化を見つめ直す・•

広域交流で学校を開く•

異文化交流・異文化尊重•

世界に発信できる内容をつくるなどにある。
しかし、インターネットの弊害もある。
有害情報に満ちているからである。
従って教育には、有害情報を防ぐ工夫がいる。ファイヤーウオールを張る、情報にレイティング
をつけ、受ける際にフィルターをかける等である。これでも情報は漏れるし、必要な情報が届かなくな
るので、むしろ、有益な情報を選んで充実させ、それを子どもに与える工夫が有効である。与えたい情報のリンク集の整備である。
情報発信についても、プライバシーを守る、誤情報を出さない、中傷、悪口、いたずらなどの有害情報を出さない、知的所有権を重視する、ネット独占をしない等の情報倫理を子ども達に身につけさせることが大切である。

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Starting Over: Tips on Learning English
This article is primarily in Japanese and therefore not all of it
may be readable without the Japanese version of Acrobat.

Masa-aki Ohsugi
Seisen University, Japan

Abstract
The title presupposes that there are people who started learning English some time ago but have notpracticed it or studied it. It also presupposes that the majority of the audience is at least interested in learning
English, or rather in starting it all over again. I do not believe we should emphasize the fact that they arestarting it again. It is true that learning a foreign language is a long and frustrating process that can be compared to a marathon. But we should remember that there is no such thing as a “finish line” in foreign language
learning. Let us ask one question. What kind of audience are we thinking of? High school students? No.
College students? No. We are probably thinking of adult learners who are in their late twenties, thirties, forties,
fifties, sixties, even seventies and upward. Therefore I assume that they are not in the regular school setting or
school environment although some of them may be going to private language schools. Since they have noteacher to guide them, it is important that they become independent learners. In the latter part of my talk, I
would like to make some specific suggestions and possibly give them some tips on learning English, such as
taking part in international or intercultural activites held in their respective localities, listening to some ofNHK’s English programs (e.g. Kiso Eigo, Eikaiwa Nyuumon).

基本的な理解そもそもことばの学習には始めはあるが終わりはない。外国語もまさに然りで、どれほど上達したとしても、練習をやめたり、使わなくなれば力は落ちる。語彙は減り、話し、書くスピードも表現力も衰える。従って、外国語の学習は続けることだけで十分意味があると言ってもよい。
「やり直し」は「始め」があったが続いていないということになる。しかし、水泳や自転車の例でも、何年かしていな
かったからと言っていきなり溺れたり、乗れずに倒れるということはまずない。
「やり直す」といっても一から出直す必要はない。続けなかったのは恐らくあまり必要がなかったからに違いない。
「やり直す」人の中に本当に必要な人がどのくらいいるのかわからない。ただ、仕事その他で具体的な必要性がない人でも「楽しい」「面白い」「興味がある」「知りたい」「自分をもっと知的で豊かな人間にしたい」といったいろいろな理由で外国語を勉強することができる。要は、せっかくやり直す気になったのであれば、なるべく続くように工夫してつきあっていくことである。

なぜ英語を学ぶのか「やり直しの英語」あるいは「英語再入門」にあてはまる学習者は (a) カルチャー・スクール、英会話学校といった何らかの教室に生徒として通っている (b) 本を読む、ラジオを聞く、テレビを見る、といった方法で独学している (c) 特になにもしていない、に大別できるが、ではなぜ英語をやるのかとなると、その理由・目的は多岐に渡る。大別すると (a) 実利的理由と (b) 楽しみ・趣味のためとなる。
(a) は言うまでもなく、仕事や商売に必要、あるいは英語ができることで金銭かそれに類する利益が得られるというものである。(b) はさらに、(i) 海外旅行をより楽しむため、(ii) 外国映画を字幕なしでわかるようになりたい、(iii) 外国人と知り合いたい。それにより友人も増え、外国についての知識も増える、(iv) そしてさらに具体的に、ホーム・ステイのホストになって外国人を迎えてあげたい、それにより国際親善に貢献し、自分の国際理解にもなる、(v) 英語で書かれた文学作品を原書で読めるようにな
りたい。
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目指す英語力と学習方法(i) から (iv) までの目的は聞き取る能力と話す能力が中心になり、読む能力、書く能力は二次的なものとなる。しかし (v) は読む能力が中心であり、これによりそれぞれの学習方法は明らかに異なる。
少なくとも中心になる学習活動が異なってくる。さらに言えば、使用すべき辞書さえも異なると言ってもよい。基本的な文法知識があるという前提だが、話す、書くといった productive な活動を助けるような辞書には collocation に関する情報が不可欠である。動詞、名詞、形容詞、副詞といった語群のひとつひとつの語がそれぞれどんな語と結びつき、どう展開できるかが示されている辞書が必要だ。
「ジーニアス」「ライトハウス」「プロシード」その他の英和辞典やオックスフォード、コリンズ、ロングマン
といったイギリスの出版社の学習者用辞典がこれにあたる。一方、「読んで楽しむ」ためだけならばそういった情報はあまり要らない。むしろ収録語数が多いことが必要である。英米を中心とした英語圏の小説、詩、劇、雑誌を読む際知らない語を引いて載っていないということがまずないというくらいの語数が欲しい。
「ランダムハウス英和」や研究社の「大英和」では大きすぎるという場合には「リーダーズ」であろう。

学習方法と提案
いくつかの提案をしたい。(a) まず、自分の住む地域の国際交流活動に参加してみる。地域セン
ター、国際交流センター、善意通訳協会といった団体に問い合わせるとよい。Think Globally, Act Locally の標語の意味と英語を学ぶ意味が体得できる。これを通じて日本文花を紹介する。(b) パッケージの団体旅行ではなく個人で海外旅行をしてみる。
自分で主体的に外国人とコミュニケーションをする難
しさ、楽しさを体験し、英語学習に新たな動機が加わる。同時に、メニュー、T‑ シャツ、看板、注意
書き、広告といった「街の英語」に関心を持ち、メモやノートをつくり写真に撮る。このようにして外国語学習に必要な観察力を養い、英語のおもしろさを知る。(c) 日常的には NHK の英語番組を聞く／
見る習慣をつける。(d) 語彙を増やすために家の中にある物を表す英語を書いた Post-it をすべての物にはり時々言って覚える。(e) 家にある外国製品のラベルや使用法などの英語を読む。

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Action Research:
Four Skills Integrated Teaching for High School Students in Osaka
Yasuyuki Mizohata
Oral Communication SIG
All Osaka Senior High School
English Teachers’ Association, Japan
Abstract
Oral Communication Special Interest Group (OCSIG) is a group of senior high school English teachersin Osaka. OCSIG did Action Research involving a class of eleventh graders, a practitioner (this writer) and ten
observers (senior high school English teachers in Osaka). Forty senior high school students were instructedusing a textbook Talk about Osaka edited by OCSIG. The group set up a hypothesis; four-skills integrated
activities in this textbook will motivate learners, resulting in improving the learners’ all-round English abilities.
Parts of the interactions in class were videotaped and the group analyzed them. For the analysis, the groupdeveloped a checklist and collected scores according to it. Questionnaires to grasp the preferences and confidence of students to discuss particular topics about Osaka were administered. Pre and post-proficiency tests
were used to evaluate students’ improvements in proficiency.

Introduction
This paper is to report Action Research conducted by Oral Communication Special Interest Group (OCSIG)
in 1999 and 2000. Some English teachers seek practical hints without any kind of theoretical framework, believingthat theory is useless in the classrooms. The group acknowledged the significance of Action Research for the
purpose of bridging the gap between theory and practice.

Oral Communication Special Interest Group (OCSIG)
Oral Communication Special Interest Group (OCSIG) is a group of senior high school English teachers in
different schools in Osaka. Since the courses of studies by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture implemented Oral Communication in 1994, the group has been working to contribute to English education. In 1998
OCSIG compiled a textbook that was used for this Action Research.

Textbook: Talk about Osaka
The textbook which OCSIG compiled aims at enhancing students’ confidence in communicative use ofEnglish. OCSIG members tried to include the successful lesson plans in actual class situations in the textbook. It
consists of six main lessons and deals with familiar topics in Osaka as in Table 1. Each lesson contains four-skills
integrated activities as follows: (a) vocabulary, (b) listening, (c) model dialogues, (d) pair work, (e) short passage
reading, and (f) guided writing. Some lessons have information gap type exercises, interview and survey type
exercises and free compositions based on brainstorming.

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Table 1. Contents
LessonPages

Features1.

Have a good time in Osaka

4

Pair Practice, Guided Writing

2.

Shopping in Osaka

4

Pair Practice, Guided Writing

3.

Festivals in Osaka

4

Interview, Guided Writing

4.

Language in Osaka

6

Information Gap, English Rakugo, Guided Writing

5.

Living in Osaka

7

Osaka Trivia Questions, Survey, Free Composition

6.

Future of Osaka

4

Ranking, Free Composition

A Rationale for Action ResearchCarr and Kemmis offer the following definition of Action Research:
a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own practices, their understanding of these practices, and thesituations in which these are carried out (1985, pp. 220-1).
OCSIG basically accepted this definition while putting it in educational settings.
The group also supported Nunan’s (1989, p. 102) five core principles as a rationale for Action Research.
1.

School-based: Strong bonds should be forged between the research and practice.

2.

Experiential: Theory and principles should be tested out in practice.

3.

Problem-centered: Problems exist in real classrooms. Teaching and research should be conducted towards the identification and solution of such problems.

4.

Developmental: Teaching is a complex human undertaking. Teachers are at different stages ofdevelopment.

5.

Open-ended: Professional development is unending, continual and lifelong.

CHECK
1. Received
Knowledge:
Questionnaire
Results

10. Postinvestigation

5. Preinvestigation

2. Problems

7. Practice

8. Reflection

4. Hypothesis

9. Professional
Competence

6. Pre-test

11. Post-test

3. Previous
experiential
knowledge

Figure 1. Action research cycle adapated from Wallace (1991)
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Action Research Cycle
Action Research involves small-scale investigative projects and consists of a number of phases which recurin cycles. The group set up the following eleven phases for Action Research in Figure 1, adapting Wallace’s (1991)
idea.
1.

Received Knowledge: To help identify the problem, already received knowledge should be utilized.
OCSIG had already administered questionnaires to English teachers in Osaka twice.

2.

Problems: OCSIG members discussed the questionnaire results to identify problems as well as
they brought the problems from their own classrooms.

3.

Previous Experiential Knowledge: To set up a hypothesis, previous experiential knowledge
was utilized. OCSIG members had more than fifteen years of teaching experience.

4.

Hypothesis: OCSIG set up a hypothesis to solve the problems.

5.

Pre-investigation: Data were collected by administering a questionnaire.

6.

Pre-test: Data were collected by administering a pre-test to assess students’ proficiency level.

7.

Practice: Lesson plans were made and put into practice.

8.

Reflection: The effects of action were assessed by using a checklist. Points for improvement
were discussed for the next action.

9.

Professional Competence: Reflection phase contributed to raising the participating teachers’(the observers as well as the practitioner) professional competence.

10.

Post-investigation: The hypothesis was tested by administering a questionnaire.

11.

Post-test: The hypothesis was tested by administering a post-test to assess students’ improvement of proficiency level.

Problem Identification (1. Received Knowledge and 2. Problems Phase)
OCSIG administered two questionnaires in 1994 and in 1996 to the teachers in Osaka. The purpose of thequestionnaires was to investigate how Oral Communication classes were conducted and to help discuss what
problems teachers were facing. The group examined the questionnaire results and the problems from their own
classrooms were considered. The following problems were pointed out to initiate Action Research.
1.

Different System: Japanese language is distant from English in terms of phonology, syntax andculture. This creates difficulties in implementing oral practice in class and getting active participation from students.

2.

Lack of Motivation: Students in general know they can live comfortably without learning English. Teachers acknowledge that students think they have no need to study English.

3.

Declining Learning Abilities: In most educational occasions students tend to easily lose concentration. The same instructions and explanations sometimes must be repeated over and overso that the teachers can ensure students understanding. Even teachers with much experienceshare the same problem and it seems undeniable that students’ over-all abilities in academic
fields are in decline.

4.

Gaps of Abilities in One Class: In a worst case scenario there would be a few students who
don’t know the alphabet and a few students who want to take proficiency test outside school inthe same class.

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Difficulty in Improving Proficiency: Some students study only for the test. After the test is overthey apparently forget almost everything that was taught. It seems quite difficult to raise thelevel of students’ English proficiency in the long run.

Hypothesis (3. Previous Experiential Knowledge and 4. Hypothesis phases)
How these problems could be solved was discussed. After the discussion OCSIG set up the following
hypothesis.
Four-skills integrated activities with familiar topics to discuss in this textbook will motivate
learners, resulting in improving the learners’ all-round English abilities.

Plan (7. Practice)
The practitioner taught 40 students using the textbook from November 1999 to January 2000 with an intervalof winter vacation for two weeks. In total 14 consecutive class hours, each of which consisting of 50 minutes, wereconducted and some scenes were videotaped. To cover one lesson, average two class hours were spent. Classroom
English was used as often as possible by the practitioner. There were some occasions when students had difficultyin comprehending what they were supposed to do. In those cases, Japanese was used. When students needed to ask
questions as for the meaning of (a) word(s), example sentences were given by the practitioner. In addition to thepractitioner’s English, students had chances to listen to the native speakers’ recording accompanied with the textbook. A couple of supplementary worksheets were prepared for each lesson so that activities could be performed
easily.

Checklist Analysis Watching the Video (8. Reflection Phase)
OCSIG members watched the video to analyze the instruction. For the analysis of the instruction, a checklist
with the following categories in Tables 2-5 was prepared. Each instruction was evaluated by eleven observers
including the practitioner on a 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent) scale utilizing this checklist.
Warm-up and Readiness At the beginning of each lesson, the practitioner always prepared a warm-up
activity. Jazz chants like rhythm practice, flash-cards, two types of listening activities; 1) cloze-type listening
reviewing the dialogue and 2) listening that utilizes students’ writing were used for warm-up activities. 4.02 points
were marked in Table 2 - 1.
Grasping Students’ Comprehension As you can see in Table 2 - 2, in this category, how much the practitioner grasped the students’ understanding was assessed. The evaluation was based on subjective judgments by theobservers.

Table 2. Warm-up and Students’ Comprehension1

Warm-up

4.02

2

Grasping students’ comprehension

3.99

Input Related Techniques during the Instruction In the categories in Table 3, how effectively the input
related techniques were utilized during the snstruction was evaluated.
3.

Visual Aids: The textbook included colorful pictures and illustrations. As a matter of course
clear images were successfully presented to students without elaborating extra visual aids.

4.

Topics: Main themes were all familiar to students.

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5.

Vocabulary: Vocabulary was effectively presented through warm-up activities and matchingactivities. To review the previous lessons, mini vocabulary quizzes were occasionally used.

6.

Information: Instead of word-by-word translation, transferring information was emphasized.
For this purpose, the semantic aspects of individual lexical items were more significantly treatedthan syntax. Enough time was secured for vocabulary learning at the beginning of each lesson,
so there were no major pitfalls in this category.

7.

Explanation: In explaining the meaning of lexis students did not know, example sentences wereused by the practitioner. Most of the time students enjoyed guessing the meaning from theexample sentences or contexts given. Only when they had difficulty in reaching the correct
meaning, their first language, Japanese, was utilized.

8.

Instruction: Generally every lesson was consistent in organization. In the first lesson, the practitioner had to exactly tell students what to do and often repeated the same instruction. Even
after elaborating the way of instruction, major points had to be summarized in Japanese. However, as they continued to study the following lessons, there was no need to add instructions inJapanese except for moving into completely new activities.

Table 3. Input Related Techniques
3

Use of visual aids

3.90

4

Topic presentations

4.40

5

Vocabularly

4.47

6

Information presentation

4.42

7

Clarity of information

4.38

8

Clarity of instuction

3.97

Four Skills As you can see in Table 4, to what extent four skills were practiced in each class was evaluated.
In comparison to the ordinary English teaching in Japan, more listening and writing activities were conducted.

Table 4. Four Skills
9

Listening

4.47

10

Reading

3.18

11

Speaking

3.18

12

Writing

4.07

Activities The purpose of the activity was checked and the results were shown in Table 5. In the categories
of variety and accuracy, the instructions were highly evaluated. However in the categories of creativity and fluency, it was less highly evaluated.

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Table 5. Activity Purposes
13

Variety

4.18

14

Fluency

2.36

15

Accuracy

3.56

16

Creativity

2.78

Preferences and Confidence Questionnaire (5. Pre-Investigation and 10. Post-investigation Phase)
Questionnaires to grasp the preferences and confidence level of students to discuss the following particular
topics about Osaka were administered two times, before and after the instructions.
Ten topics:(1) fun spots, (2) festivals, (3) dialect, (4) art (Rakugo, Manzai), (5) sports, (6) food, (7) personality of thelocals, (8) figures in history, (9) future, (10) problems in Osaka.
The results of the pre and post-investigations were compared in Figures 2 and 3. The student answered on a
1 (strong no ) to 5 (strong yes) scale. 1JS means that on the topic 1) fun spots in Osaka, the student wants to speakin Japanese. 1CS means that the student is confident in speaking in English. 1CW means that the student isconfident in writing in English. For the lack of space, the results of one concrete topic, fun spots in Osaka, and an
abstract one, problems in Osaka, are shown in Figure 2 and 3.

Concrete Topic5

On the topic of “Fun Spots in Osaka”

4

1JS: willing to speak in Japanese

3

1ES: willing to speak in English

2

1EW: willing to write in English

1

1CD: confident in speaking in English

0

IJS
1

IES
2
pre

IEW
3
post

ICS
4

ICW
5

1CW: confident in writing in English

Figure 2. Preferences and confidence / Fun spots
In the pre-investigation, this particular group of students preferred writing better than speaking in English.
They felt safer in writing because time is secured in writing. In comparison to the score of 1JS(speak in Japanese
about fun spots in Osaka), there is a remarkable decrease in 1ES(speak in English about fun spots in Osaka).
In the post investigation, a remarkable increase was seen in 1ES(speak in English about fun spots in Osaka).
In this category the score went up from 1.7 to 2.8. This means that more students became positive in speaking in
English after the instruction.

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On the topic of “Problems in Osaka”

5

OJS: willing to speak in Japanese

4

OES: willing to speak in English

3

OEW: willing to write in English

2

OCD: confident in speaking in English

1
0

Next paper

OCW: confident in writing in English
OJS
1

OES
2

OEW
OCS
3
4
pre
post

OCW
5

Figure 3. Preferences and confidence / Problems
In Figure 3, the questionnaire results concerning one of the abstract topics, problems in Osaka, is displayed
In the pre-investigation, in all the categories except for OJS, the score was less than 2 points (no). In each category,the score was much lower than that of a concrete topic.
In the post-investigation, a small increase in OJS (speak in Japanese about problems in Osaka: from 2.4
to2.6) and OES(Speak in English about problems of Osaka: from 1.6 to 1.9) was seen. On the other hand, there
were a small decrease in EW, CS and CW. Actually, they produced a larger number of sentences in the latter
chapters, but the impression that they had to write on abstract matters seemed to influence the questionnaire results
negatively. The findings in Figure 3 show it is more difficult to deal with abstract matters.

Pre and Post proficiency Test (6. Pre-Test and 11. Post-Test Phase)To evaluate students’ improvement in proficiency, pre and post-tests were constructed based on the third
Grade Step test administered by the Society for Testing English Proficiency, Inc. Each test was adapted so thatstudents could take the test in fifty minutes. Pre-test was administered before the first instruction in September andpost-test after the last instruction in January. They consisted of the five test item categories in Table 5 and the
difficulty level of each test was roughly maintained at the same level according to the data of the previous test
takers.
In order to compare the results of pre and post tests, a t-test analysis was used. The results were in Table 5.
The t-test results indicated the significance of differences in the categories of conversations (p<.005), ordering(p<.10), comprehension (p<.10) and total scores (p<.025).

Table 6. Pre-Post Proficiency Tests
Test Item Categories

NumberPreofMean SD
Questions

Post
Mean SDtp1

Idioms

13

7.8

2.1

8.0

2.1

0.40

2

Filling in the missing parts in conversations

7

4.2

1.5

5.3

1.2

3.55 .005

3

Putting words in the correct order to make a sentence 3

1.9

0.7

2.1

0.6

1.41

.10

4

Comprehension of a passage

5

3.2

1.5

3.6

1.1

1.55

.10

5

Listening

12

6.3

2.2

6.1

1.7

0.78

NS

23.4

5.0

25.1

4.8

2.17

.025

Total 40NSn = 35
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Discussion (9. Professional Competence)
The Reflection phase contributed to improving professional competence of all the teachers who participatedin this Action Research. The practitioner himself realized points for improvement by watching the video. Unlesshe had watched the video, he would have not noticed these points. Three main self-reflection points by the practitioner are as follows.
1.

On some occasions the practitioner missed the chance to control the class. He should havegiven a concrete command to discipline the class.

2.

Information which should be written on the chalkboard should be reexamined. Sometimes toomuch information was presented at one time.

3.

When using classroom English, the practitioner sometimes spoke too fast.

The practitioner also raised his competence as a teacher because observer teachers pointed out merits anddefects of the instructions, which he would have not realized. From the observers many comments were presented,
which can be summarized as follows.
1.

At first, students were less motivated because they thought English is a completely different
language from Japanese. In the course of the lessons, the class atmosphere gradually turned
into a lively one.

2.

In comparison to the traditional grammar translation type instruction, there was more active
participation of the students and higher levels of concentration and involvement were attained.

3.

As for declining learning abilities, there were some occasions when some students were notable to follow the instruction for pair work. There is a need to improve how to demonstrate
before pair work.

4.

If more time had been allotted, writing in small groups could have been incorporated. Moreeffective use of group work may provide an answer to the gaps of abilities and class size problems.

5.

The fact that t-test indicated the significance of differences in the categories of conversations,ordering, comprehension and total scores partially supports the hypothesis.

Conclusion
This Action Research was the first collaborative teacher-researcher type attempt by OCSIG. The group tried
to maintain flexibility of the research so that it would not give the class and practitioner too many burdens. Thougha clear-cut proof of the hypothesis has not been attained, all the participants learned a lot from the reflection phase.
The writer especially benefited by getting constructive criticisms from the observers. Finally the group would liketo suggest that more teachers should have a teacher-researcher mind in order to bridge the gap between theory andpractice. Action Research surely can help teachers grow.

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References
Carr, W. and Kemmis S. (1985). Becoming critical: Knowing through action research, Victoria: Deakin University Press.
Nunan, D. (1989). Understanding language classrooms Prentice Hall.
Richards, J. C. & Lockhart, C. (1994). Reflective teaching in second language classrooms Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wallace, M. (1991). Action research for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Assessing a Computer-Assisted Training Program for the Acquisitionof Japanese Pitch: Cooperation among Foreign Language Instructors,
Linguists, Lab Directors/Managers and Technology Specialists
Yukari Hirata
Colgate University, U. S. A.

Karen L. Landahl
Mike S. Ziolkowski
Barbara Need
University of Chicago, U. S. A.
Abstract
We report on several projects and novel methodologies that assess the efficacy of a computer-assisted
training program for the acquisition of Japanese pitch. One question was whether a self-study program using
visual feedback of fundamental frequency contours and additional written materials (prosody graphs) was possible without an instructor interpreting the acoustics. Experiments were designed to obtain objective and interpretable results, and to test the incorporation of the program into a regular Japanese language curriculum. The
results indicate that the program is effective for the acquisition of Japanese pitch, and that sentence-level training is possible with the prosody graphs. The program affects both learners’ speaking and listening abilities. The
experiments also demonstrate that this training can effectively supplement a regular Japanese curriculum. These
projects have brought together a director and a manager of a language laboratory, foreign language instructors, phoneticians/linguists, and technology specialists: cooperation among them has proven valuable.Introduction

Introduction
Technology has brought us many opportunities to create materials for foreign language leaning, but wecannot always tell if the materials are useful, and what exactly they contribute to language acquisition, if anything.
Among the many products advertised and sold as language-learning aids, which are just fancy toys for momentarily
attracting students’ attention? Which are good for enrichment, and which can be incorporated into the regular
language curriculum?
One problem with currently available CALL programs is that we still lack methods for identifying the specific influences of the products, and for finding objective ways of measuring learners’ changing abilities while
using a product. These problems are complicated by Human Subjects issues encountered when conducting objective experiments in educational settings. For example, in order to obtain statistically meaningful results, researchers usually have to obtain a large amount of data by putting subjects into lengthy and exhausting experimental
sessions. For the language instructors, who are practical and concerned with their students’ educational needs, thisis not acceptable.
At the Language Laboratories and Archives of the University of Chicago, we have made efforts to solvethese problems by conducting experiments with novel methodologies that assess the efficacy of computer-assisted
training for the acquisition of Japanese pitch and duration (Hirata 1999a, 1999b; Lory & Hirata 1997; Landahl &Assessing a Computer-Assisted Training Program [Oral Presentation]

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Ziolkowski 1995, Ziolkowski & Landahl 1995; Landahl, Ziolkowski, Usami, & Tunnock 1992; Ziolkowski, Usami,
Landahl, & Tunnock 1992; Tunnock 1991). In this paper, we report on one of those projects, which utilized Kay
Elemetrics’ Visi-Pitch™ and later its CSL-Pitch Program. These programs enable us to see real-time representations of spoken utterances on a computer screen, and to compare a learner’s speech with that of a model. They
immediately exhibit the utterances’ fundamental frequency contours, which correspond to our perception of pitch.
However, what is seen on the screen is pure acoustics, not easily interpretable by non-phoneticians. For example, as
shown in the upper graphics in Figure 1 (on the next page), the word boundaries do not correspond to breaks in thefundamental frequency lines. The length of the line represents the duration of voiced speech, but it is sometimes
not clear if the line represents a short vowel or a long vowel. It is also not clear to the learner how steep a rise or afall is significant or ignorable.
To address the interpretation problem, we created prosody graphs as supplementary materials throughout
training. They were originally developed by Matsuzaki, Kushida, Tsukiji, & Kawano (1997). A prosody graph is aschematic description of how we perceive fundamental frequency contours and corresponds to our knowledge ofpitch height, words, and morae or rhythmic beats. The lower portion of Figure 1 shows examples of prosody
graphs. Circles represent each mora (or beat), and ovals represent bimoraic syllables such as long vowels. The
length of the vertical lines indicates perceived relative pitch height, and the horizontal lines at the bottom correspond to words or phrases.
Our first questions were: Is a self-study program using visual feedback of fundamental frequency contours
and prosody graphs possible without an instructor interpreting the acoustics? Does this program enhance the learners’ pronunciation and intelligibility? Second, given the difficulty in interpreting pure acoustics, would it ever bepossible for a learner on his/her own to practice with fluent sentences, as well as with isolated words? Third, istraining with the visual feedback program useful for the learners’ listening comprehension as well as speaking
abilities?
We addressed these questions using the facilities of the Language Laboratories and Archives at the University of Chicago, where the director and the manager make special efforts to bring together various professionals
and students who work on language. As a result, the space and facilities in the Labs are shared by traditional users
such as language instructors and their students, as well as by faculty and students in linguistics research supported
by technology specialists. This allowed us to create the project which we present in this paper.

MethodSubjects
Subjects were eight native speakers of English who were taking the intermediate Japanese course at the
University of Chicago. Traditionally, the experimental design for finding effects of training is as follows: thetraining group participates in a pre-test, training, and a post-test, and the researchers compare the results of these
two tests with those of a control group that does not participate in the training. This design, however, is problematicin a real educational setting, since language instructors do not want to give their students unequal opportunities. In
addition, if we asked for volunteers for each group, we might end up creating two groups that differ in theirmotivation, which defeats the purpose of an objective experiment. Therefore, we added a training session for thecontrol group after the two experimental tests had taken place. In this way, we gave both groups an equal opportunity to experience visual feedback, and the grouping procedure, therefore, could be completely random.

Training Procedure
Training materials included pairs and triplets of words contrasting in pitch or duration, or in both, e.g., ámevs. ame, tori vs. toori, and í-sho vs. i-Q-sho1 vs. i-Q-sho-o. Out of 10 training sessions, only the first three sessions

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i nu oso to de ka u

‘To have a cute dog outside’‘cute’‘to have pets’

ka wa i sa n wa o o ki i no o to o ta ku sa n ka u
‘Mr(s) Kawai buys many big notebooks’
kawai
kau

(surname)‘to buy’

Next paper

kawaíikáu

Previous paper

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Figure 1. Examples of fundamental frequency contours in Visi-PitchTM and prosody graphs

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dealt with words in isolation; the rest consisted of phrases or sentences. These utterances were recorded by four
native speakers of Japanese, 2 males and 2 females. This added difficulty for the learners in interpreting the fundamental frequency contours, but we believe that exposure to various voices is a necessary part of language learning.
To compensate for this difficulty, we created supplementary handouts.
1

Q here represents a geminate consonant.

A handout was made for each of the ten sessions, explaining how to pronounce the utterances with proper
pitch control using prosody graphs. Each session has a particular goal for subjects to focus on. Session 1 states
criteria for judging the goodness of the subjects’ productions. Variations resulting naturally from different speakers, speech rates and sentence lengths are systematically introduced and explained. These codings reflect cooperation between Japanese language instructors and linguists.
The training procedure was as follows: The subjects came individually to the Language Labs to practice with
Visi-PitchTM. In each of ten training sessions, subjects did the following:
1.

Read the handout,

2.

Opened each model audio file, e.g., kíru and kiru,

3.

Listened to the model tokens and watched their pitch patterns in real-time,4.

Produced the words on another empty window,

5.

Overlaid the model pitch contour onto their own pitch contour, and6.

Repeated the procedure, producing the same words until their pitch contours matched those of
the models.

Each session took about 30 minutes. The training sessions were completed in three and a half weeks.

Test Procedures
In order to assess the subjects’ changing abilities, we conducted production and perception tests before andafter the training. For production tests, 21 words were written on index cards using Japanese orthography, and thecards were randomized. A sentence frame was also written on a card. Subjects first repeated each word in the stackafter hearing it spoken by the examiner. Then, we recorded their production of the 21 words three times in isolation,and three times in the sentence frame. In each repetition, the words were presented in a different random order.
For perceptual tests, there were 60 words and 60 sentences in each. None of the utterances were ones that
subjects had practiced in training. The materials recorded by two female native speakers of Japanese were digitizedat 48 kHz on an SGI computer. The procedure for the perceptual test was for subjects to choose one of nine pitch
patterns for the word they heard on the computer. Subjects first clicked the play button on the computer screen tolisten to the word, and then clicked one of the pitch patterns displayed on the screen. For the sentence tests, a frame
sentence was written on the computer screen, e.g., Sokowa ___ to yonde kudasai. When subjects clicked the play
button, they heard a sentence that included the target word in the underlined location, e.g., Sokowa chizu to yonde
kudasai. Then the subjects chose the pitch pattern that matched the target chizu. The program in Tcl/Tk used in
Hirata (1999a and 1999b) was modified to execute this procedure. This program represents the input of the technology specialists and programmers.

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Results
Production tests
For the production tests, two native speakers identified all the utterances produced by subjects. For example,
one of the word sets included the following four words: tóku, toku, toQku, and tooku (‘to solve,’ ‘advantage,’ ‘along time before’, and ‘far away’), which were randomly presented and recorded. The native speakers were asked
which of the four words they thought the subjects intended to say. The number of the evaluators’ identifications
which matched the subjects’ intent was then calculated. Figure 2 shows the percentage of correct scores for the
training vs. the control groups averaged over the two evaluators. A difference between the training and the control
groups was found in the sentence tests; the amount of improvement from the pre-test to the post-test was 21% for
the training group, and 4.6% for the control group. That is, the intelligibility of the training group increased fromthe pre-test to the post-test, more than that of the control group. For the word test, improvement made by thetraining group was greater than that of the control group as well, but the difference between the two groups was less(11.9% vs. 5.8%).

Word Tests

Sentence Tests

Figure 2. Production test results
Perception tests
We found similar results for the perception tests. Figure 3 shows the subjects’ overall correct responses forthe pre-test and the post-test.
For the word tests, there was no difference in the amount of improvement between the training and thecontrol groups. However, for the sentence tests, there was a clear difference between the two groups. This meansthat the Visi-PitchÔ production training had an effect on the subjects’ perceptual ability, particularly at the sentence level.

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Figure 3. Perception test results
Perception vs. production tests
Next, we wanted to know how much each individual subject developed his/her perception and production
abilities after training. In Figure 4, the horizontal axis indicates the production test scores, and the vertical axis
indicates the perceptual test scores.
Each arrow represents each individual subject. The starting point of the arrow represents the subject’s pretest scores of production and perception, and the end point represents his/her post-test scores. The broken lines arefor control subjects, and solid lines are for training subjects.
The length of the arrows, which indicates the amount of overall improvement for perception and production,is longer for the training subjects than for the control subjects. For example, Training Subject A and Control
Subject G are located at a very similar point at the pre-test. However, a difference appeared in the post-test, inwhich subject A improved about 35% in the perception tests, while subject G showed a decrease in his perceptual
test scores.
Among the training subjects, variation was found with respect to the degree of perception and production
development. Two distinct patterns of development were found. Subjects B and D, as indicated by these horizontal
dark arrows, improved mostly on production, whereas subjects A and C, as shown in the more vertical whitearrows, improved more robustly on perception.
These are the results of the sentence tests, but for the word tests, there was no clear distinction between thetwo groups in terms of the overall length of the arrows.

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Figure 4. Results of perception and production improvement by individual subjects

Conclusion
In summary, the results indicate that (1) the training program with visual feedback is effective for the acquisition of Japanese pitch and duration, and that sentence-level training is possible with additional written materials.
Second, (2) this production training can affect both the learners’ production and perceptual abilities. Furthermore,
all the students successfully participated in the experiments while attending regular classes. This demonstrates that(3) the training program is an effective supplement to a regular Japanese curriculum.
Finally, the methodology used in this project suggests a new way of conducting systematic but non-disruptive experiments in educational settings. Furthermore, the project has brought together professionals in various
fields: a director and a manager of a language laboratory; foreign language instructors; phoneticians/linguists; andtechnology specialists. We have found that cooperation among these groups is extremely valuable. We believe thatthese professionals must continue working together to bridge the humanity/technology gap in foreign language
teaching and learning.
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References
Hirata, Y. (1999a). Acquisition of Japanese Rhythm and Pitch Accent by English Native Speakers. Doctoral
dissertation, University of Chicago, Ann Arbor: Bell & Howell.
Hirata, Y. (1999b). Effects of sentence- vs. word- level perceptual training on the acquisition of Japanese durational
contrasts by English native speakers. Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences,2, 1413-1416.
Landahl, K. L., & Ziolkowski, M. S. (1995). Discovering phonetics units: Is a picture worth a thousand words?
CLS 31: Papers from the 31st Regional Meeting of the Chi-cago Linguistic Society, 1995, Volume 1: The
Main Session. Ed. A. Dainora, R. Hemphill, B. Luka, B. Need, & S. Pargman. Chicago: Chicago LinguisticSociety, 294-316.
Landahl, K. L., Ziolkowski, M. S., Usami, M., & Tunnock, B. (1992). Interactive articulation: Improving accentthrough visual feedback. In I. Shinjo, K. L. Landahl, M. MacDonald, K. Noda, S. Ozeki, T. Shiozawa, & M.
Sugiura (Ed.), The Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Foreign Language Education
and Technology. (pp. 283-292). Kasugai, Aichi: The Language Laboratory Association of Japan.
Lory, H. & Hirata, Y. (1997). Individual-based Pronunciation Training Program in Japanese: Theory into Practice.
Proposal to the Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning.
Matsuzaki, H., Kushida, M., Tsukiji, Y., & Kawano, T. (1997). Inritsu shidoo no koomoku no teijijun ni tsuite.
Nihongo kyooiku gakkai dai 12 kai kenkyuu shuukai.
Tunnock, B. (1991). Computer-driven, Pedagogical Tools Toward the Acquisition of Japanese Accent. M.A.
Thesis, University of Chicago.
Ziolkowski, M. S. & Landahl, K. L. (1995). How successfully does visual feedback train listeners to produce andperceive non-native phonological contrasts? In K. Elenius and P. Branderud (Ed.), Proceedings of the XIIIthInternational Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 95). Vol. 1. (pp. 330-333). Stockholm: Department of
Speech Communication and Music Acoustics, Royal Institute of Technology, KTH and Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University.
Ziolkowski, M. S., Usami, M., Landahl, K. L., & Tunnock, B. (1992). How many phonologies are there in one
speaker? Some experimental evidence. In J. Ohala, T. Nearey, B. Derwing, M. Hodge, & G. Wiebe. (Ed.).
ICSLP 92 Proceedings: 1992 International Conference on Spoken Language Processing. (pp. 1315-1318).
Alberta: The University of Alberta.

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A Bilingual Voice-Synthesis Multimedia Mirror-Dictionary
for International EFL/JFL Education
Richard Gilbert
Ryoji Matsuno
Prefectural University of Kumamoto, Japan

Yutaka Tsutsumi
Kumamoto Gakuen University, Japan
Abstract
The development of a bilingual multimedia dictionary (BMD) for EFL and JFL learners is intended toprovide effective, computer-aided (CAI) multimedia instructional tools largely unavailable in conventional electronic translation dictionaries and CAI programs. BMD can show video clips of a native speaker demonstrating
English pronunciation, convert Japanese Kanji sentences into Hiragana, and can “speak” all sample sentencesin the database in both Japanese and English, utilizing text-to-speech voice-synthesis technology. Lexical word
associations related to word look-ups can be accessed. The goals embodied in developing the BMD are toaccelerate and enhance language learning for beginning students of Japanese or English, and to provide adual-language interface which can be easily accessed in a multiplicity of educational environments. By providing an interface that can be used by both English and Japanese language learners, and through planned implementation via inter/intranet, the dictionary can be utilized as a tool for international communication.

Introduction
There are various types of electronic dictionaries and software on the market, but not many are compiled forbeginners. A beginning-level CAI dictionary can incorporate features important to both EFL and JFL learners.
First, many EFL beginners have a strong desire to acquire accurate English pronunciation, but it is difficult forthese students to pronounce English words correctly (even with aural cues), without demonstrable knowledge ofthe mechanisms of pronunciation, such as tongue position, lip movements, etc., so, to benefit learners, video clips
of a native speaker pronouncing terms can be included in the dictionary software. Second,for JFL learners, dictionary word look-ups often include unknown kanji, which can create frustration and confusion—therefore, rapid
kanji-to-kana translation can be provided for all kanji appearing in the dictionary. Third, typical dictionaries do notcontain semantic look-up categories, which are beneficial to learners and speed learning—through software implementation, it is possible to design a variety of look-up methods and particularly, lexical look-ups can be included in
the dictionary design; Both EFL and JFL learners can benefit by hearing as well as reading all terms and sentences
contained in the dictionary, in both languages—voice-synthesis technology allows for this possibility. Thus, webegan this project in order to effectively eliminate shortcomings and aid learners in their desire to acquire a target
language. This paper updates and partially revises the research reported in Gilbert and Matsuno (2000). Essentially,novel voice-synthesis elements have now been integrated into the BMD program and pilot-tested. Program software allows the database to be accessed and searched by several methods, including: Word Entry, Partial-Word
Entry, Jump Searches and Jump Searches Across Languages, Lexical Category Searches, and Lexical Correspondence Searches. Program software also allows for text search-strings to be entered in the Roman, kana, and kanjialphabets.

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The BMD is designed to provide a vocabulary database easy to use for beginning students of either Japaneseor English. For JFL learners: Japanese word and sentence text appears in the typical written style of kana and kanji.
This benefits JFL learners by providing accurate examples of written Japanese, thus aiding not only in kanji recognition but in associating kanji and kanji compounds with their varieties of pronunciation. JFL learners often havetrouble comprehending kanji pronunciations, therefore, a means of converting kanji to kana has been implemented—
the learner right-clicks the mouse and selects “KANA” from the menu that pops open (Figure 3). The kana associated with the kanji then appear in a small window. Thus, a JFL student without the ability to read kanji is able toacquire kanji pronunciations. A JFL learner does need to have familiarity with the hiragana script. Both hiragana
and katakana tables are provided for learning purposes and are easily accessed from the main window via buttons(there are also suggestions for how to learn kana contained within the “Help” section of the program).
EFL learners can benefit from associating written English, with its many spelling idiosyncrasies, to the
spoken word. English pronunciation can be practiced by playing multimedia clips that demonstrate a native-speaker’s
mouth-movements and intonation. We feel that this function is more effective than merely observing phonetic
symbols and/or purely aural listening. As well, EFL students responded particularly well to the video clips (see“Section 4”). All mirror-sentence pairs can be listened-to by utilizing the text-to-speech voice-synthesis feature.
This feature functions by highlighting either part or all of either a Japanese or English sentence, then right-clicking
the mouse and selecting “LISTEN” from the menu that appears (Figure 3). We feel that these design features canmake a contribution to foreign language education and provide enjoyable learning opportunities for students, while
enabling teachers to develop educational strategies which incorporate computer-aided instruction into course
curricula.

Strategy
After consulting word-frequency resources, we created a highest-frequency database of 2000 English words(see “Reference” section). Additionally, some 225 words and sentences related to information technology areincluded. Each word-entry is paired in Japanese and English. A sample sentence with a closely similar meaning, inboth languages, has been composed. Thus, each bilingual entry represents an English/Japanese word-pair andsentence-pair with nearly identical meanings in the two languages. After locating an entry, a user can optionallyread, hear and/or view a multimedia demonstration of the word or sentence, in either language. As well, a learnercan find new words through lexical correspondence, and jump search using any elements or terms visible in themain window, simply by highlighting them, right-clicking, and selecting “SEARCH” (Figure 3).
We have designed the user interface of the BMD to be easy to use, so that an EFL/JFL learner can devotetheir main energies to learning tasks, rather than struggling with the software. We have planned our program
strategy to provide for multi-modal searching via an interface which includes all functions for normal program use
either visibly on the main window, or by right-clicking the mouse. A learner does not normally need to accesspull-down menus to use the program. Below is an illustration of the main program window (Figure 1). We will
describe the BMD program in more detail in the following section.

Description: Bilingual Voice-Synthesis Mirror Dictionary Program Functions
A First Look
The BMD program is composed of two primary interface windows, the main window, above, and the lexicon
window, illustrated in Part E: ”Lexical Category Searches,” below. There are two large buttons on the lower-leftside of the main window: “English Help,” and “Japanese Help.” (All ‘Help’ information is likewise available
through the pull-down “HELP” menu at the top of the main window.) Clicking “English Help” displays a short listof menu items: “How to use this dictionary”, “What is kana?”, and “Dictionary Functions.”
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Topic 1. “How to use this dictionary” English users will find important setup information, such as where
to locate and download the Japanese “language pack” freeware support associated with the Microsoft Internet
Explorer 4/5 browser (IE-4/5). This software, easily installed, allows non-Japanese Windows 95/8 operating systems (OSs) to read and input Japanese characters. It is our goal to set up the BMD as a web site on a CGI server, andtherefore the BMD will be able to be accessed by learners who do not run Windows 95/8 English OSs, potentiallyaround the world. A second mode of implementation can be provided for the non-Japanese Windows OS by CDROM delivery, with all data being presented in HTML format, through the user’s web browser. (At present, the IE4/5 browser is the only browser that provides freeware Japanese language support, which allows for both thereading and inputting of Japanese characters within the non-Japanese Windows OS browser.) Please note that thebilingual resource database can be implemented from CD/DVD-ROM on any non-Japanese Windows OS system
as long as the program is set up to be accessed as HTML pages, through the MS Explorer 4/5 browser, with theaforementioned language support. DATABASE WINDOWDATABASE
WINDOWDATABASE
WINDOW
WORD-ENTRY
WORD-ENTRYWINDOWWINDOWSENTENCE WINDOWSWINDOWS

Figure 1. Bilingual voice-synthesis mirror dictionary program
Topic 2. “What is kana?” is provided to explain the kana scripts and indicate the need for hiragana knowledge, a requirement for reading kanji pronunciations. Generally speaking, students who are using the database toincrease Japanese vocabulary knowledge will likely either be studying or have previously mastered hiragana. Thissection also refers users to educational materials for learning kana, and directs the user to the two buttons on thelower-right side of the main graphic user interface (GUI) window: “Hiragana Table” and “Katakana Table.” Pressing either button reveals the respective kana chart, with pronunciation guides annotated in romaji (Roman letters).
Topic 3. “Dictionary Functions” describes basic dictionary usage functions, as described just below in“Japanese Help”:
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The “Japanese Help” button is a mirror of the just-mentioned Topic 3 ”Dictionary Functions” in the “English
Help” section. Topic 3 provides information relating to these dictionary functions: B) Word Entry; C) Partial-Word
Entry; D) Jump Searches and Jump Searches Across Languages; E) Lexical Category Searches; F) Lexical Correspondence Searches; G) Other Features.

Word Entry
The word-entry window on the upper-left side allows users to type in words. When a word is typed in Roman
letters, English words appear in the database window on the left side, with Japanese translations on the right side,parallel to the English entries. The reverse is true for words entered in kana or kanji. Single-clicking on any
word-entry displayed in the database window allows for use of the multimedia tools. By pressing either the “Sound”
or “Movie” buttons, the user can hear and/or see the selected word spoken. If a film clip or sound file has not been
associated to the entry, the “Sound” or “Movie” button will not automatically highlight. Double-clicking on any
word in the database first highlights the field (single-click), then (double-click), displays the sample sentence-pair
within the sentence windows located on the center-right side of the GUI. If an English word is double-clicked, an
English sentence appears in the top window. The reverse happens when a Japanese word is double-clicked (theprogram is designed as a non-biased mirror of both languages). Clicking anywhere in a sentence allows that sentence to be heard and/or seen, when the “Sound” or “Movie” buttons are pressed. These buttons are located justbelow the sentence windows. A Quick-Time video clip can be seen playing, bottom-center, in the “Main Window”
illustration.
Figure2
LEXIC O N

Partial Word Entry
Letters, kana and/or kanji representing partial word entries can beentered (in a manner similar to “Word Entry,” above), and the program
will display all the words in the database which contain letters matching
the entry. Entries containing (?) and (*) can be used in making partial
word-searches, where (?) represents a single unknown Roman letter, kanaor kanji, and (*) represents an indeterminate number of characters. So
typing “a*ment” will find both “Argument” and “Agreement.” Typing“A???ment” will find “Argument” only. Typing the letter “a” will find
all English words beginning with “a”: typing hiragana “ka” will find all
Japanese words beginning with the character “ka.” Typing (hiragana)“*ka” will find all Japanese words containing the character “ka” somewhere within the word. The program works in a similar fashion for kanji.
The program is not case sensitive.

Jump Searches and Jump Searches Across Languages
Jump searching can occur in a number of ways. Often a jump search
will occur when a user wants to find a translation for an unfamiliar word
occurring within a sample sentence. Whether in Japanese or English,
one or any number of consecutive kanji, words, or letters, can be highlighted. Right-clicking within the highlighted area brings up a menu.
Choosing “SEARCH” allows you to search for all entries that match thehighlighted section. If the “Search All Sentences” box is checked (located just below the database window), all sample sentences containingthat word (or kanji, or phrase) are searched for, and the sentence-selection
results are displayed in the sentence windows. Importantly, if the “Search
All Sentences” box is checked, the user can locate all sentences within
which any word in the database is to be found—the user simply high-Figure 2. Lexicon window

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To contentslights a word, right-clicks the mouse, and chooses “SEARCH.”
When jump-searching across languages, a student may start with an English word lookup, then find a Japanese sentence which mirrors the English sentence. Examining the Japanese sentence, the student sees an unfamiliar
word, highlights it, searches, and finds the translation of that word in English. Finally, the student can observe anadditional usage of the new word by examining the sample-sentences that accompany the new word, in the database.

Lexical Category Searches
The bilingual resource database contains two mirror-lexicons. The English lexicon is illustrated in Figure 2.
Pressing the “J--LEXICON” button on the toolbar activates a popup window, activating the Japanese lexicon.
Pressing the “E--LEXICON” button causes the popup menu list seen at the right to appear. The lexicon has threehierarchical levels, which can be opened and closed by clicking in the associated squares to the left of the major
categories. In the figure to the right, the tripartite hierarchical levels are shown for “1. THE LIVING WORLD,”
which is one of 14 global categories. Within “1. THE LIVING WORLD,” the second-order categories are “A) LIFE,”“B) ANIMALS,” and “C) PLANTS.” By double-clicking on any of the third-order categories (visible beneath“A) LIFE,” and “C) PLANTS”), the chosen category is moved to the word-entry window (within the main window), and the word-lists associated with the lexical category appear in the database window. The bilingual resource
database lexical categories, originally inspired by the Cambridge English Lexicon, have been simplified, condensed, and lexically altered in order to suit the needs of second-language beginners. The lexicon lists can beaccessed through the “Options” pull-down menu, or by right-clicking the mouse, and choosing “J-LEXICON” or“E-LEXICON” from the mouse menu (Figure 3).

Lexical Correspondence
Lexical correspondence allows the user to associate any word in the database to other, lexically related
words. By highlighting and right-clicking on the chosen word, a menu appears which allows the user to choose“Lexical Search.” After making this choice, the program automatically puts the lexicon category title in the word-entry
window, and the search-word will be found beneath, still highlighted, and within the listing of lexically related
words in the database window. Double-clicking on other words in the lexical list causes sample sentences to appear
in the sentence windows. Note that the “Lexical Search” selection has not yet been added to our mouse menu—thisfeature is currently under development.

Text-to-Speech Voice Synthesis
There are two forms of aural output designed into the BMD software. As previously
mentioned, single word entries, that is, the 2000 most-frequent word items, each have anassociated .wav file (these will be converted to MP-3/streaming audio files in the future). By
this means, learners are able to listen to highly accurate pronunciation performed by a native
speaker. However, for the sample sentences, text-to-speech synthesis (TTS), which is admittedly far from perfect pronunciation (the English TTS sounds remarkably akin to Professor
Stephen Hawking), has some advantages: 1) There are no production or post-production
issues—any sentence written can be “spoken” by the software, consequently 2) audio filesize is zero (there are no audio files); 3) sentences can be easily altered and/or added to the
database, thus providing ease and flexibility of development; 4) the synthesized speech iscommunicative; 5) voice activation is rapid; 6) future web implementation can include a
TTS streaming component, allowing for any text viewed in the program to be heard, ineither language. Currently, TTS is accomplished through two associated external software
packages: IBM’s “Via-Voice” for the English TTS, and Catena’s “D-Talker” for the Japa-

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Figure 3.
Mouse menu

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nese TTS. We will be integrating internal voice modules into the BMD software, in the
future.

Other Functions
The “Options” pull-down menu contains a “Dictionary” tab. When selected, a default folder opens, whichcontains the database files used by the bilingual resource database The user can selectively load one or more
databases into the program. Currently, there are two database files that have been created: the “word-frequency”
database and the “information technology” database; both can be loaded concurrently. The mouse right-click menu
contains “Copy” and “Paste” functions, allowing the user to move information within the bilingual resource database and to other programs, if there is associated language support. The “File” pull-down menu contains an “Exit”
tab, which closes the program.

Pilot Study and Discussion
In a preliminary pilot study, a group of five “false-beginner” level EFL students were given CD-ROM copiesof the BMD to test for a period of three months. The students were third-year undergraduates studying in the
Liberal Arts (Sogo-Kanri) faculty of The Prefectural University of Kumamoto, Kumamoto, Japan, and involved ina seminar on information processing. Use of the BMD was not a requirement of the seminar, nor were the respondants’
answers or ability to utilize the BMD part of the seminar grading process. At the end of the trial period, students
were interviewed, and anecdotal information was gathered. This early study was performed for the purposes of
information-gathering only. Future studies, with larger groups and controls, will need to be carried out. Students
were asked these questions:1.

How did you like the program?

2.

What were the most useful features of the program for you?

3.

Did you encounter any problems or have some frustrations with the program?

4.

What areas of the program would you recommend be improved?

5.

What new features would you like to see in the program?

6.

Would this program be valuable to you for studying English in a college classroom setting?

All of the students found the program easy to use, and generally liked the ease with which search words
could be entered, the mirrored (audio-visual, where applicable) means of bilingual presentation, the voice-synthesis function, and the lexicon search function. The most useful feature reported was the ability of the BMD to play
QuickTime video of English words. Being able to hear, “see,” and repeat a native speaker’s pronunciation of terms
instilled confidence. The second most useful feature was the presentation of bilingual sentences, combined withthe ability to easily listen to the sentences, using voice-synthesis. The multimedia functions of the dictionary werereported as being “fun to use.” We also observed students using the multimedia functions—students quite unabashedly attempted to emulate the voice/video demonstrations. Frustrations were most evident concerning the small
size of the database, the lack of additional usage variations for some individual entries, and the lack of portabilityof the program. Students mentioned that the program would be valuable in a classroom setting, particularly if theusage sentences were expanded.
We would concur with the survey results that the area most in need of development to make the BMD a
useful educational tool is database expansion. Creating bilingual sentences with mirrored meanings for each usageof each word entry is slow going, requiring many hours of preparation and quality control, including thoroughindependent analysis of usage sentences. As well, portability is always an issue with any CALL media.

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In the future, we plan on adding further database resources, including a matching list of the 2000
highest-frequency Japanese words, multiple examples of word usage, enhanced search capabilities, and additional
means allowing for user-customized additions to the database. The incorporation of a greater number of word-entries
and, particularly, word-usages will be necessary before the program can serve as a fully functional and effective
educational tool. Along with additions to the database, developing a means of interactive internet accessibility to
the BMD remains a high priority.

References
Carroll, J., Davies, P. & Richman, R. (1971). The American heritage word frequency book. New York: American
Heritage Pub. Co.
Downing, D., Covington, M. & Covington, M. (1996). Dictionary of computer and internet terms. (5th ed.). New
York: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.
Francis, N, & Kucera, H. (1982). Frequency analysis of English usage. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Hindmarsh, R. (1980). Cambridge English lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gilbert, R., and Matsuno, R. (2000). A computer-based vocabulary resource database for JFL/EFL education. The
Language Teacher, 24(9), 15-19.
Kucera, H. & Francis, N. (1967). Computational analysis of present-day American English. Providence, RI: Brown
University Press.
Proctor, P. (1978). Defining vocabulary: 2000 Words. In Longman dictionary of contemporary English. London:
Longman.

Acknowledgements
This research is partially supported a by Grant-in-aid for Scientific Research©, and by the Matsushita AudioVisual Foundation.

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Building Bridges to Inclusive Foreign Language Education throughAppropriately Applied Technologies
David R. Wilson
Harton School, United Kingdom
Abstract
The subject of this paper is the evolution of a foreign language teachers’ pre- and in-service training
website at http://www.tomwilson.com/david/case/, focusing on special educational needs It features case studies
of dyslexia, hearing impairment and moderate learning difficulties, accompanied by problem-solving exercises.
It also identifies common issues of classroom practice arising from the use of information and communications
technology and encourages problem-solving via external links. It has been successfully trialled with student
teachers of foreign languages at a local university and with serving teachers in the modern foreign languages
department of the author’s secondary school. The paper describes how this website was conceived to raise
student foreign language teachers’ awareness of special educational needs and information and communications technology, how its external information sources were chosen and how the project aimed to facilitate theprocess of introducing a foreign language to all 11- to 14-year-olds in English mainstream schools.

Introduction
In February 1999 I conducted a special educational needs (SEN) and information and communications technology (ICT) workshop for student teachers of modern foreign languages (MFL) at the University of Newcastle
upon Tyne in the north-east of England. To accompany this half-day session, I designed a website entitled Applying
new technologies appropriately to modern foreign languages (Wilson 1999a).
I have divided my description of this project into three sections. The first gives an overview of the historical,
professional and technological context. In the second, I relate how my teacher education initiative in MFL, SEN
and ICT evolved. The third section lists the main outcomes of the exercise.

The BackgroundIn this section I describe the broader context of my project and more especially:•

The policy, principles and practice of including all secondary school students in MFL learning;•

The collaboration of subject teachers and learning support professionals in the delivery of MFL
to all students;•

The appropriate application of ICT to MFL classroom practice with particular reference to SEN
students.

Languages for all
Ten years ago the British government introduced a National Curriculum requiring all 11- to 14-year-olds,
including those with learning difficulties, to follow a MFL course (Whitehead 1990). This entitlement, as it became
known, was due to be extended to all 14-to-16-year-olds at a later date.

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Underlying this policy of languages for all in the 11-16 age group was a recognition that the United Kingdom
could compete more successfully in Europe and world-wide if the country discarded its image as a nation ofmonoglots. In 1988 the then European Community’s Ministers of Education had also agreed to make language
learning the key to education for European citizenship (McColl 2000).
Another factor promoting languages for all was equality of educational opportunity. For much of the twentieth century, British foreign language learning had remained the virtual preserve of an academic élite. The entitlement of all 11-to-16-year-olds to study a foreign language signaled a new determination to include every schoolage student in mainstream education.
On the one hand, turning principle into practice proved something of a challenge for many teachers andstudents alike. Because grammatical concepts and other hard elements of MFL study cannot be postponed for ever,some teachers argued that learners in difficulty might drop one MFL and start another halfway through theirsecondary education. Certain SEN professionals wondered too whether teaching MFLs to youngsters with learning
difficulties was counterproductive in the light of such students’ literacy weaknesses.
On the other hand, British MFL curricula had already grown more inclusive. In the late 1970s, local teachersdevised syllabuses and tests based on survival language with school trips abroad in mind. In the 1980s, public
examination emphasis shifted from grammar and translation skills to the use of language as a vehicle of communication.

Building through teamwork
In the early 1990s, several projects successfully piloted language teaching to students with special educational needs. A strategic difference between ordinary and special schools and between MFL specialists and specialist teachers of pupils with SEN soon emerged. The first group began with the demands of the subject, the second
with the individual needs of the particular student. Successful language learning for all students with SEN ultimately required a skilful and sensitive combination of both approaches.
The MFL/SEN research literature of the 1990s reflected these differences (Wilson 1999b). MFL specialists
contributed small, practical, classroom-based studies of the issues of training and support and the implications ofspecific types of learner. Educational psychologists conducted larger-scale, theory-driven investigations of thesecond language processing of students with learning difficulties. Such research ranged from an in-depth analysis
of a single learner to an extensive, long-term study of numerous “at-risk” students.
The turn of the millennium, however, promises to bridge the gap between the special educator and theforeign language teacher. In 1999 speakers at the First International Conference on Multilingualism and Dyslexia
in the North of England city of Manchester not only disseminated the latest research about the identification of
MFL learning difficulties, but also defined multisensory strategies of use in teaching at-risk students. This combination of psychological theory with classroom practice is a continuing trend.

Applying technology appropriately
The principle that ICT may broaden the access of pupils with SEN to the National Curriculum in general,and to the MFL curriculum in particular, was officially recognised from the start. ICT was deemed to offer all
students, including those with SEN, learning opportunities which contribute both to MFL development and to
students’ personal and social development.
Pilot MFL/SEN projects paid tribute to the successful integration of ICT in most schemes of work among the
project partners. A review of MFL/SEN literature revealed widespread classroom deployment of ICT too. Later
policy documents acknowledge that certain learners require computers and other technological aids to carry out
attainment targets in MFLs. All students should be given opportunities, where appropriate, to develop and apply
their ICT capability in their study of modern foreign languages
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Appropriateness not only means curriculum compatibility but also a sense of ownership by teachers andlearners. During my year abroad in France in the late 1960s, I opted for an advanced French for foreigners course
at the local university. I was keen to improve my listening skills and was excited at the prospect of using a language
laboratory for the first time. All I remember of the experience, however, is vainly grappling in my booth withpattern drills requiring thirty-word sentences to be heard and reproduced at speed from memory in the imperfecttense. Later, as a young teacher of MFL in an English school with a language laboratory, I resolved to set mystudents more appropriate tasks.

The ProjectIn this section I turn to the project itself. I describe•

the design brief of the project, with special reference to the university education department’s
remit;•

the problem-solving approach characterizing the tasks in the project;•

the case studies used in the project to represent a selection of special educational needs.

Design brief
I work in the Metropolitan Borough of South Tyneside in the North East of England. South Shields in theeast of the borough is a pleasant seaside resort, burdened with more than its fair share of social, economic andeducational disadvantage.
A third of the 1,200 students in my over-subscribed 11-16 comprehensive school, now a Technology College, qualify for free school meals. Typically 30% of the boys and 20% of the girls leave primary education withreading ages two or more years below their chronological ages. Although a tiny minority of these learners latertransfer to local special schools, most remain in mainstream education receiving their full National Curriculum
entitlement, including MFL.
As a Learning Support Teacher, I am responsible for the 35 boys and girls aged 11-12 with learning disabilities, behavioral difficulties, sensory impairments and other special educational needs. I also teach French andGerman to slow learners in the 11 to 14 age-group, often using ICT as a resource.
In the autumn of 1998 the modern languages tutor in the education department of the University of Newcastle
upon Tyne invited me to deliver an Initial Teacher Training (ITT) workshop on SEN and ICT. The attendees had
graduated with a first degree in one or more MFL and completed a diagnostic teaching practice. At least one was anative speaker of the foreign language she intended to teach. Their ICT literacy skills varied but surpassed those ofearlier generations of student teachers. The one-year ITT course had so far delivered just a modicum of theoreticalknowledge and practical experience of teaching students with SEN.
Scheduled for an afternoon in February 1999, the workshop had a dual remit:•

Use of ICT, particularly online resources, in MFL teaching;•

Recognition and support of SEN in the MFL classroom.

Since I was reluctant to duplicate the efforts of others, I began with an extensive search of the online andprinted literature.
The World Wide Web (WWW) already had a number of sites designed to help MFL teachers with Internet
usage. Among them were the Web-Enhanced Language Learning Treasure Hunt (WELL 1999) and the Voilà! Bitte
schön! pages compiled by University of Sheffield student teachers (Woolley & Hamilton 1998). Exploiting such
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off-the-peg packages might have reduced preparation time and at least partially fulfilled the first requirement of theworkshop brief.
If so, the second issue — introducing the student teachers to the principles and methods of including learners
with SEN in MFL —remained to be addressed. MFL/SEN literature reviews revealed that most publications camein conventional printed format (Wilson 1999b). Two exceptions were The Instant Access Treasure Chest (Moore.,1999) and a British Dyslexia Association information sheet about MFL teaching and learning (Crombie, 1996),
which were available online.
So far as I could ascertain, a few websites addressed both issues, although none fully integrated them. The
instructional technology site at Longwood College in Virginia offered parallel but separate slide shows on Internet
usage (Moore, 1997a) and SEN learners (Moore, 1997b) in MFL.
Over the next few months several meetings were held to consolidate the sequence and content of the workshop. The creation of a dedicated website to accompany the afternoon’s proceedings was one of the decisions
taken. Such a site would provide hands-on experience on the day and continue to be accessible to any student
wishing to review the issues at a later date.
Although this Applying new technologies appropriately to modern foreign languages website required many
hours of research and planning, it was written in Word 97, saved in HTML and uploaded to its current URL at
www.tomwilson.com/david/case/ in a single weekend. It broke down into four parts:•

Web Skills: text, graphics and file handling routines;•

Case Studies: teaching MFL learners with a variety of SEN;•

Problem Solving: MFL classroom problems and online solutions;•

Slide Shows: PowerPoint presentations charting workshop issues.

The individual pages featured a plain, simple and uniform style to focus attention on the tasks within.

Problem-solving
In ICT-based subject teaching in general, and computer-assisted language learning (CALL) in particular,reflective classroom practitioners must ask themselves: “If technology is the answer, what is the question?” Education remains a very human partnership, founded on social interaction and mutual trust. Wholly computer-administered courses have a variable track record.
The WWW too is best approached with a modicum of skepticism. Although ready-made solutions aboundon educational websites, the pre-existing problems may be ill defined. Panaceas seldom prove efficacious when
individual teachers apply them to ‘exceptional’ students. SEN learners routinely challenge the belief that a particular tactic never fails. Because they need a balance between consistency and variety, even ICT eventually palls as aclassroom resource.
When I conducted my first SEN/ICT workshop a number of years ago, one teacher observed: “that would notwork with my students.” He had a point. I had presented my teaching strategies without explaining the priordecision-making thoroughly enough. Ultimately, the definition of the initial problem and the rationale culminating
in my particular solution mattered, not the solution itself.
So an appropriately defined problem and an appropriately applied problem-solving process precede an appropriate solution. In accordance with this principle, I took pains to devise a practical teaching problem before
offering a potential solution in the form of an external link on my website. Sometimes a serving teacher’s question
to an online discussion group, e.g. Lingu@Net or SENCO Forum, furnished the problem while the ensuing thread,or replies, exemplified worked solutions, simultaneously enhancing the authenticity of the process.
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A problem-solving approach also suited the overall workshop ethos. Imparting information about the theory
and practice of SEN and ICT in MFL to passive listeners was never the intention. Raising awareness of classroom
diversity and inclusion issues involved brainstorming ideas, questioning beliefs, and challenging stereotypes, e.g.
SEN labels are synonymous with low intelligence and motivation.
Finally, problem-solving is a distinctive feature of the social constructivist theory of learning, with which theRussian psychologist and philosopher Lev Vygotsky is often associated. Vygotskyan learning theory challenges theconventional wisdom that there is one correct response to every question and that students must acquire a finite
body of knowledge before they can arrive at this answer.
Vygotsky’s idea that learning is a social and collaborative activity and that students need to construct theirown understanding of a problem and its solution has long underpinned curriculum renewal in the United Kingdom.
It also defines many current subject-teaching initiatives there, notably the “Thinking Skills” projects in Humanities, Science and, at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, in MFL.

Case studies
Social constructivism also relies on case-based evidence to provide a meaningful context in which problemsolving can take place (Chen n.d.). A case study has a number of advantages as a MFL/SEN/ICT professional
development tool:•

It is a way of exploring a particular aspect of a situation or problem within a limited time span;•

In SEN, the focus is often on multiple agencies contributing different kinds of expertise to the
support of one student with learning difficulties;•

ICT action research usually investigates principles and practices within a single institution,
department or classroom.

Although rule-based reasoning may have cerebral appeal, a human scenario engages all faculties, including
the imagination, and encourages creative problem-solving.
Initially, four case studies were created, each starting with a classroom dilemma, ending with a series of tasks
and focusing on a single learner. The first concerned a foreign national whose mother tongue also happened to be
the TL in the MFL classroom:
Heidi is a girl in your Year 7 MFL class. She has just arrived from Zurich, where she attended
primary school. She speaks Swiss German but very little English. German is the First Modern Foreign
Language in your school. You have inherited Heidi because your more experienced fellow-linguists
are anxious about the impact of native speakers on their classes. They say she may become frustrated
at the slow pace of lessons, confuse other pupils with her non-standard pronunciation of German andout-perform the teacher in the target language. They claim that you are her ‘best bet’ as you are themost accurate and fluent Germanist in the department. The Special Needs department has arranged for
Heidi to work with a teacher of English as an Additional Language (EAL), who could withdraw herfrom German lessons if you wished. The Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCo) has already spoken to Heidi’s mother and ascertained that Heidi may have literacy difficulties in German.
Heidi’s mother wants her daughter to study German at school as the family may return in a few years’time to Switzerland.
Problem 1: How can the school’s Modern Foreign Languages and Special Educational
Needs Departments collaborate in assessing Heidi’s prior learning and in delivering her full
National Curriculum entitlement?

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Problem 2: Heidi tells you that another pupil is calling her a ‘Nazi’ because her homelanguage is German. Such verbal abuse is damaging Heidi’s self-esteem and undermining yourschool’s commitment to race equality and multiculturalism. You decide to turn Heidi’s bilingualism and biculturalism into assets, not liabilities.
I purposely began with a case study of a native TL speaker with reading and writing difficulties because I
wanted to provoke any student teacher harboring notions about SEN always meaning disaffection and underachievement.
The other three case studies were designed to illustrate certain major categories of special educational needs,
namely:•Specific learning difficulties (dyslexia);•

Moderate learning difficulties;•

Hearing impairment.

All steered the same course as the foreign national case study, accentuating the positive qualities of thelearners without glossing over the discrepancy between what they brought to the curriculum and what the curriculum demanded of them (Wilson 1999a). In the interest of anonymity, the subjects of the case studies represented‘composite’ characters.
The student teachers were expected to engage twice with this casework portfolio. During the off-computer
session, they would debate the native speaker scenario, then form three smaller groups, each entrusted with one of
the remaining cases, meeting for a plenary to provide feedback. In the second half of the workshop, they would
access the cases on the WWW via a PC or Mac computer. The online version had links leading to external websites
where others had grappled with the same problems ‘for real.’

The Outcomes
I duly ran the “Applying new technologies appropriately to modern foreign languages” workshop during theafternoon of February 21, 1999 in the Education Department of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. The choiceof a foreign national as the opening case study proved apt, not only because a bilingual student teacher was in theaudience, but also because it generated the most heated discussion. Furthermore, each group selected a different
case — specific learning difficulties (dyslexia), moderate learning difficulties and hearing impairment — without
prompting and unraveled the inclusion issues.
The workshop and its accompanying website were later deployed in:•

In-service MFL teacher training (Internet usage) at Harton School in South Shields;•

Pre-service MFL teacher training (WWW materials development) at the University of Sheffield.

The reception on both occasions was uniformly favorable. Website visitors outside these institutions havealso given positive feedback.
One constraint was the current paucity of educational information about MFL and SEN on the WWW.
Perhaps reflective classroom practitioners have neither the time, nor the confidence nor the inclination to disseminate even their personal successes when teaching MFL to SEN learners. Psychologists and medical researchersinvestigating learning disabilities are only too eager to share their own findings.
The extensive planning and research preceding the development of the website certainly proved worthwhile.
Recently I added a fifth case study, based on a learner with visual impairment. The success of the website also
encouraged me to produce a similar WWW resource bank for other subjects within my school. To date, I have
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To contentscompiled modules for Design Technology, Geography, History, Mathematics, MFL, Music, Religious Educationand Science (Wilson, 2000).
Acknowledgments: I wish to thank my brother Dr Tom Wilson, an independent medical informatics consultant in Minneapolis, for his invaluable encouragement, comments and advice. I am also grateful to Cheryl
Mackay of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne who invited me to conduct the workshop which resulted in thedevelopment of my website.

References
Chen, I. n.d. Social constructivism: case-based instruction. [on-line] Available: http://www.coe.uh.edu/~ichen/
ebook/ET-IT/case.htm
Crombie, M. (1996). Teaching and learning of modern foreign languages for dyslexic students. http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/d06tchrs/t06mfl.htm.
McColl, H. (2000). Modern languages for all. London: David Fulton.
Moore, F. X. (1997a). Using technology in the L2 classroom. [on-line] Available: http://www.lwc.edu/staff/fmoore/classwork.
Moore F. X. (1997b). The learning disabled student in the foreign language class. [on-line] Available: http://
www.lwc.edu/staff/fmoore/classwork/ldisabil.
Moore, S. (1999). The instant access treasure chest: the foreign language teacher’s guide to learning disabilities.
http://www.fln.vcu.edu/ld/ld.html.
WELL (Web Enhanced Language Learning Project). (1999). Treasure Hunt. [on-line] Available: http://
www.well.ac.uk/wellproj/workshp1/treasure.htm.
Whitehead, M. (1990). A modern foreign language for all, 11-16: Death knell of the English monoglot tradition?
Aspects of Education 43, 1-10.
Wilson, D. R. (1999a). Applying new technologies appropriately to modern foreign languages. [on-line] Available:
http://www.tomwilson.com/david/case/.
Wilson, D. R. (1999b). A bibliography of modern foreign languages and special educational needs. [on-line]
Available: http://www.tomwilson/downloads/biblio.
Wilson, D. R. (2000). Subject teaching with Internet resources. http://www.tomwilson.com/david/ittfeb00/
Woolley, J. and S. Hamilton. (1998). Voilà! Bitte schön! How to use the Internet in the modern languages classroom. [on-line] Available: http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/training/mlr/index.htm.

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Building Bridges:
Using Email and Video to Promote Intercultural Communication
Martha Robertson
Kristi Joba
Jean Simonian
Aichi University, Japan
Abstract
As teachers in the newly-created Comparative Cultures Department of Aichi University, we encounteredproblems familiar to many teachers of a foreign language: multi-level classes, multi-cultural materials better
suited to an ESL environment, or texts that focussed upon language structures familiar to many of our students
since jr. high school. Given our department’s mandate to address issues of intercultural understanding andcommunication, using English as the tool of instruction, rather than as the focus of study, we decided to have thestudents generate class materials in the form of an e-mail and video exchange. Many of our students commented
that this was the first time they had used video in their school careers, and most students were extremely happy
with both the process and the results. We observed students gaining confidence in expressing their ideas inEnglish, and found that they were highly motivated to share cultural information with their Canadian partners.

Rationale
Our decision to implement an e-mail and video exchange project was based upon four major considerations:

Our Teaching Situation
We teach for Aichi University’s Department of Comparative Cultures. Our Departmental mission is tobroaden cultural awareness, encourage tolerance and understanding of world cultures, and create opportunities forcross-cultural communication. The expectation is that English will be the tool for instruction, rather than the focusof study. However, our students are typical Japanese university students, and no special proficiency in the English
language is required to enroll in our courses. Thus, we must assist our students in improving their reception andproduction of the English language within the context of our curriculum.
We decided that a video exchange project would provide our students with an opportunity to improve bothproduction and listening skills through the sharing of first-hand information about inter-cultural topics. Students
would have an opportunity to examine their own cultural values and perspectives, and the videos from their North
American counterparts would provide materials for cross-cultural comparisons. Preliminary research could be
carried out via internet, interviews, and email, requiring the unstructured application of all language skills. Smallgroups would produce and edit the videos, and the class as a whole could develop evaluative criteria and apply
them to their own and others videos. This approach would help us to manage our multi-level classes, as each
student could work at his/her own level of language development and be evaluated fairly on the basis of his or her
contribution to the whole project. The development of both receptive and productive skills would be facilitated,
and the language structures acquired would be those necessitated by the situation, and would thus be more functional and more likely to be retained (Krashen, 1985).

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We first thought of the email exchange as an introductory activity that would forge closer relationships
among participants and help them to decide upon topics of interest for the videos, but we soon recognized the added
value of the email exchange in improving students’ reading and writing skills. Thus, both the email exchange andthe video exchange brought about a happy integration of language skills and cultural sharing.

Materials
When we first came to Aichi, we had only the few materials that we brought with us. We spent an inordinate
amount of time that first term creating teaching materials. As we reviewed materials for our second term, we foundlittle that met our students’ needs: few materials were suited to multi-level classes; the range of English in most
texts was very limited; many were repetitive- students had been studying these same language constructions since
middle school; and the few texts which had a multi-cultural focus were better suited to an ESL environment rather
than an EFL classroom.
Our most effective materials that first term had been student-generated materials. Student Journals were
backbone of all of our courses. Each week, students were required to write one full page about an assigned topic,
which might be a quotation, a news item, a response to class discussion, or even a self-evaluation of their progress.
The Journal entries then became the content for the next class. A second resource was the Internet. Students
researched topics individually and in groups, and shared these articles with the class. Students enjoyed this exercise, and, again, their language skills improved in the context of a multi-cultural curriculum.
We found that student-generated materials can have many advantages over materials chosen by instructors:
they are contextual; they are likely to be of greater interest to students; they force students to apply evaluative
criteria in their selection; they promote critical thinking and an awareness of audience; they provide an opportunity
for students to examine their own views and values; they offer an authentic voice; their range of expression is
infinite and variable; and each student can work effectively at his/her own level. We decided that, with the exception of an introductory reading that would serve to develop a structural theme for the course, all of the materials forour upper-level conversation courses would be student generated. For three sections of the second and third year
conversation classes, a video exchange project would provide the focus, the continuity, and the materials for theentire course.

Participation
A third reason for our implementation of the video and email exchange project was to encourage students totake more responsibility for their own learning. Because of their previous educational experiences, Japanese
university students tend to be very passive in the classroom (Anderson, 1993; Williams, 1994). They have been
conditioned to view learning as a receptive function, rather than as an activity over which they can exercise somedegree of control. They expect their teachers to structure their learning, and to some degree, their thinking, forthem. They also lack confidence in their own capacity to evaluate situations and make appropriate responses .
Unfortunately, these habits slow their progress as language learners, as well as impede students’ development ascompetent observers and critics of their own and other cultures.
Japanese culture also shapes our students’ relationships with one another in the classroom, and these culturalpressures often result in students preferring to remain silent rather than risk disapproval or cause offense to classmates (Lebra, 1976; Doi, 1971; LeTendre & Rohlen, 1998; Doyon 2000). At all levels, but especially in our
combined second and third year classes, there are issues concerning the appropriate behaviour of junior and seniorclass members, those of lesser and greater ability, and, even, females and males. The desire not to stand out or to
not appear more competent than one’s classmates, fear of criticism, shame, and a host of other cultural and personal
behaviours lie behind the notorious “shyness” of Japanese foreign language learners and must be accepted as partof our students’ cultural and personal identities, even as we strive to create a classroom environment in which
students can overcome the problems that shyness and reticence pose for second language learners.

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A video project appeared to be an ideal means of addressing these affective and behavioural concerns. The
success of the project would depend upon significant oral and generative contributions from each member, thus
facilitating individual progress and encouraging individual initiative within a supportive group environment. Students could negotiate relationships within their small groups in ways compatible with Japanese cultural expectations, but they also would be forced to experiment with new paradigms as they worked through certain specificsteps that we devised to encourage more collaborative ways of completing group tasks. Because these new paradigms were integrated into the process, less risk would be involved in initiating activities and voicing preferences.
The video project would also actively engage students in their learning as they deliberated meaningful choices,
responded to the unforeseen, and experienced the consequences of their decisions. To this end, each group would
exercise full autonomy (within the guidelines and objectives of the project) in choosing topics, assigning tasks, andcompleting their video. They would participate in developing the evaluative criteria used to assign a final grade totheir own and to their peers’ videos. They would be responsible for scheduling the use of the camera, seeking
permission to film in public places, obtaining releases from interviewees, and returning the equipment promptly
and in good repair. Finally, they would assume a mentor role as they described their project and dispensed advice
to future groups. From beginning to end, students would have to assume an active role as group members and as
individuals.

Authentic Communication with Native Speakers
Our program attracts students whose career goals include some aspect of international communication. Students are expected to participate in field research, exchanges with sister campuses, and various travel and study
abroad programs arranged through the University or independently. In order to have a successful international
experience and to further their own personal and career goals, students need to engage in authentic communication
with native speakers. However, such opportunities are limited in an EFL environment.
Email and video exchanges move students from the familiar, sheltered ground of the classroom to an unstructured environment where they can test their linguistic and pragmatic competence. Students have more opportunities to generate original speech and to experience an authentic, native-speaker response to their use of language. They must sustain conversations and perform a larger range of communicative tasks than can ever occur in
an institutional setting. Also, students must understand the social, cultural, and pragmatic contexts in which crosscultural communication takes place. Few language texts address these issues in any depth, and classroom instruction in these matters does not adequately prepare students to respond appropriately or to find solutions to thecommunicative dissonance that occurs when diverse cultures meet (Capper 2000). Email and video exchanges
allow participants to negotiate discourse and experience an authentic response within a cross-cultural context.

Procedure
Implementing the video and email exchange project in our department was a major decision. For the reasons
outlined above, we believed that it would benefit our students, and we were willing to commit to the extra time andeffort necessary. Even though we had incorporated the use of email and video into previous classes, making email
and video exchanges the main focus of a full-term course was a new experience both for instructors and students.
Over the three terms, the video and email exchanges evolved as we discovered ways to improve this project.

Participants
The email and video exchanges involved classes of second and third year English Conversation students inthe Department of Comparative Cultures at Aichi University, and middle school classes in Coquitlam, B.C., Canada.
The teachers of these middle school classes were eager to become involved in the exchanges because a unit on
Japan is included in their social studies curriculum. They were very interested in broadening the range of understanding that their students could gain about this country by directly communicating with students in Japan.
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The university students were very happy to have grade eight and nine students as their partners. While the exchanges were progressing, students repeatedly commented that they did not feel as anxious about communicatingwith younger students as they might have with Canadian university students. For these reasons we felt that thepartnership was beneficial to both sides, and we continued the exchanges over the next two terms.

Introduction of the Project
Before the email and video exchanges began, we started to prepare our students for this project. In the firstterm, journal writing and discussion focused on students’ feelings about being involved in the exchanges. Somevoiced concerns about being nervous in front of the video camera, or feeling worried that their English was notgood enough to complete the exchanges. Essays exploring the theme of cultural identity were used for journal
writing and discussion. Small groups of students researched and made presentations about aspects of Japaneseculture that might be of interest to their Canadian partners. Class discussions also helped students to find topics
and questions for the upcoming exchanges.
During the second and third term that we implemented the project, we also watched video segments made byprevious participants in the exchanges. Students saw that their peers were able to successfully complete the video
component, and this helped to ease any anxiety that they had felt. We discussed filming techniques and developed
criteria for evaluation of their own and other’s videos.
Video cameras were brought into classes early in the term. The first short video activity involved students
simply introducing themselves on camera. The presentations on Japanese culture were filmed at a later date, andboth of these videos were watched in the class following the filming. This allowed students to become accustomed
to seeing themselves on video and using the video camera. Groups were invited to borrow the cameras at any timeto practice filming before their final video segment was created.

The E-mail Exchange Component
During the fourth week of classes, students began the email exchanges. The first exchange was completed
during class time, and all messages were sent first to the instructors’ email addresses. The instructor was then able
to monitor the messages, and forward them to the teacher in the exchange country. The students on both sides ofthe exchange were obviously very curious about life in the other country, and many questions were exchanged ona wide range of topics. A short introduction was also included from each student in his or her first message.
Only the first email exchange was done during class time. The other three messages were assigned as
homework, and students again sent the messages via the instructors’ addresses. Three of the email exchanges werecompleted before the finished video was sent to the exchange partners. The final email message was assigned after
watching the video from the other country, and allowed the students the opportunity to make direct comments about
what they saw in the video.

The Video Exchange Component
In week five, students brainstormed topics for video segments, and groups for the video exchange were
decided upon. From this point onward, each group worked at their own pace to plan, film and edit their segment of
the final video. Each group created a basic outline of their plan for the segment, and presented their plan to theclass. Other groups discussed whether they thought this topic and plan would be successful, and brainstormed
problems that the group might encounter while filming. In some cases, groups changed their topics after discussions with their instructor and peers and began the process of planning once more from the beginning.
Along with class discussions about things to consider when filming the video, each group continued to work
independently on their video plan. Before being allowed to reserve a video camera, each group had to have a clear
plan, including the locations and dates of filming; props or materials they would need to bring with them; permission
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To contentsfrom people or establishments that would be involved in their video; and a clear outline of the topic, sub-topics andmain points they would make for each scene. They were also required to write a statement giving the reasons why
they had chosen their topic and why they believed it was important for their exchange partners to learn about this
topic. It was stressed that students should not write out and memorize what they wanted to say, but rather prepare
their main points for each scene and speak naturally. The instructors also pointed out that making the video should
be enjoyable!
After getting approval from the instructor for their completed plan, students were able to reserve a video
camera and begin filming their segment. Groups talked about their progress, and were able to offer each otheradvice and suggestions. Some groups finished filming their segment in one day, while other groups used the video
cameras a number of times to film different locations or re-do sections that they were not happy with.
Class time was used for discussion, small group planning and conferences with the instructors. All filming
and editing was done outside of class time, and some groups had to meet on several occasions to finish their video.
When groups had finished filming, they were able to reserve the editing room, and the instructors assisted eachgroup as they completed this process. The deadline for finishing all filming and editing for each segment was
before week ten of the course. Once each group handed in their edited video segment, the instructors added titles,
group members’ names, and dubbed each segment onto a master tape. Each class had previously filmed an introduction and conclusion for the tape. A copy of this tape was then mailed to the exchange classes.

Conclusion of the ProjectIn the tenth week classes watched the completed video, and each group made a short presentation about theirexperiences. The instructor and other groups assessed each video segment using criteria created by the class. Eachgroup also graded themselves using the same evaluation tool. A class Academy Awards was held, in which students
voted for the best actor/actress, funniest scene, best camera work, etc. This was a very positive experience for the
students.
During week eleven the class watched the video from Canada. Class discussion and journal writing addressed surprising or interesting things that the students found when watching the video, similarities and differences between the two classes and countries, and other topics concerning the email and video exchanges. At thispoint the final email exchange was assigned, so that students from both classes could tell their partners theirthoughts, feelings, and opinions about what they saw in the videos.
During the final weeks of the course, each group was responsible for writing a report that would help future
participants in the email and video exchanges. They were to summarize their video and explain why they chose
their topic; discuss the problems they encountered and how they solved them; evaluate how the group worked as ateam; and give advice for future filmmakers.

Evaluation of the projectThroughout this project, students were involved in the evaluation of their peers. In the first few classes,
students worked in small groups to analyze video segments from previous participants in the exchanges. The
presentation on an aspect of Japanese culture, which was the first group assignment for the course, was assessed by
the class as a whole. Each group completed a peer assessment sheet giving a grade and comments about various
aspects of the presentation. The final video was evaluated by both the instructor and the class, using the criteriathat had been created when looking at previous participants’ videos. Class discussions and journal writing also
helped the class to define criteria for evaluating presentations and videos. The email exchange component of thecourse was evaluated as either complete or incomplete. Early in the course, classes had discussed whether they felt
comfortable receiving a group grade for assignments. Students were given the option of an individual or group
grade and all of our students chose to receive a collective grade. Presentations, the email exchanges and the video
project comprised eighty percent of the students’ grade for this course.
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Results
We found that the students thoroughly enjoyed this project, and, consequently, these classes had near perfectattendance. The students exhibited, and reported, increased confidence in using English. Most importantly, we
found that the students experienced authentic communication in both its linguistic and pragmatic aspects. This isa result that we believe would not have been achieved through textbook study; the students needed to engage in across-cultural task that required them to generate original speech and to have their speech responded to realistically. Our students gained cross-cultural awareness and a better understanding of both North American and theirown culture through participating in this project.

Problems and Solutions
Problems that we encountered during the three terms of this project included students’ initial reluctanceabout being on video, the amount of time required outside of classes to complete the lengthy planning, filming andediting process.
Students quickly overcame their initial reluctance about appearing on video because the task content was too
absorbing to allow them much time to worry. Watching and discussing previous exchange videos and starting withsmall video assignments and working up to the final video exchange eased students’ anxiety about using video.
Class discussions, journal writing, and allowing students to work together in groups to reach their final goal also
helped to create a positive attitude toward the project.
Time was a major obstacle in finishing the exchanges. Our partnership with a public school in Canada meantthat the beginning and ending of our school terms did not coincide. Careful planning on both sides was necessary,and this created added pressure on both instructors and students. Due to the limited amount and availability ofediting equipment, students had to complete this part of the project in a very short time. Instructors found it
difficult to arrange appointments for the many groups who were ready to edit. When one group’s filming wasdelayed due to technical difficulties with the camera and because a festival was postponed, it was even moredifficult to find time to fit this group into the schedule.
Availability of equipment and technical support was also a major concern. Although our university has video
editing equipment available, it was difficult to find staff members to instruct us in the use of equipment. The
language barrier was a problem, and procedures for borrowing cameras, scheduling editing times, etc., were notclearly defined. While each term of the project has become easier as we become more familiar with the equipment
and support available and more rigorous in our scheduling, any instructor who is considering implementing thisproject should be very careful to allow for such contingencies in making a schedule for the project.

References
Anderson, F. (1993). The enigma of the college classroom: Nails that don’t stick up. In P. Wadden (ed.), A
handbook for teaching English at Japanese colleges and universities. (pp. 101 – 110). New York: Oxford
University Press.
Capper, S. (2000). Nonverbal communication and the language learner: Some pedagogic considerations. The
Language Teacher, 24(5) 19 – 23.
Doi, T. (1971). The anatomy of dependence. Tokyo: Kobundo.
Doyon, P. (2000). Shyness in the Japanese EFL class: why it is a problem, what it is, what causes it, and what to
do about it. The Language Teacher, 24(1) 11-16.
Krashen, S.D. (1985). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Lebra, T. (1976). Japanese patterns of behaviour. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Letendre, G. & Rohlen, T. (1998). Teaching and learning in Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Williams, C. (1994). Situational behaviour and the EFL classroom in Japan. The Language Teacher, 18(5), 10–11.

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Collaborative Teaching of Debate and Discussion through SCS
Masako Sasaki
Akita University, Japan

Michiyo Hirano
Ibaraki University, Japan

Yasuko Shiozawa
Shumei University, Japan
Introduction
One of the major goals of English education at Japanese colleges is the development of oral communication
skills applicable to practical situations in the students’ future careers. Generally college students have a verystrong desire to speak fluent English and their teachers spare no effort to improve their speaking skills. However,in spite of such earnest wishes on both sides, it is not an easy task to reach the goal. With little emphasis on thedevelopment of speaking and listening skills in Japanese English education at junior and senior high schools, thestudents lack confidence and competence in their speaking skills. The authors experienced difficulties in building
student confidence in speaking English and sought an original and creative approach to motivate and enable themto improve their oral communication skills.
A network system, the Space Collaboration System (SCS), absorbed the authors’ attention as a tool to improve these skills. The SCS is a satellite communications network connecting institutions across the nation. This
innovative system was developed and launched in October, 1996 by the Ministry of Education’s National Instituteof Multimedia Education (NIME) to make distance education and research exchanges far more accessible to institutions of higher education in the multimedia society of the 21st century. As of July 2000, there are 143 stations in
120 institutions. These stations are called VSAT (Very-Small-Aperture Terminal) stations and are controlled andmonitored by the HUB station installed in NIME. Each VSAT station installs cameras, screens, monitors, andother equipment, which enables the institution to exchange audiovisual information instantly and interactively withother distant institutions.
The marked characteristic of communication over the SCS is real-time interaction with clear audiovisual
information. By taking advantage of this characteristic, the authors came up with a project to enable students at
two different and distant universities to communicate in English in a joint class connected through the SCS. It was
assumed that the students would be much more motivated to improve their speaking skills by encountering theirpeers. This new learning environment was also expected to bring atmosphere of competition into speaking classes.
Another characteristic of the SCS appeared helpful in contributing to increase student motivation. The SCS
has an immense capacity to connect 3,000 VSAT stations and at maximum 3 stations are available for concurrent
interaction. Varied interaction among multiple stations and the presence of large audiences would hopefully encourage and stimulate the students. Simplified operations using a touch panel are also characteristic of the SCS.
Teachers do not have to be bothered or bewildered by the complexities of the technology.
The area of communicative speaking skills focused on in this research was debate, which was thought to bea favorable activity for the SCS joint class in terms of interaction and time limit (90 minutes). In addition, it waspresumed that the debate would naturally bring a competitive atmosphere to the class.

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As far as we know, there have been very few examples of the use of the SCS for communicative English
classes like our project. It seems the SCS was conventionally used for one-way communication such as lecturesand meetings in Japanese. Figure 1 below demonstrates our project exploring the use of the SCS.

HUB Station

SCS VSATU

Ibaraki University

DebateU

SCS VSAT
Akita University

Figure 1. Interactive English communications classes

The Present Study
Purposes
The purposes of this study are to explore effective ways to use the SCS to improve oral communication skillsof college students and examine its effects on them through a joint project by Ibaraki University and Akita University. More specifically, there are four purposes to be investigated in this research:1,

To explore a way to apply the advantages of SCS to interactive English communication classes.

2.

To design a collaborative way of teaching for discussion and debate.

3.

To improve oral communication skills by introducing persuasive and spontaneous speaking tobeginning students of debate.

4.

To find what benefits and stimulation will be had by students in a joint class through the SCS.

Project
Fundamental Premises: The teaching focus of this project was on the process toward final presentation,
not on the fundamentals of academic debate. First and foremost, the students were guided to speak persuasively
with clear organization rather than to collect data and evidence. In order not to occupy them with data and information gathering, the teachers coordinated and distributed a limited number of identical reference materials to each of
the student debaters.

Table 1. Shared Reference Materials
Round

Reference Materials

1stSouki Eigo Kyoiku No Kanousei (Possibilities of Early English Education). (1999, August). The English
Teachers’ Magazine, 8, 8-17.

2nd

On-Line Toronkai Houkoku : Daigaku Nyushi Ni Eigo Wa Hitsuyoka (Report on On-line Discussion:
Is English Necessary for College Entrance Examinations?). (1998, January to April). The English
Teachers’ Magazine 1, 30-31; 2, 86; 3, 87; 4, 87.

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Next, a simplified and flexible debate format and a set of rules were adopted to accommodate differences inindividual levels of English skills, the number of participants, and teaching procedures. In particular, the rebuttal
speech stage in the format below was unique to our project.

Table 2. Format and Rules
Format/Rules

Time

1.

Affirmative Constructive Speech

5 minutes

2.

Negative Constructive Speech

5 minutes

Preparation Time

1 minute

3.

Negative’s Cross Examination of the Affirmative’s Speech

2 minutes

4.

Affirmative’s Cross Examination of the Negative’s Speech

2 minutes

Preparation Time

5 minutes

Rebuttal Speech (Unique to our project!!)

10 minutes

5.

Rules:1)

Negative and Affirmative sides take turns.
(Negative→ Affirmative→ Negative→ Affirmative→ ……….)

2)

First respond to the previous person’s rebuttal, and then offer your rebuttal

3)

Turns should be first given to the members who have not spoken in constructive speech and cross examination.

4)

Within 1-minute speech per person

5)More than 1-minute silence transfers your turn to the other team.

Preparation Time

1 minute

6.

Negative Concluding Speech

2 minutes

7.

Affirmative Concluding Speech

2 minutes
Total Time: 35 minutes

The total time of one debate round was set to 35 minutes so that one joint class would have two rounds ofdebate in its time limit of 90 minutes.
Overall Picture: This project can be divided into 3 stages: (a) pre-SCS stage, (b) during-SCS stage, and (c)post-SCS stage; the flow of these 3 stages is presented in Figure 2.
Pre-SCS: At the stage of pre-SCS, fairly frequent e-mails were exchanged between Hirano and Shiozawa at
Ibaraki University and Sasaki at Akita University, through which the reference materials (Table 1), the format andrules (Table 2), and the propositions (Table 3) to be shared in the joint SCS debate were discussed and decided.
It turned out that careful planning and close coordination by teachers were essential for the success of thisproject.
Although the basic principles of pre-SCS teaching at both universities were the same, their approaches weredifferent. At Ibaraki University, the students had small-group discussions to come up with propositions, learned
common expressions for debate, rehearsed the debate and evaluated it using the same format as the one for the
coming joint SCS class. At Akita University, a model debate was presented to and analysed by the students. They
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had debate-style role plays as an introduction to debating, the situations of which were set up to reflect the debate
topics. As a way to follow the flow of debate, they received instruction on how to take notes. They went throughthe rehearsal debate with the same propositions and, finally, e-mailed to the teacher a manuscript with a few
questions expected from the other team and their answers to them, which they revised after receiving the teacher’s
feedback.

Pre-SCS

Ibaraki University

Akita UniversityUe-mail exchanges

U

Instruction & Activities

Instruction & Activities

Teachers’ Careful Planning and Close Coodination
1. Shared Reference Materials
2. Shared Format
3. Shared Rules

U

DuringSCS

Shared Debate Floor via the SCS
U Feedback

Nara Institute of Science and Technology

U

U
U

Ibaraki Univ.

1st Affirmative
2nd NegativeU

U

DebateUU

1st Negative
2nd Affirmative

Akita Univ.

U

U

Shumei Univ.

Kyushu Univ.

Fukuoka Univ. of EducationU

Post‑SCS
Ibaraki University
U

Discussion
Comment Writing

e-mail exchanges

U

Akita University
Discussion
Comment Writing

Figure 2. Schematic diagram of collaborative SCS project
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Table 3. Proposition & Position
Round

Proposition

Aff.

Neg.

1st

Primary schools should introduce English into their curriculum as a subject.

Akita

Ibaraki

2nd

English should be excluded from college entrance examinations.

IbarakiAkita

During SCS: With ‘a floor created by the SCS’ shared among the students and teachers from the 6 universities, the debaters were encouraged as well as stimulated by the presence of large audiences. The choice of the two
propositions also helped them be actively involved in the debate because most of them would like to becometeachers of English and will face those problems in the near future. Both teams at each round consisted of 5
students and they took turns expressing their opinions, ideas, questions, or answers. During the preparation time,they discussed being more persuasive in the next stage of exchanges. This was a no-win debate. That is why theprocedure did not go beyond evaluating each team’s performance by the use of an assessment/evaluation form
designed by the instructor(s) at each university.
After the two rounds of debate finished, we had time to discuss the overall performance of the debaters, theprocedures designed by the authors, and the significance of debating. The students exchanged their honest feelings
that debating in English is difficult but worth trying. The authors reflected upon the original procedure and pointed
out the points to be refined. The teachers at the other institutions gave us encouraging comments as well as
constructive and convincing observations.
Post-SCS: The joint debate class was followed at each university by a discussion and then writing comments
were exchanged by e-mail. At Ibaraki University, it was also discussed how meaningful this project was to thestudents who participated in it as part of the ‘English Education Theory’ course. At Akita University, a brief
questionnaire was administered to the students about 1) what they could get from the course as a whole and 2)
requests or complaints. Teachers’ comments were also exchanged for a better SCS joint project.
The Key to Success: To assure this project is successful, the following four factors should be followed.
1.

Close, Active, Full Collaboration
In spite of the differences in teaching purposes, procedures and contents between the courses at
two universities, the authors explored a way to realize this project by close, active, and fullcollaboration as well as mutual positive concessions.

2.

Careful Planning and Coordination
Information technology enabled careful planning and coordination between distant universities. In this project, numerous e-mails were exchanged among the 3 teachers.

3.

Rapport between teachers and students
Teachers and students at each university have to understand each other’s ideas or feelings towork as a team before, during, and after the project.

4.

Encouraging feedback from attentive audiences
Feedback from the audiences is helpful and encouraging. After the debate, useful comments tothe point were exchanged, which highly encouraged the students and teachers to try it again.

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Stimulus and Motivation
to both students and teachers

Opportunities to contact other universities
Live performance and interaction in front of a large audience
Exchange of different opinions among people of the same generation
Good balance of competition and cooperation
Figure 3. Significance of using SCS for interactive English communication classes

Conclusion
From the following four points we conclude that this SCS joint project is an unprecedented and effective
way to develop interactive English communication classes. First, an interactive English communication class
between distant universities was realized because of the advantageous characteristics of the SCS, such as real-time
interactive communication, transmission of clear audiovisual information, and simplified operation. Second, collaboration between the teachers generated a simple, flexible debate format and a set of rules. Also a cooperative
work spirit, based on rapport between the students and the teachers, contributed to every stage from wording
propositions to speech delivery. Third, the introduction of persuasive and spontaneous speaking made the students
realize that it is one of the important areas of speaking skills that they have to and want to keep developing. Last,
both the students and the teachers benefited from the SCS’s powerful stimulation and motivation. We suggest that
this SCS joint project provides a new perspective on teaching of oral communication skills.

Implications
This research will be extended to explore more effective uses of the SCS for interactive English communication classes. To supplement and develop the SCS joint class, the Internet will be a useful follow-up tool to further
exchanges of opinions and comments. With the global development of the SCS, communicative English classes
would be realized with universities in foreign countries. Actually, post-pan-pacific regional telecommunications
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network experiments and research were carried out by satellite between Japan and Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia (http://www.crl.go.jp/t/team1/POST/index.html). The development of information technology presents us withthe possibility of using it in teaching oral communication skills. It will depend on teachers’ insight and creativity
to use information technology to improve students’ communicative speaking skills.

References
Bolichowski, H. (1995). Debating the Issue. The Language Teacher, 19(7), 18-24.
Fryar, M., et al. (1993). Basic Debate. Illinois USA: National Textbook Company Lincolnwood.
Le, V. (1995). Double Debates. The Language Teacher, 19(7), 12-16.
Matsumura, Y., et al. (1997). Enjoy Debating. Tokyo: Eichosha.
National Institute of Multimedia Education, Ministry of Education. (2000). Space Collaboration System “Promoting education and research exchanges through the SCS.”

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Composing on Computer—English Foreign Language Speakers Discover Hidden Treasure—
Monica van Heerden
Da Yeh University, Taiwan
Abstract
In this paper, based on the poster presentation I want to illustrate how an electronic mail facility offerednovice writers in a freshman English second language class in Taiwan scope for free writing and composing
meaningful text in a genre such as expressive writing. Two issues are highlighted – one, the writer is the fount of
all text that she produces and two, language is a social construct. The writer and reader jointly constructmeaning as both of them contribute background knowledge and expertise to the text. Text is coherent, has
purpose and is directed at and influenced by the audience, and is produced by an author persona. When e-mailis used as a means of communication writing is in fact a kind of talking to others in a focused manner, rather
than it being an individualized adversarial activity. Communication not only breaks down cultural barriers, butalso increases writers’ shared knowledge and creativity.

Project Participants
At the beginning of the 1999 fall semester I became a student advisor for a section of the English Major
freshman class group. I did not teach all the students in my group so I had to find a way of establishing a positive
relationship with the members of the group, as this was the main task assigned to each advisor. It was importantthat students should perceive the communication to be meaningful, consequently I thought of integrating the relationship building process with a project that would be interesting to them and at the same time help them in theirstudy of English. All the students were intermediate to low advanced level English second language users. Their
English teaching in high school had mostly been within a traditional grammar oriented paradigm.

Rationale
The project served a dual purpose: first, the rationale for launching it was to use e-mail messages as a meansof establishing and developing interpersonal relationships in the group, and in that way break down cultural barriers between my students and myself by becoming engaged in an activity that was of mutual interest to us all.
Secondly, the motivation was to guide students to use the computer, more specifically, the electronic mail facility asa writing tool. Novice writers would have a chance to develop their writing and composing skills in a non-threatening way. The group of English second language students had scant knowledge of the difference between amechanistic approach to writing and composing as a meaning making activity.

Goals of the Project
For the purpose of the presentation the overriding goal of the project was to encourage students to become
independent thinkers while composing an expressive text on a computer. The process approach to writing could
enable them to utilize their declarative (what they knew) as well as their procedural (knowing how to) knowledge

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in a creative manner. Writers would begin to realize that writing is a purposeful, meaning making activity to be
carried out in phases during which the main objective is to negotiate meaning in order to produce a coherent text.
Secondly one of the goals was to make writers aware of the benefits of electronic aids and guide them to use
the available facilities at their disposal to minimize the drudgery connected to the creative but time consuming
cyclic writing process. Each time a draft is revised the writer renegotiates meaning in order to improve the qualityof ideas, as a result changes to the text are inevitable.
Thirdly, the project aimed at guiding writers to develop their ‘self-regulating ability’- that is to take responsibility for their own writing in three ways: to observe the content of their writing (to note what they wrote); toevaluate the quality of their writing (to note how they wrote); to react to their writing (to be willing to revise theirtext when necessary).
Since all members of the group were freshmen who had limited experience of writing above sentence level
I regarded them as novice writers.

Traits of Novice Writers
In my experience, supported by research (Eskey, 1993; Bhatia, 1998), novice writers share some characteristics irrespective of the target language they use, for example:
Novice writers have little sense of audience (readers). They do not direct their writing at specific readers oran anticipated reader group. When the writing does not have a clear focal point it loses impact.
Coupled to this is absence of a definite purpose for writing. Inexperienced writers often do not know thatthey have to shift the emphasis in discourse depending on the purpose for writing, for example a different emphasis
for expressive, than for persuasive writing.
Furthermore, these writers seem to have only tacit awareness of an author persona and writer’s “voice” in a
text. Inexperienced writers often do not implement rhetorical devices to create suspense or vibrancy in their discourse.
Novice writers do not revise their texts as often as experienced writers do. They also do not know how to
distinguish between revising and editing and are satisfied if surface errors have been eliminated.
Finally, texts written by novice writers often lack coherence, mostly because the writers lack self-regulatingskills.
Throughout the project I tried to encourage and boost the morale of all participants. Not all students responded equally well, but some improved remarkably well. This positive approach to a new and perhaps daunting
task already became evident at the first meeting.

ProcedureAt the first group meeting I explained the idea of launching a project in which we would do a writing as-aprocess project using the Internet as our communication medium. Since I did not see students regularly, communicating via e-mail seemed a viable option to make the communication easier between the various participants andmyself. The project would run for the duration of the academic year.
Not one of the twenty students who volunteered to join in the project had ever used the writing-as-a-process
approach before. Neither had any one used the computer as a writing tool up to that stage. Each participant would
initially produce an expressive text using e-mail as their communication medium in which they described an
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unpleasant experience. All members agreed to send weekly e-mail messages to my address, to which I would
respond within a day or two. In addition to the communication via e-mail, the group met regularly once a fortnightfor one hour during the first semester. In the latter half of the year the group met sporadically on an “at-need” basis.
During the first few class meetings I explained the cyclic nature of writing-as-a-process. First, students
learnt to distinguish between the concepts writing (a technically oriented action that can be completed at a single
session–generally without the need for revising the text) and composing (a meaning making writing activity generally drafts have to be revised to improve quality and clarity of ideas). Next, they were introduced to thedifferent phases in this approach, such as prewriting; the concept of multiple drafts needed for revising ideas; thevalue of teacher and peer response to writing while it was in progress; editing or polishing; and finally, publishinga text. Students also learnt about the writer’s prerogative to create any author persona of his/her choice; and toillustrate the purpose of writing discourse they were introduced to the rhetorical triangle (Kinneavy, 1971 in Connor
and Carrell, 1993, p. 143).
“Informative”(focus on the reality)“expressive”(focus on the encoder)“literary”(focus on the text)“persuasive”(focus on the decoder)Figure 1. The purpose of writing discourse
I would act as an outside reader, responding to text in a non-directive manner. I would conference with eachwriter individually in my e-mail responses, using a P-Q-S- format:
P - Praise at least one good aspect in the text – either a thought or a single word.
Q - Question only one point that seemed problematic.
S - Suggest a few different options to change or improve the content.
However, the onus would always be on the writer as author to accept or reject the suggestions. At the groupmeetings we discussed two most prevalent problems that cropped up in the previous weeks – sometimes referring
to composing matters, at other times, to logistical problems. Writers also had time to read their drafts in their
response groups (5–6 members) and listen to their peers’ PQS feedback. The emphasis in all interchanges during
the composing process was on improving the quality of ideas. While the writing was in progress surface language
errors were corrected only in extreme and very obvious instances. Editing or polishing of drafts was kept until the
final draft was done.

Pro’s and Cons of Using the Computer as a Writing Tool
Advantages
The advantages of using the computer as a ‘writing’ tool are generally known. In our situation it was convenient to write on computer for some special reasons. As far as the mechanics of writing were concerned facilities
such as Thesaurus and spell checker to facilitate editing, were available to all writers, while the cutting and pasting
facility lessened the drudgery of revising multiple drafts. Another advantage was that the product, even before it
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was proofread was neat and legible without being disfigured by deletions or scribbles on the page. The neat
appearance of a draft somehow helped those novice writers to develop a sense of ownership and pride in their own
text.
At content level the computer also proved to be highly beneficial as a writing tool. As a result of writers’ability to revise by deleting or adding sections it was possible to enhance the quality of ideas while the writing wasin progress. Furthermore, writers could open links to other sites enabling them to have access to a wealth of
relevant sources which enriched the content of their own texts while samples of different genres could serve asmodels to add quality and depth of thought to their own work.

Constraints
In spite of many advantages of using the computer as a writing tool, there are certain constraints. Many
language students have minimal computing skills that can slow down the writing process considerably in somecases. In freshmen classes it is not unusual that entire texts are lost because writers did not make backup copies orsave the original draft. Bothersome as such issues are, they can be remedied when members become more adept atusing the computer. Another matter of a psycho-socio nature is of greater concern, however. Foreign languageusers easily start to feel isolated from their teacher and peers when they struggle with the target language. When
writers cannot cope on their own because of their insufficient language skills they may give up trying if help is notforthcoming fairly promptly. In such instances writers feel abandoned and see writing on computer as a noninteractive and impersonal task.

Advantages of Using Electronic Mail as a Communication Medium
The almost universal availability and immediacy of electronic mail were the two features that made using the
web preferable to using word processing as a means of communication in the project. It would have been almost
impossible to sustain the support system that was implemented if students had used a word-processor The e-mailfeatures referred to above also made it possible to forestall the negative psycho-socio factors that could influence
writers’ attempts negatively.
I came to know students much better than it would have been possible in every other situation. Culturalbarriers were gradually broken down. The reticent “silent” students in class began to develop greater confidence intheir writing and composing ability, and they started to communicate freely on disc as well as in face-to-facemeetings. Students never felt “abandoned” and left to their own devices. They were assured of the outside reader’sassistance at all times. Writers could work on or off campus at their own pace and in their own time. This gave
individuals a chance to utilize their own learning style, which in turn reduced the level of student learning stress.
Nevertheless participants were aware of and had to cope with specific constraints in order to allow the
project to run smoothly. They soon discovered that their work tempo was to a lesser or greater extent affected by
the level of their computing and typing ability. Fortunately they could take care of most of the technical problemson their own or get assistance from someone else at a later stage. Other problems were mostly related to time
management and network problems. Sometimes when the network was down or very slow students were frustrated. There were a few instances where messages were lost or bounced back to the writer’s address. To overcome
the problem, however, students learnt to make back-up copies of all drafts and save all outgoing messages.
Although most writers’ drafts still reflected remnants of idiosyncratic inter-language systems the major goalof this part of the project—to communicate and create a text above sentence level—was achieved. The drafts
below are evidence of the degree of progress that was noticeable in individual persons’ writing.

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Samples of Student Writings
Subject: A bad experience
Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1999 17:07:06 +0800
Two months ago, I had the worest experience with my friend. I remembered that day was
Father’s Day and my friend called me at night. we had a little qurrel in the telephone.The reason was
he wanted to resign her part-time job. The job was I looking for her. She promised me that she would
do the job untill september, but she didn’t do it. So I was angry with her . I am never angry withanybody,but this time I was really angry. Beside angry, I was also very sad. I think this is my worest
experience in my life.
(101 words)

f8850044

GloriaSubject: A bad experience
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 1999 22:36:52 +0800
Two months ago, a Friday night, I had a bad experience with my friend.I still remember that day
was Father’s day and my friend called me. We had a qurrel on the telephone. The reason was she
wanted to resign her part-time job.The job was I looking for her. The thing was happened very suddenly. She promised me originally that she would finish the job, but she didn’t do it. Shedidn’t abide
by her promise. So I was angry with her. I have never been angry with anybody previously. Besideangry, I was also very sad. I think this is my worst experience in my life.
(106 words)

f8850044

GloriaSubject: A unpleasant experience
Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1999 17:28:52 +0800
In the morning of one day,I got up late and I must go to the classroom.I walked on the road and
I must try my best to walk faster.When I came down the stairs in the engineering building. Suddenly I
fell down,and I slid on the ground.And there were a lot of people in the place at that time.I was very
embarrassed at that time.But I must go to the classroom, because I was already late.I wore my hat andtried my best to run to the classroom. After that time I walked carefully.
(94 words)

f8850024

May

Subject: A unpleasant experience
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 1999 21:48:38 +0800
One Friday morning , I fell down suddenly .
In Friday morning ,I got up late and I must go to the classroom. I walked on the road with myclassmate Grace . And we must try our best to walk faster . When I came down the stairs in theengineering building , I fell down and I slid on the ground . And Grace asked me “Were you all right,
and were you hurt ?” I answered her “I was all right . “And there were a lot of people in the place atthat time . I was very embarrassed at that time . But I still stood up quickly . I wore my hat and tried mybest to run to the classroom. After that time , I walk carefully . And I get a experience .
(144 words)

f8850024

May

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Subject: A unpleasant experience
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1999 23:24:24 +0800
One Friday morning, I fell down suddenly.
In Friday morning,the sky was very murky grey and it seemed to tell me something will
happen.The weather was very cold and the wind was very chilly.I feared the cold weather and I wanted
to sleep more.So, I got up late.I worried about that I would be late,so I accelerated my step.I walked on
the road with my classmate Grace.And we must try our best to walk faster.
When I came down the stairs in the engineering building,I forgot there was still a stair and I
didn’t take care it.So,I fell down and I slid on the ground.And Grace asked me “Were you all right,and
were you hurt?”I answered her “I was all right,just some abrasion.Don’t worry about it!”And there
were a lot of people in the place at that time.I was very embarrassed at that time.
And I felt everyone was laughing at me.At that time, I hope there was a hole in the ground andI could go into it.But I still stood up guickly.I wore my hat because I was scared that others knew
me.And I tried my best to run to the classroom.
After that time,I walk carefully.And I get a experience.
(202 words)

f8850024

May*Note: Writing samples had not been edited as the final drafts still had to follow.

Tentative Evaluation of the Project: Composing on Computer
At the onset of the project I identified two major purposes for the project, first to establish a positive relationship between myself and the students in the group, and secondly, to guide them in a non-directive way to make thetransition from writing to composing on the web, using e-mail as the means of communication. Although the firstgoal of the project does not form an expressed part of this project, it is interesting to note that in varying degrees all
students in the group established a very pleasant and trusting relationship with me.
I identified three categories within a qualitative evaluation paradigm as a tentative base to establish if there
had been development in the quality of individual writers’ texts. These were:1.

The increase in number of words in drafts;

2.

The increase in use of number of descriptive words: adjectives and adverbs in second and third
drafts;3.

Evidence of some rhetorical devices such as writer’s ‘voice’ and a sense of personal involvement – a focus on the encoder - in the drafts.

Both writers’ samples reflected some evidence of development in all three categories

Table 1. Summary of Various Writer Characteristics
Writer:Gloria

1st
draft

2nd
draft

3rd
draft

Number of words

101

106

Number of qualifiers

6

Rhetorical devices:

yes

1st
draft

2nd
draft

3rd
draft

-

94

144

202

13

-

13

13

22

yes

-

yes

yes

yes

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Since the goal of the project was to help student writers make the transition from writing to composing I
briefly refer to some of the rhetorical devices used in various drafts. In Gloria’s case she succeeded in sharing heranger about her friend’s disloyalty, as well as her awareness of an unusual personal emotion—anger. The text isanchored in space and time—at home, “father’s day, Friday.” In spite of many surface errors the writer’s ‘voice’ isnoticeable. It is expressive writing as the focus is on the encoder’s feelings.
May’s drafts not only doubled in length, but she succeeded in creating a sense of “nature in sympathy withthe persona.” Her description of the weather in the 3rd draft is vivid and creates a foreboding atmosphere. The useof dialogue is effective as it draws the reader into the situation. The milieu is briefly sketched. Readers know when
and where the incident took place and how the writer felt about it.
Most students progressed along similar lines. The development in the consecutive drafts is noteworthy as
my input was confined to the PQS strategy. I merely suggested changes and asked questions to raise their awareness of the context, e.g., where were you? Were you alone? How did you feel? Students reacted to my suggestions
according to their individual inclination and ability.
It is understandable that individuals’ writing products showed great variation in quality. The level oflanguage usage of writers who were proficient in English was more advanced than in instances where the writers
had difficulty formulating their ideas in the target language. However, Gloria and May’s texts can be regarded as
typical of the language ability of the majority of the group members. Fifteen of the original group of twenty
members participated for at least the first semester. At that stage most of the students had written the final drafts.
There are some points that need to be emphasized and revised in a subsequent project, such as saving all my
individual responses to students. Nevertheless, I consider the project to have been a success. English second
language students learnt something about composing on computer and discovered their own creative ability as
writers in the process.

References
Bhatia, V.K. (1998). Analysing genre. London: Longman.
Connor, U.M. and Carrell, P.L. (1993). The interpretation of tasks by writers and readers in holistically rated direct
assessment of writing. In J.G. Carson and I. Leki (Eds.), Reading in the composition classroom. Boston:Heinle and Heinle Publishers.
Eskey, D. (1993). Reading and writing as both cognitive process and social nehavior. In J.G. Carson and I. Leki
(Eds.), Reading in the composition classroom. Boston: Heinle and Heinle Publishers.
Fulkerson, R. (1990). Composition theory in the Eighties: Axiological consensus and paradigmatic diversity . In
College composition and communication, 41, 409-429.
Krater, J., Zeni, J. and Cason, N.D. (1994). Mirror Images. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Kress, G. (1993). Literacy: A genre approach to teaching writing. London: Falmer Press.
Murray, D. (1985). A writer teaches writing. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Richard-Amato, P.A. (1996). Tools of the trade: Textbooks, computer programs, and videos (Ch.15). In Making it
happen. New York: Longman.
Stevens, R.J., et.al. (1987). Cooperative integrated reading and composition. Reading Research Quarterly, 22,433-454.
Zamel, V. (1992). Writing one’s way into reading. TESOL Quarterly, 26, 463-481.

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Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL)
Massoud Rahimpour
Tabriz University, Iran
Abstract
In recent years computer assisted language learning has attracted both the attention and criticism ofmany language teachers. The computer revolution, is believed to be more than just a technological development
and may change society as radically as did the Industrial Revolution (Ahmad, Corbett, Rogers and Sussex,1985). Consequently , computer literacy and utilizing the computer in teaching language has established itself
as an important feature of language teaching profession in modern education. That is why many language
schools, and language departments now utilize computers in various ways.
The aim of this paper is thus twofold: The paper first starts with a discussion of various aspects ofcomputer assisted language learning(CALL), with a particular reference to the role of computer in learning
language. The advantages and disadvantages of computers are then presented. Finally a brief summary of what
teachers should know in order to use CALL concludes the paper.

Introduction
Recent years have witnessed an explosion of interest in using computers for teaching and learning. A coupleof years ago, the use of computers in language teaching and learning was of the concern only to a small number oflanguage teachers who were familiar with computers. But nowadays, with the technological development and withthe advent of multimedia computing means, such as the E-mail, and Internet, the role of computers in language
instruction has become an important issue for language teachers throughout the world. Indeed technological developments have been welcomed with open arms by all sections of society such as banking, traffic, word-processing,computer games, students registration, office management, and 21st century language teachers and language learning are no exception to this issue. (Levy, 1999; Nunan, 1999;Vanparys, 1999, Whistle, 1999; Warschauer andHealey, 1998; Kalisky, 1992; Roach, 1992; Gitsaki, 1999; Kubota, 1999).
According to Silars (1994) one of the most obvious effects of the revolution in information technology, of
which computer is only one means, is that it allows many tasks to be performed much more quickly and with great
accuracy, cutting the costs and reducing the risk of errors; it enables personal letters to be produced simply; it can
reduce the need for travel from one place to another place and all these save much time and money.
As Ahmad, Corbett, Rogers and Sussex (1985) claim the computer revolution can be considered more thanjust a technological development and it may change society as radically as did the Industrial Revolution. It is also
claimed that Computer Assisted Language Learning and Teaching approach in language classes represents new
ways of language teaching and learning which have a great impact on the learning of foreign language and consequently creates an ideal condition and environment which will facilitate learning (Hoven, 1999; Harrison, 1998;
Holmes, 1998).

The History of CALL
Warschauer and Healey (1998) report that computers have been utilized in language teaching since 1960s.
They then divide these longer years into three main stages:
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1.

Behavioristic CALL

2.

Communicative CALL

3.

Integrative CALL

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Behavioristic CALL
Conceived in the 1950s and implemented in the 1960s and 1970s, this could be considered a sub-componentof the broader field of computer-assisted instruction. This mode of CALL featured repetitive language drills, referred to as drill-and-practice. In this paradigm which is popular in the United States, the computer was regarded asa mechanical tutor which never grew tired or judgmental and allowed students to work at an individual pace.
Behavioristic CALL was first designed and implemented in the era of the mainframe, but eventually modified andimplemented to the personal computer. According to Ahmad, Corbett, Rogers and Sussex (1985) PLATO was thebest system which ran on its own special hardware consisting of a central computer and terminals and featured
extensive drills, grammatical explanations, and translation tests at various intervals.

Communicative CALL
This emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s when behavioristic approaches to language teaching werebeing rejected at both the theoretical and pedagogic level, and when new personal computers were creating greater
possibilities for individual work. Proponents of communicative CALL stressed that computer-based activities should
focus more on using form than on the forms themselves, teach grammar implicitly rather than explicitly, allow andencourage students to generate original utterances rather than just manipulate prefabricated language and use thetarget language predominantly or even exclusively (Jones & Fortescue, 1987; Phillips, 1987; Underwood, 1984) .
Warschauer and Healey also argue that communicative CALL corresponded to cognitive theories which emphasized that learning was a process of discovery, expression, and development. Popular CALL software which wasdeveloped in this period included text reconstruction programs (which allowed students working alone or ingroups to rearrange words and texts to discover patterns of language and meaning) and stimulation (which stimulated discussion and discovery among students working in pairs or groups). Many of the proponents of the communicative CALL did not focus on what students did with the machine, but rather what they with each other whileworking at the computer.
Though communicative CALL was considered as an advance over behavioristic CALL, it came under criticism too. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, critics discussed that the computer was still being used in an ad hoc
and disconnected fashion and thus ‘finds itself making a greater contribution marginal rather than central elements’of language learning process (Kenning & Kenning, 1990: 90). Warschauer (1996b) reports that many teachers weremoving away from a cognitive view of communicative teaching to a more social or socio-cognitive view, whichplaced greater emphasis on language use in authentic social context. Warschauer then adds that task-based, project,and content-based approaches all sought to integrate learners in authentic environment, and also to integrate thevarious skills of language learning and use which led to a new perspective on technology and language learningwhich has been termed integrative CALL.

Integrative CALL
This perspective which seeks both to integrate various skills (e.g. listening, speaking, reading, and writing)and also integrate technology more fully into the language learning process. In integrative approaches, students
learn to use a variety of technological tools as an ongoing process of language learning to use, rather than visiting
the computer lab on a once a week basis isolated exercises (whether the exercises are behavioristic or communicative).

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While the mainframe was the technology of behavioristic CALL, and the PC the technology of communicative CALL, the multimedia networked computer is the technology of integrative CALL. The multimedia networked computer is now available for almost majority of the students in the developed countries and provide
possibilities for more integrated uses of technology as learning to read, write, and communicate via computer
which has become an essential feature of modern life in the third millennium in the developed world.
It is obvious that many of the changes in CALL paradigms have resulted from economic and social changes.
As Warschauer and Healey (1998) maintain, the shift to global information-based economies has meant a dramaticincrease in the need to deal with large amount of information and to communicate across language and cultures.
Consequently, teachers’ roles have also changed with times and teachers are not the only sources of language
information in the age of information. Warschauer and Healey also believe that as a result of the recent rapid
political, social, and educational changes in the world, the teacher has become a facilitator of learning rather than
the font of wisdom, and will find, select, and offer information in a variety of ways on the basis of what the students
must learn in order to meet diverse needs in this changing world.

The Advantages of the Utilization of Computer in Language Learning
Ahmad et al. (1985) divide the advantages of computer into three types:
1.

Those which are part of its inherent nature

2.

Those which benefit the teacher

3.

Those which benefit the learner.

They explain that the computer can offer interactive learning which means that like a two-way task, it canconduct a two-way learning session with students which will improve the students’ performance in language
acquisition. It is indeed more than a mere programmed textbook. The computer can assess the student’s response.
It can give messages, check the student’s subsequent responses to the questions, give positive and negative scores
to correct and wrong answers and finally corrects the errors made by the student and then gives the appropriate
feedback. All of these activities can be repeated easily and without mistakes by the computer which can easily arise
from repetition by human beings. We often witness that due to the illness, timetable clashes or other family andpersonal problems, students are absent from classes and cannot attend the course and accordingly miss the lessons
and related points covered in the class. These kind of problems present no difficulty for the computer and consequently for CALL programs. The reason is clear, if a computer is available, the student can later use the computerand spend as long as he/she wants to get full benefit from the call program. It can also accommodate different
speeds of learning and alternatively time limits can be allocated for answering questions. This is specifically
helpful and valuable for testing purposes.
From the teacher’s point of view, the computer offers a lot of help. The big help is its versatility in handlingdifferent kinds of material in short time. But the simplest is the one-way presentation of information in different
forms such as tables, graphics, audio and video and text. The computer can also present games, questions andanswers, dialogues and many different activities and exercises which will certainly facilitate learning and create afavorable condition for teaching and learning purposes too.
The computer also offers many advantages and help for students. The first one is accessibility. If computers
are available, students can work with them as long as they desire. As a result of the computer’s flexibility of time
students thus can get most of the benefit from their time. This factor makes most of the courses accessible tostudents who would otherwise miss the classes. Distance teaching is nowadays practicable by the utilization of thecomputer. This also makes the courses available on a distance mode for part-time students too. Recently technological developments have made it possible to link the computer by telephone line (modem) to other Web cites
which has consequently made it feasible for the users to use the E-mail and Internet which is of great and crucial
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help for language leaning. Graduate and postgraduate students now can benefit more from computer too. They can
get in touch with their supervisors and communicate with them whenever they want, even after office hours and get
feedback on their assignments and thesis from their supervisors. Holt (1992: xi) states that “the effect of using
computer based tools is not confined to individuals or even small groups but is likely to have far reaching implications in breaking down traditional language barriers between cultures.”
Finally “computer can be a powerful motivating force.” (Ahmad et al. 1985:6). As Kaliski (1992) points out,
the computer has a positive and key role in productive language instruction provided that its possibilities andlimitations are recognized. However CALL deserves a special and serious consideration and attention.

The Disadvantages of the Computer in Language Learning
The fact that CALL was once viewed with a certain hostility by language teachers goes beyond mere objections to methodological considerations. One problem is that early CALL was designed to be used for self study andmost of the input was designed by people other than language teachers, in particular psychologists and computerindustry itself. As a result one of the fears within the teaching profession at that time was that the computer would
alter the nature of student/teacher relationship. Most of teacher also thought that they might be replaced by thecomputers too!
Referring to the above mentioned problems, Kaliski (1992) points out that there are a number of reasons forthe under-utilization of computers in language teaching. While the young generations are often computer literate,older members of society express a certain reluctance to use the computer and remain unaware of its potential andadvantages in language learning. Kaliski also refers to an association in the early days of CALL with behaviorist
language learning theory, based on rote learning and drilling of language items, known to language teachers as‘drill and kill’ has given CALL a bad image. On the other hand language teaching has now mowed into a ‘cognitive’, ‘communicative’ phase, leading some learners and teachers to think that CALL has nothing new to offer to its
users. Another reason might be the poorly produced software or the cost of the software which most of the users
cannot afford to buy. While much CALL software may still be in the Iron Age, in Kaliski’s terms, in pedagogical
purposes, there are suggestions of new roles for CALL. Leech and Candlin (1986: XI) also criticize this software
problem that “CALL is still in an experimental stage, when the potentiality of medium is still being explored, andsoftware (particularly good software) is in short supply.” However different ways of utilizing the computer andreassessing its role, new ideas about programming and technological developments are beginning to open up new
possibilities.

Conclusion
The role of computers in language teaching has changed significantly in the last 30 years. We have come along way. There is still a long way a head to go. In the past, utilization of computers were limited to text and only
simple simulations and exercises, primarily gap-filling tasks and multiple choice drills were used. Technologicaland pedagogical developments now allow us to more fully integrate computer technology into the language learning process. Multimedia programs, such as speech-recognition software, concordance software and moreover Internet
provide us opportunities and create an ideal environment to communicate in the target language and accordingly
facilitate learning a foreign language in an ESL situation in general, and for EFL situation in particular.
As Warschauer and Healey (1998) predicts, more developments in networked communication, multimedia
and artificial intelligence will certainly create a potentially crucial role for the computer for language exploration
and use in the second language classroom. Meanwhile as our focus of attention shifts from the computer itself tothe natural integration of computers in the language learning process, it will be realized that computer technology
has taken its rightful place as an important element of language learning and teaching. However it is necessary toevaluate both the present position and future possibilities, the achievement of CALL which depends on software
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and hardware availability and also on the orientation of computer-assisted curriculum. By this careful evaluation,
the shortcoming and limitations would be recognized and necessary steps would be taken to cure the remedies andstrengthen the positive points and further practical and valuable suggestions will be offered for the betterment of
the CALL in the future. But one thing should not be forgotten that, the computer is put to the service of our
fundamental aims in learning and teaching purposes, rather than making users slaves to its own procedures.

References
Ahmad, K., Corbett, G., Rogers, M. and Sussex, R. (1985). Computers, language learning and language teaching.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gitsaki, C. and Taylor (1999). Internet-based activities for the ESL classroom. ReCALL, 11,1,47-57.
Harrison, R. (1998). The evolution of networked computing in the teaching of Japanese as a foreign language.
Computer Assisted Language Learning, 11(4), 437-452.
Holmes, B. (1998). Initial perceptions of CALL by Japanese university students. Computer Assisted Language
Learning, 11(4), 397-409.
Holt, P.O. (1992). Preface. In Holt, P. O. & Williams, N.(Eds.). Computers and writing: State of the Art. London:
Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. vii-xi.
Hoven, D. (1999). A model of listening and viewing comprehension in multimedia environments. Language
Learning and Technology, 3(1), 88-103.
Jones, C. & Fortescue, S. (1987). Using computers in language classroom. London: Longman.
Kaliski, T. (1992). Computer-assisted Language Learning (CALL). In Peter Roach (Ed.) Computing in linguistics& phonetics. pp. 95-109. London: Academic Press.
Kenning, M.J. & Kenning, M.M. (1984). Introduction to computer assisted language teaching. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Kenning , M. M. and Kenning, M. J. (1990). Computers and language learning: Current theory and practice.
New York: Ellis Horwood.
Kubota, R. (1999). Word processing and WWW projects in a college Japanese language class. Foreign Language
Annals, 32(2), 205-218.
Leech , G. and Candlin, C. 1986. Computer in English language teaching and research. London: Longman.
Levy, M. (1999). Theory and design in multimedia CALL project in cross-cultural pragmatics. Computer Assisted-Language Learning, 12(1), 29-57.
Nunan, D. (1999). A footnote in the world of ideas: graduate study through the Internet. Language Learning andTechnology. (3)1, 52-74.
Phillips, M. (1987). Communicative language learning and the micro-computer. London: British Council.
Sillars, S. (1994). Success in communication. London: John Muray .
Vanparys, J. and Baten, L. (1999). How to offer real help to grammar learners. ReCALL, (11)1, 125-132.
Underwood, J. (1984). Linguistics, computers, and language teacher: a communicative approach. Rowley. MA:
Newbury House.
Warschauer, M. and Healey, D. (1998). Computers and language learning: an overview. Language Teach. 31, 5771.
Warschauer, M. (1996b). Computer-assisted language learning: an introduction. In S. Fotos (Ed.). Multimedia
language teaching, pp. 3-20. Tokyo: Logos.
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Computer-Aided Prosody Training for Perception of English Syllables
Donna Erickson
Gifu City Women’s College, Japan

Keiichi Tajima
Reiko Akahane-Yamada
Information Sciences Division ATR, Japan

Tsuneo Yamada
National Institute of Multimedia Education, Japan
Abstract
This paper discusses why syllables are important in the perception of the rhythm of spoken English andhow to improve Japanese listeners’ perception of syllables. Japanese listeners were auditorily presented English words and asked to indicate the number of syllables in each word by clicking the appropriate number on
the program window of the computer screen. Syllable structure (number of consonants, vowel length, andvoicing of final consonants) affected Japanese listeners’ ability to count syllables correctly. However, approximately two hours of training with feedback improved Japanese listeners’ ability to count syllables from less than
50% correctly (before training) to over 80% (after training)-- except for syllables with 3 initial consonants
which were only counted correctly 65% after training. The results are discussed within the framework of asyllable pulse model of rhythm.

Introduction
The global village we currently live in is for the most part an English-speaking one. Japan is part of thisglobal village, and continues to play a very active and important role. As such, English, both written and spoken, isa skill that is de rigeur at this point in time. The focus of this paper is on how to improve perception of spoken
English by Japanese speakers.
This paper discusses (1) why syllables are important in the perception of spoken English and (2) how to
improve Japanese listeners’ perception of syllables. The first part suggests that the primary building block of
spoken language is its rhythmical structure and as such, the syllable is very important. The second part reports ona simple training experiment that led to substantial improvement in Japanese listeners’ perception of spoken English syllables.

Rhythmical Structure of Language
This part discusses how rhythmical structure provides the underpinnings of spoken language and the importance of the rhythmical unit. Fig. 1 shows a symbolic portrayal of the “rhythmical structure” of a spoken utterance,
which is based on recent developments in phonological theory, specifically, the C/D Model proposed by Osamu
Fujimura (1999, 2000). Fujimura’s articulatory model of phonetic implementation in its simplest form proposesthat each syllable in a spoken utterance can be represented by a syllable pulse. The syllable pulses vary in height(magnitude) and placement (timing) according to the rhythm or stress pattrn of the utterance.

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Figure 1. Symbolic portrayal of rhythmical structure of language
In Figure 1, we can think of rhythm as the arrangement of syllable pulses, something like poles placed in timealong the highway of the spoken utterance. In this figure, we see a “highway” of the continuous acoustic signal ofa spoken utterance marked with sections of increased amplitude, roughly corresponding to syllable units. Aboveeach section of increased amplitude is drawn a “pole” to represent approximately the point in time when thesyllable is felt to occur. In this sense, an utterance is represented as a series of poles along the acoustic “highway”
of speech. Both the placement of the poles and the size and structure of the pole-units vary from language tolanguage. It is this information about poles (rhythm) which must be learned in order to master a spoken language.
The consonant and vowel characteristics of the specific language of course are also necessary to learn, and are
affected to some extent by the magnitude and placement of the poles (see Fujimura, 1999; 2000). The consonants
and vowels might be thought of as phonetic characteristics of the language draped around the “rhythm” poles. It is
the rhythm pole units lining the spoken highway of speech that this paper focuses on.
What are the units of rhythm, i.e., the poles? In Japanese, one may think of the pole-units as mora-like units.
Japanese poetry has mora-counting rules. A Haiku poem in Japanese consists of three lines with 5-7-5 moras each.
Each mora unit gets approximately the same duration, especially at the word level. (In longer utterances undercertain circumstances of change in strong focus, the duration changes, see for instance, Maekawa, 1997). Whether
the units of rhythm are actually mora-units or highly constrained syllable units is not addressed here, but see, forinstance, Kubozono (1989); Fujimura (in press); Otake et al. (1993). In this paper, in order to emphasize what we
believe are important differences between Japanese and English rhythm, we will refer to mora-like-units as the“pole” units of Japanese spoken language.
The highway of the rhythmical structure of the spoken word in Japanese may look like a series of mora-likepoles, all about the same height and placed at roughly equal intervals apart. This is shown in Figure 2. The
utterance here consists of the words of the song about a frog, kaeru no uta ga. Notice that the structure of the unit
associated with each pole is fairly simple in this utterance: an optional Consonant (C) + Vowel (V).
|
ka
CV

|
e
V

|
ru
CV

|
no
CV

|
u
V

|
ta
CV

|
ga
CV

Figure 2. Symbolic portrayal of Japanese rhythmical structure
|
hear
CVC

|

|

|

the
CV

live
CVC

ly
CV

|
song
CVCC

|

|

|

|

of
VC

the
CV

frog
CCVC

in
VC

|
yon der pond
CVC CVC CVCC||

Figure 3. Symbolic portrayal of English rhythmical structure
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In English, the pole-units are syllables, shown in Figure 3. Notice that the heights of the poles change as afunction of the amount of stress of the syllable. For instance, in the sentence, Hear the lively song of the frog inyonder pond, the pole units have different heights to represent the different amounts of stress for each syllable. The
pole heights and spacing are shown here as relative units. The exact height and placement of syllable pulses (aswell as the size and placement of phrase pulses to indicate phrase boundaries) can be calculated using computational algorithms, currently being developed by Fujimura. The phrase pulses are not shown in these figures. See
Fujimura et al. (1998), and Mitchell et al. (2000) for a discussion of the computational algorithm for computing
magnitude and timing of syllable and phrase pulses.1
Notice also that the pole units in English consist of rather complex syllables, especially compared to those inJapanese pole-units. In English, pole units permit multiple initial and final consonants e.g., CCCVCCCC as instrengths [see e.g., Tajima et al., 1999, and Fujimura, 1996, for a more complete discussion]. In Japanese the poleunits are mora-like, or at least, highly constrained syllables, which have the following structure: a short (one mora)syllable, with an optional initial consonant followed by a vowel, or a long (two mora) syllable, with an optional
initial consonant, plus a vowel, followed optionally by an additional vowel or a consonant. The second consonantmust be a nasal consonant (N) or the first part of a geminate consonant.2
Figure 4 shows the sentence That’s wonderful with 4 pole units. Figure 4 (left) shows the poles drawn thesame size whereas Figure 4 (right) shows varying heights and timing of the poles to reflect the different stresses on
the syllables when the utterance is spoken. The pole unit for won is the tallest to indicate the fact that won is thesyllable with nuclear stress, and der is shortest, to show it is reduced following nuclear stress or emphasis (seeErickson, 1998a,b and Erickson and Fujimura, 1996 for a discussion of reduction of syllable pulse height afteremphasis.) Notice very importantly that since the space between each pole changes as a function of the height ofthe pole, the duration of each syllable changes also (see Fujimura et al., 1998; Mitchell et al., 2000). In otherwords, the duration of each syllable changes as a function of the height of the poles, as a function of the amount ofstress assigned to each pole.

(a)

|
|
That’s won

|
der

|
ful

|

(b)

|

That’s won

|

|

der

ful

Figure 4. Symbolic portrayal of English rhythmical structure
A frequent occurrence with Japanese loanwords, i.e., words that have been introduced into the Japanese
language from English, seems to be that the English pole units (complex syllables with changing levels of stress)
are transformed into Japanese pole units (mora-like units). For instance, the mono-syllabic English word, stress,
may become 4 Japanese “pole units” su.to.re.su.
Notice how the rhythm changes, from one large pole unit in English for the mono-syllabic word stress tofour pole units of equal size for the four mora-like units in Japanese. The suggestion here is that the reason thishappens may be because the structure itself of the pole-units varies between Japanese and English.

1.
Note that Fujimura’s model for Japanese is also based on syllable pulses rather than mora as the stressunit as in English. However, for bimoraic syllables of Japanese, his syllable duration is extended for the timeinterval assigned to the coda, and therefore, roughly, a pair of moraic poles corresponds to his syllable pulse when
the syllable is a long syllable (i.e., long vowel or diphthong or added hatsuon and sokuon.) For a description of how
syllable durations are modified by moraic increments for the syllable coda, see Fujimura and Williams (1999). In
this treatment, the mora is used as a temporal concept but not as the stress pattern unit.
2.
Occasionally, 3-mora syllables may be thought to be permitted in which both an additional vowel andsyllabic nasal occur.

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In summary, Japanese rhythm is as shown in Fig. 2: Each pole unit is roughly the same height and equidistant. English rhythm is as shown in Figure 3: The pole units are different heights and spaced at non-equal
distances to represent the fact that some syllables have more stress than other syllables.
The pole units (their magnitude and placement) of a language are what constitute the basic rhythmical
structure of a language. The structure of the pole units can also vary, and the structure of the poles of one language
can influence the perception and production of the pole units of the other language, as happens when English words
are introduced into Japanese as loanwords.
Wrong rhythm is a negative factor in good comprehension of spoken language (e.g., Tajima et al., 1997).
Anecdotally speaking, when my teen-age children were attending school in Japan, they were asked to eat at
ma•ku•do•na•ru•do but they did not know what this was and were very frustrated, especially when their friends
told them that it was English. In this case the 3-syllable word, MacDonalds, had been transformed into a 6-syllable
Japanese loanword, making understanding very difficult for them as monolingual English speakers.
A general hypothesis, then, is that Japanese listeners have difficulty perceiving (and producing) English interms of its basic rhythm-bearing units, i.e., (complex) syllables. This impedes Japanese listeners’ abilities inEnglish (as well as impedes English speaking listeners in understanding spoken English by many Japanese).

How to Improve Perception of Syllables
In order to ascertain whether there is a problem with perception of English syllables by Japanese listeners,
we used a simple technique of asking Japanese listeners to count syllables in English words. An earlier experiment
by Erickson et al. (1999) showed that Japanese listeners have difficulty correctly counting syllables in English
words. Fifteen Japanese listeners and five English listeners counted syllables in 275 English words that varied
from 1-6 syllables in length. The syllable-counting accuracy was 98% for the English listeners and 57% for theJapanese listeners. Accuracy was lower for longer words, 1-syllable words had lower accuracy than 2-syllable
words, and words having more initial or final consonants, or “longer” vowels had lower accuracy. The results
indicated that English syllable structure seemed to affect Japanese listeners ability to count syllables correctly.
Based on results of this study, we asked the following questions: (1) How does syllable structure affectsyllable counting? and (2) can perception of syllables be improved with feedback training?
We ran a syllable-counting experiment with 100 English words: 52 real English words, (1-5 syllables, e.g.,splash, adapt, strategies, capacity) and 48 pseudo-words (1-2 syllables). Pseudo-words were used in order tocontrol the syllable structure and also to avoid effects from familiarity with real words that had become part of theJapanese loanword vocabulary. The one syllable pseudo-words were (C)(C)(C)V(V)(C)(C) words, where theonset could contain 0, 1 or 3 consonants (/0/, /p/, /spl/), the nucleus could have a short or long vowel (/e/, /ei/), andthe offset, 0, 1 or 2 consonants (/0/, /p/, /ps/, /bz/). Syllables ending in two consonants could be either voiced orvoiceless. The two syllable words were similar, but with /ed/ inserted after the first consonant (either /0/, /p/ or /spl/) and word stress on the second syllable. That is, /{0,p,spl} + {0,ed} + {e, ei} + {0,p,ps, bz}/. For instance, /p+ed+ei+p/, or /spl+ed+e+/ or / +ed+e+bz/, etc.
Each word was read by four native American/Canadian English speakers (2 males, 2 females). Twenty-three
Japanese university students (14 males, 9 females, aged 18-22 years, mean = 19.5), and 12 American university
students (2 males, 10 females, aged 18-28 years, mean = 20) participated in the experiment. The Japanese students
were paid for their participation; the American students received course credits. The experiment involved (1) afamiliarization test, (2) a (pre-)test session, (3) a training session, and (4) a post-test session. The total test time for
the American subjects, who only did (1) the familiarization test and (2) the test, was approximately 30 minutes; for
the Japanese subjects, who also took (3) and (4), it was approximately 2 hours. Each subject did all tests at one
sitting.

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The listeners took the tests individually sitting at a computer console. Each word was presented throughheadphones. The listeners were instructed to count the syllables and to click the appropriate number on the program window of the computer screen. The American listeners were simply told to count the syllables in the words
they heard. The Japanese listeners were additionally instructed that there are ‘units’ in speech, and that in Japaneseeach hiragana (a phonotactic character ) generally is counted as a speech unit. For instance, the word hiragana has
four units (hi.ra.ga.na.). In English, a syllable generally has one vowel, optionally surrounded by consonants. For
example, papa has two syllables, and pin has one syllable, not two.
The familiarization test consisted of 10 trials with feedback, where the listener could re-do his response bypushing the replay button if the response were incorrect.
The (pre-)test session consisted of the 100 words, spoken by each of the four English speakers, for a total of
400 words. A replay button was available if the listeners needed to listen again, but using it frequently was discouraged. The training session consisted of trials with feedback, 40 trained words, spoken by three English speakers.
For 14 listeners, there were 240 trials. For the remaining 9 listeners, there were 480 trials, in order to examine if
further training led to further improvement. The post-test session consisted of 100 words (40 words that they had
been trained with, plus 60 words they had not been trained with) as spoken by two speakers (one speaker they had
been trained with, and one they had not been trained with.) (See Tajima et al., 1999; 2000; and Yamada et al.,1999) for a more detailed description of the procedure.)
In analyzing the results, two of the 12 American English (AE) listeners were excluded because one listener
had poor test-taking compliance, and the other showed a word/pseudo-word response at 88% vs. 46% (clearly
different from the other AE listeners of 95.9% vs. 96.1%). The results of the experiment indicated that the AE
listeners (N=10) counted syllables correctly 96% of the time, whereas Japanese (J) listeners (N=24) counted 48%
before training and 81% after training. There were no systematic differences among the 4 speakers in listener’s
performance.
These results indicated that training helps Japanese listeners perceive syllables. Moreover, a small amount oftraining, about two hours, dramatically improves the syllable-counting scores of Japanese listeners, and this affectcarries over to syllables and speakers the listeners were not trained with.

-EY-

Figure 5. Effect of vowel

-ps

-EH-

J. pretest
J. posttest
E. control-p

J. pretest
J. posttest
E. control

100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
none

100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20

Accuracy (%)

Accuracy (%)

With regard to whether syllable structure affects perception of syllables, the answer is that it does, but
training can help overcome these effects. The exception is for the effect of three initial consonants, which remains
strong even after training. These results are shown in Figures 5, 6, 7 and 8. Figure 5 shows the effect of short orlong vowel on the perception of syllables. Before training, Japanese listeners were able to correctly count 58% ofsyllables with short vowels but only 45% of those with long vowels. After training, the percent correctly counted
was 83% and 79%, respectively, which compares more favorably with the English listeners who counted 97% and
96% correctly.

Figure 6. Effect of final consonant(s)Computer-Aided Prosody Training for Perception [Oral Presentation]

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Figure 7. Effect of voicing of final constants

spl-

-ps

J. pretest
J. posttest
E.
controlp-

J. pretest
J. posttest
E.
control

100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
none

100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20

Accuracy (%)

Accuracy (%)

Figure 6 shows the effect of number of final consonants on syllable counting. Pre-test scores for Japaneselisteners showed that syllables with no final consonants were correctly counted at 72%, but the percentage fell forsyllables with one final consonant (50%) and two final consonants (45%). After training, the percentages rose to
above 80%, for all syllables, regardless of number of final consonants. These results approach the 97% accuracy of
the English listeners. Figure 7 shows the effect of voicing of the final consonant cluster. Before training, syllables
ending in voiced consonants were more difficult to count correctly (38%) than those ending in voiceless consonants(45%); however, training brought up the performance to 81% and 77%, respectively, and the difference in counting
accuracy of syllables ending in voiced vs. voiceless consonants for Japanese speakers seems to approach that seen
for English speakers, at 97% and 94%, respectively.

Figure 8. Effect of initial consonant(s)Figure 8 shows the effect of initial consonants on the perception of syllables. Before training there is a large
effect: syllables beginning with 0 or one initial consonant are perceived with a 63% accuracy, whereas syllables
with three initial consonants, at 28% accuracy. Training improves perception of syllables beginning with initialconsonants: 0 and 1 initial consonant syllables are perceived at 87% and 90% respectively, approaching the average 96% accuracy rate of English listeners. However, syllables beginning with 3 consonants, although showing
some improvement, show a much lower accuracy rate, 65%. This suggests that syllables beginning with three
consonants present special difficulty for Japanese listeners.
To test for statistical significance, analyses of variance (ANOVA) were conducted on the arcsine-transformed values of the percent-correct identification scores in Figures 5-8. Separate analyses were run for the four
factors and for the pre-test and post-test scores. In the pre-test, all four factors were found to have a significant
effect on Japanese listeners’ accuracy (p<.001 for number of initial consonants, number of final consonants, andvowel type; p<01 for final cluster voicing). In the post-test, only the number of initial consonants had a significant
effect on accuracy (p<.001). Other factors did not reach significance.
In summary, for English listeners accuracy is high regardless of syllable structure. For Japanese listeners,
syllable structure affects accuracy. The more initial or final consonants there are, or the longer the vowel, the lower
the accuracy; also, voiced final clusters are more difficult than voiceless ones.
The study shows that a small amount of training improves Japanese listeners ability to count syllables. Posttest performance approaches native scores except for stimuli with 3 initial consonants. One reason for this might
be that 3-initial consonants constitute a “bigger” violation of Japanese syllable structure than 2 final consonants.
Future work will investigate whether perception of syllables with 3 initial C’s will improve with more training.
When Japanese listeners’ performance in the syllable-counting task is interpreted in terms of the syllable
pulse model described in Part I, it can be speculated that the listeners assign the wrong number of pulses to theEnglish stimuli. Instead of assigning a single “big” pulse to a complex English syllable, Japanese listeners tend toComputer-Aided Prosody Training for Perception [Oral Presentation]

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assign several smaller pulses, with each pulse associated with simple mora-like structures. Syllables with three
initial consonants may be particularly difficult for Japanese listeners to hear as a single “big” pulse.
In order to better assess to what extent being able to perceive English rhythmical units aids in perception andcomprehension of spoken English, we will expand this work to counting the number of stressed syllables in a
sentence for comparison with listening comprehension tests.

Acknowledgments
We wish to thank Rieko Kubo for running the Japanese subjects and Kanae Nishi and Winifred Strange forrunning the American subjects. We also thank colleagues at ATR for helping out with pilot studies and for valuablecomments on earlier presentations of this study. We thank K. Saitou for drawing of Fig. 1, and Kris Stewart for her
insightful comments about rhythmical differences in Japanese and American frog songs.

References
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Erickson, D. (1998b). Jaw movement and rhythm in English dialogues. Technical Report, Institute of Electronics
Information and Communication Engineers. (July 1998). pp. 49-56.
Erickson, D., Akahane-Yamada, R., Tajima, K., and Matsumoto, K.. (1999). Syllable counting and mora units inspeech perception. Proceedings of the XIIIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 1479-82.
Fujimura, O. (1996). Syllable structure constraints: A C/D model perspective. In B. Agbayani & N. Harada (eds.),
Proceedings of SWOT-II+ 59-74. UCI Working Papers in Linguistics, Vol. 2, Irvine, CA.
Fujimura, O. (1999). 発話の記述理論―C/D モデル。日本音学会誌。55, 762-768.
Fujimura, O. (2000). The C/D model and prosodic control of articulatory behavior. Phonetica. 57: 128-38
Fujimura, O. (in press). Lexical accent and phrasal intonation in English and Japanese. Proceedings of LP 2000,
Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Fujimura, O., and D. Erickson. (1996). Prosodic organization of speech signals: Recent development in the C/D
Model. Proceedings of Sigphon, Santa Cruz, CA, pp. 9-16.
Fujimura, O., Pardo, B., and Erickson, D. (1998). Effects of emphasis and irritation on jaw opening. Proceedingsof European Speech Community Association Conference on Sound Patterns of Spontaneous Speech: Production and Perception (ESCA), Aix-en-Provence, France, pp. 23-29.
Fujimura, O. and Williams, J. C. (1999). Syllable concatenators in Japanese, Spanish, and English. In O. Fujimura,
B.D. Joseph, and B. Palek (eds.), Proceedings of LP ’98, pp. 461-498, Prague: The Karolinum Press.
Kubozono, H. (1989). The mora and syllable structure in Japanese: Evidence from speech errors. Language andSpeech. 32, 249-278.
Maekawa, K. (1997). Effects of focus on duration and formant frequency in Japanese. In Sagisaka, Campbell, andHiguchi, Computing Prosody, pp. 129-153. Springer, New York.
Mitchell, C., Menezes, C., Williams, C., Pardo, B., Erickson, D., and Fujimura, O. (2000). Changes in syllable andboundary strengths due to irritation. ISCA Tutorial and Research Workshop on Speech and Emotion: Aconceptual Framework for Research, The Queen’s University, Belfast, N.I.
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Tajima, T., Port, R. and Dalby, J. (1997). Effects of temporal correction on intelligibility of foreign-accented
English. Journal of Phonetics. 25: 1-24.
Tajima, K., Erickson, D. and Akahane-Yamada, R. (1999). Perception of syllables in English words by Japaneselearners: Effects of syllable shape and training. The Institute of Electronics, Information, and Communication Engineers, Tech. Rep., TL-99-15.
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English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of Japan, Spring, 347-348.
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Japanese. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 106: 2151 (A).

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Computerized Vocabulary Levels Test as a Placement Tool
for EFL Learners
Howard Hao-Jan Chen
National Taiwan Ocean University, Taiwan
Abstract
In order to provide an English course tailored to the needs of individual learners, some universities in
Taiwan, (e.g., Tung-Hai University), have begun to use placement tests to assign students to classes of an appropriate level. However, due to the cost and difficulties of administering paper-and-pencil placement tests forlarge numbers of college students, many universities still place students with different proficiency levels in thesame class. Therefore, some students would find learning materials too advanced but others find the materials
too elementary. To overcome these problems, an accurate but more cost-effective placement test for assessing
college students’ English proficiency level is clearly needed. Based on empirical research that English speakers
with a large vocabulary perform better on a wider range of linguistic indicators than speakers with a more
limited vocabulary (cf. Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Laufer, 1988), Meara and Jones (1988) proposed that awell-designed vocabulary levels test can be used as a language placement test. In order to provide an accurate
and efficient placement test on Taiwanese students’ proficiency levels, in this study we converted the well-known
Vocabulary Levels Test by Paul Nation into a computerized placement test. The authoring tools and content of
the computerized vocabulary levels test are introduced first. Then, the steps of using the test are illustrated.
Last, the limitations and potentials of adopting computerized placement tests are discussed. It is expected thatthe project report will be useful to both language program administrators and language teachers.

The Need for Language Placement Tests
As English becomes more and more important in today’s world, universities worldwide have been working
hard on improving the qualities of their English education. In Taiwan, large class size with mixed levels of learners
has been a well-known problem for improving the quality of English teaching at the college level. For a large classwith 50 or 60 students, it is difficult for teachers to pay attention to individual students. For a class with mixed
levels of learners, teachers have difficulties in providing suitable learning materials and in creating an optimallearning environment. Students with higher proficiency level find the learning materials too elementary and theycannot learn much from the English course. Students with lower proficiency levels find the learning content too
advanced and they cannot catch up with their course schedule.
Some Taiwanese universities were quite responsive to these difficulties. Tung-Hai University, for instance,
had reduced the class size to between 30 to 35 students and made great efforts to assign students to three different
proficiency levels (low, mid, and high) by using English language placement tests. Students therefore are much
more likely to be assigned to classes of an appropriate level. Many Taiwanese universities however are still
wondering how they can resolve the difficulties of assigning students to classes of an appropriate level.
In this paper, we will first discuss various methods of assessing college students’ English proficiency level.
Then we will show how a valid computerized vocabulary levels test (Vocabulary Levels Test created by PaulNation) could be used as an effective English language placement tool for college EFL students. The authoring
program and content of NTOU (National Taiwan Ocean University) placement test are introduced and the procedures of using the computerized test are illustrated. Moreover, the piloting work of including a computerizedComputerized Vocabulary Levels Test as a Placement Tool [Oral Presentation]

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listening test in our computerized placement tests is presented. Last, the limitations and potentials of using computer-assisted language testing in language education will be discussed.

Assessing College Students’ English Proficiency Level
There are many different ways to assess college students’ English proficiency levels. If we want a convenient way of assigning students to classes of an appropriate level, the English score of the Joint College Entrance
Examination would be a possible solution. Nevertheless, some teachers might argue that the tests on listening andspeaking skills were not covered in the entrance exams, and these important skills should be assessed if the teaching goal is to help students to develop language skills in these areas. Therefore, a comprehensive battery of tests,
including tests on listening, speaking, reading, and writing, should be used as placement tests. The problem with acomprehensive set of language tests, however, is that they take long time to administer and mark. In addition tothese two possibilities, some other teachers would prefer a general English proficiency test with fewer testing items
that might quickly diagnose learners’ English proficiency level.

Vocabulary Levels Test as an Effective Placement Tool
Speaking of a simple placement test from which we can obtain the test results quickly, Meara and Jones(1988) proposed that a computerized vocabulary levels test could be used as a language placement test. Theirjustification is that “vocabulary knowledge is heavily implicated in all practical language skills.” (cf. Laufer, 1992;
Laufer, 1994; Laufer & Nation, 1995) Furthermore, Anderson and Freebody (1981) indicated that speakers with alarge vocabulary performed better on a wide range of tests than speakers with a more limited vocabulary. Theirfindings were similar to the research outcomes of Chen (1998, 1999). Chen adopted one vocabulary levels test,
Nation’s (1990) Vocabulary Levels Test, to assess Taiwanese college students vocabulary levels and found that
Taiwanese college students’ scores in Nation’s test were closely associated with their later test performance (scoresof different language tests) in the Freshman English classes. A Pearson correlation coefficient test shows that there
is a significant correlation between learners’ vocabulary test scores and their midterm and final exam scores. The
results of the statistical analyses are summarized in Table 1 below.

Table1. Correlation Matrix for Vocabulary Test Scoresand Midterm/Final Scores
Nation’s Vocabularly Levels Test
Midterm

.679*

Final

.441*

p <. 01, N = 174
As shown in Table 1, learners with a larger vocabulary were able to get good grades in the Freshman English
course. Based on the empirical research findings, vocabulary levels test can correctly reflect English learners’
general proficiency level. A valid Vocabulary Levels Test thus can be used as an effective placement tool whichhelps to assign college students to appropriate proficiency levels.

Creating Computerized Vocabulary Levels Test
As can be seen from the discussion above, the vocabulary levels test can be an effective tool for assessing
learners’ English proficiency level. So far, several different vocabulary levels tests or vocabulary size tests have

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been created and developed by researchers (Nation, 1983; Meara and Buxton, 1987, Meara and Jones, 1988;
Nation, 1990, Hever, 1995, Cobb, 1999). According to Paul Meara (1996, p. 38), one of the leading researchers on
second language vocabulary, Nation’s (1983, 1990) Vocabulary Levels Test is the “nearest thing we have to a
standard test in vocabulary.”
Despite the validity of Nation’s Vocabulary Levels Test in assessing learners’ English proficiency level, toassess several thousand English learners by pencil and paper remains very costly and time-consuming. Since
language placement tests are commonly adopted by language training programs worldwide, how to make the testing process more efficient and more accurate has been a concern of language educators.
Meara and Jones (1988) and Hever (1995) had proposed that we can turn an effective vocabulary levels test
into a computerized one. They argued that computers can help teachers to grade the placement tests and can show
the test scores to students immediately. The computerized vocabulary levels test created by Boo Hever is briefly
introduced below. The computer program assesses his/her vocabulary size and immediately gives a report to thestudent when he/she completes the test. The sample question and the result are shown below in Figure 1 and 2.

Figure 1. An example of the test items
As computers become more and more affordable and powerful, various computerized/computer assisted
language tests have become popular. For example, the computerized TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) has become an option of the traditional TOEFL test. There are quite a few advantages of using computerized test. Computerized tests are efficient since computers can grade students’ scores quickly and send the test
results back to students immediately. Furthermore, test takers’ performance in the tests can also be stored in thecomputer and can be retrieved for later analysis.

Authoring Tool Used at NTOU
As computer-based training (CBT) becomes more and more popular, there are many authoring tools andprograms for creating and administering online tutorials and tests. Most of these programs are easy to use andlanguage teachers do not need to worry much about technical details of these authoring programs and can fully
concentrate on the content of the tests. However, selecting a suitable program from a wide variety of available

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programs is not a simple task. With limited budget, NTOU faculty has carefully evaluated various online language
testing systems. An authoring package called TestPilot by ClearLearning was chosen because it has many important authoring functions we need and its price is not very high. TestPilot can be used to create and administer
surveys, tests and assessments over the web or Intranet. TestPilot administers the assessment, records each user’s
submission, automatically scores those submissions, and provides customized feedback to the user.

Figure 2. The test results as calculated by the computer

Content of NTOU Computerized Vocabulary Levels TestPaul Nation’s Vocabulary Levels Test is divided into five levels: 2000-word level, 3000-word level, 5000word level, University word level, and 10000-word level. The 2000 and 3000 word levels contain high frequency
words. The University word level represents one type of specialized vocabulary. The 5000-word level is on theboundary of high- and low-frequency words. The 10,000-word level contains low-frequency words. A matchingtype of test was used with six words and three meanings/definitions in each question. One specific question isshown below.
1.

blame

2.

hide ___ keep out of sight3.

hit ___ have a bad effect4.

invite ___ ask

5.

pour

6.

spoil

The definitions in the test use words from a higher frequency level than the tested words. The words from the
2000-word level use words in the first 1000 words of English. The words at the 3000-word level are defined bywords in the General Service List by Michael West (1953). Nation indicated that the chances of guessing are low,
and learners’ scores on the test can be taken as a close approximation to the proportion of words in the test that theyknow.
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The learners have to match the words in the left column with the definitions in the right column. Whenmarking the test, we give one point for each correct matching of a word and its definition. There are 18 questions
for each vocabulary level. A score of 12 out of 18 indicates that approximately one-third of the words at that levelare not known. Thus, there will be at least 200 to 300 words worth studying at that level. If a learner scores 12 orless out of 18 in a section of the test, then it is worth helping that learner study the vocabulary at that level.
Nation’s test samples five different frequency levels (2000-word, 3000-word, 5000-word, university word
list, and 10000-word). Based on the empirical findings of Chen (1998, 1999) and Cobb and Horst (in press), mostfirst and second year Taiwanese and Cantonese college students, however, were evaluated at the 3000 word to 5000
word frequency levels. Very few Taiwanese and Cantonese had reached the level of the University Word List.
Thus, the computerized vocabulary levels test created at NTOU excludes the 10000-word level test. There are only
four vocabulary levels and each level contains 18 questions. There are 72 questions in the computerized vocabulary test. Moreover, the matching type of test as shown above was converted into a multiple-choice test for theconvenience of presentation.

Procedures for Using the Placement Test
The procedures of using the NTOU computerized Vocabulary Levels Test are briefly described below. Eachstage is illustrated with a screenshot.
Stage One. Students enter the testing system via a Web browser (either Internet Explorer or NetscapeCommunicator) and type in their name and password (student ID) to request a placement test, as shown below in
Figure 3.

Figure 3. Log in and requesting a test

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Figure 4. The computerized vocabulary levels test
Stage Two. Students then read the Test Instructions on how to complete the language placement test.
Stage Three. Students begin to take the language placement test and answer the multiple-choice questions, as
shown on the previous page in Figure 4.
Stage Four. After the students finish the test, they can click on the submit button to send out their answers to
the server, as shown below in Figure 5. They will then receive a confirmation message indicating their answers
have been processed, as shown below in Figure 6.

Figure 5. “Submit your responses” button for sending out answers

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Figure 6. Feedback on each item and test results
Stage 5. Students receive an immediate report on their performance, and the report includes detailed feedback on each question as well as the total score, as shown below in Figure 7. Test results can also be sent back to
the test takers via e-mail.

Figure 7. Feedback on each item and test results

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Figure 8. Test pilot system owner options
Stage 6. The computer system stores all the test scores of the students. As shown below in Figure 9, the test
owner has various options to gain access to test results. Since the system can automatically record learner’s
performance in the test, as shown below in Figure 9, language teachers and researchers are able to conduct further
analyses on learners’ performance in these tests and design/choose more suitable teaching methods/materials.

Figure 9. The records of user responses

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Limitations and Future Research
Despite the fact that a computerized vocabulary test can provide very efficient and accurate measurement on
language learners’ language competence, however, the administering of the tests to learners would constitute aserious problem. Currently, although the tests shown above can be delivered easily via any popular web browser
and shown on the computer screen, we still need to ask students to show up in a computer laboratory to take theplacement test. If we allow them to take the test via the computer networking, either the Internet or Intranet, it is
impossible to determine if there is any student cheating during the test.
Each year more than one thousand freshmen will enter NTOU and the language center has established twobrand new computer labs with about 80 networked multimedia computers available. Under this condition, it would
not be too difficult to administer the computerized placement test at these two computer labs. However, if there areseveral thousands of students and there are few computers available for the placement test in a university, theadministering of computerized placement test would run into serious difficulties.
Another possibility proposed by Stanford University of administering computerized language placement test
is to ask college students to follow an honor code and students can then take the language placement test via thecomputer anywhere. In this case, students can gain access to the placement test from their home, dormitories,
public computer lab when convenient. Although this method has become popular; however, it is not clear if thesystem currently adopted by Stanford and several other universities (e.g., Northwestern University) will be adopted
in Taiwan in the near future.
This paper highlights the needs of developing an adequate working system for language placement testingand illustrates how computerized placement tests can be created and used. It is expected that through language
placement tests individual college students will be able to receive English education which is tailored to their realneeds. Due to some practical constraints, now it might not be possible for many Taiwanese colleges and universities to run a computerized language placement test. However, as computers become more and more significant inlanguage curriculums and language education, very soon the availability of computer hardware might not be a
problem. As all Taiwanese universities/colleges and students demand better English communication skills, theresearch on using computers in language teaching and language testing should receive proper attention so that we
language educators can continue to improve the quality of English language education.

References
Anderson, R. and P. Freebody. (1981). Vocabulary knowledge. In J. T. Guthrie.(ed.), Comprehension and Teaching: Research Reviews, pp. 77-117. Newwark, DE: International Reading Association, 77-l17
Chen, H. J. (1998). A preliminary Investigation on Taiwanese EFL learners’ vocabulary size. In Proceedings ofthe 15th Conference on English Teaching and Learning in the Republic of China, pp. 193-211. National
Kaohsiung Normal University. Taipei: The Crane Publishing Company.
Chen, H. J. (1999). How many words do they know? Assessing Taiwanese college EFL students’ receptive andproductive vocabularies. In Proceedings of the 16th Conference on English Teaching and Learning in the
Republic of China. National Changhua University of Education, pp. 83-97. Taipei: The Crane Publishing
Company, 83-97.
Cobb, T. M. (1999). Applying constructivism: A test for the learner-as-scientist. Educational Technology Research and Development, 47(3). 15-31. Available: <http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/r21270/cv/
Constructivism.html>.
Cobb, T., and M. Horst.. In press. Vocabulary sizes of some city university students. Journal of the Division of
Language Studies of City University of Hong Kong. Available: <http://www .er.uqam.ca/nobel/r21270/cv/
CitySize.html>.
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Hever, B. (1995). Estimating vocabulary size. Available: http:// www.educ.goteborg.se/usam /pforum/elpa/why.html
Laufer, B. (1988). What percentage of text-lexis is essential for comprehension? In C. Lauren and M. Nordmann(eds.), Special Language: from Humans Thinking to Thinking Machines. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Laufer, B. (1992). How much lexis is necessary for reading comprehension? In P. Arnaud and H. Bejoint (eds.),
Vocabulary and Applied Linguistics. London: Macmillian.
Laufer, B., and P. Nation. (1995). Vocabulary size and use: lexical richness in L2 written production. Applied
Linguistics 16(3). 307-322.
Meara, P. and B. Buxton. (1987). An alternative to multiple choice vocabulary tests. Language Testing 4(2).:142151.
Meara, P. and G. Jones. (1988). “Vocabulary size as a placement indicator.” In P. Grunwell (ed.), Applied Linguistics in Society. London: CILT, 80-87.
Meara, P. (1996). The dimensions of lexical competence.” I n G. Brown, K. Malmkjaer, & J. Williams (eds.),
Performance and Competence in Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nation, I. (1983). Testing and teaching vocabulary. Guidelines 5(1), 12-25.
Nation, I. (1990). Teaching and learning vocabulary. Boston, MA.: Heinle and Heinle.
West, M. (1953). A general service list of English words. London: Longman.

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The Contribution of Virtual Language Center on
Foreign Language Education
Howard Hao-Jan Chen
National Taiwan Ocean University, Taiwan
Web-based Language Learning: NTOU Virtual Language Center
There are different ways of designing a virtual language lab/center. We at NTOU mainly target at college
level students and hope to help EFL students obtain better commands of English. Due to limited funds and humanresources, now we have five major sections in our virtual language center, as listed below.
1.

The Online Courses. The main service is the audio on demand. Moreover, we also have somefacilities for online discussion and so forth.

2.

Resources Collection. Currently the key service of this section is an online concordancer forlearners to quickly consult word/phrase usage.

3.

CD-ROM/Internet Evaluation: This section introduces various language learning sites to Taiwanese students, and at the same time we will guide them how to assess these materials.

4.

Online Testing System: Several online tests are available, including Vocabulary Levels Tests
and several popular tests in Taiwan.

5.

Chatting Area: Several Chatrooms are available for online interaction and practices in English.

Improving Listening Ability by Using Audio on Demand
Foreign language skills have become more and more important in today’s world. The importance of listening skill in second language development is widely accepted by second language acquisition researchers. Nevertheless, as pointed out several Taiwanese researchers (Chang, et al. 1992), the listening competence of many Taiwanese EFL students remains poor. Thus, there is an urgent need for students to practice English listening frequently.
With the development of Internet technology (e.g., multimedia-streaming technology), college students off
campus would have easy access to material distributed through a web browser. They could listen to their streamingaudio lessons on a computer, and even take a comprehension test and receive immediate feedback. Distributed
learning material would be texts, audio clips, and video clips. This type of anywhere and anytime language learning should allow more language learners to practice English listening at their own pace.
With the kind permission from a famous publishing company, McGraw-Hill company, we at NTOU wereable to digitize two popular ESL listening/speaking textbooks- Interaction I and Interaction II . We use Realencoder,a free authoring tool provided by the Progressive Network, to convert the traditional wav. files into the RealAudioformat. All the audio tapes of Interaction I and Interaction II were converted into digital RealAudio ra. files.
After completing digitizing all the tapes, we install RealServer on our Windows NT server before delivering
the digital audio files to students. In fact, the regular HTTP mechanism can still be used but the rate of delivery is
indeed too slow. Thus we have to use RealServer by the Progressive Network. The price of professional version ofRealserver (RealServer 5.0 Intranet Edition) goes far beyond we can afford. Fortunately, a free Basic RealServer

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was also available and it works well if there are not many students logging to the virtual language lab at the sametime. When the students link to the URL http://ntouvlc.ntou.edu.tw, they will first be guided to download the plugin software, RealPlayer of the Progressive Networking company, and then enter the virtual language lab. Because
the materials are copyrighted, so students would need to input their user name and password before using thematerials as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Log into the virtual language lab
After students successfully log into the language lab, they then can choose which exercise they would like towork on, as shown in Figure 2 below. The page number of a given exercise was also given.

Figure 2. Selecting a unit from a chapter
In addition to putting multimedia audio or video files on a web server, Godwin- Jones (1998) introduced
several ways which foreign language teachers can make the Web sites more interactive/dynamic. Through the
feedback generated by computer, foreign language learners will know if they have successfully completed a task.

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There are different ways of making a Web site interactive. The first step we made was to prepare someinteractive quizzes. After listening to a passage or a short story, students are asked to answer questions to checktheir comprehension. The Web page that is coded with the JavaScript will judge students’ answers. One very
simple example is given below. The students first click on the real audio/video icon the RealAudio, and the
RealPlayer will pop up and play the selected file as shown below in Figure 3. Then they can answer the questions
by clicking the possible answers as shown in Figure 4. Their answer will be checked and the feedback will be sent
back to students immediately as shown in Figure 5. With the help of JavaScript, students can receive proper online
feedback and learn a foreign language on their own.

Figure 3. Playing the RealAudio files

Figure 4. Listening quizzes created by JavaScript

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Figure 5. The feedback from the computer

Improving Writing Skills by Exploring Online Concodancer
In additional to the difficulties in English listening, another common problem of many Taiwanese students isthat they are not sure about the usage of English words or phrases. One of the highly recommended learning
strategies is to search the proper usage from a corpus by using a concordancer. This approach is referred to as theData-Driven Learning (DDL) or Classroom Concordancing advocated by Tim Johns at Birmingham University.
According to Odlin (1994), data-driven learning is an approach to language teaching that gives central importanceto developing the learner’s ability to “puzzle out” how the target language operates from examples of authentic
usage. This approach is particularly associated with the use of computer concordances in the classroom but can beextended to other situations where the students has to work inductively from authentic data. According to Johns(1994) data-driven allows language learners to explore a large amount of authentic target language texts by using
the searching and indexing power of computer. This approach to second language learning is not only innovative
but also powerful since it can help learners to resolve their own learning problems and help them to become
independent second language learners (cf., Kettemann, 1995 and Stevens, 1995)
Despite the data-driven learning is recommended by language teachers and researchers, it is not easy for
language learners to find free concordancing programs and suitable corpora since these facilities are only available
in the computer labs. To allow more learners to engage in data-driven learning, it is necessary to build a web-based
concordancer.
With a research project grant from NSC (National Science Council), we created a web concordancer at
National Taiwan Ocean University. In this project we not only try to provide a faster and more reliable concordancing
system open to all interested English teachers and users but also try to overcome some weakness of currently
existing web-based concordancers. We would like to create a web concordancer with the following features andoptions for Taiwanese EFL learners and teachers.
1.

Fast and reliable connection and quick response.

2.

Large corpora for ESL/EFL learners and teachers (including both NS corpora and NNS learnercorpora).

3.

Larger contexts for any searched word.

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Since we have only limited funds, we do not expect to surpass the commercial web site such as Collins
COBUILD or the well-funded project of Hong-Kong Polytechnic University. We aim at creating a fast, reliable,
and friendly web concordancer for Taiwanese EFL learners and teachers. We will discuss the goals outlined above
in details in the following sections.
First, the connection to NTOU web concordancer can be faster than the connection made to other web sites
in other countries. For TANET user and other users in Taiwan, we expect that our web concordancer will be able
to respond to learner’s queries within 10-15 seconds. Moreover, to increase the searching speed, we reduce each
corpus size to around 10-15MB. Second, we try to include various corpora. Due to the copyright restrictions, wehave to rely mainly on the free electronic texts from Gutenburg projects. We are also negotiating with several local
English newspapers about putting their electronic texts online for educational purpose. In addition to the native
speaker corpora, we also have a smaller learner corpus available. During the past three years, we have beencollecting English writing samples of Taiwanese college students. Now we have a 200,000-word EFL learnercorpus, and this corpus will be a very precious resource for language teachers or researchers to better understand
Chinese EFL learners’ interlanguage. The interface of NTOU web concordancer is shown below in Figure 6. An
instance of search outcome is shown below in Figure 7.

Figure 6. Interface of NTOU Web Concordancer
Third, since the display of larger linguistic contexts is fairly important when learners analyze the usage or themeaning of particular words or phrases. To make the searching process more friendly, NTOU web concordancer
allows learners to have a convenient access to the larger context of any keyword.
By putting the concordancer online, we hope that more Taiwanese students can have opportunities to explore
the power of data-driven learning. This unique language learning environment will encourage them to resolve theirown puzzles and answer questions regarding English usage and grammar.

Web-based Language Testing Facilities for Learners, Teachers, and Researchers
A language center should be able to provide various language tests for different teaching and learning purposes. Language learners can take a diagnostic test to better understand their strength and weakness. Language
teachers need to create various language tests to assess learners’ learning outcomes.

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Figure 7. The web concordance output
Web-based language test system can have some clear advantages: it can be used to create and administer
surveys, tests and assessments over the web or Intranet. The system administers the assessment, records eachuser’s submission, automatically scores those submissions, and provides customized feedback to the user.
As computer-based training (CBT) becomes more and more popular, there are many authoring tools andprograms for creating and administering online tutorials and tests. Most of these programs are easy to use andlanguage teachers do not need to worry much about technical details of these authoring programs and can fully
concentrate on the content of the tests. However, selecting a suitable program from a wide variety of available
programs is not a simple task. With limited funds, NTOU faculty has carefully evaluated various online language
testing systems. An authoring package called TestPilot by ClearLearning was chosen because it has many important authoring functions we need and its price is not very high.
The procedures of using one popular language test, English vocabulary level test, created at NTOU are
shown below. This test will quickly diagnose a student’s English vocabulary size. Each stage in taking the test isillustrated with a screenshot.
Stage One. Students enter the testing system via a Web browser (either Internet Explorer or NetscapeCommunicator) and type in their name and password (student ID) to request a placement test, as shown below in
Figure 8.
Stage Two. Students then read the Test Instructions on how to complete the language placement test.
Stage Three. Students begin to take the language placement test and answer the multiple-choicequestions.
Stage Four. After the students finish the test, they can click on the submit button to send out theiranswers, as shown below in Figure 9. They will then receive a confirmation message indicating
their answers have been processed, as shown below in Figure 10.
Stage Five. Students receive an immediate report on their performance, and the report includes detailed feedback on each question as well as the total score, as shown below in Figure 11. Test
results can also be sent back to the test takers via e-mail.

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Figure 8. Log in and request a test

Figure 9. “Submit Button” to send out answers
Stage Six. The computer system stores all the test score of students. As shown below in Figure 12, thetest owner has various options to gain access to test results. Since the system can automaticallyrecord learner’s performance in the test, as shown below in Figure 13, language teachers andresearchers are able to conduct further analyses on learners’ performance in these tests anddesign/choose more suitable teaching methods/materials.

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Figure 10. The confirmation message.

Figure 11. Feedback on each item and test results

Improving Speaking and Writing Skills through Online Chatting
Taiwanese college students are particularly weak in oral communication because they have few opportunities to use the target language to communicate with other English speakers. However, speaking and writing in aforeign language needs many practices, and interacting with other speakers of the target language is extremely
beneficial. The empirical research on NS (native speaker)-NNS (non-native speaker) face-to-face interactions
found that second language learners were able to receive comprehensible input and corrective feedback (from NS’s
modifications of linguistic input) and were given opportunities to produce modified output (comprehensible output) during the meaning negotiation process (cf. Pica, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1994, 1996). Some of the theoretical terms

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To contents(comprehensible input, corrective feedback, and comprehensible output) in second language acquisition researchis briefly explained below.

Figure 12. The test pilot system owner options.

Figure 13. The record of user responses.
Online chatting is particularly effective in improving learners’ spontaneous interaction with other speakersof the target language. Since the communication is synchronous, learners have to quickly transform their ideas into
language. the target language. This exercise will help them move from understanding the language to using thelanguage actively. People in different locations or countries can log into an online chatroom at the same time andcan “chat with” each other to exchange their opinions. With the help of computer networking technologies, second
language learners can be encouraged to use the chatrooms to communicate with a native speaker and their peer
learners.

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We can reasonably argued that text-based negotiations/interactions happened in online chatrooms can provide similar beneficial learning conditions as those found during NS-NNS face-to-face negotiations. Researchers(e.g., Pellettieri, 2000; Blake, 2000) have found that computer mediated communication (CMC) between NNSNNS can also provide many of the alleged benefits ascribed to the NS-NNS face-to-face interactions.
At NTOU, we have incorporated the online chatting service in our virtual language center and encourage
students to log in chatrooms for practices, as shown in Figure 14. Furthermore, all the students in English conversation classes were required to participate in online chatting as part of their homework.

Figure 14. Online chatting

Future Development
As can be seen from the discussions above, web-based language learning environment can be a very rich andstimulating learning environment for Taiwanese college EFL learners. Students can possibly benefit form using
various online services provided by this virtual language center from any place at any time. So far, we only begin
to explore the power of web-based language teaching and learning environment. There are still plenty of room for
improvement. Several projects we plan to accomplish within a year or two are:1.

For listening: Supplement streaming audio with streaming videos and add an online listening
strategies training session.

2.

For writing: Create online feedback mechanism and some intelligent error-detecting devices.

3.

For speaking: Offer pronunciation training with some web-based speech recognition mechanism.

4.

For reading: Create a click and show online learner dictionary to facilitate reading comprehension.

5.

For testing: Provide various types of online tests and quizzes for assessment and practices.

It is expected that our virtual language center will inspire more language teachers and researchers to create
more useful and interesting web-based language learning materials. When more and more web language learning
resources are available, more Taiwanese learners will surely benefit from them.

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References
Allodi A., et al. (1998). WELLS: Web-enhanced language learning. In Jager S., Nerbonne J. & van Essen A.
(eds.), Language teaching and language technology, Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger, 123-135.
Blake, R. (2000). Computer mediated communication: a window on L2 Spanish interlanguage. Language Learning and Technology, 4(1), 120-136.
Burston, J. (1998). From CD-ROM to the WWW: coming full circle, CALICO Journal, 15(1-3), 67-74.
Chang, Y. L., et al. (1992). Listening difficulties and learner strategies of non-native speakers. In Proceedings of
the 9th conference on English teaching and learning in the Republic of China, Taiwan normal university,
Taipei, Taiwan: Crane publishing company.
Godwin-Jones, R. (1996). A practical guide to teaching with World Wide Web. Available: http://www.umac.edu/
iuc/cmc96/papers/poly-p2.html.
Godwin-Jones, R. (1998). Dynamic web page creation, Language Learning & Technology, 1(2), 7-13.
Johns, T. (1994). From printout to handout: Grammar and vocabulary teaching in the context of Data-driven
Learning. In T. Odlin (ed.), Perspectives on Pedagogical Grammar, Cambridge University Press, 293-313.
Kettemann, B. (1995). On the Use of Concordancing in ELT, TELL & CALL 4, 4-15.
Odlin, T. (1994). Perspectives on Pedagogical Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pica, T. (1987). Interlanguage adjustement as an outcome of NS-NNS negotiated interaction. Language Learning,
38(1): 45-75.
Pica, T., et al. (1989). Comprehensible output as an outcome of linguistic demands on the learner. Studies inSecond Language Acquisition, 11, 63-90.
Pica, T., et al. (1993). Choosing and using communication tasks for second language instruction. In G. Crookes and
S. Gass (Eds.), Tasks and language learning: Integrating theory and practice. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters, Ltd.
Pica, T. (1994). Research on negotiation: What does it reveal about second-language learning conditions, processes, and outcomes? Language Learning, 44(3), 493-527.
Pica, T., et al. (1996). Language learners’ interaction: How does it address the input, output, and feedback needsof L2 learners? TESOL Quarterly, 30(1), 59-84.
Stevens, V. (1995). Concordancing with language learners: Why? When? What?” CAELL Journal, 6(2): 2-10.
Warschauer, M. and Kern, R. (2000). Network-based language teaching: Concepts and practice. Cambridge
University Press.

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Corpus Tools in Language Teaching and Learning
Monika K. Szirmai
Hiroshima International University, Japan
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to show how corpus tools can contribute to the effective teaching and learning of
languages and how they can be combined with speaking and listening activities in the language lab.
The first part of the paper will be a demonstration of what kind of information can be retrieved from a
corpus and how teachers can use the information in a multinedia environment. The second part of the paper will
describe how students can use these corpus tools themselves improving the following important skills needed to
be a sucessful language learner: (a) observation; (b) the ability to draw conclusions from observations; and (c)making intelligent guesses. The third part of the paper will show how the activities mentioned can serve as abasis for various kinds of speaking and listening activities in the language lab.

Introduction
About ten years ago, when technology in education was mentioned, most people automatically thought
about CALL programs (computer assisted language learning). Nowadays, almost exclusively, multimedia applications come to mind: talking dictionaries, speech recognition, encyclopedias, etc. There are, however, less spectacular and less well-known computer applications serving language teachers and learners alike. Corpus tools (tagging,parsing, lemmatizing, concordancing, etc.) are good examples of such programs.
Usually corpus tools are divided according to their function. Corpus tools can be used to annotate a corpus or
retrieve information from it. As annotation tools are not widely available for teachers, I am going to focus on
retrieval tools and even within that group, concordancing will be discussed in detail.

Table 1. Corpus Tools
RetrievalAnnotation

frequency lists

tagging

word lists

parsinglemmatized frequency lists
concordances

Frequency and Wordlists
A frequency list is a list of words that gives information about the number of times word-forms have beenused in a corpus. A simple frequency list will have come and comes as different items. Most of the commerciallyavailable programs or program packages can automatically generate such lists, for example WordSmith (Scott,1996). However, MicroConcord (Scott & Johns, 1993), an earlier popular program is one which cannot. Frequency
lists can be used to compare text types from the point of view of stylistics or text typology (Stubbs, 1996). Teachers
or even students can also create useful wordlists in order to facilitate the acquisition of a language for special
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purposes. Willis and Willis based their Collins Cobuild English Course on the frequency of English words in the
Cobuild Corpus. ‘The 700 hundred most frequent words of English account for around 70% of all English text.
That is to say around 70% of the English we speak and hear, read and write is made up of the 700 commonest words
in the language.’ – says Willis (Willis, 1990, p.vi) However, we should not forget the fact that the most frequentwords are function words, which are useless by themselves. A good collection of content words can help students
very effectively in ESP (English for Specific Purposes). In CL literature the number of times a word-form appears
in a corpus is called the tokens of that word. However, the same expression, tokens is equally used to give thenumber of words in a corpus. “A lemma is what we usually mean by a ‘word’…. the composite set of word-forms
is called the lemma.” (Sinclair, 1987, p.173)
Frequency lists and word lists basically give quantitative information, which can be compared and interpreted in many different ways. They can be very useful in teaching stylistics or academic writing, in analysing
literary works, in raising students’ awareness, and also in teaching learning strategies. Lists can also help teachers
make decisions about priorities in teaching and creating teaching materials.

Tagging and Parsing
This is one of the areas where CL can be used very effectively for the teaching of the mother tongue as well.
In fact, it could probably be more useful in that area than in helping foreign learners, who are not specialised inlinguistics. Tony McEnery reported at the AILA (Association Internationale de la Linguistique Appliquée) Conference in 1999 (McEnery, 1999), that he used interactive tagger and parser programs in a linguistic course at university level to help students (native speakers of English taking a course in linguistics) identify parts of speech andfunctions within sentences. In Great Britain, grammar had been ignored for almost 3 decades at school; as a result,even university students have had little knowledge of the linguistic metalanguage. Since grammar was not one ofthe popular subjects, changes were badly needed. When students use the above mentioned interactive programs,
they can get immediate feed-back and can see the right answers straight away. McEnery reported that students were
far more motivated than they used to be when doing such activities in the traditional way. As they were more
motivated, they spent more time on this activity and the results were better. These programs can be used not only atuniversity but at lower levels too regardless of whether the students are native or non-native speakers.

Concordancing
Concordancing may be best-known of all corpus tools, and with the spread of computers and the easy accessto the Internet, this might be the most popular as well. No wonder, since it can be used in many different ways andfor many different purposes. Another reason may be that some of the concordancing programs are available for free
to anybody who has access to the Internet.
As I believe that learning a language is like discovery, I think that all learners are explorers, researchers
themselves. (Szirmai, 1997a) The more language they want to acquire, the better researchers they have to become.
In order to achieve this, they should possess three very important skills: 1) observation; 2) the ability to draw
conclusions from observations; and 3) making intelligent guesses. This is exactly what children do when they arelearning their mother tongue. Children do it unconsciously and very successfully. Somehow, maybe as a result of“proper learning”, a lot of people seem to lose this ability and they have to “relearn” it.
Concordances are ideal for observation, both in hard copies and on-line. “A concordance is a collection of
the occurences of a word-form, each in its own textual environment.” (Sinclair, 1991, p.32) The on-line version ismore flexible and easier to use if the user has basic computer skills. As soon as the paper version is printed out, nochanges can be made about how the concordance lines are printed out. With the on-line version, different patterns
can be recognised at the touch of a key. Without attempting to give a full list of available concordancing programs,
or trying to describe them in detail, their main features could be summarized as follows (Szirmai, 1998):

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1.

they are able to run text files in ASCII format, sometimes extended ASCII as well;2.

most of them can give a frequency list of all the different words used in the text or texts;

3.

the use of the asterisk makes it possible to find different verb forms, e.g. The result of a search
for mak* will contain the forms makes, making, maker but unfortunately anything else thatstarts with mak, like makeshift, make-up, make-believe, etc.;4.

the results of the search are presented in a KWIC format (key word in context)5.

it is possible to look for units consisting of several words in the text, e.g. look* as if;

6.

the words to be searched do not have to occur next to each other, the span can be specified, e.g.
5,5 to the left and right.

7.

some can automatically index texts and some can only handle pre-indexed texts;

8.

they provide instantaneous statistical information about collocates;

9.

search results can easily be embedded into documents.

Table 2. Example of the KWIC Format_rbitrarily to exclude an expert in a key area of human rights from our delegat__pe just over a year ago. Many of the key arguments deployed by the Prime Minis__ / Tragic comedians, life in a miner key: Ariel, Wired, K-9, Cookie and Play M__r the DSS, was unequivocal about the key asset in the operation _ ‘people will__math of the 1987 stock market crash. Key assets, their values slashed post-cra_Michael Stubbs wrote about the KWIC format of a concordancer: ‘This provides a convenient layout forstudying how a speaker or writer uses certain words and phrases, and whether there are particular patterns in his or
her use of language’ (Stubbs, 1996, p.xiii). In general, concordancing programs are very helpful in the study oflexis, grammar and stylistics.
Collocations are particularly difficult for non-native speakers, even if their fluency and accuracy is quite
high (Howarth, 1996; Biskup, 1992; Szirmai, 1997b; Brown, 1974; Hakuta, 1974). Since patterns are easy to spot
in KWIC format, concordancing programs are very useful in the teaching and practicing of collocations. With thehelp of a concordancing program, teachers can provide students with processed language material for observation,
the quantity and the quality of which is far superior to what could have been produced just a few years ago without
the help of the computer. When the material is presented to students, it does not matter whether the information to
be observed is printed out or is on the computer screen. What matters is that it should be carefully chosen by theteacher, especially when starting this kind of activity. The teacher should consider the amount of information andthe content as well.
Concordancing programs can also promote individual, pair or small-group student-controlled, autonomous
learning. After some practice the students could do their own research projects on pairs like high – tall, wide –large, or any other pairs they have had problems with. As learning is like discovery, the best way to learn is to maketheir own discoveries and formulating their own rules. That is exactly what researchers do, so students can eventually carry out their own small-scale research with the help of the teacher. Observation and analysing the data help
students with identifying word senses, collocations, colligations, grammar awareness, vocabulary, spelling, practically everything.

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Guessing is another important skill, which many students lack when listening to or reading in a foreign
language. Even in their mother tongue, some people are better, others not so good at restoring a conversation or atleast the gist of it when they missed parts of the utterances. It seems that our brain needs practice, just like our bodywhen we are learning new skills or trying to improve existing ones. Contexts by Tim Johns is a corpus-based
program that helps students develop their guessing and observation skills depending on how they use that program.
As this program is a good example of what teachers can do with concordancers, let us have a look at how it works.
One big advantage of this program is that it can be authored, so any teacher can create similar activities appropriate
to their students’ level, learning goals and interests.

Contexts
Tim Johns used the Birmingham Corpus for his research. First, on the basis of his experience at the English
for Overseas Students Unit of Birmingham University, he identified problem areas for foreign students. Then,
Johns selected patterns and collocations of the items chosen. There are more than a thousand items in his programs,
put in thematic groups. The items come from a database, which ‘includes passages from:1.

The popular science journal ‘New Scientist’.

2.

The scientific research journal ‘Nature’3.

Newspapers such as the ‘Independent’, ‘Times’ and ‘Guardian’4.

Books, both fiction and non-fiction, on a range of different topics.

5.

Transcripts of lectures given in the University of Birmingham.’ (Johns, 1994)

Tim Johns used the computer program MicroConcord (Scott & Johns, 1993) to extract contexts from thedatabase. Some of the groups of items are: body parts, suffixes, prepositions, food, etc. If the student wants to study
these items, they can see all 10 contexts of the item at the same time and simply observe the data. In the Quiz mode,
they can test what they already know. After they finish the quiz, when they can see all the contexts they are asked
some ‘research questions’, usually the following ones: ‘Study these contexts of “KWIC” carefully before youcontinue. Are there any words which seem to be “close friends” of “KWIC”? Are there any special meanings of“KWIC”?’ (Johns, 1994)
The reasons why this program can be recommended are as follows:1.

As I said, guessing is very important in learning a language. Although sometimes several words
may possibly be used to fill the gaps with, as more contexts are given, the choices will go down
to only one possible word.

2.

In early computer quizzes, answers were never accepted if they were misspelled or even if acapital letter was used instead of a lower case character. In this case, the program kindly reminds the student not to ‘unnecessarily double a character’ or to ‘look at the xth letter of theword’. This program will help to learn spelling by drawing attention to the nature of the spelling
mistake.

3.

It also gives an analysis of the student’s performance in a matter of fact way.

4.

Students will not lose face if they make mistakes as it is only the computer that “knows” about
the mistakes and not the teacher.

5.

The program provides a huge number of contexts but the teacher can create new activities forthe students too: the program can be authored.

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Figure 1. Screenshot from Contexts
Other Related Activities
If the teacher wants to combine the practice of observation and guessing skills with speaking and listening
tasks, the following activities may be interesting to try.
1.

The teacher gives printouts with different contexts for the SAME word to two students. First
they have to analyse their contexts and how the word is used and then give an oral report to theirpartner. Their findings will be different, but will complement each other. (concrete use of aword – abstract) The same can be done with translation equivalents.

2.

One person is describing what he/ she can see in the data, the other student is taking notes ofwhat their partner says.

3.

One student is giving directions to the other student carrying out the search on a computer.

4.

Students are given different corpus discovery tasks and they have to give oral feed-back to thegroup.

The number of web pages offering on-line courses and tutorials is steadily growing. Teachers can find a lotof teaching ideas and example activities to help them develop their own ideas. Sometimes, a summary of the typesof activites and links them to the actual worksheets are given, which means that teachers not familiar with theprograms and corpus ‘philosophy’ can test these examples before they invest money and energy into acquiring the
programs or creating their own worksheets.
The literature of CL and education is quite large, it would be impossible to enumerate even the most important publications. However, Tim Johns must be mentioned as he was one of the first researchers and teachers
formulating the principles of Data-Driven Learning (DDL). Johns maintains a web page providing ample information and links to other sites related to this topic.

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I have put an emphasis on the role of observation, drawing conclusions from observation and guessing. I do
not think that I exaggerated their importance. Foreign language students need to be trained in using these skills andneed to practice them. But before teachers can assist with these tasks, the teachers themselves have to have such
experience, have to understand their importance and find the right methodology for passing them on to students. I
believe that the use of corpus tools and practice in making and conducting corpus-related activities should becomea standard part of language teacher training.
The merits and benefits of CL are becoming more and more evident in education, both in the teaching of themother tongue and foreign languages. Data-Driven Learning is based on the principle that authentic language
material is provided for students which they use for discovering linguistic knowledge for themselves, rather thanbeing told grammar rules and how language is used. The increasing use of the Internet, which is accessible fromanywhere in the world, as a source of useful information in this field, has been examplified by some web pages.
With the growth of multilingual corpora, parallel concordancing and comparative studies have already contributed
to the training of professionals, such as translators and interpreters, but there still remains a lot of work to do in theapplication of CL tools.

References
Biskup, D. (1992). L1 influence on learners’ renderings of English collocations: a Polish/German empirical study.
In H. Béjoin & P. J. L. Arnaud (Eds.), Vocabulary and Applied Linguistics, pp. 85-93. London: MacMillan
Academic and Professional Ltd.
Brown, D. (1974). Advanced vocabulary teaching: the problem of collocation. RELC 5: 1-11.
Hakuta, K. (1974). Prefabricated patterns and the emergence of structure in second language acquisition. Language Learning 24: 287-298.
Howarth, P. A. (1996). Phraseology in English academic writing. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
Johns, T. (1994). Contexts (Version 0.74). Computer program.
McEnery, T. (1999). Personal communication at AILA Conference . Tokyo.
Scott, M. (1996). Wordsmith Tools. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scott, M., & Johns, T. (1993). MicroConcord. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Computer program)
Sinclair, J. (Ed.). (1987). Looking Up: An account of the COBUILD Project in lexical computing and the development of the Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary. London and Glasgow: Collins ELT.
Sinclair, J. (1991). Corpus, concordance, collocation. (1st ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stubbs, M. 1996 . Text and corpus analysis: computer-assisted studies of language and culture. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers Ltd.
Szirmai, M. 1997a . Students As Researchers, The 23rd International Conference on Language Teaching/Learning. Hamamatsu, Japan.
Szirmai, M. (1997b). Teaching Collocations. A Paper Presented at 23rd International Conference on Language
Teaching/ Learning . Hamamatsu, Japan.
Szirmai, M. (1998). Corpus Linguistics: An Introduction. The Journal of Kanda University of International
Studies 10:381-395.
Willis, D. (1990). The Lexical Syllabus: A new approach to language teaching. Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers.

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A Course Syllabus for ESP Classes Using
Multimedia CAI Materials
Hisako Yamauchi
Kurume Institute of Technology, Japan
Abstract
With the advance of computer technology, CAI materials for language study have been changing from
simple ones which show only text on the screen to more sophisticated ones that treat sound, pictures and movies
together with text. However, the effectiveness of CAI materials does not depend on how sophisticated and fancy
the materials are. Repetitive, continuous and progressive learning efforts will develop learners’ ability, and CAI
materials should strongly emphasize these aspects.
In this presentation, various kinds of CAI materials developed by the presenter will be introduced, andways in which the materials have been effectively used in the English curriculum at Kurume Institute of Technology will be described. A course syllabus for ESP (English for Specific Purposes) classes using multimedia CAI
materials will be also introduced to invite discussion about effective use of technology in language education.

Introduction
With the advance of computer technology, computers have been used in English education in various ways.
Computer Assisted Instruction, or CAI, was the earliest mode of utilizing computers in language learning. Next
came the use of e-mail exchange. The mainstream usage of computers in English education is now moving to theuse of the Internet. Many types of CAI materials are also available on the Web today.
Since 1988, when the CAI system using the Local Area Network was completed at Kurume Institute ofTechnology, the author has been using computers in English education. For example, the author developed several
CAI materials for her students and used them in her classes; she required her students to exchange e-mail messages
with college students outside of Japan; she assigned her students to search the Internet for information about
automobiles they wished to drive in the future and to submit short papers about them. The institution where theauthor works is a university with only one faculty, the faculty of engineering. Therefore, the use of computers ineducation will help students to become literate in computer technology, no matter how effectively or ineffectively
they are used in terms of language acquisition. Computer usage in general contributes toward achievement of oneof the aims of the institution, that is, to make the engineering major students “Information Technology” (IT) literate. Her situation will be quite different from many language teachers. However, in this age of IT, the demand forusing computers in English education in Japan will continue to increase for the foreseeable future.
In this presentation, problems in the use of CAI materials in education are reported and a course syllabus for
an ESP course is shown to stimulate the discussion with the audience as well as among the panelists.

Problems
Too often at conferences like this, the benefits and effectiveness of CAI have been emphasized without
acknowledging the drawbacks. However, it is necessary to overcome the drawbacks of CAI in order to attain any

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benefits or effectiveness of the use of CAI in education. For the purpose of provoking discussion, the author will
point out only drawbacks of CAI.

Cost
It costs too much if you buy CAI software for classroom use. Colleges and universities in Japan now invest
a great amount of money to create a new computerized facility. However, they tend not to spend enough money to
buy CAI materials for English education available in the market. If you purchase software for a CAI room or a
CALL room with 50 PCs, you may need about one million yen to cover the expense of CAI software materials.

Availability
The software you pay a fortune for may not fit the needs and level of your students or the aims of yourcourse. Software available in the market is made for general users, not for a particular group of students in yourclass. Sometimes only 10 percent or less of the content of the software will suit the level and needs of yourstudents, and the reminder is too difficult or too easy, or inappropriate for your students’ interest or unfit for theirneeds and the teacher’s aims of the course.

Time and Energy
In order to solve the first two problems, teachers must personally develop suitable CAI materials for theirown students. Then the problem of “time and energy” emerges. It takes too much time and energy to createsoftware all by yourself for your students. However, the level of the materials will be suitable and the content will
satisfy the needs of your students. The usability of the material will greatly increase, and your time and energy will
be worth it, if you don’t mind devoting your hours.

Effectiveness
It is very difficult to confirm the effectiveness of CAI in language education. Many papers have been written
reporting the effectiveness of study with certain CAI materials. However, very few educators have compared twogroups of learners studying the same content in different manners, by randomly dividing students into a control
group who are studying with textbooks and perhaps with audio tapes, and an experimental group who are studying
with CAI software. Such comparison of the improvement between the groups in their language ability will provethe effectiveness of the CAI materials. In most cases, the evidence for claims of effectiveness is based on theincrease in scores between the pre-test and post-test given to the only one group of students who study with CAI
materials. No information of such scores for a controlled group is usually available for comparison. Yet the aimsof your English course include making your students literate IT, then the use of CAI will be worth pursuing regardless of the uncertainty of its effectiveness. On the other hand, if you conclude that the unconfirmed effectivenessof CAI in language learning does not satisfy the cost, time and energy of setting up the CAI room and developing
CAI materials, then the use of CAI in English education will not be the best way. CAI seems most suitable for suchkind of study that requires repetitive, continuous and progressive learning for vocabulary building and grammatical
exercises.

Need for Renewal
Ten years ago, when computers were not widespread and not commonly used in education, language
study with CAI materials greatly attracted the students’ attention because it was a new way of learning English. In
the last ten years, virtually every college and university provided computer facilities for use in education. Students
have become used to studying many different subjects with computers. In order to keep attracting students’ attention in new technology, CAI materials should be renewed every time a substantially new technology is introduced.
New, fancier frames should be included in your new CAI materials so that your students will enjoy studying
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English in a way they have never experienced before. It is, indeed, very hard work to continue renewing or creating
CAI materials that keep up with the innovation of new technologies.
Table 1 shows the relationship between the electronic environment of the CAI rooms at Kurume Instituteof Technology and CAI materials we developed.

Table 1. Electronic environment and CAI materials

1988 to 1995

Electronic Environment

Computers, Language, CAI

Completion of the LAN

FMR-60, FMR-70

Development of CAI materials

F-Basic

Use of CAI materials

Text format only
Vocabulary, Grammar

1993 to 1997

Windows

Windows
Windows NT

Curriculum and the use of CAI materials

Basic for Windows
Sound and text
Listening materials

1996 toMultimedia type materials

WWW, CGI
Perl
Sound, pictures, movies and text
Pronunciation practice materials

In the first stage, we started developing CAI materials for vocabulary building and grammatical exercises
because we could treat only text. Figure 1 shows a frame of ESP vocabulary material. Students choose a correct

Figure 1. ESP CAI materials
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answer from the choices and input it through the keyboard. There were two modes of presenting materials: theexercise mode and the quiz mode.
In the second stage, with the introduction of Windows-type computers in the CAI rooms, we began to create
listening comprehension materials because new computers could process sound and picture together with text.
Figure 2 shows a view of the listening comprehension material. When a learner clicks on the underlined portion,
he/she can listen to the passage explaining the picture and answer questions concerning the passage.

Figure 2. Listening materials
Our present system allows CAI materials on the Web, and now we are striving to develop materials forpronunciation practice treating movies, sound, and text all together. Figure 3 shows a view of the pronunciationmaterial for the /r/ and /l/ distinction. Students can practice hearing the difference between minimal pairs of words
read by native speakers while simultaneously looking at their mouth movements.

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Technical support
In CAI rooms or CALL rooms, there are many computers installed which are connected with larger computers called servers. Most language teachers cannot manage or maintain such rooms. We need computer techniciansor engineers for their set up and maintenance. To develop CAI materials for students’ use, cooperation between
language teachers and programmers is essential unless you, yourself, are a good programmer. If you cannot secure
good technical support, it is very difficult for you to give lessons in CAI rooms or to develop CAI materials fit for
the level and needs of your students.

Figure 3. Pronunciation practice materials

Integration of CAI in curriculum
Supposing that we could overcome all the six problems discussed above, let me consider what comes next in
utilizing CAI. The main challenge then becomes how we can increase the effectiveness of the study with CAI
materials. Our solution was to change the English curriculum so that the course using CAI materials became
integrated in the curriculum as a whole. Table 2 shows the present English curriculum at Kurume Institute ofTechnology.
After several years of trial and error, we decided to use CAI materials for two purposes: (a) to review thelessons covered in regular ESP (English for Specific Purposes) class with a textbook and a blackboard, and (b) togive pre-exercises for a more advanced level of study in an advanced course in ESP. Since our institution provides
only one faculty, the faculty of engineering, ESP means English for Science and Technology CAI materials areused in the course called “Technical English” for sophomore students. The students study in their freshman year avery elementary level of ESP in regular classrooms. They study about 300 to 500 words in science and technology,
as well as review some grammar often used in science-related literature. This course is called “Basic TechnicalEnglish.” In their junior or senior year, students can study more advanced level of ESP by enrolling in the course
called “Advanced Technical English” as an elective if they wish. In this way, there is a link between the students’previous study and the CAI course, and the study done in CAI rooms serves as the base of the advanced course in
the curriculum.

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Table 2. English Curriculum at Kurume Institute of Technology
CoursesYear

Required or Elective

Features

Basic Technical English

1

requiredsmall sized, 2 levels

Technical English

2

required

CAI

Advanced Technical English

3, 4

elective

English Reading1

requiredIntermediate English Reading2

required

Advanced English Reading

3, 4

elective

Oral English

1elective

small sizedIntermediate English Reading

2

elective

small sized

Advanced Oral English

3, 4

elective

small sized

small sized, 2 levels

Need for a Well-Planned Syllabus
The final step for maximizing the effectiveness of CAI is preparing a well-planned course syllabus. It is
indispensable to clearly set the goal of the course, to innovate more effective ways to present CAI materials, to findthe best timing for explaining the materials students are studying, and also to find a better way to evaluate theirwork. I am still in an experimental stage in this sense because I constantly ask myself what kind of materials are
best suited to the self-study nature of CAI; when students need the teacher’s assistance in their learning process, orwhether on-line quiz format is really the best suited for CAI or not. The syllabus in the Appendix indicates that the
90-minute class period is divided into three sections as follows: (1) students spend the first 20 to 30 minutes forexercises with pen and paper; (2) the next 30 minutes is the time when the teacher explains correct answers andstudents make corrections and understand the exercises; (3) the last 30 minutes is the self-checking time of the
day’s lesson using the CAI system. After several revisions of the syllabus reflecting the results of trial and error,
more time tends to be spent for the exercises using traditional study with pen and paper, and for the teacher’s
explanation, than for the self-study with computers.

Conclusion
With the advance of computer technology, CAI materials for language study havebeen changing from simple
ones which show only text on the screen to more sophisticated ones that treat sound, picture, and movies together
with text. The effectiveness of CAI materials, however, does not depend on how sophisticated and fancy thematerials are. Repetitive, continuous and progressive learning efforts will improve learners’ language competence.
Therefore, CAI materials should strongly emphasize these key aspects of language learning.
In order to increase the effectiveness of CAI, the course must be integrated in the curriculum so that the study
done in the CAI rooms and that done in other classrooms can mutually reinforce student learning. In addition, wemust always plan a better syllabus so that students will concentrate on their study instead of falling asleep during
the class or daydreaming in front of a computer.
The plenary address by Dr. van Lier concluded, “Pedagogy comes first, then curriculum and computer is thelast. But usually it is in the other way round.” Our experience of developing CAI materials and using them inclasses started from the use of computers as Dr. Lier pointed. We have already moved to the next step of integration

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To contentsof the CAI course in the English curriculum. I’m glad to say that we are now reaching the primary aspect ineducation, pedagogy, by preparing well-planned syllabus for the course using CAI materials.

References:Oda, M. et al. (1999). Development of a pronunciation practice system with views of mouth movements. A paper
presented at the 15th JACET Kyushu/Okinawa Chapter Conference. Miyazaki, Japan: Miyazaki National
College of Aviation.
Oda, M., Yamauchi, H. & Izaki, H. (1997). Development of multi-media type English CAI materials. Proceedingsof the Technology and Industrial Education Conference.
Yamauchi, H. (1999a). Use of e-mail in English education (1) — educational purpose and achievement. Bulletinof Kurume Institute of Technology, 23, 131-141.
Yamauchi, H. (1999b). Making ESP a mainstream component of college English curriculum. Proceedings of the
12th World Congress of Applied Linguistics. p.113.
Yamauchi. H, & Oda, (1998). Development of CAI materials using WWW. Proceedings of the Technology andIndustrial Education Conference.
Yamauchi, H. et. al. (1996). Systematic Curriculum of English for Science and Technology and computer Assisted
Instruction. Engineering Education, 44(2), 36-43.

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Appendix
A Course Syllabus for Technical English at Kurume Institute of Technology
Course Name: Technical English (sophomore year, required course, 2 units)
Instructor: Hisako Yamauchi
Aims: The aims of this course are (a) to build up students’ English vocabulary in science and technology,(b) to review expressions often used in the science-related literature and (c) to improve their reading ability. CAI
materials are used for building up vocabulary, and strengthening basic grammar and acquiring English expressions.
Students are encouraged to take the third level of the Test of English in Engineering.
Syllabus:
1st Week

Pre-test and course orientation

2nd Week

How to use CAI materials ( CAI—Technical English 2)

3rd Week

Vocabulary building ( Exercise 1) (CAI—Technical English 4 )4th Week

Vocabulary building (Exercise 2) (CAI—Technical English 8)

5th Week

Vocabulary building (Exercise 3) (CAI—Basic Technical English 1)

6th Week

Vocabulary building (Exercise 4) (CAI—Basic Technical English 2)

7th Week

Vocabulary building and understanding expressions 1 (CAI—Basic Technical English 3)

8th Week

Vocabulary building and understanding expressions 2 (CAI—Basic Technical English 4)

9th Week

Vocabulary building and understanding expressions 3 (CAI—Basic Technical English 5)

10th Week

Vocabulary building and understanding expressions 4 (CAI—Technical English 5)

11th Week

Vocabulary building and understanding expressions 5 (CAI—Technical English 9)

12th Week(CAI—Technical English‚ 8, 9, 10)

13th Week

Post-test

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The Design of a Multimedia Language Learning Centerand Its Applications
Harold Hendricks [Moderator]
Brigham Young University, U. S. A.

Panelists
In-Seok Kim, Dongduk Women’s University, Korea
Howard Chen, National Taiwan Ocean University, Taiwan
Akira Morita, Waseda University, JapanEd Dente, Tufts University, USA

Overview
For over a hundred and thirty years, there have been machines invented to record the human voice andcapture the sounds and rhythms of language. The use of technology to assist in the learning and teaching of
language has a long and interesting history. It has an even more exciting future. The assemblage of various
recording and playback devices into an artificial structure, such as the traditional language laboratory, is being
challenged by the digital revolution. Methods to capture the sound and even the sight of language—both real andvirtual—are distilling into an amazing array of digital devices that travel far beyond the confines of carrels orclassrooms. In this setting of frenetic change, one designing a modern, multimedia language learning center must
earnestly ask a number of fundamental questions concerning the nature and function of such a facility. Thissymposium addressed several of these questions and proposed some answers in an attempt to guide us in understanding how to best meet the challenges of new technology and new language teaching methods.
Professor Dente first addressed a number of issues that should be carefully reviewed before any language lab
design is made. The issue of physical and virtual lab space was raised, since many of the functions of the traditional language lab are now possible through the internet. Professor Dente stressed the uniqueness of each lab
facility and its relationship with the faculty and students who will use it.
Professors Kim, Chen, and Morita then described the new and interesting innovations in the design andprograms of each of their lab facilities, emphasizing the greatly expanded role of digital media and the internet.
Through the use of video and slides, each of the presenters highlighted the purposes and programs of their individual facilities and discussed the changing nature of language instruction as practiced in a modern, digital laboratory. Each provided to the audience a glimpse of the many possibilities the rapidly changing digital world provide
in presenting, reinforcing, mediating, and assessing language to our students.

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The Design of a Multimedia Language Learning Centerand Its Applications*
Akira Morita
Waseda University, Japan
Abstract
At the symposium, I focused my presentation on the following subjects:

1.

Situation and the multimedia environments at Waseda University.

2.

Necessity of an administering organization.

3.

Need for cooperative work among those who are involved in multimedia education.

Facts and Figures (as of 1999)
Waseda University has about 6 campuses, 9 undergraduate schools, 10 (+1) graduate schools, 2 high schools.
Active Net Subscribers include 51,639 students (43,489 undergraduates, 5,070 graduates), 5,000 faculty and staff(1,541 faculty, 2,613 adjunct, 833 full-time, 1,300 staff members). Internet addresses are automatically distributed
to freshmen. The students as well as the faculty and staff can have their own web pages on WASEDA network
servers.

Supporting Organization
In order to meet the various needs of the students and the faculty, we need to have an administering organization, which is called Media Network Center. Its functions include administration and maintenance of multimedia
environments and information education for the faculty as well as the students.
Media Network Center's functions:
1. Information Infrastructure Initiative, Library Online Catalogue and Resources,
2. Administrative Networking, Academic Information Networks, Media Faculty Support,
3. Courses and Seminars, Research Projects and Special Interest Groups

MNC Standard Computer Classroom Environment
MNC administers almost all of the multimedia classrooms at the university and all computer rooms withmore than 3,000 PCs which are working under mostly the same conditions. The standards are as follows.
1.

3000 PCs in different schools and campuses: Standard hardware, software, desks, chairs

2.

Uniform user interface and configuration: Central authentication and access record,

3.

Multilingual secure configuration: Instructor and student folders,

4.

Campus-wide maintenance agreement

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Multimedia Learning Environment
MNC also supports three types of multimedia learning environments. Education is now world wide and wehave already started Distance Learning with some universities outside Japan.

Ordinary Classrooms'Multi-media Box' ( with VCR, CTR, DVD, Network PC Slot, CATV)
In ordinary classrooms, the media are mainly used for the teachers to demonstrate or present their teachingmaterials. However, in MM classrooms, the class is more student-centered and interactive thanks to the following
hardware and software.

Multimedia Classrooms•

Multimedia Language Learning Lab: Digital LL, http-based test, VOD•

Multimedia Workshop: Video capturing, MIDI, Scanners•

Networked Inter-Cognitive Environment - Classroom cameras, MPEG encoders•

4 Mobile Network Classrooms•

Faculty Media workshop
http://www.waseda.ac.jp/mnc/RESEARCH/mnc_comm/n-technology/01.html

Intercampus Education - Distance Learning* Inter-cultural Distance Learning through ISDN: CU-SeeMe, TeleMeet
http://www.project.mnc.waseda.ac.jp/ccdl/index.html

Comparison of Standard and Multimedia Environments (1)In multimedia classrooms, classes are more student-centered and interactive thanks to the following hardware and software. Table 1, as an example, shows the specification and configuration of PCs, and activities done in
the multimedia classrooms in Building #14 of the university.
http://www.waseda.ac.jp/mnc/RESEARCH/mnc_comm/n-technology/01.html

Comparison of Standard and Multimedia Environments (2)Classroom Management
CAI, Monitoring and presentation of student display, Locked and remote student input, attendance andstudy record
Classes (As of 2000. 4., per 42 class hours) English 9, Chinese 8, Spanish 1, German 1, Others 3

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Table 1. Specifications and Configurations of PCs
Area

Software(Basically Common)

Software(Multimedia Lab.)

PCs

HardwareSpecifications
MS-Office 97 (Word98)
Type Quick 1.06
WinYAT 324.0.9. 0
LH Melt 1.02.0.6
Hidemaru Editor 2.29
WS-FTP 324.50
TeraTerm 2.3
Netscape Navigator 4.04
VirusScan 3.2.0
Adobe PageMill 3.0
Adobe Photoshop
L E Dictionaries:BABYLON
KOJIEN
Readers Plus E-J Dict.
Study Wave 1.0 SP1 (CAI software)
cWnn R 4.0 (Chinese input method and learning software)
kWnn R 3.0 (Korean input method and learning software)
Global IME 5.0+IE 4.0 (Chinese/Korean input method and learning software)GOLD WAVE 4.02 (Real time digital audio editor)
Chinese Pronunciation
You Be the Reporter: A Video Writing workshop
American History "GTV: A Geographic Perspective on American History"
ATR Listening Practice
TOEFL Simulation
TOEIC Preparation Kit
PC (Pentium,128Mbyte)
15" TFT Display, 3.5" FDD
640MB 3.5” MOD
CD-ROM/RWD
LCD Displays
AV Equipment Control
S-VHS VTR, DVCAMVTR DVD/LD/CD Player
S-VHS/DV Player
Overhead Camera,
CATV Tuner, MD Player, CTR
Student Displays (one per two students)
LCD Projectors, Headsets
MPEG1 VOD Servers

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Class Activities
The personal computer is personal and individualistic by nature. Therefore, aside from self-study, teachers
have to explain through the class activities why students are in a fixed room and at a fixed time, for example, nine
to ten thirty in room #101. Therefore, we should focus the activities on group activities and presentation to the othermembers of the class. To let the student work together and let them know each other in English.
Group assignment, Self-introduction with slides, Web and e-mail, Group preparation for presentation, Printed
material and online documents, Class presentation, Oral presentation with slides, Oral discussion, mailing list
discussion, Essay writing, Word processing, documentation, referencing, Spreadsheet, Peer review, peer evaluation, Data analysis and presentation

Media Support for Faculty
To support such activities mentioned above, MNC has special facilities and supporting organizations. It also
distributes PCs to all faculty members.
Faculty Media Workshop, MCC: Multimedia Contents Cannery, Faculty and other Web servers, Mailinglists for research groups, Mailing lists and IDs for classes, More than 6,000 IP addresses, Faculty Platform PC andsupportConclusion
My conclusion is simple and kind of old-fashioned. For the design of multimedia classroom, the most important thing, what we should think of first, is 'courseware', which may begin with deciding the purpose of the room:
is it for self-studying or for an organized teacher-centered class? Many things depend on the course design, and thesyllabus design we use.
The second thing is the viewpoint of 'classroom-engineering' as I wrote in the handbook. We should think of,for example, the height of desks and chairs or the space between desks, lighting, and air-conditioning. We should
consider if it is comfortable for students to sit in the chairs and to sit at their computers for a lengthy period of time.
They may need to watch the materials again and again, and need more time to respond to various types of tasks, notonly through sound and voice but also pictures and written texts.
Machines are the third thing we must consider. Of course, we have to think of teaching materials.
In order to solve the problems, teachers have to cooperate with the technical and office staff who always
support our education, engineers, and with vendors and makers. We should be more cooperative in the Network
society.

Note* This report is based on the cooperative research with Yasunari Harada, Eiichi Inui, and Mitsuru Mizuno.

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Designing an Effective Multimedia Language Learning Program:
A Pilot Study of Designing DV Movie News
Hideko Nakano
Kyushu Kyoritsu University, Japan
Abstract
This paper will propose the new type of Video CD instructional material. As an instructor and creator of
DV material in the lab, a teacher needs an effectual, teacher-friendly and timesaving material to create foreveryday class. In the present experiment, a Video CD created by the researcher with manual-worksheet instruction is shown to discuss its merits and demerits. Comparing with a ready made CD-ROM instructional materials, the learners are asked to reply the questionnaire about the experimental instruction using the Video CD. The
findings from the questionnaire suggest some tips for designing DV movie news as follows: the Video CD has
advantages as the learner-friendly tool that satisfy the learners’ preference and enables them to process at theirpace going back and forth. Applying the manual task to the Video CD instruction is almost accepted by thelearners. Pedagogical discussion will suggest the necessity for the further study, producing DV movie of higher
quality and higher performance.

Introduction
Though multimedia language learning materials have been highly developed and many varieties of readymade CD-ROM instructional materials have been provided, it is hard to find an appropriate one for teachers andstudents’ needs. Their merits and demerits have been discussed (Miyamoto, 1998; Fujieda, 1999; Kawanari, 1999;
Mine & Yoshida, 2000; Hegelheimer & Chapelle, 2000).
For advantages: (a) Both scripts and pictures, especially movies, can help learners develop their comprehensions and keep them in their long/short memory effectively through their eyes and ears; (b) CD-ROM can be
operated at the learners’ individual learning pace; (c) CD-ROM can be easily applied in the lab; (d) Teachers caneasily administer the class through CALL.
Then, for disadvantages: (a) Learners cannot deal with many functions programmed in the material efficiently and tend to skip some well-arranged learning stages; (b) There is more information and instruction thanlearners can process, which makes them less challenging; (c) Teachers cannot gain insights into learning strategies
by each learner through CALL directly.
Williams and Burden (1997) stated four key elements of the learning process as the learner, the teacher, thetask and the context. In the classroom the teachers will select certain types of tasks, which they will present to theirlearners in particular ways that reflect their beliefs and values. An important aspect of an educative experience isthat the learners perceive the value of the task for themselves and their own development. Each learner is different,
and will bring to the learning process a unique set of personal attribute, preferred ways of learning and learning
strategies. Learners make sense of the learning situation and learning strategies. Teachers, therefore, need to provide a variety of language learning activities that allow for different learning styles and individual preferences andpersonalities: some visual, some auditory, some involving movement, some interactive and some analytic. Teachers and researchers interested in improving the effectiveness of CALL activities sometimes look for guidance fromsecond language acquisition (SLA) research with the hope that CALL activities can be designed to create ideal
conditions for SLA (Hegelheimer & Chapelle, 2000).
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With these SLA theories I would like to edit and design Video CD news as instructional material, andadminister it in a Current English class to find out the essential functions and effectual approach needed for learners focusing on the learning strategies.

Aims
Two questions are posed for the present research.
1.

2.

What kind of material does the learners really need in the Current English class?
•

Theme

•

Style

•

Functions

What kind of Video CD material is the most effectual for the teachers to produce/edit and administerin the Current English class?
•Prevalence•

Simple Procedure•

Instruction

Methods
Subjects
Twenty-six third-year-grade students in mechanical engineering department, who enrolled in Current English class, were randomly chosen as subjects.

Materials
Two different types of CD-Rom instructional material (Type A and B) were given to the learners and eachmaterial was processed for 180 minutes in PC lab.
Type A is Unit one of TOEIC Super Training (ASK, 1998) that has mainly six function to process: listening,reading, movie, conversation, instruction for vocabulary and key-expression including meaning, pronunciation,and examples. Each unit has a mini listening quiz for vocabulary and key expression and mini TOEIC training quiz
before proceeding to next unit. Clicking the mouse processes each quiz on the screen.
Type B is Video CD news edited from a copy of the CNN NEWSROOM program to which our university
subscribes, showing NASA’s research on signs of flowing water at several locations over the surface of the Mars.
The Video consists of five parts: Before watching exercise (vocabulary), the first view, comprehension, the second
view and listening, and the third view with caption. Each movie is about one minute long and total length of theVideo is five minutes thirty seconds long. During the Video watching the attached worksheet (Appendix 3) was
given to the students who were allowed to review the contents without caption till they finish the vocabulary,comprehension, and listening quiz. Finally, they are allowed to watch the contents with caption which provides thelearners with further listening comprehension. Manual labor work like looking into the dictionary and writing themeaning or translation on the worksheet are required during the exercise.

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DV Movie Making
The process mainly consists of three stages: pre-production, production and post-production. In the preproduction stage, the news source was recorded and the script that includes title, vocabulary and notes were provided. In the production stage, the raw video was captured as DV into the PC (PCV-R72, Sony) using the software(DV gate, Sony). Adobe Premiere 5.1 was used to import, assemble, and then, non-linear editing with caption was
performed. In the post-production stage, CD Creator (Sony) was used to output moving picture to medium as Video
CD (Appendix1). The follow chart of the project with time line is shown in Table 1. The total required time was
210 min, which is acceptable for teachers to create Video CD in their laboratories.

Table 1. The Flow Chart and Time Line of DV Movie Making
Task

Software/Tool used

Time (min.)Format

1. Convert/Capture Analog into DV

DVgate Motion/PCV-R72 (Sony)1

DV (AVI)

2. Non-liner edit

Adobe Premier 5.1

40

DV (AVI)

3. Caption superimpose

Adobe Premier 5.1

50

DV (AVI)

4. Video CD edit

CD-Creator (Sony)60

MPEG-1

5. Video CD output/copy

CD-Creator (Sony)20

MPEG-1

6. Worksheet

39

Total

210

Experimental Procedure
After each task was finished, the questionnaire-I (Q-I) (Appendix 2) was given to the students. Their attitudes during the task were assessed according to their degree of agreement/disagreement with statements using afour-point Likert-like scale. Another questionnaire-II (Q-II) asked about the learners’ preference for the topic ofVideo CD. Analysis is conducted to reveal the tendency of students’ attitude. What is the vital function of Video
CD for learners’ effective practice?

Results and Discussion
Questionnaire-I (Q-I)
Table 2 and Figure 1 show the result of Q-I. Mean Score 3.04 in Q1 and 2.04 in Q2 indicate that amount oftask of Task A is more than Task B. The difference between Q1 and Q2 is statistically significant (p < .01). Task A
has mainly six functions to process: listening and watching movie, reading dialogues, conversation practice, vocabulary, key-expression and more mini listening and a TOEIC training quiz. Task B has also six functions toprocess: vocabulary, listening and watching movie, comprehension, listening test, listening and watching movie
with caption and translation. Q3 and Q4 indicate that a majority of learners felt that Task B was more interesting
than Task A. The difference between Q3 and Q4, which refers to learners’ interest, is statistically significant (p <.01). The result from Q5 and Q6 can support the claim that a majority of learners can be satisfied with Task B withdictionary use and worksheet. Q7, Q8, and Q9 indicate, in addition, that they think movie caption and CALL areeffective, and the latest news may be preferable.

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The second direction on Q-I was to explain the reason why they think so. In Q2 some said they overworked
with too many well arranged programs, and that too much choice made them less challenging. As for Q5 some
prefer to use an e-dictionary on the screen, but a great majority of the class prefer to use a conventional dictionary
because it helps keep the memory longer. In Q6 some prefer to run the exercise on the computer, but a great
majority of the learners prefer to use worksheet because they can bring it home and review it.

Table 2. Questionnaire-I (Q-I)
Question

Mean

SD

Q1

Amount of Task A is too much

3.04

.34

Q2

Amount of Task B is too much

2.04

.45

Q3

Theme of Task A is interesting

2.19

.49

Q4

Theme of Task B is interesting

3.12

.52

Q5

Dictionary is useful

2.69

.55

Q6

Worksheet is useful

2.65

.63

Q7

Movies with captions are effective

3.19

.40

Q8

The news should be new

3.12

.52

Q9

CALL is effective

3.00

.49

Q1>Q2

p<.0001

Q3<Q4

p<.0001

Note: Agree Strongly = 4, Agree = 3, Disagree = 2, Disagree Strongly = 1; n = 26

4
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0

Task A
Task B

Q1 vs.
1 Q2 Q3 2vs. Q4

Q5
3

Q6
4

Q7
5

Q8
6

Q9
7

Note: Agree Strongly = 4, Agree = 3, Disagree = 2, Disagree Strongly = 1; n = 26

Figure 1. Mean and standard deviation for questionnaire-I (Q-I)
Questionnaire-II (Q-II)
The subjects were asked to choose their three most favorite topics of nine items: 1. World Business/Politics,
2. Domestic Business/Politics, 3. World Events, 4. Domestic Events, 5. Science, 6. Space, 7. Environmental Problems, 8. Sports, and 9. Entertainment. The result shown in Table 3 and Figure 2 indicates the learners in engineering department most likely to be interested in science, space and sports.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Video CD (Task B)
As an instructor and a creator of Video CD (Task B), I would like to mention its advantage and disadvantage
as follows:
Advantages
1.

The script of the news can be obtained from the online news source (http://www.cnn.com/
TRANSCRIPTS).

2.

Video CD is convenient for both students and teachers to handle and process.

3.

Format of Video CD (MPEG-1) has lower data rate than other type of formats (AVI or MPEG2), which means it requires lower storage capacity and output time required is less than others.
The capacity of the present Video CD is about 70 MB.

4.

Video CD is flexible for the learning environment (stand alone/ LAN/ Web).

5.

The labor of editing Video CD and making worksheet takes less time than making DV material
including a digitized exercise.

6.

Video CD is easy to install.

7.

Task B with Video CD is easy to process/instruct because of simple procedures led by thequestions from the beginning to the end, while Task A is mixed up with several tasks without
direction.

Disadvantages
1.

Small-sized screen

2.

Video and sound quality are lower than those of AVI and MPEG-2.

Table 3. Questionnaire-II: Preference for the Topics
Content

Score

1.

World Business/Politics

7

2.

Domestic Business/Politics

3

3.

World Events

6

4.

Domestic Events

2

5.

Science

14

6.

Space

17

7.

Environmental Problems

88.

Sports139.

Entertainment

8Note: n = 26, Total Score = 78
The statement for advantage indicates that Video CD may be one of learner-friendly, teacher-friendly andenvironment-friendly material. Moreover, the statements on disadvantage suggest further study for producing DV
movie of higher quality and higher performance.

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18
16
16
14
14
12
12
10
10
88
66
44
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11 World Business
22 Domestic Business
33 World Events
44 Domestic Events
55 Science
66 Space
77 Environment
88 Sports
99 Entertainment

Note: n = 26, Total Score = 78

Figure 2. Questionnaire-II (Q-II)

Conclusion
This paper is a proposal to show that even a teacher can create the CALL environment with his/her own
teaching material with less work, cost, and time to be taken. The new attempt to combine digital material andworksheet seems to be accepted by the learners. This attempt, editing the news program into a Video CD, aims tofind the learners-friendly materials in the Current English class. The learners were interested in its theme and style,that is, digital material with worksheet. Moreover, the present digital material, Video CD (Task B), is likely to seem
satisfy the second aim to find teacher-friendly material showing its merits that it is easier to design, edit, output or
copy than other DV, for instance AVI format. As Williams and Burden (1997) mentioned, four key elements oflearning process, that are the leaner, the teacher, the task and the context, are linked together and provide thelearners with the characteristic leaning environment. In the present experiment, however, less empirical researchon the learning strategy was conducted while the learners are working with the material on both the computers andthe worksheets. Psycholinguistic experiment will reveal further evidence how the learners use their learning strategy and how the material affects them when operating. In addition, further research should be also done to findmore effective task with higher-quality and higher-performance material using other formats. Further work isneeded to apply these methods in research and instruction in order to contribute SLA theory to CALL practice.

References
Fujieda, M. (1999). Japanese EFL learners’ attitudes toward CALL. Language Laboratory 36, 1-16.
Hegelheimer, V and Chapelle, C. A. (2000). Methodological issue in research on learner-computer interactions in
CALL. Language Learning & Technology 4(1), 41-59.
Kawanari, M. (1999). The effectiveness of a multimedia type CALL material on the learning of English and its
methodology. Language Laboratory 36, 77-96.
Mine, H. and Yoshida, H. (2000). The possibility of multimedia in English vocabulary learning. Computer and
Education 8, 86-91.
Miyamoto, S. (1998). Maruchimedeia gogaku kyouzai no hyouka ni kansuru shitsuteki kenkyuu—purotokoru
bunseki o toushite miru gakushusha no kaidoku katei—Proceedings at the 24th Annual Meeting of the Federation of English Language Education Societies in Japan.
Phinney, M. (1991). Computer-assisted writing and writing apprehension in ELS students. Dunkel, P. (ed.) Computer-assisted language and testing: Research issues and practice. Newbury House.
Robinson, G. L. (1991). Effective feedback straegies in CLL: Learning theory and emperical rsearch. Dunkel, P.
(ed.) Computer-assisted language and testing: Research issues and practice. Newbury House.
Williams, M. and Burden, R.L.(1997). Psychology for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Appendix A
Video CD Assemble

Appendix B
Questionnaire I
Directions: Please circle the number that corresponds to how you feel about each statement.
(4 = Agree Strongly, 3 = Agree, 2 = Disagree, 1 = Disagree Strongly)

Score

1. Too many tasks to complete for the TOEIC Training CD-ROM (Task A).

4

3

2

1

2. Too many tasks to complete for the Video CD (Task B).

4

3

2

1

3. The theme for Task A is more interesting.

4

3

2

1

4. The theme for Task B is more interesting.

4

3

2

1

5. Using the regular dictionary is more effective than using the computer dictionary. 4

3

2

1

6. I prefer learning from the worksheet rather than from the computer.

4

3

2

1

7. The images with captions helped further my understanding.

4

3

2

1

8. I prefer the latest news for Current English.

4

3

2

1

9. I prefer learning English on the computer rather than in the L. L.

4

3

2

1

Questionnaire II
Directions: Please choose the three topics that you would most like to learn in this class.
1. World Business/Politics 2. Domestic Business/Politics

3. World Events

4. Domestic Events

5. Science

8. Sports

9. Entertainment

6. Space

7. Environmental Problems

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Appendix C
Worksheet of Video CD (Task B)
Worksheet-Mars

Date:_________/___________/__________
No.______________________ Name:_______________________

Q1. Before watching the movie, let’s check the vocabulary.
suspect:
living creatures:
theory:unlock:proof:
mount:
orbit:
intriguing:
Martian North Pole:lace (v.):
riverbed:
significant:prospect:doom:
scoop up:robotic divining rods:in the wake of:hunt:

Q2. After watching movie, answer the following True/False questions.
2-1. T/F
2-2. T/F
2-3. T/F
2-4. T/F
2-5. T/F
2-6. T/F

Mars is the fourth planet from the earth.
The surface of Mars cannot be seen in detail from the earth.
Its surface temperature rises to above zero degrees Celsius.
The Mars Global Surveyor took pictures showing signs of flowing water.
Mars is laced with riverbeds that have been dry for a million years.
The Mars Polar Lander analyzed ice crystals just beneath the surface of the South Pole.

Q3. Fill in the blanks of the script and explain the meanings of the underlined words, phrases and sentences.
JORDAN: In today’s “Science Desk” extra, a closer look at the fourth planet from the sun. It’s Mars.
Mars is the only planet whose surface can be seen in detail from Earth. And its surface is more like Earth’s thanany other planet, but the plants and animals of Earth couldn’t live on Mars. The red planet is just too cold. Its
surface temperature rarely rises above freezing.
Still, scientists () Mars could have once been home to ()()—a theory supported by a recent
discovery. Miles O’Brien explains.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MILES O’BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over):
Follow the water. Scientists looking to unlock the mystery of life on Mars feel that is the path to, perhaps,
living (). And now they may be one step closer.
A camera mounted on a NASA satellite in Mars (), the Mars Global Surveyor, snapped the intriguing(). Researchers say they show very recent signs of flowing water at several locations all over the surfaceof the Red Planet. This is by no means the first time water has been () on Mars. The ()()()
is covered with a one-mile-thick blanket of ice. And scientists agree the planet is laced with riverbeds that havebeen dry for at least a () years. The fresh Global Surveyor images are () because they show signs water
may have recently reached the surface, perhaps only days before they were taken.
Scientists are thrilled at the prospects because, at least on Earth, wherever there is () water there
is life.
(on camera): The doomed Mars Polar Lander was on that same trail. It was to scoop up and analyze ice
crystals just beneath the surface of the South Pole. NASA’s efforts to regroup in the wake of that failure last
) toyear include several proposals which amount to sending a () of robotic divining rods to Mars in (come. The new images from the Global Surveyor will make that remote- controlled hunt a lot more precise.
Miles O’Brien, CNN, at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
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Developing Culturally-Sensitive Teaching Materials for the
EFL Classroom in Japan
Christopher A. Bradley
Fukuoka University of Education
Abstract
This paper summarizes research conducted on some EFL textbooks that are published in Japan for
university and adult learners of English. The writer found that an overwhelming majority of these textbooks
contain misleading cultural stereotypes. For example, many of them give learners the unwarranted notion thatmost native speakers of English are Caucasian. Near the beginning of the paper, the author shows how suchstereotypes are re-enforced by sociocultural factors - in particular, the Japanese media.
The next part of the paper presents numerous examples of stereotypes from specific EFL textbooks,
although the author notes, too, that a significant minority of textbooks do attempt to present a more culturally
balanced view of native speakers of English. To conclude the paper, the writer suggests principals for developing more culturally-sensitive and accurate teaching materials for Japanese learners of English.
Over the past few years, the number of EFL textbooks produced specifically for Japanese learners ofEnglish has proliferated. Tomlinson (1998) views the increase in locally produced EFL textbooks in many
countries as a positive remedy to the lack of affect in what he calls "global EFL textbooks." He defines these as
textbooks that are mass-marketed to EFL classrooms in various countries. Many EFL textbooks produced forthe global market, he contends, lack affective appeal for students because they focus on grammatical structures,
which leave "little processing left over for emotive responses and very little to get emotional about" (p. 20). He
goes on to say that communicative textbooks, too, produced in reaction against the failure of traditional grammar-translation and audio-lingual publications, offer very little in the way of affect, as they tend to focus on"everyday 'survival' functions" such as buying tickets or asking for directions. These functions, while useful, do
little to stimulate emotions, he contends. Locally produced textbooks, asserts Tomlinson, motivate learners,
since it is easier to find out what these students are interested in.
While Tomlinson makes a good case for locally-produced textbooks, he cites examples that have worked
effectively in Namibia and Norway. He does not look at the issues surrounding the use of locally-produced
textbooks in Japan. Unfortunately, it seems that a large number of such coursebooks are grounded on misleading assumptions about what exactly "Western" culture is and how Japanese people should relate to this genericculture. These texts make up a significant proportion of locally-produced materials, which assume that to be aforeigner means to be a "Westerner" (often defined as a white, middle-class American, and occasionally, as a
Caucasian Brit, Australian, New Zealander, or Canadian).
Before citing specific examples of questionable stereotypes in locally produced EFL textbooks in Japan,
I shall outline the role played by contributing socio-cultural variables--in particular, the Japanese media. The
next section of the paper will analyse the stereotypes in some EFL textbooks produced for Japanese university
level and adult learners of English. This part of the paper will also give some examples of the minority of
textbooks that present various cultures in a more balanced manner. Finally, I will attempt to present somepedagogical guidelines for dealing with the question of cultural bias in many Japanese-produced EFL
textbooks.

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Sociocultural Variables
Fundamental to considering the matter of cultural balance in EFL textbooks is an examination of the use of
stereotypes in such materials. Allport (1954) says, "Whether favorable or unfavorable, a stereotype is an exaggerated belief associated with a category. It's function is to justify (rationalize) our conduct in relation to thatcategory." (p. 191).
It should be noted that if there are indeed stereotypes in locally produced EFL textbooks in Japan, they do
not appear out of nowhere, but are deeply influenced by the socio-cultural background of Japan. For example,
stereotypes of both foreign and indigenous cultures abound in the Japanese media. NTV was forced to apologize
when, in 1994, members of the Ainu, Japan's indigenous group, protested a segment on Takeshi's Ultra Quiz thatfeatured a group of comics doing an "Ainu dance" clad in bikini tops and giant phalluses (Schilling, 1997). Moreover, the long-running program, Naruhodo the World, where celebrity panelists were quizzed about customs incountries abroad, faced criticism from resident foreigners in Japan, who contended that "the show presented nonJapanese as so many sideshow freaks and their customs as bizarre departures from the Japanese norm" (Schilling,p. 159). The prevalence of stereotypes in the Japanese media may help explain why misbegotten views of nonJapanese cultures also abound in a large number of locally-produced EFL textbooks.
One stereotype that frequently appears in Japan is the glorification of people with Caucasian physical features and the contrasting condescension towards persons of non-Japanese and non-Caucasian origin. In a telling
analysis of Japanese anime, Sato (1996) postulates that the predominance of Caucasian physical traits among the
supposedly Japanese characters of animated features is a reflection of how many Japanese aspire to look. Such a
portrayal of Japanese as Caucasians is not possible in live-action films. Further, Sato quotes fashion illustrator
Nagasawa Setsu, "With their sharp-featured faces and long-limbed bodies, Westerners (read Caucasians) are physically suited to the movie screen...." (p. 25) Such thinking, if predominant among the Japanese, might explain why
Japanese-produced live-action films take in far less revenue than fare of the same genre imported from Hollywood.
Further, this mentality may also be reflected in the disproportionate number of Causasian characters in EFL
textbooks produced for the Japanese market. A former colleague of mine in Tokyo queried a spokesperson for alarge publisher in Japan about why so many of this publisher's textbooks were this way. The spokesperson replied
simply, "Because they sell here."
The corollary implication to the above assertion by the publisher, of course, is that textbooks featuring
characters coming from racial backgrounds do not sell well. I do not have the necessary data to confirm or deny thishypothesis, but if it were true, it would be prudent to look at the underlying reasons. While many Japanese learnersof English exhibit a sincere desire to explore beyond the stereotypes of non-Caucasian and non-Japanese cultures,
there is still a disturbing view of these peoples that pervades all levels of Japanese society. Discrimination against
the large Korean minority in Japan is well-documented. Even though many Korean families have resided in Japanfor decades, obtaining Japanese citizenship is extremely difficult for them, and they are thus routinely denied therights and freedoms enjoyed by Japanese nationals. Caron (1997) charges that Koreans living in Kyoto, a monument to Japanese cultural imperialism which he calls "the urban equivalent of a World's Fair Japanese pavillion" (p.
70), are excluded both from Japanese citizenship and from expressing their Korean identity.
Views of minorities within the United States, Japan's closest ally are often negative, too. Former Prime
Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, in remarks made to Japanese journalists in 1986, claimed that because of its black andHispanic minorities, the United States was an intellectually inferior society to Japan (Van Wolferen, 1989). Van
Wolferen states that only two of the fifty journalists present at this press conference deemed this epithet worthy toreport, since Nakasone had previously expressed similar sentiments and "many Japanese share such views." (p.
268) If Van Wolferen's claim is true, it may at least in part explain the aforementioned publisher's assertion that
EFL texts having a very high percentage of Caucasian characters sell well in Japan.

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A Sampling of Some Textbooks
This research effort does not pretend to be an exhaustive study of all of the available locally-produced
textbooks in Japan. Time and practical constraints prohibit this. Instead, a sampling of texts from a few of themany locally-produced EFL textbooks in circulation among university and adult students in Japan will be looked at.
When examining EFL textbooks designed for Japanese university-level and adult learners one notes a common, rather disturbing feature shared by many of them–the fact that in their purported encouragement of students
to explore and discuss culture, it is often a Caucasian point of view that predominates. This seems to be particularly true of the larger publishing companies. In the text, Milestones (Fuller & Grimm, 1993), for example, aMacmillan publication, Japanese students engage in dialogues with native speakers of English from Canada, theUnited States, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. A monocultural view of all of these countries is given, with nocorollary attempt to portray or discuss the large populations of racial minorities of these nations.
Another example of this lack of a culturally balanced viewpoint can be found in a text published by Oxford
University Press, Passport (Buckingham & Whitney, 1995), which is subtitled "English for International Communication." This textbook is aimed at Japanese learners of English who plan to travel abroad and thus will need touse their English in situations commonly encountered by travelers to another country, such as ordering food at arestaurant, asking for directions, and booking a hotel room. The book follows the journeys of five Japanese youths,
two of whom travel to the United States, two to Great Britain, and one to Australia. Of thirty-seven conversational
interactions that include an illustration, only one of these dialogues involves a non-Caucasian or a non-Japanesecharacter (p. 17). Even though each of the countries to which the Japanese characters travel have a significantly
high number of minorities, they are severely underrepresented in this text, with the exception of the above-mentioned interaction, and several figures in the background. For a text purporting to promote "international communication", this seems a major discrepancy.
In fairness to the publishers of Passport, I should note that, perhaps in response to the above-mentioned
discrepancy, Oxford published a follow-up text, Passport Plus (Buckingham & Whitney, 1997) two years after the
publication of Passport. The five Japanese characters first introduced in Passport now interact with characters
having a wider variety of ethnic backgrounds, including a Chinese Singaporean man and an African-American
woman.
Macmillan, as we have already seen, has published a number of EFL textbooks aimed specifically at theJapanese market. Many of the texts, with scattered exceptions, feature Caucasian characters almost exclusively.
One text, Destination USA (Craven, 1999), styling itself "a multi-skills course in cross-cultural communication,"tells the story of two Japanese students, Hiro and Yuko, who are enrolled in an American college. They interact
solely with white Americans. As in Passport, minorities are featured only in the background sections of a few
illustrations. They do not speak with or interact with the Japanese characters in any way. It would seem that thesmaller publishing firms appear to have a fairer perspective with regards to producing more culturally-balanced
materials for the Japanese market. Intercom Press, a small company based in Fukuoka City appears to have madean honest attempt to challenge learners' stereotypes of Western cultures.
As an example, Marathon Mouth Plus (Shimizu & Gaston, 1999), a textbook billed by the authors as "A Cooperative Multiskills Conversation Text for Large Classes," features a chapter called "Can O' Worms," whichchallenges students to re-think stereotypes of American, British and Japanese culture, as well as their views on the
differences between men and women. This is the first EFL text produced for Japanese students I have ever seenthat includes a chapter on stereotypes.
The text, Natural Speaking (Thompson & Chase,1994), also published by Intercom Press, features a range ofcharacters from many countries, including Kenya, China, England, and Norway. An African-American characteris also written into a dialogue. This textbook, too, appears to be a step in the right direction, as it shows learners
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that English is a language spoken not only among Caucasians in the well-known tourist destinations of the UnitedStates, England, and Australia, but also among a diverse range of people in many cultures.
The textbook, Talk a Lot, (Martin, 1995), published by EFL Press, a small firm based in Saitama Prefecture, is an example of a text produced by a small publishing company in which the author makes an attempt to show
Japanese people interacting with non-Caucasians. While textbooks published by larger firms portray Japanese
travelling to the traditional "native English" bastions of the United States, Canada, Australia, England, and New
Zealand, this is one of the few texts I have seen featuring Japanese people travelling to Asian countries (in this case,
Korea and Thailand) and communicating with some of the residents of those countries in English. The author ispresumably trying to show learners that the use of English as a means of international communication goes beyond
the traditional five countries previously mentioned.

Some Pedagogical Guidelines
I would now like to suggest a few guidelines for teachers who are serious about choosing appropriate materials that encourage a culturally-balanced point of view among students:
1.

Encourage students to move beyond stereotypes presented in certain textbooks and much of themedia.
Scarcella and Oxford (1992) outline Hanvey's (1987) four-level taxonomy of cultural awareness. They assert that it is important for students to move beyond Level 1 ("Facts, Stereotypes,
and Deficiencies") "and to develop at least a shallow understanding (Hanvey's level 2) and, wehope, some degree of appreciation (Hanvey's level 3) of the other cultures represented in the
ESL classroom–not just U.S. culture, but the multiple cultures of the student's classmates fromaround the world" (p. 187). In Japan, one possible application of this taxonomy could be forteachers to make it a long-term goal for their students to develop an in-depth appreciation ofcultures of nations other than those regarded as being the traditonal dwelling places of native
speakers of English (as well as an appreciation for the ethnic diversity within the latter).

2.

Encourage students to question what is written in their textbooks.
This is often difficult in Japan, where the alleged wisdom of textbooks is rarely challenged
within the conservative public school system. The university or adult conversation teacher,though, has far more freedom than the public school teacher to help students challenge theircherished assumptions about non-Japanese cultures–assumptions which are often re-enforced
by EFL textbooks.

3.

Encourage students to pursue their own research about other cultures.
This can be done within the context of a global education curriculum or pursued as a meaninful,communicative diversion from the usual situational/functional fare of most EFL texts. Research indicates that when teachers allow learners to take responsibility for their own learning,providing scaffolding as needed, they become more motivated (Scarcella & Oxford, 1992).
One way to encourage student autonomy is to have them do their own research projects on othercultures or nations and present these projects to their classmates in English

4.

Be aware of their own cultural biases.
The author of the text American Faces, American Lives (McLean, 1991) while presenting thecultural diversity of the United States in this textbook, admits that before he first came to Asia
in 1967, he "rather naively believed that Americans were quite similar." ("Introduction" page).
In my view, it is only when we as educators honestly face up to our own biases that we can even

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begin to try to teach within a culturally balanced framework. In addition, when we produce ourown teaching materials, we would be well advised to scrutinize these biases closely.
5.

Avoid being too politically correct.
Representing members from every group in a given society in a textbook in proportion to their
numbers within that society is both overly ambitious and unlikely to achieve its goal of pleasing
everyone. On the other extreme are textbooks that insert a token minority character and thenclaim to accurately portray a society of native English speakers. Achieving a healthy balance
between the poles of constant stereotyping and political correctness will prove a formidable
challenge for even the most conscientious of EFL educators and materials writers.

Conclusion
We have taken a look at a sampling of EFL textbooks produced for Japanese learners. I wish neither to makea blanket endorsement nor a condemnation of any of the texts I have mentioned. Rather, I would like to encourage
all of us engaged in the teaching profession to take a balanced world-view in the use of teaching materials, whether
they are adopted, adapted, or developed from scratch. It would appear that textbooks produced for ESL learners in
the United States have made great strides in the past decades in portraying an ethnically balanced society. By
contrast it seems that many EFL textbooks developed for the Japanese market have not been party to the same sortof progress with regards to their portrayal of both traditional native-English speaking nations and others. Whilesome small steps forward have recently been made to this end, it seems that much more needs to be done to achievea truly international and multiethnic balance in locally-produced EFL materials in Japan.

Acknowledgements
I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Mark Sawyer and Dr. Fred Anderson for their guidance and suggestions on this paper, and to Professor Janet Bennett of the Intercultural Communication Institute fortaking the time to reply to my e-mail inquiries. I also greatly appreciate Mr. Ed Roosa of Intercom Press, Ltd., fortaking the time to answer my questions on the telephone. In addition, I would like to thank Ms. Miki Tsukamoto
and Ms. Akiko Tsuda for their insights. I am grateful as well to my former colleague in Tokyo, Mr. Todd Odgers,
who pointed me to some seminal resources for this paper. As well, my colleagues at the Kumamoto YMCA, Mr.
Rob Gordon, Mr. Jeffrey Morrow, Ms. Ninon Bartelman, and Ms. Eri Furusho generously gave of their time andtheir teaching materials to assist me in this work. Rev. Craig Roberts deserves thanks, too, for helping me iron out
some of the technical glitches involved in the submission of this paper. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Ms.
Akiko Bradley and my daughter Sakura Michelle Bradley, for allowing me the time I needed to complete this paper.

References
Allport, G. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley.
Buckingham, A. & Whitney, N. (1995). Passport. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Buckingham, A. & Whitney, N. (1997). Passport plus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Caron, B. (1997). Shima Spain Village: Japan brings Europe back home. Kyoto Journal, 6: 67-71.
Craven, M. (1999). Destination USA. Tokyo: Macmillan Language House.
Fuller, D. & Grimm, C. W. (1993). Milestones. Tokyo: Macmillan Language House.

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Hanvey, R. G. (1987). Cross-cultural awareness. In Luce, L. F. and Smith E. C. (Eds.), Towards internationalism:
Readings in cross-cultural communication (2nd ed.) New York: Newbury House/Harper & Row.
Martin, D. (1995). Talk a lot. Okegawa City, Saitama: EFL Press.
McLean, P. (1991). American faces, American lives. Tokyo: Kinseido.
Sato, K. (1996). More animated. Kyoto Journal. 5, 22-27.
Scarcella, R. C. & Oxford, R. L. (1992). The tapestry of language learning. Boston: Heinle & Heinle.
Schilling, M. (1997). The encyclopedia of Japanese pop culture. New York: Weatherhill.
Shimizu, P. & Gaston, B. (1999). Marathon mouth plus. Fukuoka, Japan: Intercom Press.
Thompson, P. & Chase, C. (1994). Natural speaking. Fukuoka, Japan: Intercom Press.
Tomlinson, B. (1998). Affect and the coursebook. IATEFL Issues, October-November, 1998, 20-21.
Van Wolferen, K. (1989). The enigma of Japanese power. London: Macmillan.

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Developing Listening Skill Using Video Drama Materials—Focusing on the Improved Teaching Procedure of an English Class—
Hatsumi Kuniyoshi
Chiba Institute of Technology, Japan
Abstract
This paper will explain the improved classroom teaching procedure using video drama materials conducted the 1999 school year at Chiba Institute of Technology. Students are freshmen and sophomores. Class
consists about 50~60 students. We met once a week for one semester. One class hour is 90 minutes.
The previous procedure mainly focused on concentrating on listening to every sound or word that
could be heard from the video drama materials. The new teaching procedure mainly focused on getting the gistof the whole story. In order to train students to first get the gist of the story and then go on listening further tomore precise points, many activities are devised and sequenced in one class hour in the new procedure. The
procedure will be explained fully in this paper with various graphs.
The supporting principles in SLA field of this improved classroom teaching procedure using video
drama materials are: “importance of motivation,” “in-put hypothesis,” “comprehensible input,” “1+1,” “getting the gist,” “from top-down understanding to bottom-up understanding,” and “importance of activities.”

Introduction
In this paper, the writer will explain the teaching procedure of her listening and speaking class in the LL
classroom using videotapes.

Situation
The site is Chiba Institute of Technology. Students were1.

Science and technology majors.

2.

Low intermediate level of English language.

3.

Freshmen and sophomores.

4.

Required to take this course.

5.

Having little experience of learning listening and speaking skills of the English language.

6.

Having experience of studying English by grammar-translation method for six years.

7.

Having little experience of visiting the English speaking countries. Some have the experiencesof such short visits like traveling or home staying.

Material
For this class, the writer used "Lost Secret 2000" by Robert O'Neill published by Meynard Publishing Company. The characteristics of this material wereDeveloping Listening Skill Using Video Drama [Oral Presentation]

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1.

There are 20 units in the text. Each unit lasts between 4 and 7 minutes.

2.

This is a new re-cut version of the “Lost Secret,” a video drama material, produced by the BBC.

3.

This is a full-length video drama about the lost secret of the Mepatecs, a South American
Civilization. It's a mystery.

4.

The dialogue of the drama consists of everyday expressions of the English language.

Problems of the Previous Procedure
I have adopted a new procedure this year. But let me first explain what was wrong with my previous
classroom teaching procedure.
The problems that I had noticed were1.

Teacher-talk took too much time. There were too much explanation (in Japanese) by the teacher.

2.

The video unit was torn apart and the same bits of part replayed again and again so that students
could listen to every sound or word, and that was tedious.

3.

Students were forced to listen to the same tiny part many times not having so much of an
objective. Class activities were not thoughtfully devised. Students were easily bored with thisrepetitious and not so meaningful tasks.

4.

The time in which the video tape was played was considerably short. Oftentimes students could
watch the whole one unit through only once in 2 class hours (90 minutes × 2).

5.

The teacher forced the students to listen very precisely and correctly; word by word or every
sound. It was rather nonsense.

Changes Introduced to the Previous Procedure
Because of these problems, I have introduced such changes into my listening and speaking course using
video tapes and LL classroom facilities. The idea is to let the video drama teach the students by itself not theteacher, and to let them learn by themselves the way they like. Furthermore, students watch the whole unit of thematerial at least three times for the sake of input hypothesis.
The new teaching procedure of mine is supposed to follow such principles as “importance of movitation,”“input hypothesis,” “comprehensible input,” “1 + 1,” “getting the gist,” “from top-down understanding to bottomup understanding,” and “importance of activities.” These are the ideas strongly supported in the field of SLA.
Let me explain my new listening and speaking classroom teaching procedure conducted the 1999 schoolyear.

The New Procedure (First Video Viewing)
Before watching the whole unit, teacher asks the students questions as follows;1.

How many scenes are there in the unit?

2.

How many people are there?

3.

What happened during the unit? What kind of incidents happened?

These are the questions which students can answer from just watching the pictures of the material and not
special listening ability is needed. These are warm up questions and are very general ones.

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Then the students watch the whole one unit for the first time (first video viewing). And then teacher asks thequestions cited above and get the answers. Then teacher summarizes the whole unit broadly such as what has
happened and what was in it.

The New Procedure (Second Video Viewing)
Before watching the whole unit again, teacher asks more precise questions as follows;1.

What was on the desk?

2.

What was the important information in it?

3.

Where did the man go after he left the office?

These are the questions which students can answer from watching the pictures of the material, and someEnglish listening ability is needed.
Then the students watch the whole one unit for the second time (second video viewing). And then teacher
asks the questions cited above and get the answers. Then teacher summarizes the whole one unit a little more
precisely than the first video viewing such as the secret file was on the desk and the man peeped. These are thesmall facts and information one can get from watching and listening to the material.
Then the teacher goes on to quick comprehension using the textbook. Students read a short story on the
textbook and complete the questions for it. This task is to activate background knowledge for the material. The
short story is a summary of the entire unit of the material. There are usually 4-5 questions.
First, the teacher picks some students. They read the story aloud paragraph by paragraph. Then all thestudents find answers for the set questions, and underline the parts of the story as answers for them. Students write
numbers on those parts to match the numbers of the set questions. After that, teacher confirms the answers.

The New Procedure (Third Video Viewing)
Before watching the whole unit again, students are to do some tasks. First one is to complete the conversation. This is the exercise of filling in the blanks while watching the specific part of the material (third video
viewing). Students are to listen to important words precisely and write them down in the blanks on the textbook.
Students often watch the part twice.
Then students get feedback. Teacher picks some students. They read the conversation aloud with filledblanks. Then teacher confirms the answers. Teacher and students do role play using the completed conversation,
reading it aloud. Then 2-3 pairs do the role play again, reading it aloud. After that, students watch the part of thematerial for the third time.

The New Procedure (Fourth Video Viewing)
Then students are to memorize the set phrase from the complete conversation. Teacher picks some shortphrase in it (ex. “How does it work? I don't know this one.”), and let students memorize it by reciting it. Teacher
uses the repeat-after-me technique. Teacher gives students time to reassure and let them recite the phrase aloud
one by one. Teacher picks about 15 students. Then the whole class say the phrase together to reassure.
Next, students write the phrase. Teacher distributes each student a small piece of paper, and students write
the phrase without looking at anything. After that, they check with each other. Students who wrote wrongly willpractice that part by writing it three times.

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Now, students are to look at the back of the textbook, and read the script of the whole unit silently. Then they
are to watch the whole unit of the material for the third time (fourth video viewing). Students well understand thememorized phrase and see some important information in the unit clearer this time than they did the first time.
Lastly, comes a round up of the class. The whole class recite the memorized phrase aloud and teacher
collects the paper on which students wrote the phrase. These are used to count the students' attendance. Then theclass is dismissed.

The Anatomy of the New Procedure (The Structure)
Please look at the graph below (Fig. 1.). It explains the teaching procedure of 1 class-hour activities. There
are 9 steps in this procedure.
From the top clockwise,
1.

Class begins with 4 minutes of opening, namely get things ready and put global questions tostudents.

2.

Then the first video viewing for 7 minutes, followed by

3.

Confirmation of global questions for 5 minutes, and putting the students selective questions,and on to the4.

Second video viewing for 7 minutes. After that,5.

Various activities for 20 minutes, followed by

6.

Intensive listening activity of filling in the blanks for 15 minutes. The students will watch thecertain part of the unit several times while doing filling in the blanks activity (third video
viewing).

7.

Then the students will do several confirming activities for 20 minutes.

8.

And then the fourth video viewing for 7 minutes. After that,

9

The closing for 5 minutes.

peningProcedure of
1 Class HourP rocedureof 1 C lass H ourOOpening
FirstFi
rstVideovideoViewing
V iew ing

AActivity
ctivity1 1
Viewing
SSecondecondVideo
V ideoV iew ing
AActivity
ctivity2 2
Third
Thi
rdVideo
V ideoViewing
V iew ing

AActivity
ctivity3 3
Figure 1. Teaching procedure of one class hour activities
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The Anatomy of the New Procedure (Characteristic)
Each video viewing is put in between various set of activities like a sandwich, thus strengthening students'
motivation toward watching the unit. The activities are carefully devised from global listening to selective listening, and to intensive listening. The listening objectives move from top-down ones to bottom-up ones, thus confirming one of the supporting principles in SLA field which is "listening ability moves from top-down understanding tobottom-up understanding."
The whole unit is viewed 3 times in 1 class-hour plus several times of watching the short part of the unit. The
amount of time watching the material will be up to more than 30 minutes in 1 class-hour, thus confirming the
supporting principles in SLA field of in-put hypothesis.

Comparison of the Scores of Pre-Test and Post-Test
The effects of the changes done on the teaching procedure can be measured by comparing the results of the
pre-test and the post-test done at the beginning and the end of the course respectively. For the pre-test, part 1 of thelistening test of the second grade Eiken in 1994, spring version was used. Eiken is the test of English proficiency
guaranteed by the ministry of education of Japanese government. For the post-test, part 1 of the listening test of thesecond grade Eiken in 1995, fall version was used. This part of the listening test ask students to choose one correct
picture among the four, according to the guidance of the tape-recorded narration or conversation in English. There
are 5 questions for part 1 of the listening test of the second grade of Eiken. The ministry of education considers thatin order to pass the second grade Eiken, the English language proficiency level of Japanese high school graduate
will be needed.
Please look at the scores of the test takers. There is a list of the comparison of the scores taken at the pre-test
and the post-test below (Table 1). The perfect score is 5, and the lowest is 0. The percentage of the scorers of eachpoint among the class are shown on the list.

Table 1. Comparison of the Scores
ScoresPre-test

Post-test

Pre-test

Post-test

5

0

9

0

16

4

5

16

11

29

3

18

20

39

36

2

18

7

39

13

1

5

4

11

7

0

0

0

0

0

Students

46

56

100%

100%

Pefect Score = 5
Let us look at this on the graph. Please look at Figure 2. The scorers of the pre-test is shown in pale graypillars. The scorers are greatly crowded on point 2 and 3. The scorers of the post-test is shown in black pillars. The
scorers are crowded on point 3, 4, and 5. The perfect 5 was taken by 0 student in the pre-test which is 0 %, whereas
it was taken by 9 students in the post-test which is 16% of the whole class. Point 4 of 80% correctness was takenby 11% students of the whole class in the pre-test, whereas it was taken by 29% students in the post-test. This isa great growth. The scorers above 80% correctness are 11% in the pre-test, and 45% in the post-test. Please watch
the top of the mountains of the scorers of the graph. There is a difference. Post-test scorers are gathered on higher
points.
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In choosing one correct picture among the four according to listening to the narration or conversation in
English on the tape, there is a big difference before and after the students joined this course.

Surveillance of the Questionnaire
Also, teacher can listen to the students' voices directly through the questionnaire which has been done on thevery last day of the class.
There were 7 questions on the questionnaire; 4 are yes-no questions, and 3 are open-ended questions. Amongthe 3 open-ended questions, 2 were the essay type questions. Question no.3 asked the students what kind ofchanges were made on their understanding of the video drama through watching the unit 3 times in each class-time.
Almost all the students answered that the understanding has developed from a global one to a more precise one,which is precisely what the teacher aimed. Question no.4 asked the students what kind of activity they liked mostamong the various ones they did in one class-hour. The answers were diverse. 22 students liked watching thematerial itself and this was the biggest number. This is precisely what the teacher aimed at and is the most important activity among others. 24 students liked bottom-up activities as memorizing, reciting, and writing the phrase
or filling in the blanks that are done at the latter half of the class-time. The class activities are supported both onbottom-up ones and top-down ones, which means students did very well on both of them. This implies that the
principle of "From Top-down Understanding To Bottom-up Understanding" is successfully accomplished by thestudents.
The other questions, no.1, 2, 6, and 7, mainly asked whether the students liked this course or not; to whichalmost 100% students answered “yes.” This was rewarding on the part of the teacher. The other question, No.5,
asked the students the reasons why they liked such and such activities and the results are on the Appendix 1. Pleaselook through Appendix 1.
Thank you very much for your careful attention to this paper.

C om parison ofoftheComparison
theS cores
ScoresPercentage
Percentage (%)
(%

50
40
30

pre‑test
post‑test

20
10
0
0

1

2
3
S ScoresC O R ES

4

5

Figure 2. Comparison of the scores

References
Anderson, Anne & Lynch, Tony, (1988). Listening. In Candlin, C. N. and Widdowson, H. G. (Ed.), Language
teaching: A scheme for teacher education. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.

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Appendix
The Results of the Questionnaire
Yes

No

1.

53

2

2.

50

5

6.

21

34

7.

52

3

3.
— While watching the video three times, things that have been obscurely understood gradually become very clear in my mind. By changing objectives every time, scopes of watching the video have changed, andI have become aware of what was in the video with confidence.
— I could just watch and think about what was in the video in the beginning. By watching the video
three times, I have gradually become able to listen to the English language, and finally I have become able to listen
out the language almost all the time.
— I could study English as conversation, not as sentences. I have become used to listening to English
and saying it aloud in class.
— I understood the video by just watching it in the beginning. By watching the video three times, I
have become able to listen to English lines bit by bit.
5. The name of the activity you liked most
Watching the video

22

Filling in the blanks

15

Memorizing, reciting, and writing the phrase

9

Listening test (Eiken)

4

Global, and selective listening (Q&A)

2

Dictation test done at the final test

2

Reading the script

1a.

Watching the video(reasons)— Studying English language by watching the video drama was the first experience for me, and it was
exciting. I may not understand the language in the beginning, but while watching people's way of speaking or theirfacial expressions carefully, I would gradually understand what they are talking in the video, and that was very
interesting.
— It was the first time for me to watch a video drama as a material for an English class, and it
triggered me for coming to this class. I really wanted to talk in English myself. I strongly wanted to talk in English.
— I felt that this story was interesting so that I wanted to watch the next unit very eagerly each time.
I always thought, "Oh, what will happen next?"

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To contents(reasons)— I could try myself to find out how much I could listen to the English language and that was fun. I
hated to become a loser, so when I couldn't fill in the blanks, I felt so disappointed and irritated.
— Even though the part seemed very difficult to listen to, if I hear very carefully, I actually canfollow, and that was an interesting experience for me. Saying many words aloud was a good practice for me.
— By watching the part of the video three times, I became able to understand English language, andsince I dare not miss listening to the part, there was a fitting tension and concentration during the activity, and I
liked that.
c.

Memorizing, reciting and writing the phrase(reasons)— I could try myself to find out how much I could memorize English sentences. I could also review
simple vocabulary and its spellings and meanings which I learned in my junior high school days.
— We repeated short sentences again and again until we all memorized it. After that some students
were picked to recite one by one. When the chance came to me, it was so thrilling to recite that short sentence
successfully without any mistake in class. It was a feeling of pleasure.

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Development of a Multimedia Program
for the Acquisition of Noun Phrase with Restrictive Modifier
Reiko Kodama
Kogakkan University, Japan

Shoichi Fujikake
SF Learning Systems, Japan
Abstract
The noun phrase with restrictive modifiers (hereafter NP/RM) is the most difficult syntactic structure forJapanese learners of English. The reason is that NP/RM is not properly introduced as the restrictive modifier todenote the specific object or objects among several objects, but that the function of relative pronouns preceding
the modifiers are stressed too much. As a result, most Japanese learners of English consider NP/RM simply as
two combined sentences with a relative pronoun as a copula. The fact that in Japanese language the modifierprecedes the nouns it modifies makes the acquisition of English NP/RM more difficult for Japanese learners ofEnglish. Kodama and= Fujikake formulated the optimal learning sequence of NP/RM and have produced multimedia programs which enable learners to acquire the NP/RM syntactic structures. This paper shows how themultimedia programs are conducted and how the learners acquire the NP/RM syntactic structures with them.

Introduction
Many surveys have shown that relative pronoun is one of the most difficult grammatical items for Japaneselearners of English. The authors have supposed that the cause lies in how relative pronoun is taught in JapaneseEnglish classes. The procedure introduced below is typical of the way that relative pronoun has been taught inJapanese English classes.
An English teacher shows a photo to the class. Now we suppose this teacher is male. He may write on theblackboard, “This is a picture.” Then he explains that he took the picture the day before. He writes on theblackboard, “I took it yesterday.” Next, he will underline ‘it’, and ask which word in the first sentence ‘it’represents. He calls one of the students to answer. The student will answer that ‘it’ represents ‘picture.’ Then hestarts to explain that two sentences can be combined into one by using ‘which’. First he replaces ‘it’ with ‘which’,and then moves it to the beginning of the sentence “I took……”, and forms a new sentence “This is a picture which
I took yesterday.” He may proceed to an example such as “This is a girl. I met her yesterday.” to introduce whom
as another example of relative pronoun.
The clause led by a relative pronoun is actually an adjective clause and its function is to modify the noun
preceding the clause, which is grammatically called antecedent. The word ‘modify’ is translated into Japanese as‘shushoku-suru’ and English teachers always use this Japanese to explain about the function of the clause led byrelative pronoun. However, many English teachers are not aware of the true meaning of ‘modify’, which is notreflected in its Japanese translation.
Here are the definitions of ‘modify’ quoted from three dictionaries. (Only the appropriate parts are quoted.)

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Webster’s New World Dictionary:
3.

gram. to limit the meaning of

Collins COBUILD English Dictionary:2.

a word or group of words that modifies another word describes or classifies
something, or restricts the meaning of the word.

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English:
2.

(of a word, esp. an adjective or adverb) to describe or limit the meaning of(another word)

What is common to all these definitions is to restrict or limit the meaning of another word. In the first place,the function of adjective or adverb is to limit the meaning of another word. The definition of adjective in Webster’s
New World Dictionary illustrates this fact.
1.

Any of a class of words used to limit or qualify a noun or other substantive2.

Any phrase or clause similarly used.

However, the Japanese equivalent ‘shushoku’ does not have the connotation of ‘limit’ or ‘restrict’. The connotation of ‘shushoku’ is to decorate or add something extra to the word which it ‘modifies’.
In this context, many Japanese teachers of English may not be aware that the clause led by a relative pronoun
is a kind of adjective clause, whose function is to limit or restrict the word it modifies. That is why the grammaticalterm relative pronoun is more often used and more conspicuous in English classes in Japanese schools than adjective phrase or clause. And very often relative pronoun is introduced and taught without relation to other kinds ofrestrictive adjective phrase or clause such as a prepositional phrase, present participial phrase, past participial
phrase, and adverbial clause.
Every language has a word, phrase and clause, which can be classified as adjective, whether it is put before
or after the word it modifies. And the function of the adjective and/or the function of the modification are to limit
the meaning of the word it modifies. But then what does it mean to limit or restrict the meaning of the word it
modifies? In this world there exist an infinite number of things. When human beings recognize the existence of
those things, they have to give them their unique names. Otherwise they would not just exist. However if humanbeings had to give names to each of the limitless existing things, they need the infinite number of words, which they
have to learn or memorize. The capacity of memorization or the storage area for memory in the brain is limited. It
is not possible for human beings to learn or memorize the infinite number of words.
So every language has come to have the mechanism of grouping or classifying the things that have thecommon feature or characteristic, and give each group the same name. To give a simple example, a group ofanimals that is named ‘dog’ shares a common characteristic, which can be called ‘dogness’. It differs distinctlyfrom another group of animal, which is named ‘cat’. However in the group of ‘dog’, each dog has distinctive
features differing from other dogs. To differentiate the group of dogs that have distinct features, these group ofdogs are given their unique names such as dachshund, terry, shepherd and so on and on. Or if a dog is kept as a pet,
it is given its own unique name. This unique name is grammatically defined as proper noun. Many objects,
especially animate things and almost all human beings have their own proper names. The number of proper nouns
is almost infinite.
If we must call an object by its unique name to refer to it, we have to know the unique name of every object.
It is not possible because our memory capacity is limited. Therefore every language invented a mechanism torestrict the reference to only one object. It is the restrictive modifier. And there are two kinds of restrictive
modifiers; one is the post-modifier and the other is the pre-modifier. Japanese language has the pre-modifier

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system. English has the post-modifier system. This difference is supposed to cause the trouble when JapaneseEnglish learners learn the restrictive modifiers. We do not suppose that this difference does not cause much troublein learning restrictive modifiers, but the ways they are taught in Japanese English classes makes it difficult forJapanese English learners to acquire them.
As illustrated before, the typical way of introducing relative pronoun in Japanese English classes does not
employ the strategy to present the situation that enables or obliges the use of restrictive modifiers to designate only
one thing. It has not been possible to present this kind of situation with text-based instruction, or even withprimitive audio-visual methods. But the advent of multimedia presentation with computers enables the presentation of the appropriate situation that necessitates the use of restrictive modifiers. Kodama and Fujikake havedeveloped multimedia programs that enhance the acquisition of restrictive modifiers based on our preceding linguistic research on the strategy of restrictive modifier acquisition.

Optimal Learning Sequence
We can formulate the optimal learning sequence for the acquisition of noun phrases with restrictive modifier(NP/RM), as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Optimal Learning Sequence for the Acquisition of NP/RM Construction
NP/RM

Description

Question

1

This N is Adj.

Which N is Adj?

The [Color] N.

2

This N is Adj.

Which N is Adj?

The [Color] N.

3[NAME]’s bag is prep the N.

Which bag is [NAME]’s?

The bag prep the N.

4

This N is Adj-er than this one.

Which N1 is Adj-er?

The N1 prep the N2.

5This N is Adj-est.

Which N1 is Adj-est?

The N1 prep the N2.

6[NAME] is wearing [CLOTHING].

Which girl/boy is [NAME]?

The girl/boy wearing [CLOTHING].

7[NAME] is Vt-ing NP.

Which girl/boy is [NAME]?

The girl/boy Vt-ing NP.

8[NAME] is Vi-ing prep NP.

Which girl/boy is [NAME]?

The girl/boy Vi-ing prep NP.

9[NAME] is VP-ing

Which girl/boy/woman is [NAME]? The girl/boy/woman VP-ing.

10[NAME] is going to VP.

Which girl/boy is [NAME]?

The girl/boy who is going to Vt NP.

11[NAME] has just Vt-en NP.

Which girl/boy is [NAME]?

The girl/boy who has just Vt-en NP.

12[NAME] is VP-en.

Which girl/boy is [NAME]?

The girl/boy who is VP-en.

13[NAME] is Vt-ing a [DOG].

Which dog is a [KIND OF DOG]?

The dog (which) [NAME] is Vt-ing.

14[NAME] is Vi-ing prep NP.

Which N is Adj-er?

The N [NAME] is Vi-ing prep.

15[NAME] is Vt-ing NP prep NP

Which N is Adj-er?

The N [NAME] is Vt-ing prep16

NP is Vt-en PP.

Which N is Comp?

The N VT-en PP.

17

NP VP.

Which dog is a [KIND OF DOG]?

The dog Modifier.

18[NAME] VP

Which girl/boy is [NAME]?

The girl/boy Modifier.

19

NP VP.

Which N is Comp?

The N Modifier.

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NP/RM Construction

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The fourth column in the Table 1 shows the syntax of NP/RM to be learned. This sequence shows thatlearners learn the syntax of NP/RM from the easiest one The [color] N, which is shown in the right-top row, to themost generalized one The N Modifier, which is shown in the right-bottom row. The phrases in the second and thethird columns are the ones to be used to introduce the NP/RM constructions as shown in the rightmost column. The
phrases in the second column are the description about the objects used in each section and the phrases in the thirdcolumn are the questions to introduce the NP/RM constructions. We ask learners the questions beginning withwhich N so that they pick up the specific one among the same kind of objects with a restrictive modifier. The nouns
to be restricted are definite nouns such as bags, girls or boys, or dogs at the beginning stages and are generalized toother nouns at later stages.
Based on this sequence, we have produced nineteen multimedia programs to visually present the situations
in which the sentences with NP/RM should be used to denote the specific object or objects, using the Asymetrix
Tool Book II, Instructor 6.0 software.

Multimedia Programs
Our NP/RM multimedia programs are incorporated into My World Series, multimedia English learning curriculum developed by Fujikake. Each program consists of four sections; presentation, questions & answers, reading comprehension, and composition, simulating the curriculum format of My World Series. Since they are part of
My World Series, the nouns, phrases or syntax used in the NP/RM programs are also used in the other parts of My
World Series; some of them are learned in advance before learning one program of NP/RM and some of them areused after learning in one program of NP/RM. They are related in intricate way in My World Series. A specificfeature of NP/RM programs is that there are eight characters who are two Japanese girls, two American girls, twoJapanese boys and two American boys, named respectively Yuki, Kayo, Mary, Nancy, Koji, Taro, Bill, and Jim.
They often appear on the screen of the computer.
Now we will show some programs, NP/RM 3, NP/RM 9 and NP/RM 13, from among nineteen NP/RM
programs and illustrate how learners can learn NP/RM constructions with these multimedia programs.

NP/RM 3: postmodification by prepositional phrases

Figure 1

Figure 2

The programs of NP/RM 1 and NP/RM 2 are aimed for learning noun phrases restricted by premodifiers and
NP/RM 3 is the first program for learners to learn noun phrases with restrictive postmodifiers. In this program, allof the head nouns of noun phrases are bag to make the learners’ learning less complicated and postmodifiers arelimited to prepositional phrases. Eight characters’ bags are placed somewhere in the room, as shown in Figure 1,
and learners learn how to designate each bag with a restrictive modifier specifying its location. The prepositional
phrases needed to describe its location have been learned in other programs in My World Series before taking thisprogram.

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The program starts with the presentation section. One of eight characters and his/her bag appear on thescreen as shown in Figure 2 and the learners are informed of where her/his bag is; in this case “Yuki’s bag is on thearmchair.” Then this picture fades out and another character and his/her bag appear, and they are informed where
his/her bag is. In this way, eight characters and bags are presented successively, along with the information about
the locations of their bags. After the presentation of all eight characters and bags, the learners may try this presentation once again if they want, and as many times as they like until they understand.
Then the learners proceed to the questions & answers section. In this section, the picture Figure 1 is presented and the learners are asked a question such as “Which bag is Yuki’s?” Soon the picture is transformed to the
picture like Figure 3 in which only Yuki’s bag is clear and the other bags are dimmed so that the learners can findwhich bag is Yuki’s. Since it is a novel question to them, they don’t know how to answer it, even if they know they
can specify it by adding their location somehow. Then the learners click the ‘Confirm’ button at the bottom of thepicture and can learn how to specify it. They listen to the answer as many times as they like, try to answer it bythemselves and then advance to the next question by clicking the ‘Next’ button. There are eight bags of eightcharacters, and therefore they take eight exercises of this kind. By the end of this section, they are supposed tograsp the syntactic structure of noun phrases with restrictive prepositional postmodifiers.

Figure 3

Figure 4

After the questions & answers section, the learners advance to the reading comprehension section to gain aclearer command of this construction, as shown in Figure 4. The learners are presented with two sentences at first.
If they click anywhere in the sentence fields, the picture representing the situation described by that particularsentence appears. If they click sound marks, the sentences are read aloud. With the help of a picture and sound, thelearners read the description of the bag, and when they have read it, they proceed to another character’s bag byclicking one of the names listed at the top of the screen.
After that the learners go on to the final section; composition section. This section is designed for the learners to acquire the target construction by composing sentences and typing them by themselves. On entering thissection, the picture as shown in Figure 5 is presented on the screen and the learners are asked a question like
”Which bag is Yuki’s?” Soon the picture is changed to the one as shown in Figure 6 in order to show the locationof Yuki’s bag. Since they have taken many exercises in the previous sections, they are expected to compose andtype the sentence such as ‘The bag on the armchair is Yuki’s.” in the blank field. But if they are not sure how toanswer it, they can hear the answer by clicking ‘HINT1.’ If they do not know the spelling of a word, they click‘HINT2’ and a list of words appears. With the help of these hints, the learners compose the sentence, type it andclick the ‘done’ button. When the sentence they typed is correct, the ‘OK’ sign pops out with the sound of a fanfare
and they proceed to the next picture. When there are any mistakes, the ‘Try Again’ sign appears with the sound of‘boo.’ They correct errors until they get the ‘OK’ sign. In this way, they answer eight questions about eightcharacters’ bags and grasp the syntactic structure of the sentences with NP/RM 3.
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Figure 6

As we said before, this program is incorporated in My World Series and four sections of the program arearranged among other programs of My World Series. Therefore these exercise presented above are not offered at
one time but provided at a certain interval.
After this program, NP/RM 4-5 programs where the heads of noun phrases are expanded from bag to common nouns are followed and similar learning as shown above is conducted in a different situation.

NP/RM 9: Postmodification by Present Participle Clauses
The programs of NP/RM 6-9 deal with noun phrases whose heads are postmodified by –ing participle clauses.
In NP/RM 6, which is the first program of this sequence, the ing forms in postmodifying clauses are exclusively
wearing and then they are expanded to Vt-ing in NP/RM 7 and Vi-ing prep NP in NP/RM 8 and generalized to VPing in NP/RM 9. I will show the program of NP/RM 9 here.
In this program there are two women other than the familiar eight characters, as shown in Figure 7. Five
persons out of ten are doing something described by a transitive verb and the other five persons are doing something described by an intransitive verb. First, in the presentation section, ten persons appear one by one with ananimated motion on the screen. The learners are informed of what he/she is doing, such as ‘Tom is spinning a top.’(see Figure 8.)
They have learned the progressive syntactic structure in the earlier stage of the curriculum before taking thisprogram.

Figure 7
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After listening to all of the descriptions about what the person is doing, the learners go on to the questions &answers section. They are presented with the picture Figure 7 and asked a question such as “Which boy is Taro?”
Soon after that the picture on the screen is turned into the one where only Taro is clear while the other part isdimmed, so that the learner can find which boy Taro is. The learners are expected to answer ‘The boy spinning atop.” They answer ten questions in all about ten persons, listening to the answer or making sure if their answers arecorrect by clicking the ‘Confirm’ button as in the previous sections.
Ing-forms in postmodifying clause do not always correspond to the progressive forms, as the fact shows thatstative verbs, which cannot have the progressive in the finite verb phrase, can appear in participial form such as in
the example ‘It was a mixture consisting of oil and vinegar.’ However, it is also true that they correspond to theprogressive forms bearing progressive meaning in many cases. We assume here that the situation the person isrestricted by –ing participle clauses with the progressive meaning is the most natural guide to introduce
postmodification by ing participle clauses.
After the questions and answers section, they advance to the reading comprehension and composition sections. In the composition section, the learners are asked questions such as “Which boy is Taro?” and are expected
to compose sentences like ‘The boy spinning a top is Taro.” in the blank field. Taking ten exercises of this kind,they come to acquire the syntactic structure of the sentences with noun phrases whose heads are postmodified bypresent participle clauses.

NP/RM 11: Postmodification by Restrictive Relative Clauses
NP/RMs 10-15 are designed for the learning of noun phrases restricted by relative clauses. It is widelyadmitted that the relative clause in which the relative pronoun functions as subject is easier to acquire than the one
in which the relative pronoun functions as object. Therefore in our programs the relative pronouns are subject in
NP/RMs 10-12 and the relative pronouns are object in NP/RMs 13-15. Moreover, in order to make the learners feel
it is less complicated, the first two programs NP/RM 10 and NP/RM 11 use the same verb phrases, which are
different in tense; future tense in NP/RM 10 and perfect tense NP/RM 11. They have learned verb phrases and bothtenses in the preceding programs of My Life Series. Figure 9 and Figure 10 represent the situations of NP/RM 10
and NP/RM 11 respectively.

Figure 9

Figure 10

The programs for postmodification by relative clauses are also conducted roughly the same way as otherprograms illustrated in the previous sections. Figure 11 is one of the presentation scenes of NP/RM 11.

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Kayo shows up with an animated motion on the screen, accompanied by the narrations such as;
Kayo is going to do the dishes. / Now she is doing the dishes. / She has just done the dishes.
After this kind of presentation, the learners go on to the other three sections. The learners are presented
Figure 11 and asked a question such as “Which girl is Kayo?” They compose a sentence such as “The girl who has
just done the dishes,” or “The girl who has just done the dishes is Kayo,” looking at the picture where only Kayostands out on the opaque background. The hints prepared in the program help the learners when they are not sure
how to answer the questions. The learners have taken exercises in making noun phrases and sentences with somekinds of postmodifications so far and it is highly likely that they have been used to the structure of postmodificationby this time. Once they find the need of relative pronouns after the head nouns, it would not be difficult to compose
the noun phrases postmodified by relative clauses and sentences with them.

Figure 11

Summary
We have illustrated some programs and shown how the learners acquire the syntactic structures of post
restrictive modifiers with these programs. Human beings have the innate language-acquisition ability. On the basisof the sentences that he/she has heard, every human child can construct a set of rules for creating and understanding
new sentences. Our multimedia programs offer proper situations for the learners to learn and use the sentences,finding the rules by themselves by using their own innate ability.

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Development of an Automatic Pause Controller:
What We Can Learn by Controlling Speech Rate and Pause Length*
Yutaka Kitamura
Tomohiro Kohno
Ken Horii
Kentaro Kotani
Kansai University, Japan
Abstract
The authors developed a RIFF file editor, which can automatically control pause duration in speech withhigh precision, and used it to conduct a series of experiments, in which the naturalness of compressed andexpanded speech was assessed by L2 learners. Our findings in the experiments were a) when Intra-WP wascontrolled, the naturalness of listening materials dropped very significantly, b) Inter-WP with a range of 50 to
80 msec was evaluated as very natural, and c) SUP (Sense Unit Pause) remained natural even when prolonged
for lengths up to 500 msec.

Introduction
Adult speakers talk slowly to young children so that the children can easily understand what they say. The
authors’ previous research shows that pauses are far more prolonged than the words themselves (Kitamura, et al.,1997). If slightly prolonged pauses can truly contribute to aural comprehension of L2 learners, listening materials
may be produced that retain the authenticity of the original and yet provide learners with the ease in learning due tothe prolonging pauses.
Controlling pauses, however, could deteriorate the naturalness of speech. The conflicting results of theprevious research, in which the effect of mechanically or manually controlled speech on listening comprehension
was examined, might reflect this deterioration (Kano & Saito, 1997; Kanzaki, et al., 1995; Machida, et al., 1981).
In addition, pause control in previous literature does not always seem to be accurate due to technical limitations
caused by analogue consumer recording devices.
In this paper, therefore, we report on a) the development of a highly reliable automatic digital pause controller, and b) the assessment by L2 learners of the naturalness in speech whose pauses are controlled by using thecontroller mentioned above.

This research was conducted in part under the support of the Kansai University Grant-in-aid for Joint
Research provided to the first author in the year of 2000. The authors would like to express their appreciation to
Osamu Takeuchi, an associate professor at Kansai University, for his assistance in preparing this paper.
*

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Pause Detection and Types
Definition of PausesSound levelUU

No agreement has been reached on the definition of pauses. Some argue that a pause is a silence of more than
220 msec duration, and others maintain that a silence should be more than 250 msec (e.g., Boomer and Dittman,
1963; Eisler, 1968; Kohno, 1992; Tomita, 1995). In this paper, a pause is defined as a silence of more than 10 msec
duration within ±10 bit range (See Fig.1 (a)). Any sounds of less than 5 msec duration within the silence areexcluded as spike noises (See Fig.1 (b)).
Sound level
Real pause U
Pause

U

U

+10bitU

UU(msec)(msec)-10bitSpike noisea. Ordinary pauseb. Spike noise

Figure 1. Examples of pauses
Procedures for Digitization
Speech in our experiments was digitized (16 bit at the max sound level of 90.3dB) into a RIFF file by using
Sound Forge XP 4.0 (with a sampling rate of 44.1 KHz, which is of music CD audio quality). Conventionally,
pauses in speech have been discussed based on a precision of 100 msec. When digitized at a sampling rate of 44.1
KHz, however, digitized speech can be analyzed with a precision of 0.02 msec. This precision can provide thelanguage teaching community with a new horizon.
Figure 2 shows an example of a pause (approx. 15msec) detected by the automatic pause controller theauthors developed.

P au se(15msec)(15m sec)
Pause

Figure 2. Automatic pause controller screen
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Figure 3 is an example of actual measurement of pauses in speech based on the definition described above.

96

434

88

39

553

BBBBB B B B B
54

75

86

57

Then the ship heads back to the public waterfront bustling with tourists,

B
11

BB
271

48

BB
46

59

the grain-loading terminal, and Pier ninety one where hundreds of new JapaneseB
11cars stand in rows.

Figure 3. An example of actual measurement of pauses in speech (unit: msec)
Types of Pauses
Three types of pauses were controlled in our experiments:
1.

Intra-word pause (abbreviated as Intra-WP), pauses within a word, which generally ranges fromapproximately 10-70 msec.

2.

Inter-word pauses (abbreviated as Inter-WP): pauses between two consecutive words, which
generally range from approximately 30-100msec.

3.

Sense-unit pauses (abbreviated as SUP): pause between two consecutive words whose duration
is over 125msec.

Experimental Conditions
Subjects
Approximately 130 college students took part in this series of experiments. The number of the subjects ineach of the experiments differed only slightly.

Materials
A female narrator voiced-over a sentence at a slow speed (141.2wpm), and a male narrator voiced-over thesame sentence at a normal speed (187.9wpm). There were two SUPs in the sentence, and their duration was 381
and 305 msec each. Both the voice-over parts and the pauses were uniformly controlled on a time scale from 55%
to 145% with increments of 15% for Experiment 1.
For Experiments 2 and 3, both contracting and prolonging durations alone in the recordings controlled all
three types of pauses in the recordings. The speech parts are not at all controlled. In other words, the voiced parts
are completely intact although their ambient pauses are either shorter or longer than the original.

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Procedure
The subjects were instructed to judge the naturalness of each controlled speech recording and evaluated thematerials using a scale from 1 (very unnatural) to 3 (very natural) in Experiment 1. In the other experiments,
another scale from 1 (very unnatural) to 5 (very natural)

Experiments
Experiment 1
In this experiment, the entire speech was controlled. The subjects listened to 7 versions (differing in speechrate) of the slow and the normal voice-overs respectively. Figure 4 shows the result of the subjective evaluation of
the naturalness of the controlled speech. They judged controlled recordings with speech rates ranging from 141.2
wpm through 221.1wpm. BBC broadcasting and daily conversation speed fall in this range. We can say from thisexperiment, even nonnative speakers of English can judge the naturalness of speech in terms of speech

Eval
Evaluation

3

2

1
55%

70%

85%

100%

115%

130%

145%

Pause compression / expansion on time scale

NormalSlow

Figure 4. Controlling speech rate
Experiment 2
In Experiment 2, only pauses (not the voice part) were controlled according to the following rules:
1.

To control all the pauses with fixed durations from 50msec to 400msec.

2.

To control Inter-WP alone with fixed durations from 50msec to500msec.

3.

To control SUP alone with fixed durations from 50msec to500msec.

From Figure 5, we can learn that controlled speech with all three types of pauses replaced with fixed durations rapidly deteriorates in naturalness when the replaced pauses are more than 100 msec in length. A similar trend
was detected when the Inter-WPs alone were controlled in the same way as in Figure 6. However, SUPs are highly
tolerant towards naturalness deterioration even when they were replaced with 500msec pause in Figure 7.

Experiment 3
To investigate the properties of all types of pauses further, Experiment 3 was conducted with a higher resolution of 20msec. A resolution of 50msec was used for the previous analysis (Fig. 5 - Fig. 7). Subjects in thisexperiment were divided into three proficiency groups based on the scores of TOEFL.

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300
400
500
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NormalSlow

F ig.6 CFigure
on trolling all pau ses
ith fixed
5. Controlling
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F ig.7Figure
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F ig.
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Figure7. Controlling
SUP

with fixed duration
Experiment 3-1. Figure 8 and Figure 9 show the tolerance against deterioration of naturalness when all
types of pauses were replaced with fixed durations (10msec-130msec). Figure 6 shows that naturalness deteriorated drastically when pause duration exceeded the threshold of 50 msec. In other words, naturalness of speech canbe maintained when pause duration varies between 10 and 50 msec. ANOVA showed no significant main effect ofEnglish proficiency. No significant interaction between proficiency and duration was found, either.
Experiment 3-2. Figures 10 and 11 are an analysis of the results when the Intra-WPs alone were controlledwith fixed durations ranging from 10msec to 130msec with increments of 20msec.
Figure 8 shows that naturalness remained the same when pause duration varied between 10 and 70 msec.
ANOVA again showed no significant main effect of English proficiency. No significant interaction between proficiency and duration was found, either.
Experiment 3-3. Figures 12 and 13 are an analysis of the results when the Inter-WPs alone were controlledwith fixed durations ranging from 10msec to 130msec with increments of 20msec.
Figure 12 indicates that naturalness remained the same (Intra-WP) when pause duration varied between 10
and 70 msec. ANOVA showed no significant main effect of English proficiency. No significant interaction between
proficiency and duration was found, either.

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Figure 8. Controlling all pauses
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Figure 9. Controlling all pauses with
fixed durations (Groups by proficiency)

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Figure 10. Controlling Intra-WP
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Figure 11. Controlling Intra-WP with
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Figure 12. Controlling Inter-WP
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Figure 13. Controlling Inter-WP with
fixed durations (Groups by proficiency)

Experiment 3-4: Figures 14 and 15 are an analysis of the results when the SUPs alone were controlled with
fixed durations ranging from 10msec to 130msec with increments of 20msec.
Figure 14 explains that naturalness remained the same when pause duration varied between 10 and 130
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safely maintain that naturalness remains the same when pause duration varies between 10 and 500 msec. Again,
ANOVA showed no significant main effect of English proficiency. No significant interaction between proficiency
and duration was found, either.

3
2

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2
1
10

1
10

30

50
70
90
110
SUP Durations （msec）

30

130

50
70
90
110
SUP Durations (msec)

Low

Figure 14. Controlling SUP
with fixed durations (All subjects)

Mid

130

Top

Figure 15. Controlling SUP with fixed
durations (Groups by proficiency)

Conclusion
When Intra-WPs, Inter-WPs, and SUPs were uniformly replaced with fixed durations, subjects judged thecontrolled speech extremely unnatural. This suggests that there exists a unique duration range for each type of
pause, and these ranges differ from one another. Our findings were:1.

when Intra-WP was controlled, naturalness of listening materials dropped very significantly,

2.

Inter-WP with a range of 50 to 80 msec was evaluated as very natural, and3.

SUP remained natural even when prolonged for lengths up to 500 msec.

References
Boomer, D.S. (1965). Hesitation and grammatical encoding. Language and Speech, 5, 148-58.
Eisler, F.G. (1968). Psycholinguistics. London: Academic Press.
Kano, N., and Satio, M, (1997). The effects of speech speed and pauses on recognition of English words andlistening comprehension. Language Laboratory, 34, 13-31.
Kanzaki, K. Yamane, S., and Suenobu M. (1995). Hatsuwa sokudo to eigo choukairyoku. Proceedings of the 37th
LLA Annual Conference (pp. 101-104). (In Japanese)
Kitamura, Y., Yamamoto, E., Takeuchi, O, Sakurai, T., Yoshida, S., and Hart, R.S. (1997). Internet taiou multimedia reading kyozai no kaihatsu to sono hyoka. 1996 Research Report for Matsushita AV Education andResearch Foundation, 69-85. (In Japanese)
Kohno, M. (1985). Listening & Speaking -Atarasii kangaekata. Kyoto: Yamaguchi shoten. (In Japanese)
Kohno, M. (1992). Hito ha oto no nagare wo donoyouni shite rikai surunoka—Eigo ni yoru communication no
kihon mondai. LLA Kansai Chapter Monograph Series Ⅳ (pp. 13-49). (In Japanese)
Machida, T. Miyake, M., and Minami, H. (1981). Hatsuwa sokudo no choukaido ni oyobosu eikyou—VSC no
yukosei ni tsuite no kenkyu. Nagoya Gakuin Daigaku Gaikokugo Kyoiku Kiyo, 3, 1-23. (In Japanese)
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Okuda, Y., and Ikeura, S. (1992). An analysis of pauses by Japanese students of English. Language Laboratory,
29, 103-116.
Tomita, K. (1995). The effect of articulation rate and spoken unit on listening comprehension. Heisei 6 nendo
kagaku kenkyuhi hojokin kenkyu seika houkokusho, 67-83. (In Japanese)

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Development of KUIS On-Line Self-Study System for False Beginners
Takeshi Nozawa
Jun Arimoto
Mari Katayama
Miho Kadono
Midori Sasaki
Kansai University of International Studies, Japan
Abstract
This is an ongoing project of the Research Institute for Communication at Kansai University of International Studies (KUIS) in Hyogo, Japan. University students come from various academic backgrounds andmany have not had the opportunity to learn ‘functional’ English before they enter the university. These students,
in general, do not know how to prepare for language courses. Students’ disinterest and their limited awarenessof foreign language learning strategies make it difficult for teachers to manage lectures to the needs of eachindividual student. To address this need, ‘Web’ pages are being developed to encourage students to explore
English independently and at their own pace, with the focus being on how to consult a dictionary, learn basic
grammar and increase vocabulary. Each computer based learning module features self-teaching exercises.
Students will transmit their answers through cyberspace for teacher input, correction and evaluation.

Introduction
Japanese university students today have various academic backgrounds. Some of them are ready to take“college level” English, but others have to struggle with basic grammar. As the Japanese birth rate declines, it isgetting easier to gain admission to college. As more people pursue higher education, universities are no longer aplace where only the elite can go.
Kansai University of International Studies (KUIS) is no exception to this trend. Although the required entrance examination does not include an English section, English is a required subject. KUIS students have to takeEnglish courses for at least three semesters. Once admitted, an English placement test is used to classify students.
Even with a system of placement, similar student ability levels are difficult to maintain because of the diversity of
their academic backgrounds. The required English Course meets three times a week, but those students with thelowest proficiency often need extra hours of study to keep up with their classmates. These students may require
additional teacher support outside of the classroom, but this ‘teacher support’ is not always readily available at the
moment of greatest student need. To provide students with free, easily accessible and convenient to use around theclock teacher support, we have developed a web based system of self-study which will help students to study on
their own and at their own pace.
Having students learn on a computer is possible and practical because every student at KUIS owns a laptop
computer and there are plenty of outlets for information transmission on campus. Additionally, KUIS has 190
desktop computers on campus that students can use. Students become computer literate in a required course.
When they have questions or experience difficulties using their computers, students are encouraged to ask forassistance from the staff and faculty of the Media Center or Study Support Center.

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KUIS has launched its own general information web page. Once constructed, the English self-study program will be added to this site.
To use the English self-study program, students will first access the KUIS web page and then click ‘Study
Support Center.’ The Self - Study Program will appear on the screen. After logging on, users decide which section
to study and can start any lesson they would like to study. When they have questions, they can ask teachers by email.

Dictionary Section
Aims
When studying English, it seems to be a simple task to refer to the dictionary in order to understand themeanings of words. However, many false beginners have limited knowledge of dictionary usage. Students at thislevel fail to comprehend the correct meaning of English sentences or phrases. Consequently, they become tired ofusing a dictionary, and what is worse, they become tired of studying English. The Dictionary Section is designed
to help students use a dictionary properly and more effectively. The dictionary page consists of three parts:
1.

What we can find in the dictionary — Tutorial

2.

How we can find the correct meaning, usage, or part of speech — Practice3.

Comprehensive Exercises

Contents and Procedure
In the Tutorial, students learn what kind of information a dictionary has. The following items are explained:(a) Word Entry, (b) Pronunciation, (c) Parts of Speech, (d) Meanings, and (e) Usages.
In the Practice, students have to answer multiple-choice questions as shown in figure 1 and 2. Before
answering the questions, they are directed to refer to a dictionary page in order to find out the meaning of the target
word. (See Figure 1.)
When users click ‘GO,’ they will be linked to the appropriate dictionary page and a display window of thevarious aspects of the word or phrase. (See Figure 2.)Q1

下の単語の意味は次のとれですか。
He asked leave to adopt the boy as his son.
① 出ていく② 残す③ 放っておくClick here

n

GO!

④ 許可

Figure 1. Sample web page–Multiple-choice question
After looking at dictionary definitions, students link back to the question page, and click the correct answer.
(See Figure 3.)
If they get the right answer, they may go to the next question, and if not, they may either refer to the clue or
go back and try again.
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Figure 2. Sample web page–Dictionary page for a target word or phrase from “Taishukan’s
GENIUS English-Japanese Dictionary”1
In our web page, there are some dictionary reference tasks. We obtained permission from Taishukan to use “Taishukan’s
GENIUS English-Japanese Dictionary.”1

Now find the answer!
Q1

下の単語の意味は次のとれですか。
He asked leave to adopt the boy as his son.
① 出ていく② 残す③ 放っておく④ 許可

Figure 3. Sample web page–Multiple-choice question
CCORRECT!
O RRECT!

RReturn
etu rnINCORRECT!
IN C O R R E C T !

Returnagain)R etu
rn ( T (Tryry again
)

CClue
lu e

((nextn ext question )question)

Figure 4. Sample web page–Reactions to correct and incorrect answers
Comprehensive Exercises
In this part, students have to complete some exercises to ensure they can use the dictionary properly. Learners read the question, then link to the dictionary pages to find the right meaning. There is no picture help as in thepractice part above. Only pop-up clues are available here.

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Vocabulary Section
The Vocabulary Section is being created to introduce students to essential vocabulary necessary to understand basic English. This section is made up of basic verbs, adjectives, adverbs, proper nouns, prepositions andcampus terms.
This section has the following features: (a) Students can confirm the pronunciation of the word(s) they
intend to learn by clicking on it (them). (b) All the words listed here will be accompanied by illustrative sentences.
(c) The page contains illustrations, photos, charts and graphs so that users can have visual images of what the word
denotes. And, (d) Tests are provided so that students can check their achievement by themselves and then submit
their answers on-line. Instructors can confirm what each student has mastered.
The following is a brief explanation of each part of the Vocabulary Section:
1.

Basic Verbs
Listed in this page are 90 verbs from a junior high school textbook. Verbs are listed alphabetically along with definitions in Japanese and illustrative sentences in which those verbs areused. Students can click on the verbs, and check the pronunciation.

2.

Basic Adjectives
Listed on this page are 50 adjectives extracted from a junior high school textbook. Adjectives
are introduced in alphabetical order along with their antonyms if they are also basic. Table 1
shows the Basic Adjective page chart.

3.

Basic Adverbs
On this page, it will be mentioned that typical adverbs can be made by adding the suffix “-ly” toan adjective. Basic adverbs are divided into the following: adverbs of degree (e.g., very, so,little), adverbs of frequency (see Table 2), adverbs of manner (e.g., happily, slowly), adverbs oftime (e.g., now, then, before, again), adverbs of place (e.g., here, there, home).

4.

Basic proper nouns
This is to let students know the names of days, months, major cities and countries in the world.

5.

Prepositions
The concept each preposition denotes is shown along with illustrative pictures.

6.

Campus terms
Campus words such as “extracurricular activities,” “lecture hall,” and “Student Affairs’
Office” are introduced to help the students express their everyday life easily.

Table 1. Image of Basic Adjective Page
Adjectives ( Antonyms)

Definition

Illustrative Sentences

deep( ⇔ shallow)

深いHow deep is this lake?

difficult( ⇔ easy)

難しいThis question is too difficult for me.

different( ⇔ same)異なる

You and I are different.

early( ⇔ late)早い

I got up early this morning.

far( ⇔ close, near)遠いHow far is it from here?

fast( ⇔ slow)

速い

He is a fast runner.

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Table 2. Image of Adverbs of Frequency
neverrarely0%Illustrative Sentences

sometimes

often

usually

always100%

Japanese translation

I never eat rice for breakfast.

私は決して朝食に米は食べない。

I rarely eat rice for breakfast.

私はめったに朝食に米は食べない。

I sometimes eat rice for breakfast.

私は時々朝食に米を食べる。

I often eat rice for breakfast.

私はよく朝食に米を食べる。

I usually eat rice for breakfast.

私は普通は(大抵は）朝食に米を食べる。

I always eat rice for breakfast.

私はいつも朝食に米を食べる。

Grammar Section
Aims
The main aim of this section is to give false beginners a chance to relearn and master basic English grammar.
We mainly focus on the basic level. Most of the students targeted with this program have lost their motivation tolearn English. Therefore, our secondary aim is to make them regain their confidence in English and motivate themsomehow by getting them to realize that they can make simple conversation in English with the knowledge of basic
grammar. To achieve these aims, we 1) use as few technical terms as possible in grammatical explanations; 2) give
simple and clear explanations; 3) make a task based program; 4) give many drills so that they can learn how to put
the grammatical knowledge into real use.

Contents and Procedure
The structure of this grammar section is shown in Figure 5. The top page of this section is for the explanation of how this section is constructed and how students will use this program.

Top Page of the Grammar Section:
Explanation of how to use this section

U
Level Selection Page

U

U
Basic Level

Pre-Intermediate Level

U
Intermediate Level

Figure 5. The structure of the grammar section
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Table 3. Contents of Each Level
Basic Level

Pre-intermediate Level

Intermediate Level

Word Order

Wh-questions

To-infinitive

Tense

Parts of Speech

GerundAspectSingular and Plural Nouns

Participles

Pronouns

Conjunctions

Modal Verbs

Relative Clause

Voice

Comparative Adjectives
Superlative Adjectives

This program has three levels; Basic, Pre-intermediate, and Intermediate. The Table 3 shows the grammatical items that are taught in each level. Each level has 10 lessons and a review. Learners can start at any level (orlesson) that suits them. Each lesson consists of grammatical explanation (Figure 6), exercises (Figure 7), and achecking test (Figure 8). Students should proceed in this order.
About 20 quizzes are provided in the exercise. When students’ answers are not correct, a hint window pops
up. Hint and question buttons are provided so that students can get back to the grammatical explanation or ask
questions by e-mail. After students finish the exercises, they go on to the self-checking test section. Students passeach lesson when they make 9 correct answers out of 10 questions. A feedback of ‘Correct’ or ‘Incorrect’ is given
for each answer. If students do not pass the self-checking test, they can go back to the grammatical explanation andthe exercises or skip them and try the same test again.
Lesson 1 英語の語順
文は色々な語が集まってできていますが、日本語と英語ではその並び方（語順）が異なま
す。
I
S（主語）
僕は

play
V（動詞）
する

soccer.
サッカーを

このように、英語では主語の次に動詞がくるのです。この主語のすぐ後に動詞がくるという
語順は英語の基本的な語順で、これからみる基本文型は全てこの語順になっています。
では、この違いに注意しながら、英語の文型を学習しましょう。
①「僕は１２時に寝る」（ＳはＶする）型
英語での語順は「僕は・寝る・１２時に」となり、「S（主語）は V（動詞）する」の部分が初めにきて、その後に時間、場所、頻度、程度などの情報が付け足される形になります。

I
僕は
I
僕は

go
to bedat midnight.
行く
ベッドに １２時に （ベッドに行く＝寝る）
livein an apartment
near the university.
住んでいる アパートに 大学の近くのFigure 6. Grammatical explanation
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練習問題
次の語を並べ替えて文章を作り、（）にタイプして下さい。
入力し終えたら OK をクリックしてください。なお、文頭にくる語は大文字で入力すること。
例）彼女は学生です。
is, she, a student.
→
（
She
）（

is

）（

a student

問題１
僕は毎朝８時に起きます。
I, every morning, at eight, get up.
→（
）
（
）
（
）
（
ヒント

）.

）.

質問

OK

Figure 7. Grammatical explanation
確認問題
では、どれだけ理解できたか試してみましょう。問題のやり方は練習問題と同じです。
１０問中９問正解すれば、合格です。がんばってください。
問題１
私は携帯電話を電車を置き忘れました。
my cellular phone, left, I, on the train.
→（
）
（
）
（
）
（

）.

OK

Figure 8. Checking test

Summary
We still have a long way to go before we can determine if this system really works. But it is clear that thosestudents who we call false beginners need to be exposed to English more than they are now. If they do not know
how to learn English by themselves, we will have to show them how to do it. And there is no reason why we should
not make the best use of cutting-edge technology if it is available. We have to admit this system is not perfect, andmay need some revision to meet the students’ demands and interests. However, it is our hope that our students willrealize that a little language goes a long way.

Acknowledgements
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the following people; Mr. Toshiaki Iizuka of Taishukan,
Publishing Company, Ms. Tomoe Watanabe of Hiroshima City University, Mr. Katsuhiro Saitoh of KUIS Media
Center, and Ms. Adrian C. Chandler of KUIS, Women’s College.

References
Asano, H., Makino, T. & Shimomura, Y. (1999). New Horizon English Course 1-3. Tokyo: Tokyo Shoseki.
Konishi, T. (Ed.) (1994). Genius English-Japanese Dictionary. (Revised ed.). Tokyo: Taishukan.
Leech G. & Svartvik, J. (1975). A Communicative Grammar of English. London: Longman.
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The Development of Multimedia CD-ROM for English Learning:
The Evaluation of the CD-ROM on the Significance of Listening
Comparing the CD-ROM Material and Video Material
Sachiko Tanaka
Kanagawa University, Japan
Abstract
This study investigates the significant differences on the English learning between two kinds of the media
materials; a CD-ROM and a video. We developed the CD-ROM for the English learning; the title of “America
Virtual Experience”. Two groups of Japanese university students participate in the six lessons on the CD-ROM
material and on the video material. As for the each group, we measured the pre-test/post-test in English listening
comprehension, the achievement listening test of each lesson, and the questionnaires of four moderators: interaction, motivation, learner-directed learning, time efficiency. One way analysis of variance procedures arecalculated that the English listening proficiency of the participants on the CD-ROM was slightly more significant than that on the video. In the time efficiency, interaction, motivation and learner-directed learning, thestatistical analyses in the learning on the CD-ROM showed a little more significant than that on the video.

Introduction
We have been using the textbook, the tape, the video and the CD-ROM for teaching English in the classroom. A large amount of research of significant difference between a textbook and a tape, between a tape and avideo have been investigated (Dhaih, 1990; Steven, 1991; Machida, et al.; 1991; Nozawa, 1997). However the
researches of significant difference between a video and a CD-ROM are a few (Chihara, 1995; Takefusa, et al.,
1996; Doi, 1996; Tanaka, 1997).
While the development computers has brought better interactive multimedia applications. They may enhance more communicative, motivating, learner-directed learning experience than a video. These experiences may
also enhance more effective English learning than that of a video. Therefore we developed the CD-ROM forEnglish learning; the title of “America Virtual Experience.” We program a video materials of “Ticket to Ride”, thetext, the dictionary, and the questions into CD-ROM, using Adobe Premiere 4.0 and HTML. We try to evaluate this CD-ROM on Japanease university students’ English learning. Then we tried to research the significant
difference on the English learning between the video and the CD-ROM through their listening test and questionnares.

Procedure
Participants
A Group: Thirty freshmen in Kanagawa university learned 6 American cites on a CD-ROM.
B Group: Thirty freshmen in Kanagawa university learned 6 American cites on a video.

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Term
The whole term from the beginning of May in 1999 to the end of January in 2000.

Material
CD-ROM material:「アメリカバーチャル体験」; Directed by Sachiko Tanaka, Published by Ikueishinsha
in May 1999. This CD-ROM was produced especially for people who have been looking for a reliable and enjoyable way to learn English the way it is really spoken. For this purpose, we created Mie Toyama, the main characterof this series. Mie who has been accepted at U.C.L.A., goes to America to start classes. However she decides totake advantage of the opportunity to get acquaintd with America before school begins. She tours around six maijor
American cities – New York, Boston, Washington, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. This 「アメリカバーチャル体験」is a collection of the situations and conversations she encouters along the way. All films footage was shot on location in each of the citeies. This program is to introduce America and the English language
spoken there. You can capture the uniqueness and charm of each location.
Video material: “Ticket to Ride” Published by Ikueishinsha in 1989
The content of the two materials is almost just the same.

Method1.

Pre-test
The participants have the Listening Comprehension Test in Complete Practice Test One of
TOEFL by Heinemann. It consists of 50 question adding Part A, Part B, and Part C.

2.

They study six American cities on each media.
As we don’t have enough video decks for all students at a time, a teacher has to control students’ learning pace and place in a groups. Some students often fall into a doze during during
the class.

3.

Achievement test and Examining the time efficiency
After the learners studied the lessons of one American city on the each media, they filled several blanks of the text in listening within the same minutes on the each media. This is theachievement test. At the same time, we can check the time efficiency.

4.

Questionnaires of motivation, learner-directed learning, time efficiency

Analyses
Pre/Post test
Learners took the pre-test/post-test to measure the students’ listening comprehension, We checked
the difference between the gained score of the pre-test/post-test on the each media. We confirmed t-score is significant.

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Table 1. The Difference Between the Gained Score of Pre/Post-test on the Each Media
CD-ROM GroupVideo Group

Pre-T

Post-T

GainedPre-T

Post-T

GainedAverage13.0041

15.5178

2.381312.9193

14.53411

1.4506SD

4.013434.982811.61238

4.629444.204316

0.914

df = 2 (N-1) 56, p < 0.05, t = 1.67 t = 4.57*

Estimate of the Time Efficiency and Achievement Listening Test
Average of the achievement listening test on CD-ROM within the same time is bigger than that of video. We
confirmed t-score is significant on a CD-ROM..

Table 2. The Time Efficiency and Achievement Test
CD-ROM

Video

Average11.50899.3036SD

1.74532.9629df = 2 (N - 1) 56, p < 0.05, t = 1.67 t=3.3*

Questionnaires
In the questionnaires of motivation, learner-directed learning, we calculated these mean, S.D., t scores. We
also examined the relationship between them in one way analysis of variance. We confirmed t-score is significant
on a CD-ROM(**p<0.1).

Table 3. Questionnaires
Questionnaires
CD-ROM

Video

AverageSD

AverageSDt

Student Control

3.22

0.81

1.87

0.62

6.4*

Interaction

2.93

0.68

2.59

0.55

1.9*

Motivation

3.14

0.75

2.88

0.38

1.52*

df = 2 (N - 1) 50‚ p < 0.1, t = 1.31

Conclusion
One way analysis of variance procedures are calculated that the participants experienced a significant proficiency in listening to English on CD-ROM. In the time efficiency, interaction, motivation and learner-directed
learning, the learning on CD-ROM is more significant than that on a video.

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Reference
Bull, S. (1997). Promoting effective learning strategy use in CALL: Computer-assisted language learning, 10(1),3-39.
Dhaif, H. (1990). Computer-assisted language learning: A client’s view. CALICO Journal 7(4), 67-81.
Dunkel, Patricia (1989). Computer-assisted language learning and testing. Newbury Hough.
Ellis, Rod. (1990). Instructed second language acquisition. Basil Blackwell.
LLA 関東支部 . (1995). 『英語教育活用マニュアル』リ−ベル出版 .
田中幸子 (1997). Evaluation of CALL multimedia software. LLA 学会機関誌 34 号:107-122.
田中幸子 (1997). 『英語学習用マルチメディア・ソフトの評価』、日本教育工学会、Vol. 1, 1-4.

Appendix
Questionnaire for CD-ROM / Video Learners
Student Control
1.

Is it easy to operate this software/video tape?

2.

Do you study it on your own pace?

3.

Is it easy to repeat it?

4.

Can you control the speed of learning ?

5.

Could you decide and select freely where to go and back?

Interaction and Feedback
1.

Are the interaction and feedback frequent?

2.

Are the types of them informative?

3.

Do they enhance your comprehennsion of English/?

4.

Do they strengthen your memory for English?

5.

Are they positive and cheering up learning?

Motivation
1.

Is the learning English with computer enjoyable?

2.

Are you interested in this software?

3.

Does this software/video arouse your curiosty?

4.

Do you want to calleng to this software?

5.

Do you feel the sense of fullfillment after playing the software?

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Discourse Analysis in the Classroom:
Working with Student-Generated Texts
Michael Carroll
Kyoto University of Education, Japan
Abstract
This paper looks at project using real-life language data collected by learners themselves. Tape recorders were used by students to record conversations, and these texts were worked with in a variety of ways in andout of the classroom. The procedure used was based on one originally suggested by Clennell (1997: 118, 1999:
85-87). The fact that the texts were generated by students themselves gave them an intrinsic interest, andanalysing them became a ‘communicatively real’ activity. Students were in control of the texts at every stage,
from collection to analysis, giving them a strong sense of identification with the task. The analysis consisted ofidentifying possible communication breakdowns and the reasons for them; identifying differences between what
students heard on their tapes and what the teacher heard, leading to individualised improvement plans; andinvestigation of alternative ways of representing similar meanings through comparison of student output withnative speaker output.

Introduction
The continuing shift in language teaching from the notion of the teacher as imparter of knowledge to that ofteachers and learners collaborating in the investigation of their subject and the development of skills, (Hirvela,
1999; Wilhelm 1999, Carroll 2000, 1994b) has led to the search for materials derived in some way from learnerinterests (Nunan 1988: 62; Carroll 1994a, p. 137). Leech points out that one source of data for this kind of ‘discovery learning’ is computer corpora (Leech 1997, p. 3). Others are collections of tape-recordings with their transcriptions such as Carter and McCarthy (1997). Other researchers, most notably Suzanne Eggins (1997, p. 315) andHeidi Riggenbach (1999. p. 45)have further advocated the use of learners own recorded texts for intensive analysis.
Carter and McCarthy (1997, p. 7) note the difficulties of collecting natural spoken language data, and theresultant emphasis on ‘large quantities of broadcast talk [which] can be collected easily [ … ] and similarly [ … ]lectures, discussions, meetings in formal settings or speakers narrating or reporting straight into a microphone.’
Nevertheless, it is precisely the more difficult to collect, conversational data that is most interesting and has thegreatest potential as classroom material. Moreover, even the more easily collectible natural data is in fact not soeasily encountered by EFL students.
Natural conversation is of course not easy for language learners to listen to, or to make sense of. Nevertheless, there are good reasons for making the attempt. By looking at how language is actually used students may bebetter able to connect what they learn in the classroom with what they hear, or would hear, in real communication
situations.
One way of doing this is to use published collections of such authentic speech, such as Carter and McCarthy’s‘Exploring Spoken English’ (1997). This collection contains recorded conversations across a variety of genres,
unscripted and unrehearsed. By listening to the conversations, and following the transcripts and explanations
students can come to be aware of features of English as used by proficient speakers that they may never before haveconsidered. For example repetition, grammatical ‘mistakes’, unfinished ‘sentences’, and finishing of others’ utterances are all evident in the tape-recorded conversations.
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However, such materials have some problems. First, of course, they are difficult to listen to, particularly forstudents used to the artificially slow pace of textbook materials, and indeed many teachers’ speech. This problem
is well addressed, in Carter and McCarthy, by the provision of transcripts and by detailed focus on short stretchesof the texts.
A more important drawback, though, is that like all textbook materials the conversations are inevitably
decontextualised. That is, they are taken out of the time and place in which they took place and brought into theclassroom as specimens for study. The observers (the students) have no obvious connection with the people andevents recorded.
Asking students themselves to collect the language data both renders it less difficult to hear and contextualises
it. When the recording is brought into the classroom some of its context comes with it, in the form of the person
who recorded it. If the student is also a participant in the conversation then it is even more context-embedded, evenas a subject of classroom study.

The Students
Twenty five 2nd year students in a national university in Japan took part in the project. 20 were English
majors, and 5 were majoring in other subjects. Four students had spent a year or more in an American or Australianhigh school. All of the students were familiar with journal writing and 14 had previously done some simple
transcription.

The Activity
The procedure is quite simple. (Clennell 1997, p. 110; 1999, pp. 85-87) To begin with, examples of taperecordings and transcripts are analysed in class. Though difficult, the Carter and McCarthy book is useful for this.
Once the procedure has been done once, though, previous students’ tapes and transcripts are more accessible. The
analysis can look at whatever features the teacher would like to focus on, but may include differences between
learner-talk and proficient speaker-talk, phrasing and pausing, non-standard expressions, mis-hearings, grammatical issues and so on. Students are then asked to make a similar tape-recording, transcript and analysis.

Modeling
Students listened to a recorded conversation, and then listened again with the help of a transcript. They thendiscussed, with the help of the teacher, features of the conversation (for example unfinished sentences,• eerrors’,difficult to hear items and so on. Following this they tape-recorded their own conversation with a classmate,transcribed some of it in class, and discussed the transcription process and communication issues arising out of thetranscriptions. Topics were given by the teacher: eg. a funny story; should students have part-time jobs?; myfavourite … . The questions for discussion included following:•

Were there any misunderstandings?

•

What would you do differently next time?

•

What was interesting about the tape and transcript?

Doing
Students took a tape recorder and recorded a conversation in which they themselves took part (with a person
who uses English easily, a native speaker or highly proficient speaker). They then listened to the tape recording andidentified communication or miscommunication issues. They transcribed the part of the conversation just before
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and just after the issue and commented on the transcription. They were instructed to transcribe only what they
could actually hear on the tape, not to summarise what they had intended to say, and not to ‘correct’ any errors.
They were asked to transcribe no more than 30 seconds of conversation.

Reflecting and Learning
After the teacher had listened to the tape and added to or commented on the transcription, students wrote areport on what they had found from doing the recording and transcribing task, and presented their transcript andreport to the rest of the class.

Findings and Discussion
The data referred to in the following comes from students’ reports on the activity, from students’ own transcripts, and from the teacher’s re-assessment of the latter where there were discrepancies.
The fundamental aim of this sort of exercise is to stimulate students’ awareness, or conciousness as it isreferred to by James (1998, p. 260), of their own use of language and that of others with whom they interact. Somestudents are more able than others to do this with skill from the beginning, and some aspects of communication are
more easily identified than others. There are therefore two levels of learning. The first consists of those items
noticed by students themselves, in their reports on the interactions. These learnings are important. Since theycome from students themselves they are likely to be remembered. The second level of learning comes from those
aspects of the communication pointed out by the teacher. These learnings are also valuable since they constitutethings that the students had not noticed by themselves, but which they can see clearly in the transcripts, and hearclearly on the tapes, once they are made aware of them.

Student-Initiated Observations
Students evaluated their own communication patterns, and some linked these evaluations with the specificitems they had covered in the course textbook.
When I asked Chieko, ‘You have your band, don’t you?’ I knew she has her band so I lower the tone in theend. I’ve been thinking that this system of “tag question” is interesting. This time I noticed that there is the same
system of that in Japanese. I’ve thought English which have this system is special but I know it’s natural.’In this conversation I noticed a lot. The difference of speaking without any grammatical mistakes, but I also
noticed that having a conversation is interesting and we can know grammar that we don’t notice by only myself.
We care less about grammar in speaking than writing except when we want to emphasise what we want or wethink the companions might misunderstand the meaning.
In this conversation we use present simple. We learned this from the textbook, page 11. It’s a very simple
form. So we had no mistake in grammar.
Some students pointed out English-Japanese translation issues, becoming aware in a practical, concrete wayof the connection between their knowledge of English and their own way of using it.
First of all, on the third line, when she said “No”, I thought she disagreed with us, that is, she thought
Japanese wear kimono many times. But from the next sentence, I found that she agreed with me. There is adifference in the use of “yes”, or “no” for responding between English and Japanese, so I think I misunderstood atthat time.

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Some students became aware of stylistic differences in speech patterns among proficient speakers of English
He talks like a teacher!
Other students noticed communication strategies that proficient speakers used, and compared them with
their own strategies. (See also Eaves-Walton, 1999, p. 8)
I noticed Ingrid’s colloquial expressions. For example ‘’I’m just wondering”, “You know” and “I mean”. I
never use these phrases, but I want to.
Also I noticed the great role of nodding. Nodding shows understanding or agreement to a speaker as well as
encouraging him/her to keep talking. And the words “um” and “ah” give speaker a time to think about what to say
next.

Teacher Interpretations
A wealth of linguistic behaviour was evident in the tapes and transcripts of just this small group.
Strategies Proficient Speakers Use to Facilitate Communication: Filling in gaps and guessing meaning
S: Do you remember my house? And in front of my house, there are many houses?
J: Yes, yeah
S: There wasn’t a house in front of our house
J: When you bought it?
…
N: I don’t have enough time to … to
K: time to … time to … time to enjoy yourself?
N: Yes, yes!
…
N: It is the celebration for my …twen … twenty … I’m going …
W: Oh! Twentieth birthday?
Simplifying their English
W: Oh, wow … [laughter] please send me a photo … [laughter] … I would like to see!
Changing sentence in mid-construction, and self-correcting
S: They wants … City wants them to move …
…
J: so … they had them … (so) [they] bought … [they] built more houses for the people to live in?
…
N2: they gonna … he gonna be a rich …

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Interrupting the topic and then returning to it
S: They wants … City wants them to move … because they’re gonna … build a road, big road, and … bridge,
to the bridge
J: uh-huh. Look
S: Oh, beautiful
J: so … they had them … (so) [they] bought … [they] built more houses for the people to live in?
Repeating the whole phrase after a pause, to preserve the integrity of the phrase
Compare N: No, but now Japanese people don’t … … … wear … … … kimono so much
With W: ‘To the … to the shrine’The student pauses between words, and then continues the utterance, while the more proficient speaker, in
this case a native-speaker of English, repeats the beginning of the phrase, with it’s conclusion, to make comprehension easier.
On the other hand, some students also used this strategy.
N2: they gonna … he gonna be a rich …
M: the man who doesn’t have a … who doesn’t have a knowledge
Learner Behaviors
Some students fail to hear grammatical items which have a low priority in their current interlanguage, and‘hear’ others which are not actually there, perhaps because their current interlanguage grammar leads them to
expect them
J: so … they had them … (so) [they] bought … [they] built more houses for the people to live in?
(square brackets indicate items the teacher, but not the student heard on the tape; round brackets indicate
items the student but not the teacher ‘heard’ on the tape)
Something (that) I can say > Some thing[s] I can say
Some students hear correctly but cannot reconcile the sound with any meaning .
M: I mean, I’m just wondering sometimes … Is it a demand from .. the society (but) [that] … you have to keep
it <now OK?>
The student correctly heard the word ‘now’, but didn’t understand how it fitted into the utterance as a whole.
Some students fail to hear but fill in grammatically necessary items.
M: yeah, yeah, exactly
S: but the …
M: exact{ly} …exactly, yeah
(Curled brackets {} indicate items the teacher heard and the student was unable to hear but included in thetranscript because she judged them grammatically necessary.)

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Some students mis-hear, but make sense of their mis-hearing
M: But sometimes, you know, you … I mean it’s nothing, I mean it’s the same in (the moment) [Denmark],
those trends, everybody is following.
Some students demonstrated great skill in managing difficult conversations
O: Well, what clearly do you, what point do you want to make? When you make (the) [a] cultural point, youhave to be clear what is your point.
…
O: well, the question is a little too big …I can’t because they’re all different …
…
F: OK. So … then … what do YOU think about it?
Some students used effective communicative strategies for overcoming grammatical deficiencies, by reformulating utterances in simpler ways:
I hear that you go abroad near future. When will you go abroad?
Some transcripts and tapes demonstrated that turns can overlap because of politeness rather than rudeness
S: Before … they have to … cut their hairs like above … the eyebrow, like that, so … we … we’re feelingabout … against it …
M: yeah, yeah, exactly
S: but the …
M: exact{ly} …exactly, yeahS… because … I don’t know …

M: But sometimes, you know, you … I mean it’s nothing, I mean it’s the same in (the moment) [Denmark],
those trends, everybody is following.

Conclusion
The data yielded by this activity, collected by the learners themselves, and analysed by learners and teacher
together, reveals an extraordinary richness. It is not difficult to identify numerous facets of real life language use,
often at odds with the simplified language typically presented in textbooks, and often hidden from awareness until
subjected to the kind of close analysis involved in transcription. In addition the process of data collection, carriedout and controlled by the learners themselves, renders the texts eminently suitable for classroom use, since it
contains an intrinsic interest by virtue of being deeply contextualised for each individual student. Small-scale as
this study is, it may point the way to further more systematic investigation of the uses to which student-generated
texts might be put.

References
Carroll, M. (2000). Conceptions of what Japanese and English speakers do with language and how they do it:some ‘culture bumps’. Tokyo: Proceedings, International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA99) Conference, August 1-6 1999 CD ROM

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Carroll, M. (1994a). Teacher-Learner negotiation in continuing curriculum development: A case study. In Jill
Burton,. CALUSA research on language and learning series Volume 1: Perspectives on the classroom pp
134-152 Adelaide: CALUSA, University of South Australia.
Carroll, M. (1994b). Journal writing as a learning and research tool in the adult ESL classroom. TESOL Journal,
4(1), 19-22.
Carter, R. and McCarthy, M. (1997). Exploring spoken English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clennell, C. (1997). Raising the pedagogic status of discourse intonation teaching. ELT Journal, 51(2), 117-125.
Clennell, C. (1999). Promoting pragmatic awareness and spoken discourse skills with EAP classes. ELT Journal,
53(2), 83-91.
Eaves-Walton, F. (1999). Native speakers get it wrong! English teaching professional, 12, 6-7.
Eggins, S. and Slade, D. (1997). Exploring casual conversation. London: Cassell.
Hirvela, A. (1999). Collaborative writing instruction and communities of readers and writers. TESOL Journal,
8(2), 7-13.
James, C. (1998). Errors in language learning and use. London: Longman.
Leech, G. (1997). Teaching and language corpora: a divergence. In Wichmann, A et al. (eds.) Teaching andlanguage corpora. London: Addison Wesley.
Nunan, D. (1988). The learner-centred curriculum: a study in second language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Riggenbach, H. (1999). Discourse analysis in the language classroom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Wilhelm, J. (1999). Collaborative dos and don’ts. TESOL Journal, 8(2), 14-19.

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Discipline-Specific CyberNeeds for Reading and Writing Instruction
Thomas Orr
University of Aizu, Japan
Abstract
This paper briefly identifies two educational problems, related to instructional content and high-tech
instructional delivery, which are currently slowing progress toward developing high levels of linguistic competence among the English speaking populace in general and specific domains of English – particularly in theareas of reading and writing. Solutions are then proposed to solve these problems, which recommend refocusing
professional energies on areas that are genuinely in need of attention, in light of current trends in educationaldelivery which will likely remove large numbers of English teachers from employment in the profession in the not
too distant future.

Literacy in the Information Age
In this Information Age of ours, never before has society generated so many words and placed them in such
multitudes of texts. Words appear on TV screens and cover our newspapers, fill recipe boxes and computer files,
line the selves of libraries and supermarkets, and race across classroom blackboards after every teacher’s chalk.
Some words shout loudly in neon, some boast boldly in gold, and others hide quietly in fine print. In this age ofours, with nearly every human activity involving text, the ability to read and write at increasingly sophisticatedlevels has become essential for successful human existence.
Reading and writing, however, require special training; for unlike spoken language, which normally develops at home, literacy must be taught, and this normally takes place in schools. In fact, the initial objective of every
nation’s educational system is to produce a literate population, which first can read, then write, and then begin tolearn other skills and acquire additional knowledge after that. A teacher’s role is clearly central in producing asociety that can read and write.
The English teacher’s role in building literacy encompasses two important components: content and delivery. Content refers to the material deemed appropriate for instruction, and delivery refers to how that material ispackaged and presented to the learner. If content is genuinely useful and delivery is genuinely engaging, students
are more likely to understand the information presented to them and make significant progress in their own reading
and writing practices. In the Information Age, high technologies are enabling teachers to deliver educational
content in increasingly sophisticated and interesting ways; however, technology assisted instruction never surpasses content in its importance in the educational package. Better technologies may enable good content material
to be delivered more efficiently and effectively, but increasingly sophisticated machinery will never make poor
content better. Good education today requires both excellent content and sophisticated delivery, but a language
teacher’s primary concern should be the first.

EGP and ESP
In the field of English language education, teachers acquaint students with texts that surface in a variety ofdifferent situations and help them learn to produce the ones which will likely be required of them. Some texts are
general in nature, and others more specific. Because the nature of general and specific texts can vary rather greatly
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in this current age, the field of English Language Teaching (ELT) has divided itself in two, enabling language
specialists to devote their time and energies in greater concentration in one of two professional domains: English
for General Purposes (EGP) or English for Specific Purposes (ESP).
For teachers in EGP, the primary instructional objectives are 1) to acquaint students with English in its
existence as a linguistic system and 2) to enable students to master the system well enough to employ it successfully in situations they are likely to encounter in daily life. The content of EGP instruction includes the sounds,
symbols, lexis, and syntax of English, along with the conventions of spoken and written discourse as they are
employed by the general public in social, academic, and workplace contexts such as initiating conversation withstrangers, comprehending classroom lectures, or requesting a raise from one’s employer. The acquisition of general English normally begins at home for native speakers, but for non-native speakers, English language learning
frequently begins in an English as a Second Language or an English as a Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) classroom.
Proficiency in English at increasingly higher levels, particularly in reading and writing, is fostered in English
language courses taught to native and/or non-native speakers alike in K-12 and in some university courses (e.g.,
freshman composition or literature appreciation). Linguists and rhetoricians who conduct research in EGP study
the characteristics of English speech and text, and then describe how the language is, was, or could be used bypeople at home, in school, or in general social situations. In the field of English language education, most language
professionals are employed in EGP.
ESP, on the other hand, is somewhat different in nature. For teachers in ESP, the primary goal is to acquaintstudents with a specific sphere of English, rather than the English linguistic system as a whole. This specific sphereof English is used by a specific subset of the English speaking population to accomplish specific academic orworkplace tasks, which require English knowledge and skills beyond that normally acquired by the general public,
and thus this specific knowledge and these special skills require special training. Acquisition of ESP frequently
begins near the end of one’s schooling, when people begin training for their careers, such as in a technical/vocational program or in the latter years of one’s university education. ESP training may continue after graduation as
well, in the form of workplace seminars or workshops designed to further enhance one’s skill in using English for
specific professional tasks. Linguists and rhetoricians who conduct research in ESP study the specific characteristics of English speech and text in specific academic/professional spheres, and then describe how the language is(or could be) used by specialists to carry out complex study- or employment-related tasks.
If we consider reading, for example, from both an EGP and an ESP perspective, we can easily observe thatmaterial targeted for instructional content is vastly different. Reading instruction in EGP, for example, familiarizes
native and/or non-native speakers with novels, essays, magazine and newspaper articles, telephone books, recipes,
board game instructions, directions, maps, road signs and whatever other written English a child or adult may
encounter, and want to understand, in order to live a normal literate existence. Reading instruction in ESP, on theother hand, acquaints learners (usually adults) with spreadsheets, technical reports, pharmaceutical symbols, legal
contracts, programming code, pesticide labels, and similar symbols or text which are generally read by specialists
in the course of highly specialized work. Society needs people who are competent in both kinds of English –general English for general activities and special English for highly specialized activities – and educators clearlyplay a major role in facilitating this achievement.

Two Problems
In recent years, two problems have surfaced in ELT which seem to be slowing down our progress in developing a literate society that is able to process both general and specific English texts. Since a significant portion of
the world’s knowledge in the Information Age is generated and disseminated in English, the reading and writing ofEnglish texts are especially crucial to success in both general and specific realms. The first of these problems is acontent problem, and the second problem concerns delivery.

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The Content Problem
The content problem that appears to be hindering international progress in fostering English literacy has
primarily resulted from a poor distribution of specialists. There are too many educators competing for a shrinking
number of jobs in EGP, while a surplus of jobs in ESP either remain unfilled or become staffed with poorly
qualified teachers when the only job seekers who apply prove disappointingly weak. This is a genuine tragedy for
ELT, for many brilliant minds seem to be wasting both energy and brainpower searching for interesting new EGP
content that is significant enough for scholarly research and publishing, when greater needs with higher value areleft ignored in ESP. As a result of this imbalance in professional ELT distribution, ESP content appropriate for
instruction in many occupational fields remains weak or entirely unidentified, while journal and conference papers
abound in EGP on topics of questionable value to language learners. Increasingly sophisticated technology fordelivering EGP content will not make politically popular topics more essential for mastering English, nor will
better technology improve weak and faulty ESP. Too many highly competent scholars are devoting their talents tomarginally useful research issues in EGP, while far too many content needs in ESP remain untouched.

The Delivery Problem
The delivery problem that appears to be hindering progress in creating a large international population ofpeople who can read and write well in English also results from a poor distribution of specialists. There are too
many educators dabbling in the development of high-tech instructional media when computer programmers andother technical specialists could be doing a much better job. As a result, many Computer Assisted Language
Learning (CALL) applications are limited in their range of useful functions and lack appropriately supportive
visual layout. Web-based CALL is particularly weak in these areas because English teachers can easily pick upsome simple programming tricks and then throw together a few instructional Web pages rather quickly, which
frequently contain equally amateurish ELT content.
In modern times, it is no longer possible to be a Renaissance man (or woman) who can excel in many diverse
areas. The Information Age has generated vast amounts of information that must be learned for each different
career path, along with highly specialized skills, too. Mastery of a profession takes time, and since new information appears so quickly, keeping up-to-date makes continual learning and devotion to one’s specialization absolutely essential. Generalists who possess shallow knowledge in many different areas, and perhaps keep up-to-dateon none, usually find it increasingly difficult to obtain stable employment in any professional area these days.
Those in EGP with a Master’s in TEFL, or something similar, and a dash of knowledge about HTML or JavaScript
for simple CALL applications especially endanger themselves with dead end careers and potential unemployment
in their latter years – even if their current job situation appears quite stable and lucrative. EFL/CALL generalists in
Asia and the Middle East, where high salaried jobs are still relatively easy to come by, may be facing particularly
uncertain futures. Consider the following example.
In Japan, current annual salaries for English language teachers in junior and senior high schools, conversation schools, junior colleges, and universities generally run somewhere between 3,000,000 – 12,000,000 yen (i.e.,$27,273 – $109,091 at the current 110 Japanese yen to 1 US dollar exchange rate). If we roughly assume that atypical teacher’s salary during his/her career averages out at 7,500,000 yen ($68,182) per year and then multiplythat by an average of 35 years of teaching, we arrive at 262,500,000 yen ($2,386,364 US) of income for the careerof a typical English teacher. This is a lot of money for a school to invest in educational resources for its students,
particularly if the investment is an English teacher who merely reads from popular textbooks, drills students weekly
with multiple choice exercises, and plays language cassettes or videos to expose students to authentic English.
Investing in quality computers with good CALL software that can do all of this, and much more, would prove to bea much wiser investment for any school. Quality high-tech instructional delivery is and will continue to replaceteachers, especially generalists in EGP with average qualifications. In fact, I predict that in the not too distantfuture, a small number of companies and universities, staffed with the world’s best and brightest linguists, educational psychologists, cognitive scientists, graphic artists, computer programmers, and other specialists in educaDiscipline-Specific CyberNeeds [Symposium]

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tional content and high-tech delivery will produce enough high quality language education media, delivered via
distance education, for the entire planet – thus rendering most generalists in EGP (and CALL) unnecessary. Clearly,
the evolution of CALL from its currently limited state to more sophisticated educational packages designed bybetter qualified specialists will increasingly attract the attention of ELT educators currently dabbling in computerassisted instruction.

The Solutions
So far, we have considered two problems currently surfacing in ELT due to misdirected efforts in the profession: 1) the problem of poor or insufficient content in the professional domain of ESP and 2) the problem of poor
quality CALL applications. The solutions to these two problems are obvious.
To improve ESP content, more ELT scholars need to seriously reconsider their research agendas and realigntheir interests with the genuine needs of English language learners. They need to begin investigating specificdomains of English as they are used in different academic and workplace settings and then begin to outline material
appropriate for instruction for the language learners seeking expertise in these areas. Consider the following
examples of potential areas for ESP content research.

Example One
To orient students to the range of English text types used by professionals in a specific discipline, an ESP
professional would need to arrive at answers to the following research questions:
1.

What text types are characteristic of the discipline and its work?

2.

How are they named by professionals in the field?

3.

What are their functions?

4.

Who are their authors and audiences?

5.

What are their visual/linguistic characteristics?

6.

How are they normally constructed?

7.

How do these documents fit into the context of professional activity?

8.

What professional taboo should be avoided?

9.

Etc…

If the language learners were law school students, for example, they would need to learn how to read andwrite various legal texts such as casebooks, appellate court decisions, contracts, torts, statutes, regulations, and thelike. ESP instruction would include information about legal text structure, legal vocabulary, unique punctuation
usage, and document numbering among many other things (Feak & Reinhart, 2001). If the language learners were
immigrant farmworkers from Mexico, however, the English text that might interest them the most might be theapplication labels on farm pesticides so that they could apply the poisons effectively without physical harm tothemselves or to others (Gordon, 1999).

Example Two
To assist medical students write for publication, an ESP professional would need to create appropriate instructional material that would be clear enough to assist both native and non-native speakers of English compose
journal articles that conform to all the conventions expected by medical journal gatekeepers as well as medical
journal readers. Frequently, existing ESP instructions are too vague to be of much use, especially to non-native
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speakers. In a 1989 publication published by the Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College for the Harvard
Medical School (Hoffman) the instructional material advises, “begin every paragraph or section with an introductory sentence.” When applied to the Results section of a research article, the following examples can be judged
perfectly “introductory”; however, none of them are appropriate due to other disqualifying factors. Sadly, the ESP
instructions offer no hint of explanation that would enable young writers to see these as inappropriate and enable
them to make the necessary revisions.
1.

Allow me to introduce my results.

2.

Would you like to know my results?

3.

Here are my very spiffy results?

4.

I think you will like my nice results.

5.

I have these wonderful results.

6.

Satisfying results follow in this paragraph.

7.

Now, intelligent results will be introduced.

8.

Just what you’ve been waiting for – RESULTS!

Additional Examples
Other examples of potential areas for fruitful ESP research include defining the fuzzy edges between genericboundaries of various kinds of documents or language used in specific professions such as1.

a technical research report and a technical research article,

2.

a briefing and a white paper,

3.

constructive criticism and complaint, or4.

praise and sarcasm.

In respect to writing processes, how do professionals normally (and efficiently) compose business letters,lab reports, book manuscripts, product brochures, presentation slides, software installation instructions, help menus,
campaign speeches, and other texts that one might use in a particular line of work. Many of these differ considerably from the writing processes taught in most freshman composition courses, and thus require serious investigation and special instruction. If language teachers fail to do this work, growth in specific domains of academic andworkplace English will be stunted within the English speaking population.
Finally, returning to the second problem addressed in this paper – that of poor quality CALL applications –the solution here seems obvious too. Though knowledge of computers and computer programming is never disadvantageous to an ELT professional, the development of genuinely professional software and other instructional
media requires professional involvement from technology specialists. A cooperative approach, which draws upon
expertise in the educational and technological realms, would prove most effective. Good CALL material requires
both excellent content and appropriate technological features to properly complement the content. Applied linguists, discourse analysts, composition experts, and similarly qualified professionals should devote their energies
to designing accurate and useful content, while computer programmers and technology engineers focus their efforts on high-tech delivery. As education in the Information Age continues to become more complex, cooperative
team efforts by highly qualified specialists will continue to yield the best educational fruit. Particularly in light ofcurrent trends in education where advances in technology are making it possible for the world’s best educators tocreate quality content that is sufficient for the entire planet, it seems prudent for educators to develop their expertise in content areas which are most in need of assistance and let educational technology and its engineers develop
the computer assisted support to deliver it properly.
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References
Feak, C. B. & Reinhart, S. (2001). ESP for students of law. In T. Orr (ed.), English for Specific Purposes: Case
Studies in TESOL Practice Series. Alexandria, VA: TESOL.
Gordon, J. (1999). ESP/LSP programs for green workers. Paper presented at TESOL 1999, New York, NY.
Hoffman, B. S. (ed.). (1989). Communicating our work. Boston: Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College.
[URL] http://www.hms.harvard.edu/fdd/com

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Effects of Controlled-Speech Rate in Video Materials
for Listening Comprehension Practice*
Yasuyo Edasawa
Machiko Yoshimura
Yumiko Imai
Kuniko Nishikawa
Doshisha Women’s Junior College, Japan
Background
Films and TV news programs are well known as good teaching materials for listening comprehension, especially for intermediate/advanced learners of English as a foreign language. We have studied the effects of thesematerials since 1995 and found that: (a) documentary news programs are very difficult for most Japanese students
but they stimulate the students’ intellectual curiosity a lot, and (b) Hollywood type motion pictures are great fun forstudents to practice listening, and they are excellent materials to listen to various types of authentic English (Edasawa& Imai, 1996 & 1998).
However, one of the difficulties of using such authentic materials in listening practice is the appropriatenessof the speech rate for learners. In many cases, such as in long sentences, rapid discourse, sudden change of thecontext, etc., the natural speed of spoken English is too fast for most Japanese students to comprehend the meaning.
Owing to the fast speech rate, it seems that students cannot use the clues of segmentation of sound streams. As aresult, students may practice listening earnestly but not improve much because of such incomprehensible input.
A number of studies have been done about the relation between speech rate and listening ability (Flaherty,
S., 1979; Machida, T., 1979; Conrad, L., 1989; Griffths, R., 1990; Kimura, S., 1997; etc.), but as Ellis (1994) says,
although there is much evidence to suggest that slower speech may help comprehension, only a few studies havebeen done concerning to the speech rate per se. Especially there are very few studies using video materials.
We designed a study to investigate the effects of rate-controlled speech of video materials for listening
comprehension instruction. The results were reported at the 37th LLA Annual Conference at Fukuoka in 1998
(Edasawa, Y. et al., 1998). There was no significant difference between the slower speech rate class and the normal
speed class. But we knew there were a couple of shortcomings in our study and felt the importance of doing
another study.
At the same time, in our college, there was another group conducting a similar study about speech rate inlistening comprehension using first-year students. They found that in the first term there were significant effects ofusing slower speed audio tapes, but in the second term, they found no difference between slower speed materials
and faster speed materials (Wakamoto, N. et al., 1999).
Given these circumstances, we have decided to repeat our previous study with a wider perspective. In otherwords, using the same subjects who had listening instruction in their first year at college, we designed a study to see
if controlled speech rate materials help to improve students’ listening ability in their second year.

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Hypothesis
The hypothesis of this study is that a controlled speech rate will improve listening comprehension ability. To
prove that, we formed the following four groups according to the speech rate of the materials that students were
given in the first year and the second year. Each group was selected at random so that the four groups were counterbalanced.
Group 1:

Normal speed both in the first and second years

Group 2:

Slow speed both in the first and second years

Group 3:

Normal speed in the first year but slow in the second

Group 4:

Slow speed in the first year and fast speed in the second

We examined the effects of listening instruction with slower vs. normal speech materials using listening tests
conducted eight times over the two years. We also surveyed students’ reactions toward teaching materials to see ifthey prefer slower speech materials.

Speech Rate
For the speed of the teaching materials, a slower speech rate was made by using Victor HR-VX8, which can
reduce the speed about 15% from the normal speed. Words per minute (wpm), duration of utterances, and entire
duration of speeches including utterances and pauses were measured by the authors; then the speaking rate wascalculated by simply dividing the number of words in the passage by the speech duration. In the news materials, wemeasured the speed by the speech of the newscasters, which varies from very fast to quite moderate. Therefore, for
the words per minute for the news material, we indicate the range of speed. Table 1 shows the speaking rate of thenews (“Bilingual Education” and “The Perfect Baby: A Follow Up” in Focus on American Culture), and the film
(Titanic), which were used in the fall term of the class of 1999. In general, in the slow condition, the speaking ratesof the news and the film increased 20% and 18% as those of the original, respectively.

Table 1. Speaking Rate of the Materials
wpm
News: (Normal speed)(Slow speed)Film: (Normal speed)(Slow speed)

174 - 222
159.5 - 199
191.2
164.4

Study 1
Subjects and Measurements
The subjects of this study were 223 women’s junior college students majoring in English. We used only thestudents who took all eight CELT tests for two years; they were divided into four groups according to the materials
they used in the second year. Returnees were included in this study. The treatment groups and the number ofsubjects in each group are given in Table 2.

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Table 2. The Treatment Groups and the Number of Subjects
Speed in 1st year

Speed in 2nd year

Number of subjects

Group 1

normalnormal56

Group 2

slow

slow

51

Group 3normalslow

50

Group 4slow

normal66

To measure students’ listening ability, we used CELT tests Form A and Form B. Form A was used in thespring terms of 1998 and 1999, and Form B was used in the fall terms of 1998 and 1999.

Teaching Procedures
For the listening course for the second year the students had one 90-minute period per week. It was arequired course with 2 credits. Each session was managed as follows.
The first 15 minutes were used to practice for TOEFL, and then students watched a documentary-type news
video (ABC News), originally made for native speakers of English, for about 40 minutes, using a textbook. Then
students watched a Hollywood movie video for the rest of the 35 minutes, using exercise sheets made by theauthors.
The soundtrack of each video was recorded onto the students’cassette tapes for their homework. For Groups
1 and 3, we used the normal speed materials. However, for Groups 2 and 4, we reduced the speed of the audio tapespeed 15% using Victor HR-VX8, so that the students listened to the slower speed materials at home. Students
were told to listen to the tapes repeatedly at home to answer the questions in the textbook for news material as wellas to fill in the blanks for the film material. In class, all students in both control and experimental groups watched
and listened to the videos at normal speed.
In 1999, we used the textbook Focus on American Culture (Prentice Hall and Regents, 1984). The news
segments we picked up were “Manufactures Engage in False Advertising on the Environment” and “Judgment
Day” in the spring term, and “Bilingual Education” and “The Perfect Baby: A Follow Up” in the fall term. We used
the film Titanic the whole year.

Analyzing the Data
To measure students’ progress in listening comprehension ability, the scores of the eight CELT tests for two
years were analyzed according to the treatment groups (normal vs. slow), by a statistics package, STATISTICA,
specifically focusing on the results in the second year. We analyzed the data using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)
with repeated measure as follows.

Table 3. Design of the ANOVA:
Between Group variables:

Speed in the first year (2): 1 (normal) 2 (slow);
Speed in the second year (2): 1 (normal) 2 (slow);

Within Group variables:

Year (2) x CELT (4)About the homogeneity of the groups, there was no significant difference found between the two groups at
the beginning of this research by the ANOVA for CELT tests in April 1999. (F = 0.12, p < 0.72, n.s.).

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Listening Ability in the Two Years
First, we examined how much the students improved their listening ability in two years. Figure 1 shows themean scores of the eight CELT tests of all subjects. CELT 1 was conducted in April, 2 in July, 3 in October, and 4
in January each year. The mean scores of each test are as in Table 4 and Figure 1.

Table 4. Mean Scores of the CELT Tests by Years (F (3, 657) = 64.65; p < 0.001)
Group

CELT

Means

N

1st year1

48.92329

56

1st year255.29426

51

1st year352.0326550

1st year455.06136

66

2nd year160.43926

56

2nd year265.39671

51

2nd year359.44053

50

2nd year462.64165

66
F(9. 657) = 10.84; p < .0000

68
66

Mean Scores of CELT

64
62
60
58
56
54
52
50

1st Year48
46

2nd Year

1

2

3

4

CELT

Figure 1. Mean scores of the CELT tests by years
Figure 1 clearly shows that all four CELT scores in the second year are better than those of the first year. We
also notice that the students showed improvements in their listening ability when they received instruction but lost
progress after the summer vacation both in the first and second years.

Effects of Slow Speed Materials
We examined the effects of using controlled speech rate with teaching materials. The CELT scores wereanalyzed according to the experimental and control groups (Table 5 and Figure 2).
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In this statistical package, the mean scores of the second year CELT tests were obtained by the average ofeach test in the first year and the second year. In other words, for example, CELT 1 in the normal group was theaverage of CELT 1 (April) in the first year and CELT 1 (April) in the second year. This is because we looked at thetwo year’s data of the subjects who received normal or slow speed material in the second year.

Table 5. Mean Scores of the CELT Tests by Speed Groups
Group

CELT

Means

Normal154.18236

Normal2

59.57901

Normal354.71239

Normal457.06223

Slow

1

55.18019

Slow

2

61.11196

Slow

3

56.76078Slow

4

60.64079(F (3,657) = 2.86; p < .05)
F(3.657) = 2.86; p < .0361
62

Mean Scores of CELT

61
60
59
58
57
56
55
54
53

1

2

3

4

Normal in
2nd YearSlow in2nd Year

CELT

Figure 2. Mean scores of the CELT tests by speed groups
The results show that there are significant effects of the use of slower speed materials in the second year,with the value of F (3,657) = 2.86 (p < .05). We interpret the results as follows. From Figure 2, we see that in thenormal speed group, no matter what listening materials they used in the first year, their progress of listening ability
in the fall term is less than that of the slow speed group. The slow speed group improved more in the second termof the second year.

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Findings from Study 1
The eight listening comprehension tests have indicated that the subjects improved their listening ability
significantly during the two years. Also, we see that the students using the slow speed material showed better
progress than those who used the normal speed material in the second year, no matter which materials (normal orslow) were given in their first year.
This is probably because the subjects were in the second year of a junior college. In the spring term, they had
to study hard for employment tests or transferring to other schools. So they had high motivation and improved theirlistening ability. In the fall term, however, after a long vacation and having decided their jobs or next schools, it
was hard for them to be motivated in their learning. In such situations, it seems that slow speed materials are more
effective than the normal speed materials to keep students’ motivation in the second term of the second year.
To support these findings, we conducted Study 2.

Study 2
Subjects and Method
To find supporting evidence for Study 1, we had the same subjects in the study answer a questionnaire
concerning the use of the listening materials. The survey was done in January, 2000, when they sat for the last testof CELT at the end of the second year.
The students were asked to give us their evaluation in 5-point scales, Yes/No answers, and/or comments.
The questions we asked were regarding the following points.
1.

Difficulty of the materials: “too easy” (= 0) to “too difficult” (= 4)2.

Interest in the materials: “not interesting” (= 0) to “very interesting” (= 4)3.

Improvement of listening ability: “not improved” (= 0) to “improved” (= 4)4.

Preference of media: Which is easier to comprehend, a video tape or an audio tape?

5.

Awareness of speed difference: Did you recognize the difference of speed between the video
tape in class and the audio tape for homework?

Difficulty
The first question is about the difficulty of the materials. The results of the analysis are as in Figure 3.

4.0
3.0
2.0

Normal
Slow

1.0
0.0

TOEFL B.Edu
B. Edu P.Baby
P. BabyFILM
Film
TOEFL

Figure 3. Difficulty

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There was no significant difference between the two groups. The graph shows that both groups of students
responded that the news materials (“Bilingual Education” and “The Perfect Baby: A Follow Up”) are more difficult
than others. They also answered that the TOEFL practice is least difficult. This is because the subjects are not used
to the speed of broadcast English, though they are quite familiar with the TOEFL-type listening exercises. The film
speed is too fast for them to comprehend conversations, but we assume that other factors, especially the vocabulary
and plot made them feel that they understand the story better than news. Takefuta (1979) found that Love Story has
a quite limited number of vocabulary items and is easy to understand.
One thing we notice here as a common tendency across the two groups is that students in the normal speed
group feel it more difficult to comprehend than those in the slow speed group in all materials. Although thedifference between the two groups is small and not significant, when we think of the progress of their listening
ability in the second term of the second year, i.e., the slow speed group improved more than the normal speed
group, we think that different speed groups cause different tendencies to be displayed. These findings imply thatslowing the tape speed effects to some extent listening comprehension practice.

Interests
About the students’ interests in the materials, Figure 4 shows the results of the questionnaire.

4.0
3.0
Normal
Slow

2.0
1.0
0.0

TOEFL
TOE

B. Edu P.Baby
P. Baby FILM
Film
B.Edu

Figure 4. Interests
In this section, we find quite similar tendencies between groups. Both groups show extremely high interestin the film materials, while they rate the other two materials (news and TOEFL) much lower than the film. Goingback to the question of “Difficulty,” we remember that the students rated the Film materials less difficult thanNews. This may mean that students’ strong interest in the film compensated for the difficulty of following the
speed of the materials.

Improvement
About the students’ feeling of improvement of their listening ability, we asked them, “Do you think that yourlistening comprehension skill has improved compared with that of your first year and that of your first term of thesecond year?” The results are in Figure 5.
Here, we find very interesting results. The slow-speed group students evaluate themselves as more “improved” in all materials than the students in the normal speed group do. For both news and film materials, we findthe slow-speed group students tend to rate themselves improved. Although we use the same speed tape for TOEFL
exercises in both groups, students in the slow-speed group feel that they have improved more than the normalspeed group. In other words, the use of slow speed tape in the main materials affects the improvement of theirgeneral listening ability. This will support the results of the proficiency improvement of the slow speed group in
the second term in two years.
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3.0
2.8

Normal
Slow

2.6
2.4
2.2

Total

TOEFL
Toefl

News
News

Film
Film

Figure 5. Improvement
Preference of Media
About the students’ preference of media, namely video vs. audio, we asked which type of listening materials
is more comprehensible. If the students mark “video,” that answer is converted to score 1. If they marked “audio
tape,” that answer is converted to score 2. If they marked “no difference,” that is converted to score 3. Therefore,
the lower score means less preference for the audio tape and more for video. The results are shown in Figure 6.

1.9
1.8

Normal
Slow

1.7
1.6
1.5

Video
Audio
Video/Audio

Figure 6. Media preferenceStudents in the normal speed group have a lower score than the slow speed group students. This means thatthe normal speed group regards video as more comprehensible than audio. This is probably because the audio tapeis too fast for them to comprehend and so they have to rely on the pictures of the video more than the students in theslow speed group.

Awareness of Speed Difference
The last question is about the awareness of the difference of speed. We gave this question to see if thestudents in the slow group were aware that the speed of the audio tape is slower than that of the video. The results
are in Figure 7.
As the results show, 32% of the slow speed group are aware of the speed difference of the audio tape.
However, although the audio tape speed in the normal group is the same as that of the video, 22% of the subjects
answered they noticed the differences between the audio and video tape speeds. This may be an effect of a leading
question, and we think that even the students of the slow speed group are rarely aware of the difference of the speed
between the video and audio tape. These results indicate that many students using slow speed materials did not
realize the 15% speed reduction of their audio tape, but that their listening ability improved better than the othergroup. This may say that there is unconscious learning in the slow speed group.
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Normal

22%

Slow

32%

0%

50%

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Not-Aware
Aware

100%

Figure 7. Awareness of speed difference
Findings of Study 2
The questionnaire given at the end of the second term of the second year gives us important information
about using slow speed tape for listening exercises. We have found the following.
More students in the slow speed group support audio tape as an effective tool for listening comprehension
practice. We think this tendency is closely related to students’ satisfaction in the learning process.
To fulfill dictation assignments for the film Titanic and to understand the contents of the news material every
week, students were supposed to concentrate on listening to the audio tape repeatedly at home. They had to do it athome without having any visual aids. Only the students in the slow speed group had chances to listen to slow speed
tapes, more comprehensible for them, even though they did not realize it. It seems that the slowed down audio tapehelped students to accomplish the tasks of dictation and other listening exercises, and that the students learn better
unconsciously.
Students’ self-evaluation about “improvement” explains the reason. The more correct answers they have in
dictation, the more their satisfaction increases. Students’ self-evaluation about “improvement” which we examined above corresponds to the students’ satisfaction of their accomplishment. The accumulating satisfaction inspires them to give themselves a higher self-evaluation. Thus, the slow speed group students evaluate themselves“improved more than the students in the normal speed group.

Conclusion
Based on the results of this study, it can be said that slowly-adjusted video material will help students keep
practicing and improve their listening ability, especially when students lack high motivation for learning. Althougha number of researchers report negative evidence for the use of slow speed materials, this study provides positive
aspects of the use of slower speed texts for listening practice; as Ellis (1994) claims, “a number of studies... provide
evidence to suggest that a slower rate aids comprehension (p. 274).” We believe the students’ subjective reactions
about their feeling of improvement may support the results.
About the tape speed, we have found that reducing speed 15% is not enough for students to realize thedifference between normal speed and slow speed. However, when we slow it 20% from the original, sound quality
becomes poor and it hinders comprehension. If we can have a better device to change the speech rate and provide
students the tape with which they know that they are listening to more comprehensible English, the effects may be
more apparent. Further study is necessary.
We would like to continue our research on the slow delivery speed based on the arguments above, and wehope our study will be a help for listening comprehension practice.
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Notes
This is a revised version of a paper presented by the authors at the FLEAT 4 in Kobe, Japan, on August 1, 2000.
We would like to express our special thanks to our colleagues, Professor Mine for his help in statistics andhelpful comments and Professor Susser for his valuable comments on our early draft.

*

References
Edasawa, Y. & Imai, Y. (1996). Listening materials for EFL advanced students: Films vs. documentary news.
Language Laboratory, 34(33), 25-45.
Edasawa, Y. & Imai, Y. (1998). The effects of summary writing for news programs in listening practice. Language
Laboratory, 35, pp. 1-15.
Edasawa, Y. et al. (1998). A study about controlled speech rate in teaching listening. Proceedings for the 37th
LLA Annual Conference. Fukuoka, 1998. pp.62-65.
Conrad, L. (1989). The effects of time-compressed speech on native and EFL listening comprehension. Studies inSecond Language Acquisition 11, 1-16.
Ellis, R. (1994). The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Flaherty, Sister E. (1979). Rate-controlled speech in foreign language education. Foreign Language Annals, 12,
4, Sep., 275-280.
Griffths, R. (1990). Speech rate and NNS comprehension: a preliminary study in time-benefit analysis. Language
Learning 40, 311-336.
Kimura, S. (1997). Hatsuwa sokudo to Listening Comprehension saiko. (Revisit in the speech delivery speed andlistening comprehension.) In Journal of Language Processing, Kotoba to Communication: Gaikokugo Kyoiku
Kenkyu eno New Approach, Vol. 1, 60-68. (Kotoba no Kagaku Kenkyukai, ed.) Tokyo: Eichosha. (in Japanese)
Machida, T. (1979). Hatsuwa sokudo no chokairyoku ni oyobosu eikyo. (Effects of the speech rate in listening
comprehenion.) Eigo Kyoiku, 27, 12, Feb., 26-28. Tokyo: Taishukan. (in Japanese)
Takefuta, Y. (1979). Love Story ni miru eikaiwa no sekai (The world of English conversation in Love Story). Eigo
Kyoiku, Sep. extra number, 19-22. (in Japanese)
Wakamoto, N. et al. (1999). The effects of controlled speech rate on listening instruction to Japanese learners ofEnglish. Paper presented at AILA ‘99, Waseda University, Tokyo.

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Effects of Schema-Building Tasks on Reading
Comprehension for Japanese Learners of EFL
Yuko Matsumura
Kinki University, Japan

Naoko Yamamoto
Kyoto Girls’ Senior High School, Japan
Abstract
This paper addresses two empirical studies on the effects of discussion-based schema-building tasks on
the reading comprehension of Japanese EFL learners.
The first study compared three intact homogeneous groups: the Control Group, the Content Group which
engaged in content-schema-related tasks, and the Formal Group which engaged in formal-schema-related tasks.
Results of a two-way ANOVA (treatment with three levels and questions with two levels) indicated that theformal-schema-related tasks had a significant main effect on comprehension, with no interaction between treatment and questions.
The second study added a new group which engaged in content/formal schema building tasks and introduced a three-week intervention. Results of a one-way MANOVA showed that pre-reading tasks for content/
formal schema had the most significant effect on performance on M/C test and summary recall. Despite thelimited generalizability arising from the research design, the research suggested the importance of teachingboth types of schema.

Introduction
Both theoretical and empirical studies suggest that pre-reading tasks designed to build content and/or formal
schema have a significant effect on reading comprehension. Content schema refers to prior knowledge of the topic/
theme of the text, and formal schema refers to prior knowledge of the rhetorical organization of the text.
Carrell (1987) compared the differential effects of content schema and formal schema embedded in text
information. She compared the effects of four combinations of textual information: familiar content and familiar
rhetorical form, familiar content and unfamiliar rhetorical form, unfamiliar content and familiar rhetorical form,
and unfamiliar content and unfamiliar rhetorical form, and found that content familiarity affected reading comprehension to a greater extent than familiarity with rhetorical structure. This suggests that content schema may play agreater role in reading comprehension. Carrell (1985) nonetheless contends that teaching text structure can significantly facilitate comprehension and argues for an important role for both types of schema.
However, Koda (1994) raises a question about the efficacy of content instruction, on the grounds that content
information is passage-specific and limited in application to other reading materials. She calls for the validation ofthis argument and its pedagogical implications through further empirical research. The effects of schema instruction may vary widely according to the particular passage and participants included in the experiment. Therefore,
there is a need to investigate the effects of schema instruction in a varied learning environment.

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Among a variety of open-ended question types for a reading comprehension test, what Nuttall1 (1996, p.186187) calls ‘questions of literal comprehension’ and ‘questions involving reorganization or reinterpretation’ require
the reader to make objective text-based understanding of the content. The latter is considered more challenging,since it requires the reader to integrate information from various parts of the text using elementary inferencing.
Therefore, it may be worthwhile to compare questions of literal comprehension and questions involving reorganization or reinterpretation in order to find out how these different types of questions affect comprehension.
Researchers have been increasingly interested in investigating the mental activities that readers engage in toconstruct meaning from a text. These activities are called reading strategies. Most researchers divide reading
strategies into top-down types and bottom-up types. Proficient readers use both of these strategies; however, thestrategies which are of great relevance to schema are top-down strategies. Top-down strategies allow readers to ‘fit
the text into knowledge they already possess’ (Richards, 1997, p.18). Therefore, using metacognitive strategy
questionnaire, we would like to investigate whether readers bring their prior knowledge of the topic or rhetoricalorganization to the text.
This paper concerns two empirical studies exploring the effects of these two types of schema-building tasks
on reading comprehension of Japanese EFL high school learners. In comparing the effects of schema instruction,
this paper also takes into consideration other factors that are likely to affect reading comprehension, i.e., types ofquestions and perceived use of reading strategies.

MethodFirst Study
Research Questions
The research questions were formulated as follows:1.

Which type of schema-building task will have a greater facilitative effect on reading comprehension, content schema-related tasks or formal schema-related ones?

2.

Which type of questions will significantly facilitate reading comprehension, literal questions orquestions involving reorganization or reinterpretation?

3.

Is there any significant interaction between tasks and question types?

4.

Is there any significant effect of schema-building tasks on metacognitive awareness of reading
strategies?

Participants
A total of 111 second-year high school female students in three intact classes participated in the study.
The three groups were randomly assigned three kinds of treatment: teaching of content schema, teaching of formal
schema and no schema-related treatment. They were called 1) Content Group, 2) Formal Group, and 3) Control
Group. Prior to the treatment, a practice TOEFL written test was administered to confirm the between-grouphomogeneity of English proficiency. The results of one-way ANOVA showed no significant difference in proficiency between these groups (F(2,108) = 1.442, p = .241).

Procedures
The experiment was performed as follows:

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Pre-reading tasks

Carrell (1988) stresses the importance of schema-building pre-reading tasks, and she suggested “discussion”
as one of the possibilities. Therefore, the two experimental groups were assigned the task of discussing different
topics in Japanese. The Content Group discussed topic-related issues: what kinds of animals/plants are considered
endangered species that deserve protection and what measures should be taken to prevent the extinction of these
species? The Formal Group was given instruction on typical rhetorical organizations of written English discourse
categorized by Carrell (1984), and the group discussed which type of the passages correspond to the Contrast/
Comparison argumentative type structure, the same as that used in the reading material. The materials used for theFormal Group did not make mention of any environmental topics.
2.

A short-answer reading comprehension test in English

All of the groups were tested with a 20-item reading comprehension test. A 25-minute time limit was
imposed on all participants. They were asked to read the contrast/comparison type of an expository text on endangered species featuring the pros and cons of the protection of endangered species. After reading the passage, two
subgroups of homogeneous proficiency in each group were given different kinds of questions. Half of the students
in each group were randomly assigned literal questions using the same or similar wording in the text, while theremaining half in each group were randomly assigned what Nuttall (1996) calls “questions involving reorganization or reinterpretation.” The latter type is more challenging, since it requires the reader to “consider the text as awhole” and/or “make him process the information in the text for fuller understanding”(p.186). All of the learners
could refer back to the material while answering the questions provided.
3

A questionnaire on reading strategies in JapaneseAfter turning in answer sheets, all the groups were inquired about reading strategies through a 5-point Likertscale questionnaire. Carrell’s (1988) metacognitive awareness questionnaire was a starting point for designing thisquestionnaire. The original questionnaire was translated into Japanese and the wording was slightly rephrased, sothat the learners could understand the content of each item. This seven-item questionnaire inquired about whether
the respondents used schema-driven top-down processing strategies. (See Appendix.) The internal consistency
coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha) of this scale was .79.

Materials
A 460-word expository text on environmental issues entitled “Environmentalists Are Now Saving Flies?”
was selected for use in the study. Readability was determined to be 53.2 according to Flesch Reading Ease and theFlesch-Kincaid Grade Level was 10.3. A Japanese/English glossary list was given for reference for low frequency
words that appeared in the text.

Analysis
A two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to find out whether there were any significant
effects of pre-reading tasks on reading comprehension. One of the independent variables included three levels ofTreatment (No special schema-related treatment for the Control Group, pre-reading tasks designed to build content
schema for the Content Group, and pre-reading tasks designed to build formal schema for the Formal Group). The
other independent variable was two levels of question type (literal questions and questions involving reorganization or reinterpretation).
To answer the fourth research question, a one-way ANOVA was run in order to identify any significant
between-group difference in the metacognitive awareness questionnaire.

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Results
Descriptive statistics for both reading test scores and the questionnaire are shown in Tables 1 and 2.
Results of a two-way ANOVA showed a significant difference in main effects for Treatment: F(2,105) =4.015, p < .05 and for Questions: F (1,105) = 36.771, p < .001. No interaction was found: F (2,105) = 2.271, p=.108. n.s. A subsequent LSD post-hoc test revealed that the Formal Group surpassed the Content Group (p < .01).
Results of a one-way ANOVA for Reading Strategy Questionnaire confirmed no significant differences
between any of the groups: F(2,97 = .918 p = .403, n.s. The number of respondents was 100, since 11 respondents
failed to answer all of the questionnaire items.

Table 2. Results for Reading Questionnaire

Table 1. Results for Test Scores
Group

Control

Content

Fromal

RQ: M

7.78

7.79

8.53

RQ: SD

4.80

4.45

3.92

(N=18)(N=19)(N=17)

LQ: M

13.05

10.21

14.79

LQ: SD

3.29

4.50

2.95

(N=19)(N=19)(N=17)Group

Control(N=27)

Content(N=38)

Formal
(N=36)

M

2.80

2.84

2.89

SD

.67

.82

.76

RQ: Questions involving reorganization andreinterpretation
LQ: Literal Questions

A Pearson-Product Moment Correlation between test results and the questionnaire showed a significant, but weakcorrelation. r = .302* p < .01.

Discussion and Limitation
The pre-reading tasks designed to build formal schema significantly improved reading comprehension.
However, the results cannot be generalized due to the following reasons: First, the treatment period was short. It
could be postulated that more practice would be needed for content-schema-building tasks to have a significant
effect on reading comprehension. Second, the mean scores indicated that the text used for the comprehension test
was too difficult for the participants in terms of length, sentence structure, and the number of unfamiliar words.
Third, the endangered species mentioned in the reading text, i.e. flies, upset the participants’ prediction. Content
group students confessed that endangered species reminded them of rare species such as Japanese crested ibises
and pandas. Therefore, the pre-reading tasks for the Content Group did not provide them with an appropriate
schema.

Second Study
Based on the reflection of the first study, a second study was conducted with the following features: First, a
new group which engaged in pre-reading tasks designed to build both content and formal schema was added.
Second, three sessions of intervention were introduced before the administration of the reading test. Third, theassessment of reading comprehension was performed through a multiple-choice (M/C) test and cloze-type summary recall instead of a short-answer comprehension test. Lastly, an easier text in terms of readability and passage
length on the same topic was used for the reading test.

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Research Questions
The following research questions were addressed:(1) Which type of schema-building tasks will significantly improve the score for MultipleChoice type reading comprehension test?
(2) Which type of schema-building tasks will improve the score for cloze-recall?

Participants
A total of 140 high school second-year female students divided into four intact groups participated in the
study. They were quite similar to the participants in the first study in terms of demographic features.

Procedures
1.

A pre-intervention cloze test

A 50-item cloze test (KR-21= .71) was administered to check the between-group homogeneity of English
proficiency. Results showed no significant between-group difference (F(3,136) = 1.968, p = .122 n.s.).
2.

Introduction of three-session pre-reading tasks

Each group was randomly assigned one of the following treatments. Pre-reading tasks related to content
schema were given to the Content Group. Pre-reading tasks related to formal schema were given to the Formal
Group. Pre-reading tasks related to content and formal schema were given to the Content/Formal Group. Texts onenvironmental issues were given to the Control Group as reading exercises; however, no pre-reading tasks were
provided.
3.

Reading comprehension test

After reading a passage on endangered species, an eight-item multiple-choice reading comprehension test
was administered in English.
4.

Summary recall test

A kind of cloze-type summary recall in Japanese was administered, on condition that learners could
not refer back to the text.

Test Material
A Comparison/Contrast type of expository text on the pros and cons of hunting was used. The text was 337
words long and difficulty as determined by the Flesch Reading Ease was 72.3 and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level was
6.6. A Japanese/English glossary list was given for reference.

Analysis
A one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was run with four levels of Treatment: No special
schema-related treatment, Pre-reading tasks designed to build content schema, pre-reading tasks designed to build
formal schema, and pre-reading tasks designed to build both types of schema. The dependent variables were testscores on an eight-item M/C and scores on a prompted summary recall which had a total score of 15 points.

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Results
Results of descriptive statistics are shown in Table 3.

Table 3. Descriptive Statistics
Group

Control(N=36)

Content(N=33)

Formal
(N=34)

Content/Formal(N=37)

M

2.67

2.94

3.59

3.38

SD

1.37

1.25

1.48

1.30

Recall M

5.44

7.67

7.29

8.11

SD

2.71

2.20

2.25

2.08

M/C

Results of MANOVA were significant (Wilks’ Lambda =.797 F(6,270) = 5.420 p < .001). The subsequent
F tests were significant: for M/C test, F(3,136) = 3.34, p < .05; for Recall, F (3,136) = 9.14, p < .001. Results ofpost-hoc test (LSD) are shown in Table 4.

Table 4. Results of Post-hoc Test (LSD)
TestGroup Differencep

M/C Test

Formal > Control= .005

Formal + Content > Control= 0.26

Formal > Control= .001

Content > Control= .000Formal + Content > Control= .000RecallResults showed that the Formal/Content Group had the best test scores for both types of readingassessment. The Formal Group and the Formal/Content Group significantly surpassed the Control group in bothtypes of reading test. However, the scores for the Content Group was higher than those for the Control Group only
in M/C test scores.

Discussion
Results indicated that the pre-reading tasks designed to build both types of schema had the most significant
effect on recall test. Second, the pre-reading tasks designed to build formal schema had the most significant effecton the M/C test. On the other hand, the Control Group had the worst test scores for both types of assessment,
showing some effects of intervention on reading comprehension.
The results of the M/C test scores showed that the Formal Group and the Formal/Content Group significantly surpassed the Control Group. The Content Group was the second worst, and it was not significantly different from the Control Group. Indications are that the participants had difficulty decoding and understanding themeaning of the text regardless of schema-building intervention. Their failure to understand the text may haveoverridden the treatment effects. Or the M/C test used in the experiment may not have been amenable to schema-

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related intervention.
Results of recall test scores showed that all experimental groups significantly surpassed the Control Group.
Discussions of related topics and/or understanding the rhetorical structures of the text certainly improved theirunderstanding and memory of the text.

Limitation of the two studies
First, the M/C test used in the experiment was not significantly sensitive in discriminating between-groups
differences. Although the readability indices indicated that the reading passage used in the second study was easierthan that used in the first study, wordings used in the distractors were speculated to be difficult. Second, the withingroup difference was large enough to override the treatment effects. Third, the number of passages was limited andthe number of M/C test questions was also limited. Using more passages and a greater number of test questions
would be valuable in increasing the reliability of the test.

Conclusion
The pre-reading tasks designed to build both types of schema significantly improved reading comprehension, although the results are not generalizable. The results of reading comprehension could vary according to anumber of parameters: the participants (age, L2 proficiency, the length of study, and majors), text (readability, thetype and genre of text organization), assessment methods (M/C test, summary recall, and total recall), and intervention (the type, length and intensity of the intervention). Therefore, further studies are needed to explore the effects
of pre-reading tasks by taking these factors into consideration.

Note
1.
The other types of open-ended questions in Nuttall’s (1996, pp.186-187) list require the reader tomake personal responses to the text, subjective judgements and interpretations about the content of the text, andspeculations about the author’s intention.

References
Carrell, P. L. (1984). The effects of rhetorical organization on ESL readers. TESOL Quarterly, 18, 441-469.
Carrell, P. L. (1985). Facilitating ESL reading by teaching text structure. TESOL Quarterly, 19, 727-752..
Carrell, P. L. (1987). Content and formal schemata in ESL Reading. TESOL Quarterly, 21, 461-481.
Carrell, P. L. (1988). Interactive text processing: Implications for ESL/second language reading classrooms. In P.
L. Carrell, et al.(eds.), 1988. Interactive approaches to second language reading, pp. 239-259. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Carrell, P. L. (1989). Metacognitive awareness and second language reading. Modern Language Journal, 73, 121134.
Koda, K. (1994). Second language reading research: Problems and possibilities. Applied Psycholinguistics 15, 128.
Nuttall, C. (1996). Teaching reading skills in a foreign language. New edition. Heinemann.
Richards, J. C. (1997). From reader to reading teacher: Issues and strategies for second language classrooms.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Other Materials
Ming, T. (1999). Environmentalists are now saving flies? MINI World, August-September. MINI WORLD.
McLean, P. (2000). Hunting. Discussing issues II. pp. 6-7. Tokyo: Yumi Press.

Appendix
Metacognitive Awareness Questionnaire
When you read in English,
1.

I anticipate what will come next in the text.

2.

I guess at meanings of unknown words using clues from the context.

3.

I guess the overall meaning of the text.

4.

I relate information which comes next in the text to previous information in the text.

5.

I grasp the organization of the text.

6.

I relate the text to what I already know about the topic.

7.

I integrate the information in the text with what I already know.

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Effects of the Use of the English Material:
ALC NetAcademy and the TOEIC Test
Yoko Watanabe
Nagasaki Junshin Junior College, Japan

Shota Yoshihara
Nagasaki Junshin Catholic University, Japan
Abstract
This study reports on the possibility of a correlation between computer assisted learning and test results,
that is, a correlation between the use of English material, ALC NetAcademy, and the scores on the TOEIC test.
Students started using the ALC NetAcademy software in May 1999 and continued to use it until the end ofJanuary 2000. Forty-eight students took both TOEIC tests conducted in June 1999 and in February 2000. The
first actual TOEIC test score was compared with the second test score to see if there was any improvement. Then
students’ improvement in the various dimensions of language ability in the TOEIC test practice course in the
ALC NetAcademy was measured in relation with the level diagnostic test. Both results were analyzed to see if theuse of computerized material had affected the actual TOEIC test scores and overall English proficiency.

Background
The focus of this study was to see if there was a correlation between computer assisted learning and test
results, that is , a correlation between the use of English material, ALC NetAcademy, and the scores on the TOEIC
test. The ALC NetAcademy was installed in May 1999 at the computer laboratory of our school to meet the goalof cultivating students’ overall English proficiency so that they can take an active part in the world internationally.
Students’ English proficiency as a basic skill must be improved all-around, specifically to the level to be able tocommunicate with people in other cultures. Students in our school started using the ALC NetAcademy software in
May 1999 to get used to the common question patterns the actual TOEIC test has. The software consists of fourcourses: a level diagnostic test, listening build-up course, reading build-up course, and TOEIC test practice course.
The level diagnostic test had a vocabulary diagnostic test and a listening diagnostic test. Eighty-nine students tooka TOEIC test in June 1999 and seventy two students in February 2000. Only forty-eight students (22 sophomores
and 26 freshmen of the British and American Cultural Studies Department) took both tests and those students’scores were used in this study. The first actual TOEIC test score was compared with the second test score to see if
there was any improvement. Then students’ improvement in the various dimensions of language ability such as
vocabulary knowledge, reading, and listening in the TOEIC test practice course was measured in relation with thelevel diagnostic test of the ALC NetAcademy. Both results were analyzed to see if the use of computerizedmaterial had affected the actual TOEIC test scores and overall English proficiency, and if there is a correlation
between the test scores and the length of time that students worked on the software material.

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Objectives
1.

To enhance students’ basic English ability to the level of being able to communicate with people
in different cultures.

2.

To find out if there is a correlation between the use of computerized material and the TOEIC
test scores; if there is a correlation between the use of this material and students’ improvementin the various dimensions of language ability such as vocabulary knowledge, reading, and listening; and if computerized material has affected their overall English proficiency.

Summary of ALC NetAcademy
ALC NetAcademy consists of four courses. The following are summaries of these courses.

Level Diagnostic Tests
Students can measure their own English ability by taking a vocabulary diagnostic test and a listening diagnostic test. These diagnostic results help set up a standard for them as to what materials in a listening ability buildup course and a reading ability build-up course they should choose to study.

V ocabu larydiagnostic
diagn ostic
a.a.Vocabulary
test
test

F ig.1tests

L isten in g diagn
ostic test
b.b.Listening
diagnostic
testlevel diagn ostic

Figure 1. Level diagnostic tests

Listening Build-Up Course
1.

A function to change voice speed to 5 levels is available so that students can play back thelistening material according to the students’ level without changing the pitch of narration.

2.

A function with a check mark under each speaker button on the screen to check listening helps
train students’ intensive listening to the parts they did not hear correctly.

3.

Students can make their own personal vocabulary notebooks in which they register after theychoose the words they do not know or have not learned yet. When students click words they do
not know in the text they listened to, the words are shown in blue and are indicated in thecolumn of the vocabulary window.

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F ig.2 2.L isten
in g bu
ild u pFigureListeningbuild-up
cou rse

Reading Build-Up Course
1.

It is possible for students to measure their reading speed (words per minute), which enhances
their motivation for learning aiming at 200wpm.

2.

There are 4 kinds of speed reading training functions. According to the speed that students set,English sentences are shown on the screen so they can read them feeling the actual reading
speed.

Figure 3. Reading build-up course
TOEIC Test Practice Course
1.

Students can practice the common question patterns which the actual TOEIC test has.

2.

Students can get the results of answers instantly after answering questions. If they did not
answer them correctly, they can try again the questions they did not give right answers to.

3.

Students can jump to the explanation in detail for the questions that they found difficult
listening to.

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a. Listening section
b. Reading section
Figure 4. TOEIC test practice course

Subjects
Students who took Comprehensive English, Reading, Listening in 1999 and also took TOEIC tests in July
1999 and February 2000. (26 freshmen and 22 sophomores of the Department of British and American Cultural
Studies, total 48)

The Ways Students Studied and Results Analyzed
They started using ALC NetAcademy software in June 1999 in class and after class. The students’ two
TOEIC test results and their study history of ALC NetAcademy materials were analyzed.

The Diagnostic Standard Set by the ALC NetAcademy Company to Show Student Levels
1.

A vocabulary diagnostic test:
Vocabulary was chosen from the vocabulary data base which ALC NetAcademy Company
originally made, and the way questions were presented was variable according to the students’answers. There was an 8 level evaluation.

2.

A listening diagnostic test:
Students’ ability was evaluated according to how fast they reacted to the listening text, howmuch they understood the sentence structure, and how much they grasped the content of the
discourse. There was a 5 level evaluation.

Analysis of Results
This section discusses how much improvement students have made by using ALC NetAcademy software.

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Students’ analyzed results by the level diagnostic test of ALC NetAcademy
1.

A vocabulary diagnostic test:
Very weak in vocabulary. Overall evaluation was 1.75.
A little more than 10% of the students were evaluated as 4.

2.

A listening diagnostic test:
How fast they reacted to the listening text, 45.1%
How much they understood the sentence structure, 53.1%
How much they grasped the content of the discourse, 45.9%
Levels of the listening diagnostic test were divided as follows on the base of the percentage ofthe correct answers from part 1 to part 2.
0 = < beginning level < 20%
20 = < beginning level + < 40%
40 = < intermediate level < 70%
70 = < intermediate level +< 90%
90 = < upper level3.

Overall evaluation:
Students evaluated as 2: They tend to be weak in reacting fast to the listening text, but theirgrasp of the content is evaluated as rather average.
Students evaluated as 3: Two students were very strong in grasping the content but very weak inreacting fast to the listening text. On the other hand, 8 students were very weak in grasping thecontent but very strong in reacting fast to the listening text.
Students evaluated as 4: Students were strong in understanding the sentence structure and inreacting fast to the listening text, but their grasp of the content of the discourse was much
weaker than the other two.

An analysis by the learning history of build-up courses of ALC NetAcademy
1.

A listening build-up course
Students took 15.5 minutes to study one unit on average. They spent more time on studying
Discovery and First Listening Sections but not much on Review and Speed Listening Sections.

2)

A reading build-up course
Students took 11.9 minutes to study one unit on average. They put the most weight on studying
the Discovery Section.

3.

A TOEIC test practice course(a)One student who had the most correct answers in one unit spent 57 minutes to finish one
unit.

(b)

The time students spent on the material became less as they finished each unit because
they seemed to get accustomed to using the material. The number of correct answers
varied each time they studied units.

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To contents(c)Students had more correct answers in listening rather than in reading because of a lack ofconcentration and of vocabulary in reading.

(d)No improvement in the results was made even though they practiced the same materials
many times in short time.

(e)Students who studied the same materials constantly showed improvement in reading.

TOEIC Test Results

Figure 5. TOIEC test listening results

Figure 6. TOIEC test reading results

An Analysis of the TOEIC Test Results
1.

Only a few students achieved a rather high score, about 400 in the listening test, but in general,many students’ scores are concentrated on between 150 and 250. Much improvement in scoreson the test was not seen in the second test, but 35% of the examinees showed a little improvement in listening on the second test.

2.

Some students scored about 300 in the reading test, but most of the students’ scores are concentrated between 100 and 200. 44% of the examinees showed a little improvement in reading on
the second test. Among those examinees showing improvement, students who studied the material of the TOEIC test practice course repeatedly were included.

3.

40% of the examinees showed improvement in the total scores of listening and reading on thesecond test.

Students’ Reaction after Having Used ALC NetAcademy Materials
1.

It was convenient for them to be able to practice the materials many times according to theirown pace and to be able to check their answers instantly.

2.

It was easy to listen to the recorded voice.

3.

The speed of the listening materials were adjustable to their own ability, and they could speed
up when they got used to them.

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4.

The content of the reading materials was difficult, and the quantity of them was too much.

5.

The level of the materials overall was difficult, and specially the vocabulary was likewise. The
TOEIC test practice course was also very difficult.

6.

Topics dealt with in the materials were rather abundant, but the topics related to current affairs
were too little.

Summary and Examination
1.

Students whose objectives in studying English were clear used the ALC NetAcademy materials
regularly.

2.

Many students thought of the materials as convenient because they could study them according
to their proficiency.

3.

Between listening and reading build-up courses, students used the former course more often
than the latter. Only 46% of the subjects used the latter course, and 31% out of this 46%
showed a little improvement in the reading section of the second TOEIC test.

4.

Polarization in practicing the two courses was probably due to the fact that students did nothave much time to concentrate on both courses.

5.

Students started to use the materials in June, and their actual use of them was roughly for
4.5months till February when they had the second TOEIC test. How often they used the materials varied from student to student, and the number of the students who took two TOEIC tests
was too little for us to gather data.

Problems to be Solved to Enhance Learning Effectiveness1.

ALC NetAcademy materials would be much more effective if used in classes until students
become accustomed to using them rather than students studying them by themselves in their
free time.

2.

It would be necessary to make students clarify the objectives of their learning and have motivation to learn.

Research Themes for the Future1.

We would like to compare the difference in learning effect between the two groups: a group
who uses the ALC NetAcademy and a group who does not.

2.

We would like to compare the difference in learning effect after using ALC NetAcademy among
the groups divided according to the placement test conducted right after their enrollment.

References
Morita, K. (1999). Kakushu eigoshikaku ninteitesuto ni chousen – eiken, TOEIC, TOEFL, nado, sonokeikouto
taisaku (A challenge for various English tests – a trend and a countermeasure for STEP, TOEIC, TOEFL
tests). Daigakusei no eigo gakushuu handobukku (A handbook of learning English for students). pp. 122140. Tokyo: Kenkyuusha.
Nagasaki, G. and Morita, K. (1992). A practical guide to TOEIC. Tokyo: Aratake Shuppan Inc.

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To contentsOda, A., et al. (2000). TOEIC Tests Given to the Students at Notre Dame Seishin University, Considerations of theResults, and How to Utilize TOEIC. The Journal of Notre Dame Seishin University, 24, 178-205. Okayama:
Notre Dame Seishin University.

Acknowledgement
We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to the ALC NetAcademy Company for their cooperation to let
us use their materials.

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English Teaching through Internet:
A Web-Assisted Course Design
Aili Hsin
Yuan Ze University, Taiwan
Abstract
The traditional way of teaching plays great emphasis on the role of the teacher and the necessity of
textbooks in teaching. However, the advance of computer technology and web development in recent years has
had a great impact on teaching concepts and methods. Distance teaching and learning is not only possible, but
has also become more and more popular. Teacher-oriented teaching activities have gradually changed to student-oriented learning activities. In addition, with the help of electronic media, learning can be done without
physical contact, totally beyond the limitation of time and space.

In this paper, I propose a web-assisted English course design, which aims to help improve thestudents’ listening and speaking abilities, since they are the two weakest areas in most EFL students andalso the hardest parts to practice for students when they are at home without a learning partner. The
material on the web is mostly audio files and can provide students unlimited opportunities to practicelistening as well as review the parts they missed or felt confused about in class. More challenging learning
tasks can also be added for more advanced students to upgrade their abilities. In this way, the webassisted course design can improve many defects of traditional English classes.

Introduction
Traditional language teaching emphasizes a lot on the role of the teacher and the necessity of textbooks andlanguage labs in teaching. The teacher gives students guidance and instructions on what to learn and how to learn
the language material. In oral practice, the teacher is even more important in acting as a conversation partner aswell as in giving an imitation model in language use. The textbook, in addition to providing learning material in theclassroom, is also a great help for review after class. Also, in order to let students feel what the target language islike in real use, authentic language material in audio and videotapes are played and shown to the students from time
to time. Hence the language lab becomes essential equipment in language teaching.
The English course in college meets some difficulties with the traditional teaching model. First, the total
learning time is not enough. In high school there are usually 5 to 7 hours of English class every week, and students,
under the pressure of entrance examination, usually spend another several hours reviewing the material learned inschool. Yet, in college, the English class meets only two hours a week and students seldom review English afterclass. Since language learning has to be done with a teacher, the learning is limited and can only be done at school.
Next, the off-class review or practice is limited or focused mainly on the written form of English. Without theinteraction with the teacher and other classmates after class, the listening and speaking part of the language is
impossible to practice. Even for those students that do review at home, the language skills they reinforce is on the
cognitive side, such as vocabulary, grammar, reading etc. rather than on the motor side, such as listening andspeaking. Moreover, the learning media or equipment is not available most of the time. Students have the opportunity to be in the lab to practice pronunciation or watch videos only once or twice a semester. Since the language
lab usually is not open for students after class, teachers assign mostly written homework instead of listening or
speaking exercises.
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However, with the help of web technology, the above shortcomings in traditional college English course canbe overcome. Unlike the time and space limit in formal classes, the total learning time can be increased sincelearning can be done via Internet. The off-class practice can be improved in both quantity and quality. The amountof practice time can be increased since the Internet is available anytime and anyplace. The review learning can also
be extended to listening and speaking since the sound transmission on the Internet is possible and common now.
The aims of this paper are three folds. Section One introduces the change of teaching media and the motivation of this course design. Section Two discusses the characteristics of language teaching and learning, and how
the use of Internet can assist the English teaching. Section Three presents a web-assisted course design in teaching
an English reading class, showing that with the help of the internet students can also learn to listen and speak via thematerials or activities established on the web. Section Four concludes this paper by discussing the shortcomings
and possible future improvements of this web design.

Characteristics of language teaching and internet assistance
Language learning has many special features in contrast to other academic fields. First, language learningneeds a lot of practice in addition to the learning in class. That is, language learning requires a lot of motor training
aside from the cognitive knowledge of the target language. That is why mere memorization of vocabulary or
understanding of grammar rules is not equal to the mastery of the language. Unfortunately, English classes meet
only once a week and the class size is usually large. Limited contact time and large class size make the motor
training impossible in regular classes.
Second, language learning is individual. Different learners, due to the different efforts that they have made,are usually at different linguistic levels and learn at different paces. So, they might need different amounts of timeto learn the same linguistic materials. But in a language class of 60 or more students, it is hard to attend to
everyone’s need and give them proper feedback individually.
Third, language learning, for a large part, is a private and internal process. Although language is used tocommunicate with others as a final purpose, the previous learning stages are mostly done in the learners’ private
world. However, the language class usually is not a very comfortable practicing environment, for learners have to
use the target language awkwardly in front of their classmates. Often they feel nervous and embarrassed during
these learning processes. Chinese students, who are usually shy and afraid of making mistakes, tend to avoid
practicing in front of classmates and thus lose many learning chances.
Fourth, language learning is a multi-skill acquisition. Unlike other academic fields, which emphasize theunderstanding of the knowledge, language acquisition has four phases, each reinforcing the other. Yet, in a nonEnglish-speaking country, English as a Foreign Language (EFL) program is usually successful in reading andwriting areas but not in speaking and listening areas. Frequency of contact is part of the reason. Another major
reason is because reading and writing are basically cognitive abilities and speaking and listening are more of motor
abilities. The former abilities can be built through mere understanding and the latter abilities, through the equalamount of efforts and knowledge plus lots of contacts, practices, and reinforcements.

Web-Assisted course design
Many web-assisted courses have been designed and set up to help English teaching. Kimball (1998) statesthat the internet-assisted course design provides a virtual, but interesting, environment for the learning of medical
English. Students have profited a great deal from such simulations of clinical problem solving on the Internet.
Leahy (1998) observes the use of satellite TV and CALL can be a solution to the problems caused by reduced
contact time. And in her case of legal English training, the evaluation shows an overall positive learning experience. Peterson (1998) and Dunkel (1991) both suggest the use of computers and network to design a virtual
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learning environment. Nelson (1998) highly recommends the utilization of Internet in vocabulary teaching, Phinney(1991) in writing, and Backman & Palmer (1996) and Brown (1997) in language testing, among others.

Pedagogical consideration
Sound and meaning association. A new word in the target language consists of three components: thewritten form, the meaning, and the sound. Most EFL students can form a good tie between the written form and themeaning, but the sound component of a word is often neglected. Hence it is common to see a learner’s visualvocabulary larger than his audio vocabulary. The learning activities on the web aim to increase students’ audio
vocabulary.
Brown and Payne (1994) report that students use a five-step strategy to learn new words and one of the steps
is to develop a memory chain between the form and the meaning. The form actually refers to both the written andaudio forms. The web-assisted activities focus on strengthening the memory chain between the audio form and themeaning. Oxford (1990) proposes that success in maintaining the newly formed memory connection depends on
several specific memory strategies. Nelson (1998) suggests that two strategies can easily be incorporated into webbased activities, that is, using mechanical techniques to memorize new words, and placing new words into context,
such as a meaningful sentence, conversation, or story.
Review of the course material. Language is learned most efficiently through high frequency of contact;
hence students’ after-class review of the material taught in class is necessary. As mentioned above, listening andspeaking are the two areas that most students have difficulty to review or practice. In this web-assisted course
design, the articles in the textbook and all the learning exercises I designed are all presented in an audio form andput on the web for students’ free access so that they can review the lesson and do the exercise by listening to thematerial on the web.
Laddered arrangement of learning activities. Various designs of learning practices can be arranged on
the web for different levels of students. One disadvantage of the traditional language class is that every learning
practice the teacher conducts in class is meant for all students and no exception. Slow learners hence face a lot offrustration in class and gradually lose their interest in learning; while fast learners often feel bored because thelearning activities are often times no challenges to them at all. Web learning activities designed in various levels
can solve this difficulty.
Many researches have investigated on what sorts of input are most efficient for ESL or EFL learners. Ellis(1984a) suggests that a high quantity of input directed at the learner could facilitate rapid development. In addition
to quantity, Krashen (1982) and Long (1983b) argue strongly that second language acquisition is dependent on theavailability of comprehensible input, i.e. the input that contains exemplars of the language forms which according
to the natural order are due to acquired next. Input must consist of ‘i + l’, as proposed by Krashen (1982:21). Withvarious levels of learning activities, we hope to provide students with not only the large amount of practice but also
the right level of practice.
Individualization and feedback. A web-assisted course design can help alleviate the problems of large
class size and limited in-class time, and make the learning individualized. On the web, students can work at theirown paces and receive feedback when they need it. The advantage of the web-based activity is its ability to provide
instant interactive, individualized instruction and feedback and never feel tired. Learning activities are arranged
from the simplest to the most difficult and students can select the activities that are suitable for their level andgradually move upward. The purpose of this arrangement is to individualize the practice activities so learners can
reduce their frustration to the minimum. Usually in-class activities are meant for everyone and individualization is
hard to reach.
Pleasure in learning. Schumann (1978) as well as many researchers observed that the formal in-class
instruction influenced the learner’s production only in test-like situations, while normal communication remained
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unaffected. Other researches (Gardner, 1980 etc.) on second or foreign language acquisition also found that thelearner’s motivation and the environment play a very important role in language learning. Hence, to have the best
result, the learning environment and the learners’ interest in learning are probably as critical as the teacher’s
lectures in class, especially in the college, where the English class meets only two hours a week but students canplay on the web for hours a day. Language learning needs high frequency of contact and Internet is a good way to
attract students’ attention and to compensate for the insufficiency of formal school instructions.
Students learn much from the activities they enjoy; that is, they also learn incidentally. However, language
teachers need to know what activities are both fun and educational in language learning. Fong (2000) tests 18
activities and proposes that singing English songs and watching English films are most effective and fun in helping
students acquiring English. To attract students to learn on their own on the web, we should mix fun and interest
with the learning activities we design.
Design of the Web-assisted Course. In this paper, this web-assisted course is put under the course ‘English
reading’, which can be found at my personal web site at (140.138.169.4/Hsin-world). On the first page an introduction of the course is given. Information includes the objective and content of the course, the lecturer’s name andways of contact, class schedule, course requirements, textbooks or software needed, etc. Students can get thegeneral information about the course and get prepared accordingly. Picture One below illustrates this page.
Class content review. The textbook used in this English reading course is Concepts and Comments by P.
Ackert and A. Nebel. There are 25 units in the book; the web is then sub-divided into 25 sub-web pages. To help
students review the article taught in class and also practice listening, the article in each unit is presented in audio
files instead of text files. Students can practice listening or speaking by repeating after the reading sentence bysentence. Hence, in addition to reviewing the written part of the unit, students can also practice listening andpronunciation on the web after class.

Figure 1. Course syllabus and introduction

Figure 2. Review of the course

Learning-assisted activities. Aside from the material in the textbook, some other learning activities arealso put on the web to give students extra practice or a greater challenge. These activities are arranged in order ofcomplexity, from the easiest to the most difficult. Picture Three shows these learning activities.
Interesting English activities. Several studies (Gardner 1980, Savignon 1976, among others) show thatinterest and motivation are one of the major reasons why students can learn English well. If the web language
learning activities can not only help students in their course studies but also arouse their interest in learning English, the English teaching will have double effect. Based on this concept, I designed first the ‘English Songs’ since
singing English songs have always been a popular activity among students. The lyrics are also given but withEnglish Teaching Through Internet [Oral Presentation]256

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several blanks. With this design, we hope that when students are filling in the blanks, they will get an impressionof the English vocabulary and sentence patterns. This activity is illustrated in Picture Four below.
Visual pleasure is also one advantage of the web learning over the traditional English class. Since the web
can provide almost unlimited source of media in teaching, we might as well make good use of this advantage andmake the English learning as fun as possible. Here I use the Power Point software to design a short film, in which
the imperative sentence pattern of English is taught. With the beauty and fun of the pictures, students could easily
learn the patterns fast and with joy.
Motion pictures can also be provided on the web to assist learning. To reduce the size of the video file, we
can use the Real Software and make the film easier to transmit on the Internet. Students learn the gesture and body
movement when they watch an English skit, and this is also one important part of language learning. Picture Fiveshows this activity on the web.

Figure 3. Learning activities

Figure 4. English song activity

Self-Testing and Self-Challenging. All of the above learning activities focus on English accomplishment
in one semester. However, the final goal of language learning is aimed to build up a general proficiency in all
aspects of the language. Hence, we can from time to time let students have a general English ability test so that they
will understand their progress in upgrading their English abilities.
Presently, the most common and standardized English proficiency test is the TOEFL test. Therefore, acouple of TOEFL simulated tests are put on the web for students’ practice. Tapescripts can be provided if somelong passage listening is too hard for them at the beginning. Students, when doing the tests, will also pick up some
useful words and expressions in English. Picture Six below displays the arrangement of TOEFL practices on the
web.

Figure 5. Learning English with fun
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Conclusion
Tough a novel tryout, the networked teaching or learning is actually receiving a lot of positive evaluation in
research. Anderson et. at. (1999) reports that the internet has much potential to provide a unique environment for
language teaching and learning. It is observed that participants using the web-learning program exhibit a greater
proportion of conscious recollection of learned material than those who learn using traditional methods. Harrison(1998) highly recommends the use of the WWW for teaching with authentic materials and using collaborative
tools. He foresees the rapid growth of the agentive use of the Internet for teaching Japanese and suggests language
teachers adapt to the trend and make good use of it.
However, this web design certainly is not perfect and several areas can be improved. First, the pictures on
the web are all static without animation. In the future, more interesting effects on the web can be added and, withthe advance of web technology, the arrangement and design of web activities can be made both efficient andattractive. Another area for improvement is the feedback messages. Currently only the correct answer is provided
as the feedback. Later, different designs of feedback can be supplied for different levels of students.
With all these assisting learning activities on the web, we can break almost all the obstacles we faced in the
traditional language class. Language labs can be replaced and learning can be conducted on the learner-centeredbasis and at the students’ own pace. Yet the present web-assisted course design is rough, using only the most basic
functions of the web, i.e. long distance and free access. Nevertheless, it is simple and easy and an English teacher
without much sense of web technology can build a teaching assisting web site similar to this one easily. Web
industry is developing rapidly, and it is influencing many aspects of our life, language learning included. As an
English teacher, we probably do not need to learn the skills of web construction, but we certainly need to pay close
attention to how the web can assist or effect us in language learning.

References
Anderson, S. J., J. M. Noyes and K. J. Garland. (1999). Evaluation of the Internet as a learning tool. Journal ofComputer Assisted Learning, 15, 87-88.
Backman, L. and A. Palmer. (1996). Language testing in practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brown, J. (1997). Computers in language testing: Present research and some future directions. Language learning
and Technology, 1(1), 44-59.
Brown, C. and M. E. Payne, (1994). Five essential steps of processes in vocabulary learning. Paper presented at
the TESOL Conference, Baltimore, MD.
Dunkel, P. (ed.) (1991). Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching. Newbury House: HarperCollins.
Ellis, R. (1984). Classroom Second Language Development. Oxford: Pergamon.
Fong, B. (2000). A study of the college students’ perception variance on learner-centered activities in the English
lab course. Proceedings of the 17th Conference on English Teaching and Learning in the Republic of China.
pp. 437-455 Taipei: The Crane Publishing Co. Ltd.
Gardner, R. (1980). On the validity of affective variables in second language acquisition: conceptual, contextual
and statistical considerations. Language Learning, 30, 255-70.
Harrison, R. (1998). The evolution of networked computing in the teaching of Japanese as a foreign language.
Computer Assisted Language Learning, 11(4), 437-452.
Kimball, J. (1998). Task-based medical English: elements for internet-assisted language learning. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 11(4), 411-417.

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Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon.
Leahy, C. (1998). Student centered legal language study. Computer assisted language learning, 11(3), 289-308.
Long, M. (1983). Native speaker/non-native speaker conversation in the second language classroom. In M. Clarke
and J. Handscombe (eds.). On TESOL ’82: Pacific perspectives on language learning and teaching. Washington D.C.: TESOL.
Nelson, B. (1998). Web-based vocabulary activities: Pedagogy and practice. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 11(4), 427-435.
Oxford, R. (1990). Language learning strategies: What every teacher should know. New York: Newbury House.
Peterson, M. (1998). The virtual learning environment: The design of a website for language learning. Computer
Assisted Language Learning, 11(4), 349-361.
Phinney, M. (1991). Computer-assisted writing and writing apprehension in ESL students. In P. Dunkel (ed.) Computer-assisted language learning and teaching. Newbury House: HarperCollins.
Savignon, S. (1976). On the other side of the desk: a look at teacher attitudes and motivation in second language
learning. Canadian Modern Language Review, 76, 32.
Schumann, J. (1978). The acculturation model for second language acquisition. In R. Gingras (ed.). Second language acquisition and foreign language teaching. Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics.

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English Teaching Using CALL Software
Etsuko Watanabe
Kinran Junior College, Japan
Abstract
A CALL software, New Dynamic English, is introduced to CALL lessons at Kinran Junior College. About
one third of the whole lesson period (one lesson 90 minutes) is allotted for the material to learn English. At theend of the course a questionnaire is carried out. It is verified that the software is enjoyable and useful forstudents to practice.

Introduction
Teaching English using computers changes students’ learning styles and lessons completely. It makes learning an individual job, not a whole class activity. Students can learn at their own paces. Teaching English using
computers has been getting popular among Japanese schools. Can computers be ideal teaching tools? A questionnaire is carried out to find out how learners accept CALL lessons and the software New Dynamic English.

MethodFrom April 12th until July 14th New Dynamic English (CALL software) was used as one of the threematerials. Students of three classes took the lessons. All of them are first year students of the English Department
at Kinran Junior College. They could access New Dynamic English Disc 1 and Disc 2 of Level 2. They answereda questionnaire on New Dynamic English at the end of the course. The number of students who answered it was 77.

Items of Questionnaire and the Answers
The students’ answers to each question and their comments are shown one by one.
I-1. Did you enjoy New Dynamic English?

6%

6%

25%
25%
very muchso-so
not at all

69%

69%

Figure 1. The proportion of students who enjoyed New Dynamic English
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Students were asked to choose one item out of “very much,” “so so,” and “not at all” to the question “Didyou enjoy New Dynamic English?”Twenty five percent of the students enjoyed the material very much as shown in
Figure 1. Sixty nine percent of them enjoyed the material to some extent. We can judge that the material was
accepted.
Tables 1, 2 and 3 show the reasons why they enjoyed New Dynamic English very much, the reasons why
they enjoyed it to some extent, and the reasons why they did not enjoy it respectively. Some students wrote nothing,and some listed several reasons. The numerals in the right column of each table show the number of students withsimilar reasons.
As shown in Tables 1 and 2, many students were interested in learning English using a computer and they
enjoyed it, because they could learn at their own paces looking at the pictures on the screen which was accompanied with authentic English. Table 3 shows that there are only few students that had some difficulty in learning
English through New Dynamic English.

Table 1. Reasons Why New Dynamic English was Enjoyed
I enjoyed New Dynamic English very much, because:This was a new experience for me.

3

I could learn at my own pace.

2

It seemed to improve my English.

1

It was easy to understand.

1

Voices and Japanese accompanied it if I needed to hear.

1

I could concentrate on learning.

1

I was happy when they produced the scores.

1Sounds and moving pictures accompanied it.

1

I liked blank completion putting in the given words.

1

I could improve my listening ability by playing games.

1

Table 2. Reasons Why New Dynamic English was Enjoyed to Some Extent
I enjoyed New Dynamic English to some extent, because:
It was easy to understand by looking at the screen.

3

I could learn at my own pace. I could listen to the same part repeatedly.

3

The listening part was fun.

2

I could converse with the computer.

1

The way of using the computer for New Dynamic English was easy.

1

I could not understand well.

3

The volume of the sound was small.

2

I wish we could have spent more time for New Dynamic English.

1

The speaking part was not good1

It was so difficult that I could not proceed well.

1

The patterns of practice were similar.

1

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Table 3. The Reasons Why I Did Not Enjoy New Dynamic English
I did not enjoy New Dynamic English at all, because:
I could not catch English at all.

2

The practice was so simple.

1

New Dynamic English is a material that provides listening, grammar and speaking practices. These practices
are combined with each other. Which part they enjoyed most was asked. Figure 2 shows that half of the students
enjoyed the listening part of the material most and the number of students who enjoyed the speaking part most was
small.

1-2. Which part did you enjoy most?

Number of Students

40
30
20
10
00

Listening

GrammarSpeaking

Figure 2. Parts that the students enjoyed most
Tables 4, 5 and 6 show the reasons why they enjoyed the listening part most, the grammar part most and the
speaking part most respectively. Some students wrote nothing, and some gave several reasons.

Table 4. Reasons Why Students Enjoyed the Listening Part Most
I enjoyed the listening part most, because:
I could listen to the English repeatedly if I made a mistake.

5

I got used to listening to the voices.

4

I could listen to natural authentic English.

3

I had to answer within the time limit, so I learned to respond quickly.

2

It was easy to understand.

2

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Table 5. Reasons Why They Enjoyed the Grammar Part Most
I enjoyed the grammar part most, because:
It was good for me that I could try many times until I could produce
correct sentences listening repeatedly.

5

I enjoyed the word arrangement.

4

I could understand the English.

3

I enjoyed clicking of mouse.

1

I listened intently to fill in the blanks.

1

I liked the grammar practice.

1

Table 6. Reasons Why They Enjoyed the Speaking Part Most
I enjoyed the speaking part most, because:
It was a new experience for me.

1

Pronunciation was difficult, but I could repeat speaking until I .
could pronouce it correctly.

1

I could judge my own pronunciation.

1

As shown in Table 1, being able to listen to English many times repeatedly with pictures was helpful andnecessary for learners. Table 2 shows they enjoyed the exercise of word arrangement using the mouse and listening
to English. Table 3 shows some students enjoyed the speaking part of New Dynamic English which has an innovative characteristic with its speaking practice: it recognizes the English that students produce. This practice wasfantastic for the advanced students.
Students were asked if New Dynamic English was useful or not. They chose one out of “very much”, “so so”
and “not at all”.
Figure 3 shows that twenty seven percent students think that New Dynamic English was very useful, sixty
nine percent of them think it was okay, and only four percent of them think it was not useful for them at all.
Tables 7, 8 and 9 show the reasons why students think New Dynamic English was very useful, the reasons
why they think it was okay, and the reasons why they do not think it was useful. Some wrote nothing, and somegave several reasons. Each numeral in the right column of each table shows the number of students with similarreasons..
Tables 7 and 8 show that students think New Dynamic English was useful as they could listen to natural
English repeatedly and it was fun. Some mentioned that they do not have enough chances to recognize their improvement. Table 9 shows those who do not think it was useful had some difficulty in following the speed ofEnglish.

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II-1. Do you think New Dynamic English was useful?
4%4%very much
27%
27%
so-so
not at all

69%
69%

Figure 3. Ratios of usefulness as seen by the students
Table 7. Reasons Why New Dynamic English was Thought to be UsefulI think New Dynamic English was very useful, because:
Doing it little by little made me get used to English.

4

It was fun.

2

I could listen to the difficult parts repeatedly.

2

It is full of useful expressions.

1

The speakers of the material spoke natural English.

1

I absorbed English pronunciation by listening.

1

Table 8. Reasons Why New Dynamic English was Thought to be Okay
I think New Dynamic English was okay, because:This material was useful for listening.

6

At first it looked simple but gradually it became difficult.

1

Repeating similar sentences or patterns I memorized them.

1

I could find if my pronunciation was communicative.

1

This practice would be useful when I go abroad.

1

I do not know if this is useful or not.

1

Table 9. Reasons Why New Dynamic English was Thought to be Useful
I do not think New Dynamic English was useful at all, because:
I could not follow the speed of English and I could not answer.

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New Dynamic English is a material that provides listening, grammar and speaking practices. These practices
are combined with each other. They were asked which part they thought was the most useful. Figure 4 shows thatthe number of students who think the listening part was the most useful is the largest at 59 %.

Number of Students

50
40
30
20
10
00

Listening

GrammarSpeaking

Figure 4. How many students thought each part was interesting.
About 30 to 40 minutes out of each 90 minutes lesson period were allotted for New Dynamic English.
Students were asked if they would like to use New Dynamic English for the whole lesson period or not was asked.
Figure 5 shows that forty seven percent of students would like to use New Dynamic English for the whole lesson
period and forty three percent of them would not
III. What do you think about using New Dynamic English for the whole period?

10%
10%
would like to

47%
47%
43%
43%

would prefer not todoesn’t matter

Figure 5. The proportion of students who would like to use New Dynamic English for the whole
periodTables 10 and 11 show the reasons why students would like to use New Dynamic English for the whole
period, and the reasons why they would not respectively. Some wrote nothing, and some mentioned several reasons. Each numeral in the right column of each table shows the number of students who made similar remarks.
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Table 10. Reasons Why Students Wanted to use New Dynamic English for the Whole Lesson
PeriodI would like to use New Dynamic English for the whole lesson period, because:
It is fun and useful.

8

I can learn English at my own pace.

5This lesson is different from ordinary ones.

2

To use a computer is useful.

1

I like a computer.

1

We cannot do many things for 90 minutes.

1

Table 11. Reasons Why Students Did Not Want to Use New Dynamic English for the Whole Lesson
PeriodI would not like to use New Dynamic English for the whole lesson period, because:
It would be boring.

11

It would make my eyes tired.

4

It would be tiring to do it for 90 minutes.

3

I prefer real conversations.

2

It cannot be called lessons.

1

I like the combination of present lessons: computer material,
a movie and video skits.

1

Teachers are useless.

1

Results of the Questionnaire1.

One fourth of the students enjoyed New Dynamic English very much.

2.

Sixty nine percent of the students enjoyed it to some extent.

3.

Half of the students enjoyed the listening part of New Dynamic English most.

4.

One third of the students enjoyed the grammar part.

5.

About 15 percent of the students enjoyed the speaking part.

6.

Twenty seven percent of the students think New Dynamic English was very useful.

7.

Sixty nine percent of the students think New Dynamic English was useful to some extent.

8.

Fifty nine percent of the students think the listening part was the most useful.

9.

Forty seven percent of the students would like to use New Dynamic for the whole period but
forty three percent would not.

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Discussion
It can be said that most of the students enjoyed this new learning material using computes, and that New
Dynamic English was useful for most students, because the quality of English is good and they could listen to it
repeatedly. Students wanted to improve their listening ability most, so they appreciated the listening part of it most.
Judging from the fact that the percentage of students who would like to use it for the whole lesson period and thatof students who would not are similar, it should be decided carefully to use the whole period for the material.

Conclusion
A questionnaire was carried out to find out how learners accepted CALL lessons and the software named
New Dynamic English. It was verified that New Dynamic English was enjoyable and useful for students to learn
English. The listening part was especially appreciated. But to use it for 90 minutes or more than an hour seems to
make students tired and bored. This kind of CALL software is expected to develop more and how to use new one
should be studied more.

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Evaluating Student Proficiency in the Language Laboratory
June-ko Matsui
Meikai University, Japan
Introduction
The objective of the present experiment is to determine whether the role of vocabulary is more pronounced
than background information in the listening process. Various factors are involved in listening, and inadequacies inany pertinent perception skill can pose communication barriers.
The present study tests the relevance of vocabulary versus background information when listening to a news
commentary/debate. The type of information provided - vocabulary vs. background information - was correlatedwith TOEFL-ITP scores.
Results indicate that vocabulary is more essential for word comprehension than background information, butboth vocabulary and background information are necessary to understand the meaning of an utterance. That is, alistener can understand word meanings if he/she knows the terminology, but will be unable to comprehend concepts unless background schema is provided. This might be comparable to a person reading a book out loud, but notunderstanding what he/she is saying.
The higher a subject’s proficiency in listening, the more likely either vocabulary or background was tobenefit him/her during dictation. Previous research shows that listening is rate dependent - that is the location ofphonetic category boundaries changes with rate. (Miller, O’Rourke, & Volatis, 1997). Lower acheivers may havenot acquired such rate dependent listening skills. Also, Japanese listeners have been found to classify English
vowels as similar Japanese correlates (Ingram, J. & Park, S., 1997). Proficient listeners are more likely to haveestablished separate categories for separate vowels, leading to fewer listening errors, whereas less proficient listeners re-assign all foreign sounds into their native phonetic system, thereby increasing the chance of misperceptions.
Results indicate that students who are better at listening have already acquired more of the basic skills such as
reduction, linking, assimilation, and consonant/vowel perception needed for comprehension, and therefore any
extra information provided leads to improvement. Meanwhile, listeners who have not acquired basic skills do notbenefit as much from additional vocabulary and background knowledge because their lack of listening skills hinders the phonetic input process.
Likewise, the higher a subject’s vocabulary, grammar, and composition proficiency was, the more likely he/she was to initially comprehend the meaning of the target listening segment. However, further information such asadditional background was more beneficial to listeners in comprehending meaning, for subjects who have higher
TOEFL listening scores. In other words, listening skills were essential in maximizing other pertinent input, such as
vocabulary and background information. Unless a subject had the basic listening skills needed, he/she was unable
to take full advantage of any other helpful data provided.

MethodThe experiment took place over four stages. In the first stage, two groups of Japanese subjects were instructed to to write word for word, each segment of the tape-recorded news report shown below:“Look. Look. The...uh...Milosevic and his security forces had a rampage through Kosovo thissummer.
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It was inexcusable an appalling. They created 400,000 refugees and homeless.
A lot of people were killed unnecessarily.
I’m sorry that we weren’t...uh...much quicker to put pressure on him, but that was a function ofa tremendous legal dispute with the Europeans and the Russians over the right of NATO to act.
And now, I hope that this civilian army,
This NATO surveillance and all the other things will provide a security environment which willallow these people to come back.”
Only the first sentence was analyzed in order to unify memory retention and fatigue factors. The tape wasstopped periodically. If the subjects were unable to hear words, they were encouraged to write any sounds they
could pick up. After the tape was played twice, portion by portion, it was played through from beginning to end.
After the dictation exercise, they were requested to write if possible, a word-for-word translation of the segment, or
if this was not possible, to write a summary of what was being said, or write what the topic was.
In the second stage, group 1 was shown a word list shown below, with the Japanese translation of the words
next to the English original.

Word List
Milosevic, security forces, rampage, Kosovo, inexcusable, appalling, refugees, pressure, function, tremendous, legal, dispute, right, to act, civilian army, NATO, surveillance, security, environment
The group repeated the words aloud after an instructor, and was instructed to look at the translation of thewords. The word list was read twice off closed-circuit TV screens. The word list was removed immediately after
the repetition exercise.
Group 2, on the other hand, was given a short explanation on the situation in Japanese, roughly as indicatedbelow:The situation in Yugoslavia is reported on daily, in the news and newspapers. The Yugoslav
leader, Milosevic, has invaded Kosovo, and is tormenting the Albanians. The North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, or NATO, is trying to restrain Milosevic. The person speaking on the tape is an American special envoy, and he is talking about the atrocities commited by Milosevic. Next, he says NATOwas not able to act earlier because there were legal problems involved. Finally, he says he hopes
NATO monitoring will lead to a good environment, and hopes the refugees can go home soon.
Group 2 was then shown a full Japanese translation of the English on closed-circuit TV screens, but was notprovided any English. The translation was read, and was removed from the screen, immediately after the reading.
Both groups then listened to the tapes twice, portion by portion, writing down everything they could hear.
They then wrote a translation, if possible, of the text, and were instructed to write a summary, or write the theme, ifthey could not write a full translation.
In the third stage, the process was reversed, and Group 1 was given an explanation of the background and theJapanese translation, and Group 2 was shown the word list. The groups repeated the listening/dictation and translating/summarizing procedure.
In the fourth stage of the experiment, the subjects listened to segments (individual sounds) which wereunrelated to the above debate. The two groups were instructed to choose which word (shown below) they heard
when the utterances/sounds were spoken in isolation.
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Correct answer:
Options:

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sip, correct, i, bit lack, slip, heard, uncle, full, bough
ship/sip, correct/collect, eat/English (vowel spoken in isolation), beat/bit,
sleep/slip, heard/hard, ankle/uncle, fool/full, bough/boy

Correct answer:
Options:see, wrong, i, ill, bag, live, fur, run, pull, mareshe/see, long/wrong, meat/busy (vowel spoken in isolation), eel/ill, bag/bug,leave/live, fur/far, ran/run, pool/pull, mere/mare/moor/more

The results were correlated with TOEFL scores.

Results and Discussion
Results indicate that vocabulary is essential for word comprehension. A listener is not able to hear a word he/she does not know. On the other hand, both vocabulary and background information are necessary to comprehend
the meaning of a statement.
The higher a subject’s vocabulary, grammar, and composition proficiency was, the more likely he/she was toinitially comprehend the meaning of the target listening segment. Moreover, additional information such as background data was more beneficial to listeners who have higher TOEFL listening scores.
The ability to hear individual sounds (segments) correlated mildly with the TOEFL vocabulary/grammarscores (0.4 & 0.35) for the two groups, but was not correlated with the listening or reading sections. This may be
because listening to individual sounds is a local skill, similar to vocabulary/grammar, rather than a global skill likeunderstanding concepts and ideas.

Conclusion
The present experiment was conducted to determine whether vocabulary is more essential than backgroundinformation in listening. Vocabulary vs. background information - was correlated with TOEFL-ITP scores.
Results indicate that vocabulary is more essential for word comprehension than background information, butboth vocabulary and background information are necessary to understand meaning. Listeners are able to identify
words if they know the terminology being used, but are unable to comprehend the meaning unless the backgroundis provided.
The higher a subject’s proficiency in listening, the more likely either vocabulary or background would
benefit him/her in the dictation exercise. Students who are better at listening have already acquired more of thebasic skills such as reduction, linking, assimilation, and consonant/vowel perception needed for comprehension,and therefore any extra information leads to immediate improvement. On the other hand, listeners who have notacquired basic skills do not benefit as much from additional vocabulary and background knowledge because theirlack of listening skills hinders the phonetic input process.
Likewise, subjects who scored higher on TOEFL-ITP vocabulary, grammar, and composition were more
likely to initially comprehend the meaning, but further information such as additional background was more helpful for listeners in comprehending meaning, if they had higher TOEFL listening scores. In other words, listening
skills were essential in utilizing vocabulary and background information. Unless subjects had basic listening skills,
they were unable to fully benefit from from other pertinent data.

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Moreover, students who scored higher in TOEFL vocabulary/grammar were also more likely to hear individual sounds - probably reflecting the more localized and isolated nature of both skill compared to more global
tasks such as overall listening comprehension and reading for meaning.

References
Miller, J.; O’Rourke T; & Volatis, L. (1997). Internal structure of phonetic categories: Effects of speaking rate.
Phonetica 54. 121-137.
Ingram, J. & Park, S. (1997). Cross-language vowel perception and production by Japanese and Korean learners ofEnglish. Journal of Phonetics. 25. 343-370.

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An Evaluation Study of CALL Software for EFL Learners
Huei-Chun Teng
National Yunlin University of
Science and Technology, Taiwan
Abstract
The purpose of the present study is to evaluate some CALL software designed for EFL learners of intermediate level. The major research questions explored in the study are: (a) What are the advantages and disadvantages of the evaluated CALL software? (b) What are the users’ perceptions for the evaluated CALL software?
Subjects in the study are eight students and six teachers from a university in Taiwan. There are three instruments
adopted in the study, including a survey, a questionnaire, and an interview. Several suggestions are proposed
based on the results. First, user-friendliness and good display quality are the important elements of effective
CALL software. Besides, the vocabulary and content of CALL software must be diversified and varied in order
to arouse users’ interests and provide lots of information and vocabulary for learners. In addition, effective
CALL software should provide authentic conversation and motion pictures for users to obtain situational learning.

Introduction
In the past, people listened to the tapes or the radio to learn English; nowadays, CALL has been generally
used in teaching and learning English. Nevertheless, most of the software designers emphasize the attractivenessof the multimedia software, rather than the analysis of purposes, needs, and levels of users. As a result, there is a
lot of multimedia software which looks very interesting and useful, but in fact the context of most software can notsatisfy many learners. Some of them are even totally unfavorable in learning English. Due to the difficulties of
establishing a standard, we decide to evaluate the multimedia software for English learners of intermediate level.
The purpose of the present study is to evaluate several CALL software programs designed for EFL learners ofintermediate level English. Three main research questions are explored: (1) What are the features in the evaluated
CALL software? (2) What are the advantages and disadvantages of the evaluated CALL software? (3) What are theusers’ comments for the CALL software?

Literature Review
There are two studies about the effectiveness of CALL for ESL learning. According to Watts’ study (1989)
on CALL, IVD (interactive videodisc) provided a highly motivating and successful language learning experience,
based on her research results and learner response. Branvold, Chang, Probst and Bennion (1986), in a pre-post-test
design of comparison between IVD groups and non-IVD groups, found that both groups had increased learning inareas of vocabulary, expressions, and content. Considering the examination of a single lesson will rarely revealthat it is good for every purpose or every student, Chapelle and Jamieson (1989) emphasize that aspects of lessons,learning, and learners should be clearly defined to make a meaningful assessment of CALL effectiveness. Malone,
Kirkpatrick and Heasly (1984) proposed a series of considerations and selected appropriate and relevant points: theobjective of evaluation, test method, and appropriate test measure selected. As for test method, some are suggested
as follows: task analysis, error analysis, experiment, observation and measurement of actual performance, survey,
questionnaire, and interview. Appropriate test measure selected should include user-friendliness, information quality,
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display quality, display characteristics, data organization, dialogues, procedures, data entry device characteristics
and documentation.
Two studies about the use of help function are reviewed. Chou (1992) asked 39 EFL high school students towork on a reading program through using a hypertext program for reading instruction. The program is designedwith four types of help respectively: text only (no help), text with on-line vocabulary help, text with on-line sentence structural analysis, and text with strategic help. This comparison study reports that types of help did not
make a difference on reading comprehension among groups of subjects. Chou’s questionnaire data indicate that
subjects thought the vocabulary help was the most useful, and was used most frequently. In a study about students’reaction toward standard subtitles, Vanderplank (1988) found that the subtitles can reduce anxiety in class andrelease spare language processing capacity. However, he found that subtitles are not so useful for low-level learners as for intermediate learners.
In Taiwan, two studies for EFL learning are reviewed here. In the fall of 1993, twenty college EFL subjects
from Foreign Languages Department of National Tsing Hua University participated in the evaluation of a piece of
IVD courseware (Liou, 1993). It was conducted from the perspective of learner strategies regarding use of on-line
help and time on task. Results show that the on-line help design is useful to most of the learners because they
actually used them. Then we move to an evaluation survey study on the effectiveness of a multimedia CALL
program conducted form 1994 to mid 1995 (Liou, Shieh, and Yeh, 1994). This paper shows the results of evaluating a piece of interactive videodisc language learning courseware using a survey approach. This survey was
conducted to 31 EFL students using a questionnaire in order to evaluate a piece of interactive videodisc multimedia
courseware. The implication from this study is that we have to delineate important constructs beforehand, and thenwe can design a feasible and convenient questionnaire like those in the reviewed studies. However, the questionnaire answers can have biases or even the designer’s subjective presuppositions. The overall assessment is positive
on four aspects: learning effectiveness, interestingness, user-friendliness, and instructional design effectiveness.
Some unsatisfactory specific points of the courseware would need revision work in the future.

Methodology
Subjects
Subjects for this study are 8 Chinese students from The Applied Foreign Language Department (DAFL) at
National Yunlin University of Science and Technology. Generally, their abilities in listening, reading, speaking,and writing are among intermediate high level and have no difficulty communicating in English in daily life. The
average age of subjects is 22 and the average duration of learning English till now is 10 years. Two males and six
females participated in the present study.

Materials
LangMaster Interactive English. LangMaster Interactive English is a well-designed multimedia software
especially for learning foreign languages. The course programs are based on textbooks published by Heinemann
English Institution in the UK. One of the most creative features of the advance program is the detective story;
fictions are adopted in the materials. LangMaster Interactive English programmed three different level programsfor those who have different needs. Each learner can select the most proper level for learning.
Studio Classroom. This software contains five units in it. The American Way is designed in order to letlearners understand American culture, values, and life style. Multi-Word Verbs contains some interesting fables
which include a lot of phrases, and its purpose is to make users learn more phrases easily through reading thesefables. Famous People introduces stories of famous people such as Leonardo da Vinci and Bill Gates. Around theWorld introduces the world news, and some of them even use the newscast way. Spotlight vividly introduces
several famous cities for users.
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Huh? Huh? Is a program designed to help learners to enhance their listening ability, and is published by
Attainment Company in Taiwan. There are four major parts for practice: games, easier, difficult, and impossible.
In “Games” section, four simple games are included. In the “What’s the sentence” section, a learner must put thewords in sequence after listening to one sentence. In the “What does it mean” section, a learner must choose theexact meaning after listening to one sentence. In the “Rabbit hunting” section, a learner has to shoot the answer
after listening to a word. Also, in the “How many words” section, a learner has to select the number of words after
listening to one sentence.

Instruments
There are three kinds of experimental instruments adopted in the study, including a survey, a questionnaire
and interview questions for CALL software. They are described in the following sections.

SurveyThe survey is used to examine researchers’ attitudes toward the three CALL software programs. The survey
for researchers includes four parts. Part I. is Publication Information, which asked researchers to write down thebasic information about the software, i.e. title, author, publisher, place of publication, Internet URL, and intended
level. Part II. Is System Minimum Requirements, which asked researchers to write down the information about thebasic computer system requirement in order to assess the software, such as CPU, CD-ROM, RAM, SoundBlaster,
video card, etc. Part III. is Software Characteristics, which asked researchers to check or circle the appropriate
answer.
Questionnaire. The questionnaire was designed to examine subjects’ attitudes and feelings toward software. Part. I. is Basic Information, including some questions about the basic information of each subject such as
the name, the age, etc. Part. II. is Instruction Before Using. In this part, subjects should circle the most appropriate
answer for the questions such as that if the instruction is clear enough or if the intended level is clearly noted in the
instruction. Part. III. is Evaluation After Using, including the following four sections: hypertext, games and tests,
visual and sound effect, and user satisfaction.
Interview. The interviewing questions are designed to ask more deeply about subjects’ opinions and feelings toward software. Therefore, the answer would be open, in order to get more detailed information from thesubjects. Six questions are designed for each evaluated program.
Procedures. At the first stage, researchers decided to select three sets of software of intermediate level forevaluation. Secondly, survey for CALL software was used for conducting evaluation by researchers themselves.
Researchers tried out these three sets of software step by step, including screen display, using the program, andcontent. Taking notes about special feature, advantage, as well as disadvantage in every step was necessary. After
that, researchers filled out the survey.
At the final stage, eight students as subjects from Department of Applied Foreign Language in National
Yunlin University of Science and Technology were assigned to use and evaluate one set of software in the multimedia classroom. After that, subjects completed questionnaire for CALL Software and interview questions.

Results
Researchers’ Ratings of Survey
In the present study, the survey is used to examine researchers’ attitudes toward three sets of CALL software.
Thus, the results of the survey represent the value of the software in researchers’ opinion. There are four parts inthe survey, including: Publication Information, System Minimum Requirements, Software Characteristics and

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Content. The following section demonstrates one of the results of researchers’ ratings of one CALL software
evaluated in the current study.
Survey of Studio Classroom
Using the Program
1. Menu Driven ×

Command Driven __2. Display of Menus/Commands

Clear

5 4 3 2 1 Unclear

3. Use of Helps

Clear

5 4 3 2 1 Unclear

4. Existing ProgramEasy

5 4 3 2 1 Difficult

5. DirectionsClear

5 4 3 2 1 Unclear

6. Feedback

Efficient

5 4 3 2 1 Inefficient

Visual ×

Auditory ×

Immediate __Motivational __Positive __Negative __Drill and Practice ×

Tutorial __Simulation __Games ×

Demonstration __Test ×

Reading ×

Composing __7. Types of Activities __8. Record Keeping

Yes __No ×

a.

Current (on screen only) __b.

Stored (for later printing) __c.

Comparative (individual with other users) __9. Interface

User Friendly

5 4 3 2 1 User Hostile

10. Motivation

Interesting

5 4 3 2 1 Boring

Subjects’ responses to questionnaire. In the present study, the questionnaire was designed to examine
subjects’ attitudes and feelings toward each software. Therefore, the result of the questionnaire would represent
subjects’ opinions about how each software performs.
Table 1 presents one part of the questionnaire.
Subjects’ answers to interview questions. In this study, the interviewing questions are designed to asked
more deeply about subjects’ opinions and feelings about each software. The following section shows part of theresults of subjects’ answers to interview question. (The number of respodents for each answer is indicated inbrackets.)
Interview of Huh?
Question 5:

What kind of characteristics do you think a useful multimedia software for EFL learners should
have?

Answers:

1.

[3] User-friendly, such as simple and clear explanations and easy to operate.

2.

[4] Vivid and creative in order to make the user to continue using.

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3.

[5]. Attractive music, sound effect, especially outstanding pictures to attract people
to use.

4.

[2] Interesting and creative games or exams, in order to attract the users andcorrect their mistakes.

5.

[1] Understanding the needs of users.

Questionnaire of LANGMaster Interactive English
Table 1. Subjects’ Responses to Evaluation after Using (satisfaction with the software)
Item

NumberMean

Rank

I am content with the program settings.

5

2.2

7

I learned something from this multimedia software.

5

2.8

3

Generally, the multimedia software is very efficient for teaching English.

5

2.4

4

Listening

5

3.6

2

Pronunciation

5

3.8

1

Conversation

5

2.6

3

Reading5

2.6

3

Writing5

1.6

6

Grammar5

2.2

5

Vocabulary

5

3.6

2

Cultural Understanding

5

2.6

3

Others5

1.0

8The software helped me most in the following skills:

Discussion and Conclusion
Discussion of the Results
LANGMaster Interactive English. Reviewing the data from survey, questionnaire, and interview questions,
we propose three advantages of LangMaster Interactive English. First, there is variety in the vocabulary andphrases. Second, meaningful pictures are very helpful to comprehend the text. Third, subjects agree that thesoftware accelerates listening skill the most for the pronunciation is articulate.
According to the data, there are few disadvantages of the software. First of all, researchers and most subjects
reported that the main menu is poorly designed. Besides, the software does not give proper directions. Second,rules in drills and games are not defined. Third, the helplessness of the “help function” is another weakness of the
program. At worst, users have to quit from the current section and start the software all over again. To sum up, thedata suggest a major defect in the software. Comparing the result of the present study with those of the previous
studies in Chapter 2, we discover that user friendly is one of the significant factors for users.
Studio Classroom. According to the questionnaires of Studio Classroom, we can see that this software has
the best performance for the users. Most of the items are evaluated to be above 4.0. So, from these statistics we can
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know this software is the most useful one for the learners. The highest point is 4.4; thus, we can see that the
vocabulary for the Studio Classroom are most useful and abundant. The second highest point is 4.2. From these
items, they show that the contents are well structured, and it is helpful to learn English by playing games for users.
Moreover, the effect of motion pictures as well as sound effects and background music are useful to attract theattention of users. Most of the subjects think that this software is user-friendly. It is really easy to operate.
However, from the lowest point of 2.6, we can know that the one of the disadvantages of this software is thatit does not clearly note the level on the cover or in the instruction. The other disadvantage of this software is thatthe instruction before using is not clear and complete enough for users to understand.
Huh? After being evaluated by subjects and researchers, this program is found to have the following advantages. First of all, the documentation is clear and easy to understand. Secondly, the screen display is organized anduncluttered, and the font is clear and moderate, which make learners feel comfortable. Thirdly, the interface isquite user-friendly and learners will be willing to use it. Fourthly, the games are very interesting and the pictures
are cute and attractive. Finally, Huh? is a representative listening program with unbiased and coherent content. Its
step-by-step practices, from Easy to Impossible, makes it easy for learners follow and gain points.
However, there are also several disadvantages in this program. Firstly, it lacks the use of help. According to
the evaluation of a piece of IVD courseware (Liou, 1993), results show that the on-line help design is useful to mostof the learners because they actually used it. Besides, Robinson (1989) revealed that a program, which concludes
program and student-controlled help benefits more for students than those with no help, total program-controlled or
total student-controlled programs. Without the use of help, learners will easily get confused when they havetroubles in operation. Secondly, it lacks feedback, and it does not analyze learners’ learning defects. Meskill(1991) implemented six different types of strategy advice messages (rehears, monitor, repeat, plan, associate, andresource strategies). The results indicated that most of the subjects read those messages and were willing to follow
the advice. Without feedback, learners can hardly recognize how to adjust themselves and how to improve themselves. After all, this program neither provides the time limit when playing games, and nor keeps learners’ records.

Implications of the Study
By combining the results of the present study, there are some implications for teachers, parents, students, andsoftware firms. First, for teachers or parents, we discover that students are generally interested in multimedia
software programs. Besides, software programs apply visual aids, motion pictures and sound effects, which draw
more attention than traditional teaching methods. A properly projected multimedia software program can be a very
good tutor after class. So, parents should encourage children to use it to assist learning and reviewing at home.
Secondly, for students, it is always significant for students to select a better multimedia software program.
Students or users should examine if the software is labeled with a defined level. To choose the suitable level forusers is important. To consider about how practical the contents are should be emphasized, too. Besides, thesettings of the program must create a scene for students to learn how to respond according to the actual situation.
Thirdly, by reviewing the results of surveys, questionnaires, and interview questions, we propose three implications for software firms. First of all, software companies should be able to combine the latest high technology
with software design. Motion pictures and sound effects will draw the most interest from users.
Consequently, to combine software designers’ specialty with the knowledge of EFL teaching experts is
another urgent issue for software companies. Software companies need to work on how to integrate the essence ofthe two specialists (EFL experts, software designers) and to make the best of the multimedia software programs.
Finally, while reviewing the results, we also detect that it is necessary to include the function of “recordingsaving” into the program. With this function, teachers, parents and students are capable of observing how improvement is made during the self-learning process. Eventually, software firms could pay more attention on how tomake “records saving” function work in the future design.
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Conclusion
From the discussion of the results, we can propose several useful suggestions for CALL software designers
as well as EFL learners. First of all, the software must be user-friendly and have good display quality. If the
program is hard to operate, and the display of the program is carelessly designed and roughly explained, users will
have no patience to use it because of inconvenience and confusion. Therefore, we conclude that user-friendlinessand good display quality are parts of the important elements of an ideal Call software. Besides, it is important toprovide users clear instructions before using the software, and the online help design can be useful to solve problems of operation for users. Finally, an effective CALL software should provide authentic conversation and motion
pictures to users to obtain situated learning. For this suggestion, we proposed the combination of the latest hightechnology with software design. Motion pictures and sound effects take a lot of space in the disk, and the space ofa piece of CD-ROM is insufficient. Thus, combining the latest high technology in the future with software development is the only way to overcome this limitation.

References
Branvold, D., Chang, L. L., Probst, G. W., & Bannion, J. (1986). Effectiveness of the interactive videodisc
workstation in us in the English language center at Brigham Young University. CALICO Journal, X(X), 2539.
Chapelle, C., & Jamieson. (1989). Research trends in computer-assisted language learning. In M. Pennington,(ed.), Teaching languages with computers, (pp. 45-59). La Jolla, CA: Athelstan.
Chou, C. T. (1992). Reading comprehension strategies and computer-assisted English language learning. Research report (NSC 81-0301-H003-11), National Science Council.
Liou, H. C. (1993). Effective human-computer interaction in IVD/CALL design and evaluation: Human factors.
In F. Borchardt & E. Johnson (eds.), Proceedings of the Computer Assisted Learning and Instruction Consortium 1993 Annual Symposium on “Assessment,” (pp. 86-90). Durham, N. C.: Duke University.
Liou, H. C. (1994). Multimedia English material development: Theories and implementation. Taipei: The Crane
Publishing.
Malone, T. B., Kirkpatrick, M., & Heasly, C. C. (1984). Human-computer interface effectiveness evaluation. In
G. Salvendy (ed.), Human-computer interaction, (pp. 117-120). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers.
Meskill, C. J. (1991). Language learning strategies advice: A study on the effects of on-line messaging. System
19(3), 277-287.
Robinson, G. (1989). The CLCCS CALL study: Methods, error feedback, attitudes and achievement. In W. Smith(ed.), Modern technology in foreign language education: Applications and projects. Lincolnwood: National
Textbook Co.
Vanderplank, R. (1988). The value of teletext sub-titles in language learning. ELJ Journal 42(4), 272-281.
Watts, C. (1989). Interactive video: What the students say. CALICO Journal 7(1), 17-20.

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An Exploration of the Relationships Among Test Taker
Characteristics, Test-Taking Strategies, and Test Performance
Li-ju Yien
National Lien Ho Institute of Technology, Taiwan
Abstract
The paper, taking 523 two-year college freshmen throughout Taiwan as subjects, aims to explore therelationships among test taker characteristics, test-taking strategies, and test performance. Nevo’s (1989) checklistof test-taking strategies is adopted as an instrument for the study. Yien’s (1999) findings concerning the relationships between testees’ characteristics and test performance also serve as references. The results of thisstudy indicate that there are significant relationships among test taker characteristics, test-taking strategies andtest-taking strategies. The findings suggest that students of low English proficiency should be trained to apply
the effective test-taking strategies to improve their testing scores and therefore build up their learning confidence and accelerate their learning in English.

Introduction
Education in Taiwan is examination-oriented. Generally speaking, the goal of education for most students is
to pass every kind of examination. In the examination oriented setting of Taiwan, test results are the focus foreducation, and therefore some important things such as test taker characteristic and test-taking strategies are overlooked. Allan (1992) and Amer (1993) indicated that there was a significant relationship between test performanceand skill in test-taking. Allan (1992) also pointed out that test-taking strategies are seldom explored, though theirimplications for test construct validity are important. Bachman (1991) claimed that by far the majority had examined only the product of language test-taking scores.
The present paper adopts Nevo’s (1989) checklist of test-taking strategies as well as Yien’s (1999) findings
concerning the relationships between test taker characteristics and test performance as a basis for the study. And
then the author extends the research to the different application of test-taking strategies on gender, major field ofstudy, location, educational system, and school type (Yien, 1999) as well as the relationships among test takercharacteristics, test-taking strategies, and test performance. The study attempts to find the effective test-taking
strategies for students to improve their test performance, provide an insight for English instructors to recheck theirinstructional materials, and then help students to build their confidence in learning English, and finally make them
become self-starters in learning English.

Literature Reviews
Nevo (1989) proposed 16 test-taking strategies; some of them were assumed to be contributory (backgroundknowledge, returning to the passage, chronological order, clues in the text, ceasing search at plausible choice,process of elimination, key word, association) and some non-contributory (guessing, choosing the exception, length,
location, common word, matching the stem with an alternative, matching the alternative with the text).
The author (Yien, 1999) investigated the influence of test taker characteristics on English test performanceand results of her study suggested that performance on EFL tests was closely related to test taker characteristics
such as gender, major field of study, region, educational system, and school type.
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Based on the findings of the author’s (Yien, 1999), the study extends the exploration to the relationships
among test taker characteristic, test-taking strategies and test performance. The section will focus on the relationships between test taker characteristic and test-taking strategies as well as test-taking strategies and test performance.

Test Taker Characteristics and Test-taking Strategies
Allan (1992) and Messick (1989) claimed that students were differentially skilled in taking tests. Allan(1992) and Storey (1995) further claimed that when taking EFL/ESL tests, respondents employing prior knowledge
were differentially skilled in taking tests. Earlier, Duran (1989) indicated that differences in cultural backgroundaffected the ways in which individuals perceived problem-solving situations.
In addition, Allan (1992) shared the same viewpoint with Nevo (1989) that test takers employed a combination of varied test-taking strategies. More specifically, Cohen (1986), Chuang (1999) and Wu (1998) drew asimilar conclusion concerning the association between the difference of using test-taking strategies and testees
with varied English proficiency.

Test-taking Strategies and Test Performance
Anderson et al. (1991) suggested that the test performance was influenced by strategies the test takers employed, the characteristics of tasks, and the characteristics of test takers. Both Allan (1992) and Amer (1993)
indicated that there was a significant relationship between test performance and skill in test-taking.
Some other researchers specified the impact of test-taking strategies on test performance. Nevo (1989)
indicated that most of the correct responses were obtained by the use of contributory strategies. Purpura (1998)
also found that differences existed in the ways that high- and low-ability test takers used strategies.
Recently, some researchers recommended the instruction or explicit training for ESL respondents in testtaking strategies. For instance, Allan (1992) developed a test of test-wiseness that included stem option cues,
grammatical cues, similar option cues, and item giveaway. Amer (1993) suggested that students who did poorly on
EFL tests could be trained to use some test-taking skills to improve their scores.

MethodResearch Structure
Based on the aim of the study and the exploration of related literature, the research structure for the study canbe illustrated as in Figure 1. The figure indicates that test taker characteristics influence the application of testtaking strategies and then test-taking strategies influence test performance.

Subjects
1100 questionnaires were sent out by post. 523 (47.5%) participants, who completed the questionnaire, werechosen as the subjects of the study. The test score of the study was the English score of the Joint Technical College
Entrance Examination (JTCEE) in 1997. The number of students and the mean English score of JTCEE in 1997 foreach variable was presented on Table 1.

Variable Measurement
The study examined the relationships between test taker characteristics and test-taking strategies as well as
between test-taking strategies and test performance. The five test taker characteristics were: (a) gender, (b) acaExploration of the Relationships Among Test Taker Characteristics [Oral Presentation]

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demic major, (c) location, (d) educational system, and (e) education background. The test performance was the
English test score of JTCEE in 1997. The checklist of test-taking strategies was that of Nevo (1989).

GenderAcademic
Major
Test-Taking
Strategies

▲

▲▲ ▲
▲▲

Educational
SystemTest
Performance

Location

Educational
BackgroundFigure 1. The research structure of the study
Table 1. The Students’ Number and Mean Score of the Joint Entrance Exam on English Test for
Each Variable
Variable

NumberMean score of Entrance exam

Gender(1) Male(2) Female

379
144

49.4
61.0

Academic
Major(1) Mechanical Engineering(2) Electrical & Electronic Eng.
(3) Industrial E & M(4) Nursing(5) Chemical

255
51
135
53
29

41.1
53.8
66.8
61.2
69.1

Educational
System(1) Vocational High school(2) High school

489
34

50.9
77.1

Urban

108
100
315

58.2
61.9
47.7

286
237

45.9
60.8

Location
Rural
SchoolStatus(1) Taipei & Kaohsiung(2) Provincial cities(3) Other places(1) Private(2) Public

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Questionnaire Design
The questionnaire consisted of personal information (including gender, academic major, educational system,
location, and education background) and testing strategies (designed based on Nevo’s (1989) Multiple-Choice
Strategy Checklist). A 5-point Likert-type scale was adapted to investigate the extent of agreement of respondents’opinion toward the questions.

Analytic Method
The study applied Principal Component Factor Analysis to identify the principal factor dimensions among
the test-taking strategies. Besides, the questionnaire results were analyzed by t-test, and one-way ANOVA withSPSS statistic program. The post-hoc Scheffe test was also adopted to investigate the relationships concerning
test-taking strategies within each variable. Regression Analysis was performed to examine the relationships between test-taking strategies and test performance.

Results and Discussion
The Factor Analysis of Measurement and Reliability
Principal Component Factor Analysis was conducted to extract the principal factor dimensions from the 16
test-taking strategies. Hair, Anderson, Tatham and Black (1995) suggested the criteria for the significance of factor
loadings as follows:
1.

The Eigenvalue is greater than 1.0.

2.

After the operation of Varimax rotation, the absolute value for a factor loading is greater than 0.5.

3.

The loading of .30 translates to approximately 10 percent explanation, and a .50 loading
denotes that 25 percent of the variance is accounted for by the factor.

Using the first Varimax rotation, four of the 16 test-taking strategies in this study were discarded because thefactor loadings were below 0.5. After the second Varimax rotation was conducted, we identified four common
factors (listed in Table 2) which together explained 61.3% of the variability among the remaining 12 strategies.
The four common factors were named as follows: Inference, Time, Guessing, and Order.
Factor 1: ‘Inference’ represents items in which the answers of a test are given by making inference.
Factor 2: ‘Time’ represents time allocation during the test.
Factor 3: ‘Guessing’ represents items in which the answers of a test are given based on guessing.
Factor 4: ‘Order’ represents the order in which the passage and items is processed.
The Cronbach’s α in the study was close to 0.6 or over, hence, they were acceptable to explain the reliabilityof the measurement (Cuieford, 1975).

Relationships Between Test Taker Characteristics and Test-taking Strategies
This portion investigated the relationships between test taker characteristics and test-taking strategies byusing one-way ANOVA, t-tests, and the post-hoc Scheffe test.
Inference. Table 3 showed that significant difference on the application of ‘Inference’ by ‘academic majors’ (p = 0.066), ‘educational system’ (p = 0.050), ‘location’ (p = 0.001) and ‘education background’ (p = 0.003)
was found.

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A further observation found that students graduated from high school applied significantly more of ‘Inference’ than their counterparts. Students from the most urbanized areas applied significantly more of ‘Inference’
than those from rural areas. Public school students applied significantly more of ‘Inference’ than their counterparts. However, Scheffe did not show a significant difference on the application by every two of the five academic
majors.
The result seems to imply that students with more language training possess more sophisticated test-taking
strategies when taking language tests and that respondents with higher English proficiency apply ‘Inference’ more.
The results also seem to suggest that ‘Inference’ is more frequently applied by testees who are from a learning
environment of high competition, stricter training and intensive practice (Yien, 1999).

Table 2 The Results of Factor Analysis
Factor

Factor 1:
Inference

Factor 2:
Time

Factor 3:
Guessing

Factor 4:
OrderContent

Factor Eigen- Cum Cronbach’s
loading Value Pct
αNo. 3. Selects an alternative through deductive reasoning

0.833

No. 2. Selects an answer not because it was thought to becorrect, but because the other did not seem reasonable, seemed similar, or were not understandable

0.780

No. 4. Matches the stem and/or alternatives to a previous
portion of the text

0.714

No.13. Expresses uncertainty at correctness of an answer
chosen0.740

No.14. Skips a quotients and returns to it later

0.738

No. 7. Makes reference about time allocation

0.708

No. 12. Stops reading the options when they reach theanswer

0.695

No.1.

0.689

Guesses without any particular considerations

No. 15. Skips a questions that is not understood andleaves the response blank

0.644

No. 16. Marks answers without reading in order to fill
the space

0.619

No. 8. Reads the questions and options after reading
the passage-0.840

No.9.

0.832

Reads the questions and options before reading
the passage

Exploration of the Relationships Among Test Taker Characteristics [Oral Presentation]

3.02 25.2

0.71501.77 40.0

0.66871.36 51.3

0.5942

1.19 61.3

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Table 3. The Different Application of ‘Inference’ on Test-Taker Characteristics
VariableMeant value or
SignificanceF value

Scheffe

Gender(1) Male(2) Female

4.00184.0440.588.443

3.95424.03274.11853.96234.1034

2.218

.066

n.s.

Academicmajor(1) Mechanical Eng.
(2) Electrical &Electronic Eng.
(3) Industrial E & M.
(4) Nursing(5) Chemical

Educational
system(1) Vocational High(2) High School

4.0007
4.1961

3.863

0.050

(2) > (1)Urban

4.18214.04673.9450

7.559

0.001

(1) > (3)3.9487
4.0936

8.697

0.003

(2) > (1)Location
Rural
Education
background(1) Taipei & Kaohsiung(2) Provincial cities(3) Other places(1) Private(2) Publicn.s. = not significant
Time. Table 4 showed that there was a significant difference on the application of ‘Time’ by ‘gender’ (p =0.001), ‘academic majors’ (p = 0.002), ‘educational system’ (p = 0.014) and ‘education background’ (p = 0.011).
Females seem to be specially good at the management of time during tests because they may be more cautious and careful. Students graduated from high school applied significantly more of ‘Time’ than their counterparts, and students of public colleges worked better at time allocation than their counterparts. The results may
suggest that respondents with more language training and better language proficiency have higher ability to manage time during the test.
The Scheffe also showed that Industrial E & M majors managed time significantly better than MechanicalEngineering majors did. One interpretation may be that majority of Mechanical majors is male and that ofIndustrial E & M is female.
Guessing. Table 5 showed that there was a significant difference on the application of ‘Guessing’ by ‘academic major’ (p = 0.005), ‘educational system’ (p = 0.003) and ‘education background’ (p = 0.035). Chemical
majors applied ‘Guessing’ significantly more than Mechanical Engineering majors. The results also showed thathigh school graduates and public college students applied “Guessing’ more than their counterparts, respectively.
The results may suggest that students with better English achievement apply ‘Guessing’ more than their counterparts. A possible explanation may be that these people usually have strong intention to get high scores; therefore,
when they confront questions which they have no ideas of correct answers, they take the chance to guess.
Order. Table 6 showed that significant differences on the application of ‘Order’ was only found amongmajor fields of study (p = 0.047). The results showed that majors of Chemical and Nursing applied more of‘Inference’ than their counterparts.
Compared with the application of ‘Inference’, ‘Time’, and ‘Guessing’, less people applied ‘Order’. Maybe
testees are lack of this kind of training. Meanwhile, it is hard to identify the effectiveness of application of ‘Order’by the results.

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Table 4. The Different Application of ‘Time’ on Test-Taker Characteristics
Variable
GenderAcademic
major

Educational
systemMean

Scheffe(1) Male(2) Female

3.78633.997710.5020.001(2) > (1)(1) Mechanical Eng.
(2) Electrical & Electronic Eng.
(3) Industrial E & M(4) Nursing(5) Chemical

3.74643.71903.9901
3.97484.0115

4.443

0.002

(3) > (1)(1) Vocational High(2) High School

3.8255
4.1176

6.059

0.014

(2) > (1)Urban

3.9012
3.91333.8032

1.506

0.223

3.77973.9291

6.433

0.011

Location
Rural
Education
backgroundt value or
SignificanceF value(1) Taipei & Kaohsiung(2) Provincial cities(3) Others(1) Private(2) Public(2) > (1)Table 5. The Different Application of ‘Guessing’ on Variables
Variable
GenderAcademic
major

Educational
systemMean

Scheffe(1) Male(2) Female

3.67483.6788

0.005

0.945

(1) Mechanical Eng.
(2) Electrical & Electronic Eng.
(3) Industrial A & M.
(4) Nursing(5) Chemical

3.60783.70103.76483.59433.9655

3.714

0.005

(5) > (1)(1) Vocational High(2) High School

3.65593.9632

8.753

0.003

(2) > (1)Urban

3.70143.71253.6556.480.619

3.62593.7351

4.456

0.035

Location
Rural
Education
backgroundt value or
SignificanceF value(1) Taipei & Kaohsiung(2) Provincial cities(3) Others(1) Private(2) Public

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Table 6. The Different Application of ‘Order’ on Variables
Variable
GenderAcademic
major

Educational
systemMean(1) Male(2) Female

3.3852
3.4479

1.249

.264

(1) Mechanical Eng.
(2) Electrical & Electronic Eng.
(3) Industrial A & M(4) Nursing(5) Chemical

3.38433.3922
3.33703.54723.6207

2.429

0.047

(1) Vocational High(2) High School

3.40083.4265

.064

0.801

Urban

3.45833.38503.3889

.647

0.524

3.41783.3830.476.491

Location
Rural
Education
backgroundt value or
SignificanceF value(1) Taipei & Kaohsiung(2) Provincial cities(3) Others(1) Private(2) Public

Scheffen.s.

n.s. = not significant

Relationships Between Test-taking Strategies and Test Performance
The relationship between test-taking strategies and test performance was examined by Regression Analysis, and the results were demonstrated in Table 7. Results indicated there were significant relationships between
test performance and test-taking strategies ‘Inference’ (p=0.002), ‘Guessing’ (p=0.000), and ‘Time’ (p=0.003).
The result echoed the findings of Allan’s (1992) and Amer’s (1993).

Table 7. The Relationships Between Test-Taking Strategies and Test Performance
Strategy

UnstandardizedßStandardized
ß

t
value

SignificanceIntercept-24.602

Guessing

8.361

0.193

3.970

0.000

Inference

6.493

0.142

3.131

0.002

Order

-0.280-0.006-0.143

0.887

Time

5.549

0.146

2.964

0.003

F = 4.356, p = 0.000, R² = 0.141
The results also indicated that ‘Inference’, ‘Guessing’ did not contradict each other. Table 5 seems to revealthat higher test performers also apply ‘Guessing’ more than their counterparts. In addition, the application of‘Time’ leads to better test performance too. Better time allocation helps testees solve problems without hurry andmakes them think carefully.
Nevo (1989) indicated that most of the correct responses were obtained by the use of contributory strategies.
Nevertheless, Purpura’s (1998) indicated that a result which might be explained by the fact that high-ability test
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takers have achieved a higher degree of automatization, thereby having less of a need to use strategies (Purpura,
1998). ‘Inference’, ‘Time’, and ‘Guessing’ could be viewed as contributory strategies which help improve test
performance. However, it appears that some language learners have a ‘gift for languages’ which others lack.
Maybe the gifted language learners need less or even none strategies to process tests just as what Purpura (1998)
claimed.

Conclusions and Implications
Conclusion
The results of the study basically echoed the findings of Anderson’s (1991) that the test performance was
influenced by strategies the test takers employed, the characteristics of tasks, and the characteristics of test takers.
After devoting deeper observation, it may be the case that test-taking strategies might play the role of a mediator
between test taker characteristics and test performance. That is to say that the test taker characteristics affect theuse of the test-taking strategies and then the strategies influence the test performance. Therefore, we draw thefollowing conclusion based on the results of the study and Yien’s (1999).
1.

Females applied significantly more than males on ‘Time’ and then significantly outperformed
their male counterparts on the English test.

2.

Industrial E & M and Chemical majors applied more than Mechanical majors on ‘Time’ and‘Guessing’ respectively; therefore, they excel Mechanical majors on the English test.

3.

High school graduates applied significantly more than those of vocational high on the application of ‘Inference,’ ‘Time,’ and ‘Guessing’ and then significantly excelled their counterparts ofvocational high school on the English test.

4.

Students from most urbanized areas applied ‘Inference’ significantly more than counterparts ofrural areas and then the former significantly outperformed the latter on the English test.

5.

Students of public schools applied ‘Inference,’ ‘Time,’ and ‘Guessing’ significantly more thanthose of private schools, and then the former significantly performed better than the latter on
the English test.

Implications
Including Yien’s (1999) findings concerning the relationships between test taker characteristics and test
performance, the study extended the research to investigate the relationships among test taker characteristics, testtaking strategies and test performance. The results revealed that there were significant relationships among test
taker characteristics, test-taking strategies, and test performance. The results of the study seem to suggest higher
linguistic competence is more likely to lead to the selection of more effective testing-taking strategies. And inreverse, it might also imply that the selection of effective test-taking strategies lead to better test performance.
Accordingly, the author suggests EFL/ESL teachers to include effective test-taking strategies in EFL curriculum and pedagogical activities. It is suggested that students, especially students of low English proficiency,
should be trained to apply the effective strategies ‘Inference’, ‘Time’, and ‘Guessing’ to improve their testing scoreand build up their learning confidence as soon as possible. These contributory strategies might improve their scoresooner than unexpected. Then, the learning interest can be activated; consequently, students will establish theirconfidence in learning English.

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References
Allan, A. (1992). Development and validation of a scale to measure test-wiseness in EFL/ESL reading test takers.
Language Testing 9, 101-122.
Amer, A. A. (1993). Teaching EFL students to use a test-taking strategy. Language Testing 10, 71-77.
Anderson, N. J., et al. (1991). An exploratory study into the construct validity of a reading comprehension test:
triangulation of data sources. Language Testing 8, 41-66.
Bachman, L. F. (1991). Fundamental considerations in language testing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cohen, A. D. (1986). Mentalistic measures in reading strategy research: some recent findings. English for Specific Purposes 5(2), 131-145.
Chuang, Y-L. (1999). Comparisons of the Listening and test-taking strategies of paper-and-pencil tests and computer-assisted tests. A Paper Presented at 8th International Symposium on English Teaching, pp. 309-320.
Taipei: The Crane Publishing Co., Ltd.
Cuieford, J. P. (1975). Fundamental statistic in psychology and education (4th ed.) New York: McGraw Hill.
Duran, R. P. (1989) . Testing of linguistic minorities. In R.L. Linn (ed.), Educational measurement. (3rd ed.). New
York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
Hair, J. F, et al. (1995). Multivariate data analysis with readings. (4th ed.) N.Y.: Prentice Hall.
Messick, S. A. (1989). Validity. In R.L. Linn (ed.) Educational measurement, (3rd ed.) (pp. 13-103). New York:
Macmillan Publishing Company.
Nevo, N. (1989). Test-taking strategies on a multiple-choice test of reading comprehension. Language Testing 6:
199-215.
Purpura, J. E. (1998). Investigating the effects of strategy use and second language test performance with highand low-ability test takers: a structural equation modeling approach. Language Testing 15.3: 333-379.
Wu, Y. (1998). What do tests of listening comprehension test? – A retrospection study of EFL test-takers performing a multiple-choice task. Language Testing 15(1), 21-44.
Yien, L-J. (1999). The impact of test taker variables on English test performance: implications from Taiwanese
students. A Paper Presented at the 4th CULI International Conference. Bangkok, Thailand: Chulalongkorn
University.

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Forty Years of the Language Laboratory Association of Japan
Hiraku Iteya
Sonoda Women’s University, Japan

In the latter half of the 1950s, “Oral Approach” was adopted in Japan. In the 1960s, it spread rapidly andwidely in junior and senior high schools. Along with this approach, language laboratories were established everywhere.
It was thought natural that such a sound-oriented language laboratory study system should be put into practice more widely in junior and senior high schools. However, there were some bottlenecks in its development anddeployment.
There were, I think, three problems in relation to senior high schools.
One was the problem resulting from the curriculum. In those days the standard number of English lessons
per week was five, three of which were allotted to “readers” and two, to “grammar and composition”. The teachingof the textbooks had priority. Language laboratory work was hard to incorporate.
Another was the problem of hardware. The equipment for a language lab was expensive. So it was impossible to have language labs installed in a lot of schools at a time.
The third was the problem of software. Language lab work was pattern- practice-centered, monotonous anddull. There were few teaching materials that students showed a great interest in.
In 1971, when I worked at an Osaka Prefectural High School, the Education Board proposed that a language
lab be installed. I thought the conventional audio-lingual language lab system would come to a standstill as itstood. Language and culture are inextricably woven together. So students should experience “culture” vicariously
through the audio-visual language lab system and should satisfy their intellectual interest.
Thus I developed a new booth where students could watch TV in pairs (see Figure 1), videotaped the English
programs of the NHK school broadcast, classified them from the point of “culture patterns”, and consequently
prepared “English not easily obtainable in class work.”
In this way language lab work would help students acquire a heuristic method and voluntary study habits.
I named this approach the “Cultural Approach”, and advocated it in 1972.
In evaluating “culture” materials, I attached special importance to “qualitative” as well as “quantitative”
evaluation.
As for “quantitative” evaluation, I examined “interest reactions” as well as “comprehension reactions” (seeFigure 2).
As for “qualitative” evaluation, I examined, by using matrixes (see Figure 3), how the students grasped the“culture”, and also conducted a follow-up survey on how the students changed in the way they grasped it.
Thus in the “Cultural Approach”, there are, I believe, unlimited possibilities still to be exploited.

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Figure 1. The first newly-developed booths where the students could watch TV in paris (1971)

The Badger’s Spinning Wheel
難 解 反 応 曲 線

⑤

④ ③②
①

18
E
n
d

17

16

15

whole story

14

13

12

11

review

10

9

last half8

7

6

review

5

4

first half

3

2

1

0 T
i
t
l
e

Figure 2. An example of a “Comprehension Reaction” graph

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STRUCTURALFLAT

LINEARPARTIAL
Comprehension
Thought

FACT
UNDERSTANDING

INTERESTIMPRESSIONANALOGY
INTEGRATIONDEVELOPMENT

Figure 3. A matrix for “Qualitative” evaluation

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Globalization and Education
Setsuko Hirao [Moderator]
Aichi University, Japan
Panelists
Keiko Nakata, Nagoya University Affiliated Senior and Junior High School, Japan
Shuji Ozeki, Chubu University, Japan
Yoshikazu Yanagi, Nagoya Gakuin University
Tim Hoffman, Chubu University
Setsuko Hirao, Aichi University

Introduction
Globalization is a fact, and the language education and technology for international communication acrossthe globe is one of the most crucial issues today. Teachers should try to help students improve their communicativecompetence in order to promote their mutual understanding in the global village.
This forum discusses not only our teaching activities using such new media as computers and the Internet inlanguage classes, but also students exchange programs between schools, colleges and universities abroad.
The purpose of this forum is to study the process and system of the Internet real-time-communication, focusing on the validity of the communicative approach to English language teaching as well as practicability for crosscultural understanding.
The main activities of each high school or university are:1.

International e-mail exchange programs by the Internet

2.

“Show and Tell” performance on the web sites

3.

Production of the authentic teaching material on the web sites

4.

Intensive English courses for the college students who are going to study abroad

5.

Student exchange programs between sister universities

6.

International student exchange and intensive Chinese courses in China

The first panelist, Ms. Keiko Nakata, presents “Show and Tell” performances on the web sites and “Peaceand International Understanding via E-mail” project called “Passage to Hiroshima” by using the Internet and videos at Junior and Senior High School affiliated to Nagoya University. The presenter is planning to make Hiroshima
field work into a complete web based interactive study material, meeting the A-bomb survivors, and exchanging
ideas with the students in other countries by e-mail.
The second speaker, Prof.Shuji Ozeki, reviews his experiences in variety of the international e-mail exchange programs as well as development of supporting resources at Chubu University. Students were encouraged
to find at least three partners of different cultural backgrounds so that they can keep themselves busy and have agood resources of information to compare with their own culture and write essays or compose web pages on their

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experiences in the exchange. This motivated the students and gave clear ideas of the required tasks especially to
lower-level students. The presenter also suggests what are important for successful e-mail exchange programs.
The third panelist, Prof. Yoshikazu Yanagi, Nagoya Gakuin University, presents the student exchange programs between sister universities in the U.S.A, Canada and Australia as one of the special features of the English
curriculum. The past, the present and the future of the short-term programs, long-term programs and mid-term
programs are introduced. Based on 10 years of experience, the presenter has concluded that studying in a different
culture is so valuable for students that it is necessary to send as many students as possible.
The fourth presenter, Mr. Tim Hoffman, introduces “PASEO” (Preparation for Academic Study In English
Overseas) program, which is a joint program of Chubu University and Ohio University. It is a 4-year comprehensive English for Academic Purposes curriculum including both skills-based and content-based instruction which
prepares the students, no matter what their academic majors for academic study in English-speaking nations. The
presenter suggests highlight future directions for PASEO and offer suggestions for replication or adaptation atother Japanese colleges and universities for the global activities.
The last panelist, moderator, Prof. Setsuko Hirao, addresses the globalization in education, introducing theinternational student exchange project between Aichi University and Nankai University, China. The project ismeant for the global communication and cultural awareness by means of Chinese, the language other than English.
The conclusion has been made by evaluating the effectiveness of the intensive language courses and the results ofstudents’ presentations on field works made in China. The students’ positive and enthusiastic attitudes towards theintercultural communication will lead to the borderless globalization in education.
The forum was successful in sharing ideas with participants from around the world who face the sameproblems and suggesting the further pedagogical implications for communicative language teaching and effective
use of technology. The forum concludes that the positive and aggressive attitude towards the international communication by means of the Internet will contribute to globalization in education as well as development of intelligent
technology.

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Home, Sweet Home, on the Internet—Homepage Making Project at a Junior College—
Kiyoko Kinugawa
Naoko Matsumoto
Saitama Women’s Junior College, Japan
Abstract
The prevalence of the Internet has broadened the scope of teaching and learning English using computers. It makes possible for both teachers and learners to make the best of the latest technology as active andcreative learning tools. The “Homepage Making Project” integrates many facets of computer use such as word
processing, graphics, or doing the Internet searches into a language learning material, and provides learners
with opportunities to express themselves in English creatively and freely. This paper will outline the “Homepage
Making Project” in the course of “Internet English” at a junior college, and discuss its advantages in language
learning. It will also explore possible difficulties in the project and ways to overcome them.

Introduction
Computers and the Internet have had a big impact on the world of English learning and teaching. Manyadvantages of teaching English using computers have been discussed, and there are still unlimited possibilities to
explore in the computer-mediated teaching. Taking a hint from these beneficial points discussed, some English
teachers at Saitama Women’s Junior College (SWJC) have been eager to introduce the latest technology to theirteaching methods. The “Homepage Making project” is one of the approaches to have students learn computers andEnglish at the same time. The main objectives of this project are to improve students’ abilities to express themselves in English and to enhance their motivation to learn English independently and interactively.
Some researchers discuss how motivational and advantageous the “Homepage Making project” is in termsof developing computer skills and of learning English. Regarding the development of computer literacy, the project
integrates many facets of computer technology: creating word documents, graphics, and artwork, searching theInternet and exchanging e-mail with key pals (Trokeloshvili & Jost, 1997).
As regards language learning, the advantages are diverse: (a) Learners quickly realize the importance ofacquiring English skills as they browse the Internet to obtain necessary information for their homepage and findthat most of it is in English, the major language of the Internet (Fox, 1998; Muehleisen, 1997a). (b) Learners are
exposed to more authentic, naturally occurring English beyond the classroom (Fox, 1998). (c) Learners are able tocreate their homepage individually and at their own pace utilizing their English skills and computer skills: teacherscan, therefore, deal with mixed-ability classes (Muehleisen, 1997b; Sela, 1995). (d) The class can be interactive
when the teacher and other students give the creator feedback and advice (Muehleisen, 1997a). (e) Learners areable to exhibit what they have learned by making their own homepage (Muehleisen, 1997b; Singhal, 1997). In
addition to these advantages, the “Homepage Making projects” changes learners’ learning style from teacher-given
or teacher-designed learning to learner-based or self-directed learning.
This paper will explain the “Homepage Making project” with the course description of “Internet English”
and discuss its advantages and difficulties in teaching and learning English.

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An Overview of the Homepage Making Project in the “Internet English” Course
The main objectives of the “Internet English” course at SWJC are to familiarize learners of English newtechnology, i.e. computers and the Internet, and to have them express themselves in English utilizing these equipments and their already-established English skills. Teachers instruct them not only in language aspects but also incomputer techniques, and encourage them to write English journals and to create homepage without being afraid ofmaking mistakes. Students are actively and independently engaged in language learning using the technology andtheir English knowledge, and freely express themselves in English.

Goals of the “Homepage Making Project”
1.

To give students opportunities to browse the Internet and search for necessary information.

2.

To have students learn that it is fun, motivational and instructive to express their thoughts about
their favorite things on their own homepage.

3.

To have students take initiative and responsibility for their own learning.

4.

To have students learn cooperatively in the process of making a homepage.

5.

To encourage students to be more aware of what is going on around them globally and tocommunicate what they are thinking to their audience.

6.

To have students express themselves freely and creatively with easily accessible computer
techniques.

7.

To cultivate students’ computer literacy as well as their English skills.

Class Structure
In Saitama Women’s Junior College (SWJC), 20-30 students have enrolled in our “Internet English” course
every year since 1999. The class meets once a week for 80 minutes in a computer room equipped with 40 computer
terminals. Not all the computers at SWJC are set up for Internet access, but they are connected in a Local Area
Network (LAN). Using the network, students are able to upload and save their on-going homepages in theirpersonal folders in the designated server. Thus, they can also browse their own and other students’ Web sites using
the campus LAN system, which is accessible only by SWJC students and faculty.

The Procedure for the “Homepage Making Project”
1.

Students decide to work individually or in a group.

2.

They choose a topic which they want to introduce and share in their homepage.
Depending on the topic, they decide whether they work individually or in a group. Even if theirinterest is different, they can form a group to make a homepage together because all they haveto do is to upload their homepage on the same folder in the server. There is no restriction on
topic selection because learning about their favorite topic in English itself can be motivational.
Therefore, their themes are varied every year, ranging from celebrities in the world, specificcountries such as China or France, to their favorite restaurants or coffee shops or festivals inJapan.

3,Students start to gather information from the Internet.
After selecting a topic, they start to do the Internet searches and gather information on theirfavorite topic. Not all computers are connected to the Internet, so students take turns using thecertain number of computers with the Internet access, and to save necessary documents andpictures, they are provided with a floppy disk.

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Students make a homepage with Microsoft Word 98.
There are several ways to make documents with Hyper-Text Markup Language (HTML), but
Microsoft Word (MS-Word) 98 was chosen for the sake of simplicity and ease of use in thisproject because it has the advantage of being able to save documents in an HTML format
without the necessity of typing complicated HTML tags. Appendix I will explain how to makea simple homepage with the software.
There is no restriction on how to make a homepage, but they have to create it in English and at
least three different pages (“self-introduction,” “favorite,” and “recommend”), which should belinked together. The “self-introduction” page, which is usually the gateway to their homepage,should write about themselves in over 100 words. The “favorite” page should include theirselected topic explaining why they choose it, how they like it, what they want to share it, etc.,
and some pictures on it. The “recommend” page should contain the site information(URL=Uniform Resource Locator) to give the audience the information about their topic. These
are the basic criteria of this project. If students want to create more, they can expand their
homepage as they wish.

5.

Students check their created homepage with Internet Explorer (browser software) and modify it
if necessary.
They need to check how their homepage created with MS-Word looks with Internet Explorer,because to see it with the word-processing software and with the browser software can bedifferent. They are to modify the page if necessary.

6. Students will make an oral presentation about their homepage. (Final week)
They are given about one to three minutes and make an oral presentation about their homepage.
They can talk about the content and interesting parts to share and difficulties in making thehomepage. The presentation can be done either in English or in Japanese although they areawarded additional points if they make an oral presentation in English.

Advantages
1.

Students’ satisfaction and a sense of achievement.
Students are satisfied by making a homepage on their favorite topics and feel a sense of achievement. The latest sophisticated technology enables even beginner-level students to make attractive and informative documents. The beauty of the pages the students have produced is enoughto motivate them to create better ones. In this way, the homepage making project shows bothteachers and students alike successful outcomes of what they have learned.

2.

Self-directed learning and cooperative learning.
Through self-directed learning and cooperative learning, students will not feel nervous, embarrassed or intimidated about learning English. They choose and set the topics and pace of work,
thus are given more freedom, independence and responsibility in learning. They are allowed
and encouraged to cooperate and collaborate while working, helping each other out throughdifficult patches and working out ideas to improve each other’s pages.

3.

Chances to find authentic language materials.
Students are able to find and study authentic language materials via the Internet. One problem
in EFL classrooms is that it is difficult for students to be exposed to authentic, naturally-occurring English. But since the main language of the Internet is English in its current status, students have plenty of opportunities to immerse themselves in it while browsing the Internet andreading for information.

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Students can become computer-literate.
Computer skills are fast becoming taken for granted in the contemporary competitive businessworld and even in everyday life. Many uses of computers are fairly mundane (writing reports
and e-mail, information-gathering on the Internet, account-checking, online shopping) and may
or may not be particularly creative.
In the homepage making project, students learn not only how to type and to do Internet searches,
but also how to lay out web pages and to select and insert pictures and graphics in order to maketheir homepages attractive and comprehensible. In doing so, they acquire or improve basic
computer literacy and English skills, while making use of their judgment and creativity as well.

5.

Peer stimulation from other students’ homepages.
Sometimes students are impressed with other students’ work and are stimulated to try the same
techniques themselves. Without being taught, some students venture into using sophisticatedword-processing functions. This implies that the homepage making project is advantageousand motivational not only because students try to make their homepage attractive enough fortheir audience, but also because they can share the new techniques they have learned with theirpeers. As a result of positive peer stimulation and a climate of mild “rivalry,” students’ homepages
tend to become more sophisticated and more fashionable.

Challenges
1.

Evaluation: quality vs. quantity.
Homepage evaluation is difficult because we have to weigh quality and quantity. Quality heremeans whether students can make a homepage that is well-designed, well-organized, and attractive enough for the audience. Quantity means whether students can provide the audience
with sufficient information.
As a solution to this difficulty, we present important criteria to the students in advance. We also
give them some “required” tasks and conditions such as a minimum number of words to be
written, writing headlines and captions, etc., that are closely evaluated. In more subjective
areas, we can let fellow students judge the quality (e.g., Is the homepage attractive enough?)and quantity (e.g., Is the given information sufficient?) of the homepages made by students.
This emphasizes that peer evaluation as well as teacher’s assessment should be taken into consideration.
Another challenge is how to assess a homepage which is creatively written and well-constructed,
but has numerous errors vis-à-vis a homepage which is grammatically correct, but has limited
content and materials poorly put together.
In this case, we attach greater importance to creativity and quantity than to correctness. As togrammatical correctness, all we require of the students is that they can make themselves understood in English. We leave grammatical correction to a later stage, which conforms to learningin natural (non-classroom) situations, since one of the pitfalls of English as taught in Japan isthat overemphasis on correctness often makes students shy away from using English at all.
Therefore, we prefer a homepage in which students use their English skills as creatively andchallengingly as they can to a homepage that is grammatically correct but with limited or unimaginative content.

2.

The possibility of plagiarism.
Some students may be tempted to plagiarize when they “borrow” some pictures or text from theInternet on their homepages without any attributive notes because it is very easy to download

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these things without any degradation in quality. We use this opportunity to teach students“netiquette (= net etiquette)”, academic ethics, respect for others’ work, and the altruistic sharing sprit of the Internet community. We also explain how to cite and link pictures and texts on
their homepages using proper credits and attributions.

Conclusion
Homepage making projects can encourage students to learn language by themselves. In this project, motivation was the key element to successful learning. This project gives learners freedom and opportunities to learn
English in their own way using computers and their favorite topics. Also, by searching the Internet, students venture into a new world of their selected topics, like it and are familiarized with it, and take to share the findings withthe audience through their own homepage. The interaction among learners, teachers and audience never ends andenhances their motivation to modify their homepage to make it better.
Plagiarism is an unavoidable thing. In this redundant information era, it is easy for students to download
celebrities’ pictures and documents or to upload them without changing any parts on their homepage. It is necessary for both teachers and students to understand what the copyright is and to create a homepage full of originality
and with no plagiarism.
Aside from this challenge, the “Homepage Making project” has unlimited possibilities to motivate students
to learn English inside and outside the classroom and, thus, encourages them to learn English independently andinteractively.

References
Fox, G. (1998). The Internet: making it work in the ESL classroom. The Internet TESL Journal, IV(9). Retrieved
October 29, 1999 from the World Wide Web: http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/Articles/Fox-Internet.html
Lowry, C. M. (1989). Supporting and facilitating self-directed Learning. ERIC Digest, 93. Retrieved November
7, 1999, from the World Wide Web: http://ericae.net/edo/ED312457.htm (ERIC ED312457)
Muehleisen, V. (1997a). Projects using the Internet in college English classes. The Internet TESL Journal, III(6).
Retrieved October 16, 1999 from the Word Wide Web: http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/Lessons/MuehleisenProjects.html
Muehleisen, V. (1997b). Using the Internet to teach language and culture: making a class web page. Retrieved
October 16, 1999 from the Word Wide Web: http://www.faculty.web.waseda.ac.jp/vicky/papers/jacet.html
Sela, O. (1995). Using computers in the EFL mixed-ability class. Retrieved October 29, 1999 from the World
Wide Web: http://ietn.snunit/k12.il/mixed.htm
Singhal, M. (June 1997). The Internet and foreign language education: benefits and challenges. The Internet
TESL Journal, Vol. III(6). Retrieved November 8, 1999 from the Word Wide Web: http://www.aitech.
ac.jp/~iteslj/Articles/Singhal-Internet.html
Trokeloshvili, D. A. & Jost, N. H. (August 1997). The Internet and foreign language instruction: practice anddiscussion. The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. III(8). Retrieved October 29, 1999 from the World Wide Web:http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/Articles/Trokeloshvili-Internet.html

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Appendix
Procedures for making a simple homepage with Microsoft Word 98 or higher
1.

Start Microsoft Word and choose a new document.

2.

Type anything you want for your homepage.

3.

If you want to insert a picture, follow the instruction:a.

Position the place in the document where you want to insert a picture.

b.

From the “Insert” menu, choose “picture.”c.

There are some options to choose pictures from the “picture” menu, so choose the one
you are looking for. For example, if you want to use a picture from “clip art,” choose it.
If you want the one you drew, choose “from file.”d.

Choose the picture and click “open” to insert it.

4.

Save the on-going or finished document in Microsoft Word format just in case of trouble withsaving it as HTML: Choose “Save as…” from the “File” menu and enter a title like “My
Homepage.”5.

Next, save the same document in HTML format: Choose “Save the file in HTML format” andenter the title “index.” You will be asked which language code you will use, choose the one you
want. For example, if you are making your homepage in English, choose “American/ European
language code.”

6.

Quit Microsoft Word.

In order to view the created homepage, double-click the “html” file that you saved on your computer. It willautomatically open the browser software, “Internet Explorer,” and you can check the “html” file that you made. If
you use “Netscape Navigator/ Communicator,” open the browser first and choose “Open” from the “File Menu.”
Choose an option “Open the file with Navigator,” and you will be able to check the document.

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How Do Pre-Intermediate Learners of Japanese Read Passages?
—Exploring the Eye Movements of JSL Learners—
Mika Suzuki
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the process of pre-intermediate learners’ reading in Japanese. An experiment was conducted in which learners’ eye movements were recorded using an eye camera while
they read two different passages in Japanese, followed by an analysis of the obtained data. The experiment was
implemented with ten subjects at the pre-intermediate level. The results were as follows: (a) No statisticaldifference was found in reading time of each sentence, that is, there was no tendency to read slowly the first partof the passages or longer sentences. (b) Eye-fixation and/or regressional movements often occurred on thewords and sentence patterns that were unknown to the readers or they had just learned. (c) There was no
significant difference in terms of the number of eye-fixation between efficient readers and less-efficient readers.
(d) Efficient readers had a tendency to read back more than less-efficient readers did

Introduction
Learners of Japanese at the pre-intermediate level vary in their level of comprehension of written passages.
While basic Japanese focuses on comprehension and production of simple sentences, intermediate level requiresthat students comprehend complicated compound sentences or complex sentences, as well as the structure of awhole passage. In analyzing comprehension issues among learners, there seems to be a great deal of individuality
as to whether their problems lie in acquiring and/or utilizing their knowledge of grammar, characters, vocabulary,
and/or the structure of passages.
Some researchers have been using an eye-camera for the purpose of investigating eye movement whilepeople read passages, but these researches have been conducted mainly with readers reading in their mother tongue.
While reading passages, eye fixations and saccades are repeated until the end of a passage and regressions sometimes occur in the process of constructing the meaning of the passage (Just & Carpenter 1987). Using records ofeye movement through an eye-camera, fixation points and frequency, regression points and frequency can be measured along with reading time.
Investigations of eye movement in reading passages in one’s mother language have shown that the frequency
of fixations decreases when a reader reads an easier passage (Just & Carpenter 1987). When native Japanese readpassages, Kanbe (1986) maintains that each fixation time varies from 250 to 350 msec., the average span between
one fixation and the next fixation is 3.5 characters, regressive fixations constitute less than 10 percent of all fixations, and that Kanji plays an important role in supplying information for determining the points of fixation.
Shigematsu et al. (1993) demonstrated that Japanese language learners from China have a tendency to be reliant
upon Kanji when reading passages in Japanese.
In this study, the research of recording and analyzing eye movement while reading a passage has been
implemented using an eye-camera with the intent to clarify the process of comprehending a Japanese passage as asecond language learner. Results of analysis of the most optimally defined fixation point while reading a passage
showed that JSL learners at the pre-intermediate level took approximately 500 msec. per character. That means
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they can read 120 characters in one minute and that the mean fixation frequency is twice per character on the firstread through (Konosu and Suzuki 1995).
In addition, records of each learner’s eye movement have been plotted out and the detailed process of reading has been analyzed for the purpose of investigating differences in the reading process between highly proficientlearners and less proficient learners. This paper includes an overview of this experiment, along with information
about specific features learners display when reading. This work also offers some advice for supporting the reading
comprehension of learners based on an analysis of the results of the experiment.

Purpose of the Experiment
The purpose of the experiment was to clarify the process of reading passages adopted by learners at the preintermediate level in relation to the curriculum, the difficulty of a given passage and the particular learner’s reading
ability. A further goal was to examine effective ways to assist the learner in reading in a way that was in line withthe learner’s style. The analysis was designed to demonstrate: (a) whether reading speed differs within a sentence,(b) what kind of features the fixation points and regression points have and whether frequency of fixation and/or
regression differ according to the difficulty of passages, (c) whether learners highly proficient in reading and lessproficient learners differ in reading time, frequency of fixation and/or regression.

MethodSubjects
The subjects were ten undergraduate students at the pre-intermediate level1 in Japanese, consisting of fivehighly proficient learners in reading, which included two Chinese-language-background students, and five lessproficient learners.

Procedures of the Experiment
Two passages were prepared. One passage was 232 characters long and at the pre-intermediate level and theother consisted of 187 characters and was written at the low intermediate level. After adjusting the eye camera,
passages were presented to the subjects on the screen of a 40-inch monitor. Subjects sat 160 cm away from themonitor. The subjects’ eye movements while they read the passages were recorded on a VCR using an eye camera.
The Eye Movement Monitor which was made by Takei Scientific Instruments Co., Ltd. was used as the eye camera
for this experiment. After the subjects finished reading, their comprehension levels for the passages were examinedthrough oral interviews.

Methods of Analysis
The eye movements recorded while reading the passages were played back frame by frame (33 msec.).
Movements were tracked and a locus of eye movements was made for each passage. Reading time was also
calculated for each sentence in the passages. Based upon the loci, fixation points and frequency and/or regression
points and frequency were investigated. Whether there were differences based on the passages and/or whether
differences in reading ability caused different processes of eye movements was also investigated.

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Results
The Reading Time for Each sentence and the Reading Rate
Statistical processing was not applied to the reading time of each sentence in Passage One because of theinability to differentiate which sentence a subject was reading for some of the data. The reading rate of Passage
Two and the reading times for Passage One and Two are illustrated in Tables 1 and 2. One-way analysis of variance
was applied to investigate whether the reading rate differed from sentence to sentence in Passage Two. The results
showed no significance (F(2,18) = 1.71, p > .10).
As a result of the analysis of differences between highly proficient learners (High) and less proficient learners (Low), no significant difference was found (Passage One: t(7) = 0.692 , p > .10; Passage Two: t(8) = 0.38, p >.10).

Table 1. Reading Rate of Each Sentence in Passage Two
First sentence

Second sentence

Third sentence

Mean

1.66

1.73

1.87

SD

0.52

0.49

0.46

(characters/second)

N = 10

Table 2. Reading Time (converted into a passage of 100 characters)
Passage One

Passage Two

High (N = 4)

Low (N=5)High (N = 5)

Low (N = 5)

Mean

40.83

45.29

60.12

63.72

SD

6.55

9.84

14.12

17.14

(seconds)

Table 3. Amount of Fixation and Regression (converted into a passage of 100 characters)
Fixation

Regression

Passage 1

Passage 2

Passage 1

Passage 2High
Low(N = 5) (N = 5)

High Low(N = 5) (N = 5)

High
Low
(N = 5) (N = 5)

High
Low
(N = 5) (N = 5)

Mean

25.00

26.48

35.68

32.42

27.40

11.30

46.30

10.32

SD

11.77

17.37

16.64

19.37

13.95

9.77

27.53

3.80

(characters)

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良くないイメージの両方を持っています。国にいた時、日本
人は親切な人ばかりだと思っていましたが、駅でたくさんの荷物を持った弱そうな女の人が階段を上ろうとしている時、
おおぜいの人は何もせずに通りすぎてしまうし、こんだ電車

Figure 1. Frequent fixation points of more than three readers (Passage One)
一番広く行われているのが、焼いてしまう方法です。家
庭の生活から出るごみなどは、どろどろとしてその 9 0パーセント以上は水分で、焼くことが難しいのに、それをエネルギーが足りないこのごろでも石油を使ってかわて焼いています。このような場所を作らなければ、

Figure 2. Frequent fixation points of more than three readers (Passage Two)
良くないイメージの両方を持っています。国にいた時、日本
人は親切な人ばかりだと思っていましたが、駅でたくさんの荷物を持った弱そうな女の人が階段を上ろうとしている時、
おおぜいの人は何もせずに通りすぎてしまうし、こんだ電車

Figure 3. Parts where more than three readers regressed in reading (Passage One)
一番広く行われているのが、焼いてしまう方法です。家
庭の生活から出るごみなどは、どろどろとしてその 90パーセント以上は水分で、焼くことが難しいのに、それをエネルギーが足りないこのごろでも石油を使ってかわかして焼いています。このような場所を作らなければ、

Figure 4. Parts where more than three readers regressed in reading (Passage Two)
Points and Amounts of Fixation and Regression
In this analysis, when a fixation continued more than 33 msec., it was determined to be a point of fixation.
Parts that were fixated upon more than twice were regarded as frequent fixation points. The range in a passage
where a learner read back over something was considered to be part of a regression. Frequent fixation points andparts of regression are shown in Figures 1 to 4.
The points of frequent fixation can be categorized as (a) unlearned vocabulary or newly learned vocabularysuch as “ 弱そうな ”, “ 親切な人ばかり ”, “ おおぜいの ”, “ 通りすぎてしまう ”, “ 行われている ”, “ 以上は水分で” and “石油”, (b) learned vocabulary with unlearned meaning, for example, “一番広く行われているのが ”, “ 生活から出るごみ ”, (c) a clause which consisted of a combination of individually learned grammar,
such as “ 荷物を持った弱そうな女の人 ”, which is the noun phrase that was included in the noun modifierclause and an expression of mood, (d) parts where more than two types of processing are needed, such as activationof vocabulary knowledge and understanding of the demonstrative pronoun, for example, “ このような ”, “ 何もせずに ”, (e) unlearned Kanji such as “ 荷物 ”, “ 階段 ”, “ 親切 ”, “ 以上 ”, “ 焼く ”, “ 難しい ”, “ 石油 ”, or parts
presenting new information such as new readings of Kanji, for example, “ 行う ”, “ 以上 ”, “ 足りない ”, “ 石油 ”.

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Regressions were often found in (a) parts in which learners need to infer unlearned vocabulary or expressions and/or the meaning of a sentence as a whole, for example, “( 親切な ) 人ばかりだ ”, “( 階段を ) 上ろうとしている時 ”, “ 生活から出るごみなどは、どろどろとして ”, “(90 パーセント ) 以上は水分で ”, “ エネルギー”, (b) long clauses in which the learner needs to recognize the scope of the subject and predicate and constructeach as a whole meaning, for example, “ 一番広く行われているのが、焼いてしまう方法 ”, “ 生活から出る
ごみなどは .”In this analysis, the number of characters in frequent fixation points was regarded as the amount of fixationand the total number of characters within the range of reading back over an area was defined as the amount ofregression. The results of the amount of fixation and regression are shown in Table 3. A comparison of the amountof fixation between Passage One and Two indicated that subjects tended to fixate more often in Passage One than
Passage Two (t (9) = 1.97, .10 > p > .05). The amount of regression in Passage One was compared with that of
Passage Two and the results indicated no significant difference (t (9) = 1.57, p > .10).
The amount of fixation of highly proficient readers (High) was compared to that of less proficient readers(Low) and no significant difference was found (Passage One: t (8) = 0.14, p > .10 ; Passage Two: t (8) = 0.27, p>.10). Comparison of the amount of regression between highly proficient readers (High) and less proficient readers(Low) indicated that highly proficient readers tended to regress more frequently than less proficient readers in bothpassages (Passage One: t (8) = 1.89, .10 > p > .05; Passage Two: t (4) = 2.59, .10 > p > .05).
The results of the experiment are summarized as follows:
1.

No statistical difference was found in the reading time of each sentence, that is, there was notendency to read the first part of the passage or longer sentences slowly.

2.

Eye-fixation often occurred on the characters, words and sentence patterns that were unknown
to the readers or that they had just learned, while regression occurred on unknown words and/or
sentence patterns and long clauses.

3.

Readers tended to fixate more in Passage Two than Passage One, while there was no significant
difference with regard to regression between Passage One and Two.

4.

No statistical difference was found in the reading time between proficient readers and lessproficient readers.

5.

There was no significant difference in terms of the number of eye-fixations between proficient
readers and less proficient readers.

6.

Proficient readers had a tendency to read back over items more often than less proficient readers.

Discussion
The Reading Process of Pre-intermediate Learners
When pre-intermediate learners read a passage at the same level as the one in the experiment, they seem toread slowly without altering their speed of reading. The possibility remains that readers do not alter their reading
rate while reading a relatively short passage consisting of about two hundred characters. Results revealing thatreaders tended to fixate more in Passage Two than Passage One concur with the preceding research, which claims
that readers fixate less in easier passages. The result of no difference being found between the two passages may
indicate some possibility of interaction between the difficulty of a passage and the proficiency of the reader, basedon the fact that proficient readers regressed more than less proficient readers and proficient readers regressed morein Passage Two than Passage One. Meanwhile, less proficient readers regressed more in Passage One than in
Passage Two. Further research needs to be done.

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The Difference between Proficient Readers and Less Proficient Readers
The results of the experiment demonstrated that readers need considerable time to process characters, vocabulary and sentence patterns that they have just learned, as well as unknown ones. Although proficient readers
took about the same time as less proficient readers for both readings, they tended to regress more than the others.
Readers have to process information that enters their sight on the spot, holding onto prior information related to thepassage, for the purpose of making a whole meaning network of one sentence or one passage. Proficient readersseem to be able to construct the meaning of the sentences and passages as a whole so as to process informationentering their sight and previous information at the same time. On the contrary, less proficient readers need toallocate most of their capacity to processing information that is in sight and do not have sufficient processing
capacity to relate information in sight to prior information, which is the purpose of regressing during reading.

Some Advice for Assisting Learners in Reading
Proficient readers fixated less on Passage One and more on Passage Two with regression, so it can beinferred that there is a need to grapple with the activation of each concept, which consists of comprehending thesentences and the passage and relating the concepts to one another. Proficient readers could be assisted by being
providing with passages that are about the same difficulty as Passage Two and being given tasks to create a meaning network of sentences and/or passages, such as comprehension practice of noun modifiers consisting of morethan two sentences, and anaphoric relations, etc.
Less proficient readers could comprehend Passage One and seemed to utilize most of their processing capacity on recognition and activation of information in sight and were not able to spare any processing capacity forsynthesizing the concepts of the passage. They could be assisted by being given practice aimed at decreasing thetime needed for processing each component of the sentence and/or the passage. Furthermore, they could complete
exercises designed to relate all of the concepts of the passage together and construct the meaning of the passage asa whole. In the case of learners not being able to comprehend Passage One-level sentences, they could be helped bybeing given practice in getting used to constructing networks of meaning of sentences and/or passages consisting oflearned vocabulary and sentence patterns. Less proficient readers would also benefit from exercises that demanded
regression.

Notes
1.

Learners at the pre-intermediate level refers to learners that have acquired a vocabulary of
2,000 words and 400 to 500 Kanji characters, in addition to Hiragana and Katakana. They areable to manage basic daily communication in Japanese.

2.

The reading time in Passage One could not be measured for one highly proficient learner because of a locus problem.

References
Just, M.A. & Carpenter, P.A. (1987). The psychology of reading and language comprehension. Newton: Allyn andBacon.
Kanbe, N. (1986). Yomi no gankyuu undoo to yomi no katei (Eye movement in reading and the process ofreading), Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyuujo Hookoku 85 Kenkyuu Hookokushuu 7, 29-66.
Koonosu, T., Suzuki, M. & Fukuda, T. (1995). Dainigengoshuutokukatei ni okeru gakushuusya no dokkai sutoratejii
ni kansuru koosatsu (Consideration of reading strategies in the second language learning process), Japan
Ergonomics Association, Dai 36 kai Taikai Kooen Ronbunshuu 208-209.

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Saita, S. (1993). Yomi no gankyuu undoo (Eye movement in reading) Osaka, R et al.(ed.)Gankyuu undoo nojikkensinnrigaku (Experimental psychology concerning eye movement) Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, pp.
167-197.
Shigematsu, J., Koonosu, T. & Fukuda, T. (1994). Aikamera niyoru non-native no yomi no jisshouteki kenkyuu
Dai 2 Hoo—Tyuugokujin Gakushuusya no baai — (Empirical studies of non-native readers reading throughan eye camera—Case study of Chinese students—), Heisei 6 nenndo Nihongo Kyouikugakkai Shuuki Taikai
Yokooshuu, pp. 92-95.
Shigematsu, J. & Koonosu, T. (1993) Aikamera niyoru non-native no yomi no jisshouteki kenkyuu—Tyuugokujin
gakushuusya no baai— (Empirical studies of non-native readers reading through an eye camera— Casestudy of Chinese students —), Heisei 5nenndo Nihongo Kyouikugakkai Shuuki Taikai Yokooshuu, pp. 31-36.

私が日本へ来たのは３か月前で、その間に私の中の日本のイ
メージは少しかわりました。今では、いいイメージとあまり良くないイメージの両方を持っています。国にいた時、日本
人は親切な人ばかりだと思っていましたが、駅でたくさんの荷物を持った弱そうな女の人が階段を上ろうとしている時、
おおぜいの人は何もせずに通りすぎてしまうし、こんだ電車に年をとった人が入ってきても、寝たまま気がつかずに席をかわってあげない若者も多いようです。人を助けようという
気持ちはあまりないのでしょうか。
(Reading of all Kanji were marked with Furigana in original)

Figure 5. Passage One
毎日出てくる家庭や会社のごみを処理する方法として今一番広く行われているのが、焼いてしまう方法です。家
庭の生活から出るごみなどは、どろどろとしてその 90パーセント以上は水分で、焼くことが難しいのに、それをエネルギーが足りないこのごろでも石油を使ってかわかして焼いています。このような場所を作らなければ、
新しい住宅地やニュータウンを作ってはいけないという市町村も各地に多いのです。
(Reading of all Kanji were marked with Furigana in original)

Figure 6. Passage Two

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How Effective is a CALL System When Promoting TEFL Methods?
Mika Kawanari
Meikai University, Japan
Abstract
The present study examines the effectiveness of the teaching methods using a CALL system. Three assumptions are: (a) a multimedia type of CALL material is effective in the increase of English communication
ability of the learner, (b) the media of a computer installed for the class activities is effective in learning English,and (c) such effectiveness is remarkable for lower level learners. 80 Japanese university students majoring inapplied international studies who were taking English I, and III (mainly for listening practice in CALL laboratory, in 1998-1999), served as subjects. They took two tests, completed two questionnaires, and made achievement records of learning the CALL material. As a result of performing the correlation analyses on the data oftests, questionnaires, and leaning records, our assumptions were almost verified. We could conclude that a
CALL system is fairly effective when promoting TEFL methods.

Objective
We Japanese are in the middle of drastic change in the methods of foreign language teaching for communicative use. With the rapid increase of multimedia use in the classroom teaching, we came to revise the interactive
learning method by using electronic teaching material, dictionary and internet facilities. There are many reportsthat the computerized class activities would exert a favorable influence on the learner’s motivation, and the multimedia teaching materials and CALL are effective in promoting TEFL methods. The objective of the present study
is to examine how effective the teaching methods using a multimedia type of CALL material are with reference tothree kinds of data: the test data, the learner’s learning records, and the questionnaires on their learning experience.

Background
The freshman students were divided into six graded classes based on the placement tests given at the beginning of the academic year. They must take the English courses separated into the four skills of reading, writing,listening and speaking, using the integrated learning materials and syllabus. Among these separate courses, thelistening-centered course was taught by means of the traditional video-based instruction and the new networking
type of multimedia CALL materials.
A multimedia type of CALL material contains the dialogues of some stories whose purpose is to teach
British and American language and culture. The material includes the dialogues for listening, speaking, writing andreading distributed in a well-balanced way. The CALL material is particularly valuable in picturing the soundwaves and intonation on the screen. It has also the function of roll play, recording and reproducing of the student’s
utterances on a sentential level and, comparing the sound waves of the model with his own.
In addition, the CALL material can give dictation practice indicating the correct and incorrect spelling.
The students can conduct their individual practice according to their individual interests and needs on demand bylogging into the computer using their registered identification number, which has already been registered in thecomputer network not only in their regular classes but also in their free time. It is also possible for a teacher to
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observe and grasp the students’ learning process and to advise them by reserving all the processes of their learning,that is, the table of the accumulation of the student’s learning data, the table of their achievement, the table offrequency of their use of computer system on the file server of the central computer. It was suggested that students
should use 20-25 minutes for practice in the classes and they were encouraged to use the CALL computer during
their self-study hours.

Research Design
Assumption
Assumption 1: A multimedia type of CALL material is effective in the increase of English communication ability of the learners.
Assumption 2: The media of a computer installed for the class activities is effective in learning
English.
Assumption 3: Such effectiveness is remarkable especially for lower level learners.

Subjects and time allowed for study
2 classes in the freshman (2 upper level classes, A and B, out of 6 classes); the subjects are 80
students.
24 class periods out of the total 28 class periods a year and the self-study hours.
Experiment duration : 2 full semesters; May in 1998 to January in 1999.

Teaching material
A networking type of BBC New English Course (produced by ALPS System Integration Company, in Japan)

Method for the experiment
1.

In the pre-test, a close type of dictation test was used for examining the students’ ability ofEnglish. Pre-questionnaire about the students’ interest in the CALL materials and computerutilization was given.

2.

Suggestions of learning English were made to students on the basis of one unit per 2 weeks bymaking the syllabus appropriate. 4 kinds of the learners’ learning records were accumulated asdata bases: time spent for learning, frequency of learning, frequency of pronunciation practice,frequency of dictation practice.

3.

Post-test for measuring the students’ English ability with the same content as that of the pre-test
and the post-questionnaire about the student’s consciousness of the CALL materials and computer utilization were given to the students.

Method of analysis
Descriptive statistics of basic data
Test data: To check whether the students have increased the test score by making use of the CALL
material, by measuring the basic statistical data of the pre- and post-tests. A test of significance by a t-test given toeach of the four experimental classes about the difference between the means of pre-test and post-test was
executed.
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Learning records data: To analyze the basic statistics pertaining to the data of learning history, such as thetime and frequency used for learning, frequency of pronunciation practice, and frequency of dictation practicebased on the learning data basis.
Questionnaire data: To analyze the basic statistics pertaining to the data of Pre- and Post-Questionnaire. A
test of equality by chi-square test was give to each item.
Multivariate analysis of basic data
Correlation analysis between test data and learning records data: To analyze the correlation between
the test scores and the data of learning records, using multiple regression analysis and Pearson’s correlation
coefficients.
Correlation analysis between test data and questionnaire data: To analyze the correlation between thetest scores and the data of pre- and post-questionnaire, using Hayashi’s Quantification Method Type I.
Correlation analysis between learning records data and questionnaire data: To analyze the correlation
between the learning records data and the data of pre- and post-questionnaire, using Hayashi’s Quantification
Method Type I.
Data analyses were performed by using two kinds of software: SPSS 8.0 J for windows Base System andQuantification Programs 32 Bit SPSS for windows.

Results and Discussion
Analysis 1: The Test of Significance Referring to the Difference Between the Means of the Preand Post–Tests
Table 1. The Means of Pre-test / Post-test / Difference
Pre-Test

Post-Test

Class

mean

S.D.

max. min.

mean

S.D.

max. min.

t

df

p

A (n = 36)

34.47

5.63

44

22

38.72

4.58

46

24

6.56 35***

B (n = 33)

29.78

5.71

42

15

36.33

4.72

45

27

6.54 32***

Total (n = 69)

32.23

6.10

44

15

37.57

4.77

46

24

5.34 68***

Difference
Class

mean

S.D.

max. min.

A (n = 36)

4.25

3.88

13

-3

B (n = 33)

6.84

4.08

24

0

Total (n = 69)

5.49

4.77

24

-3

*** p < 0.01

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In order to examine whether each of the class A and B had increased their test scores, due to the use of CALL
material, BBC New English Course, we made the test of significance referring to the differences between themeans of the pre-test and post-test in each class. Table 1. indicates that the students showed improved test scoresin the post-test, and that after performing the test of significance for the difference between the means of the pretest and post-test, the result was significant by the level of significance of 1%. Moreover, comparing the difference
between the means of the pre-test and post-test in each class, no meaningful significance was found. This meansthat by using a CALL material, the degrees of increase of the learning effect was similar in every class of different
level.

Analysis 2: Descriptive Statistics of Data of Learning Process
Table 2 shows the students’ time spent for learning, frequency of learning, frequency of pronunciation drill,
and frequency of dictation practice on each class, and on total classes. All students practiced 11.47 hours during 24
weeks, i.e. an average of 29 minutes a week, and the students also practiced the pronunciation drill 496 times in 24
weeks, i.e. 20.6 times a week. The students practiced 20-25 minutes in the regular classes and 4-9 minutes in theirself-study hours. According to the questionnaire, we could say that the students were active and positive to study
English using the multimedia type of CALL material. However, they actually could not have much time for selfstudy because CALL laboratories were always occupied by other classes in addition to English classes.

Table 2. Descriptive Statistics of Data of Learning Process on BBC New English Course
time spent for learning (hours)

frequency of learning

Class

mean

S.D.

max.

min.

mean

S.D.

max.

min.

A (in = 36)

11.07

3.65

19.7

4.4

64.36

27.42

146

29

B (n = 33)

12.47

4.75

24.7

7.1

88.45

60.75

314

37

Total (n = 69)

11.74

4.24

24.7

4.4

75.88

47.65

314

29

frequency of pronunciation practicefrequency of dictation practice

Class

mean

S.D.

max.

min.

mean

S.D.

max.

min.

A (n = 36)

529

269

1424

23

444

253

1010

37

B (n = 33)

460

296

1112

25

493

272

969

25

Total (n = 69)

496

282

1424

23

467

262

1010

25

Analysis 3: Correlation Analysis of the Test Score and the Data of Learning Process
Table 3 indicates that the correlation coefficients between the difference of pre-test and post-test and thefrequency of learning are only significant in total. This means that high frequency of accessing the material forlearning caused a elevated score in the post-test. In B class, the correlation coefficients between the post-test andthe time spent for learning, and frequency of learning are significant. On the contrary, in A class, there are no
significant correlation coefficients in any part.

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Table 3. Correlation Analysis of the Test Score and the Data of Learning Process
time spent for learning

frequency of learningclass

pre-test

post-test

difference

pre-test

post-test

difference

A (n = 36)

0.101

0.117

-0.009

0.169

0.086

-0.144

B (n = 33)

0.331*

0.335**-0.076-0.17

0.37**

0.304*C (n = 69)

0.141

0.183

-0.002-0.0620.18

0.238**

frequency of pronunciation practicefrequency of dictation practiceclass

pre-test

post-test

difference

pre-test

post-test

difference

A (n = 36)

-0.09

0.025

0.161

0.246

0.26

-0.05

B (n = 33)

0.37**

0.212-0.123

0.18

0.118

-0.099C (n = 69)

0.178

0.147

-0.038

0.159

0.158

-0.048** p<0.05, * p<0.1
Actually, students of each class made the increase of test scores by using the CALL material. And thelearning effect was significant similarly in each class as shown Table 1. However, the correlation coefficients
between the post-test and the frequencies of pronunciation practice and dictation practice were not significant.
Thus, we cannot confirm which learning processes directly produce the learning effect. The question now arises:
are there any other factors such as psychological or mental factors that influence the increase of learning effect? If
so, is it possible that we reveal quantitatively such psychological or mental factors? Therefore, as the next stage,
we examined the psychological characteristics of students based on the questionnaire asking students’ preference
and orientation about computer, English, CALL lab, CALL material, and so on.

Analysis 4: Analysis of the Frequency of the Students’ Response to the Pre- / Post–Questionnaires
Table 4. The Frequency of Students' Responses to the Pre/Post-Questionnaire
Key to Questions:(BQ1 /AQ1) Do you like to operate the computer?
(BQ2 /AQ2) Do you like to study English?
(BQ3 /AQ3) Is the English course using the CALL lab more interesting to you than the other English courses?
(BQ4 /AQ4) Is the BBC New English Course, a CALL material interesting to you?
(BQ5 /AQ5) Are / Were you positive and active in learning the BBC, a CALL material ?
(BQ6 /AQ6) Do/Did you think of the English course using the BBC, a CALL material as more effective inEnglish learning?
(BQ7 /AQ7) Do / Did you have enough time for self-studying the BBC, in addition to class period ?
BQ=Pre-questionnaire

AQ=Post-questionnaire

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Table 4. The Frequency of Students' Responses to the Pre/Post-Questionnaire (Cont’d)
Pre-Questionnaire

BQ1

BQ2

BQ3

BQ4

BQ5

BQ6

BQ7

Yes

53

41

52

55

51

47

10

No

3

5

2

2

1

0

32

Neither

13

23

15

12

17

22

27

Post-Questionnaire

AQ1

AQ2

AQ3

AQ4

AQ5

AQ6

AQ7

Yes

52

36

49

51

27

43

4

No

3

3

4

4

7

8

52

Neither

14

30

16

14

35

18

13

n = 69n = 69In Table 4, pre- and post-questionnaires consist of 7 items: preference for operating computer, preference forstudying English, interest in CALL lab, interest in a CALL material, positive attitude to study a CALL material,
expectation to the learning effect by using a CALL material, and self-study hours for a CALL material. The middle
part of this table indicates the students’ responses to the pre-questionnaire given when a month has passed since thestudents studied English using the CALL material. The bottom part shows the students’ response to the postquestionnaire given when they finished all the courses using the CALL material in ten months. Answers are 3
possibilities: yes, no, neither yes or no. There are no remarkable changes of proportion of the students’ answers toeach 7 question between pre- and post- questionnaire.

Analysis 5: Equivalence Test of Items of Pre-Questionnaire
Table 5. Equivalence test of Items of Pre-Questionnaire
BQ1
BQ 1

BQ ２

BQ ２

△

BQ ３

×

△

BQ ４

×

×

○

BQ ５

×

×

○

○

BQ ６

×

×

×

×

BQ ３
BQ ４
BQ ５
BQ ６
○

n = 69○ ＝ relationalp ＜ 0.05△ ＝ weakly relationalp ≦ 0.10

× ＝ not relationalp ＞ 0.05

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Based on the results of pre-questionnaire in Table 4, cross tabulation and equivalence test by using chisquare test were performed to each item of pre-questionnaire. In Table 5, ○ means that the items are relational, △means that the items are weakly relational, and × is that the items are not relational. This table enables us to findwhat preference and orientation the students have when they start studying the CALL material. First, most students(53 out of 69) like to operate computer, than to study English (41 out of 69). We may say that students arecomputer-oriented people just in the present IT period. Second, preference for computer and preference for English are weakly relational (BQ1 x BQ2 = △ ), that means students who like studying English also like operating
computer. And also, students who like studying English are interested in CALL lab (BQ2 x BQ3 = △). Third,
regardless of preference for computer, or preference for English, the following 4 characteristics are found as relational. Students who are interested in CALL lab are also interested in BBC, CALL material (BQ3 x BQ4 = ○ ),and also they are positive and active in learning BBC (BQ3 x BQ5 = ○). Then, the students who are interested in
BBC are also positive and active in learning BBC (BQ4 x BQ5 = ○ ). And, the students who are positive andactive in learning BBC also think of learning BBC as more effective in English learning (BQ5 x BQ6 = ○ ).
Judging the results as a whole, we could say that, regardless of likes and dislikes for English, the students’interests in computer, CALL lab, and CALL material, and their positive attitude to studying CALL material are theinfluential factors to the increase of the learning effect, i.e. the increase of the test scores. To clarify such influential factors, correlation between the increase of test scores and psychological factors, and correlation between thelearning process and psychological factors were analyzed as in the following sections.

Analysis 6: Correlation Analysis Between Test Data and Questionnaire Data
Table 6. Correlation Analysis of Pre-test vs. Pre-questionnaire and Post-test vs. Post-Questionnaire
Pre
VariablePost
partial correlation coefficientA (n = 36) B (n = 33)

Variable

TOT(n = 66)

partial correlation coefficientA (n = 36)

B (n = 33) TOT (n = 66)

BQ1

0.21

0.36

0.06

AQ1

0.07

0.22

0.12

BQ2

0.18

0.23

0.29

AQ2

0.24

0.38

0.15

BQ3

0.39

0.04

0.08

AQ3

0.20

0.56

0.32

BQ4

0.31

-0.01

0.18

AQ4

0.20

0.58

0.29

BQ5

0.55

0.01

0.34

AQ5

0.23

0.51

0.21

BQ6

0.08

-0.01

0.12

AQ6

0.07

0.18

0.01

BQ7

0.51

-0.08

0.28

AQ7

0.07

0.60

0.27

m. c.

0.62

0.63

0.53

m. c.

0.42

0.78

0.48

m. c. = multiple correlation
To examine which psychological factors cause the increase of test scores, correlation analysis between pretest and pre-questionnaire, and post-test and post-questionnaire were performed by using Hayashi’s Quantification
Method Type I. In Table 6, the left table shows the result of pre-test and questionnaire. The right table shows theresult of post-test and questionnaire. In these tables, the variable is the item of each questionnaire. For example. inthe left table, we set the scores of pre-test as objective variable, and the items of pre-questionnaire as explanatory
variable, and partial correlation coefficients are shown in each class and in total. Taking an example, we can findthat explanatory variable BQ1 (preference for computer) have influence on the score of pre-test, and its degree is
0.21.

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As a result of examining the right part of the Table 6, it is clear that the most influential factor on the post-test
is BQ3 (0.32), i.e. interest in the English course using the CALL lab; and the secondary influential factor is BQ4(0.24), i.e. interest in the BBC, a CALL material itself. When the post-test was done in January, 1999, students hadstudied the BBC in the CALL lab for about 10 months. The interest in CALL lab and CALL material stimulated thelearners’ motivation of learning. And, while actually they had studied in such a condition, their interest in CALL
lab and CALL material were kept, and that influenced the elevated scores of the post-test. This result seems to bemeaningful. In addition, what is more noticeable here is that such result is clearly found in B class. BQ3 (0.56) andBQ4 (0.58) are most influential factors on the post-test. Students in B class are in the secondary level of proficiency in English ability. To learners who are computer-oriented, but are not good at English, English learning in
CALL lab using a CALL material caused the elevated scores of the post-test. In fact, it is a serious problem to us
how to manage the class of poor proficiency students. As one answer to this problem, we can safely state thatlearning English interactively by means of the computer in CALL lab is effective as one of the new type of TEFL
methods.

Analysis 7: Correlation Analysis Between Learning Records Data and Questionnaire Data
Table 7. Correlation Analysis of Learning Process and Post-Questionnaire
Time spent for Learning

Frequency of Learning

Variable

Variablepartial correlation coefficientA (n = 36)

B (n = 33)

TOT

AQ1

0.04

0.32

0.25

AQ2

0.33

0.15

AQ3

0.18

AQ4

partial correlation coefficientA (n = 36)

B (n = 33)

TOT

AQ1

0.21

0.33

0.28

0.23

AQ2

0.19

0.42

0.3

0.37

0.12

AQ3

0.09

0.42

0.13

0.64

0.29

0.33

AQ4

0.39

0.3

0.07

AQ5

0.07

0.03

0.05

AQ5

0.34

0.26

0.06

AQ6

0.29

0.27

0.19

AQ6

0.16

0.33

0.06

AQ7

0.14

0.49

0.25

AQ7

0.08

0.59

0.34

m. c.

0.69

0.59

0.51

m. c.

0.51

0.73

0.48

m. c. = multiple correlation
Frequency of Pronunciation PracticeFrequency of Dictation Practice

Variable

Variablepartial correlation coefficientA (n = 36)

B (n = 33)

TOT

AQ1

0.28

0.36

0.06

AQ2

0.57

0.37

AQ3

0.35

AQ4

partial correlation coefficientA (n = 36)

B (n = 33)

TOT

AQ1

0.12

0.31

0.18

0.25

AQ2

0.21

0.41

0.23

0.49

0.19

AQ3

0.24

0.39

0.18

0.24

0.54

0.27

AQ4

0.50

0.51

0.47

AQ5

0.36

0.36

0.25

AQ5

0.31

0.17

0.15

AQ6

0.42

0.54

0.23

AQ6

0.11

0.35

0.14

AQ7

0.36

0.34

0.16

AQ7

0.02

0.31

0.11

m. c.

0.69

0.77

0.52

m. c.

0.55

0.66

0.53

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Our final analysis was to examine which psychological factors had some influence on the learning process.
That is, what consciousness do the learners have when they practice the BBC in CALL lab. Correlation analysis
between learning process and post-questionnaire was performed by using Hayashi’s Quantification Method Type I.
In Table 7, partial correlation coefficients are shown in each class and in total, in every 4 kinds of learning processes.
As a result of examining partial correlation coefficients in total of all tables, we can notice that the factor ofinterest in CALL material :AQ4 is the most influential factor on the three kinds of processes: on time for learning(0.33), on pronunciation practice (0.27), and dictation practice (0.47). It seems reasonable to suppose that once thelearners come to have an interest in a CALL material, they come to take much more time in learning, and to practicemore in pronunciation and dictation. That is, the interest in a CALL material made the learners spend much time
for learning, and stimulated them to practice pronunciation and dictation as much as possible. Then, that effort
caused the elevation of the test scores in post-test.
Concerning B class, the secondary level of proficiency group, the factor AQ7, having enough time for self–
study, is the most influential factor on the time spent for leaning (0.49) and frequency for learning (0.59). And, thesecondary influential factor on time and frequency is AQ3, interest in CALL lab (0.37) and (0.42). In addition, as
shown in Table 3 on B class, there was a significant correlation between time for leaning and post-test, and frequency of learning and post-test. This means that if B class students have enough time for self-study in school, andthey are interested in CALL lab, they take much time and more frequency for learning the BBC. And such learning
process resulted in the significant elevated scores in post-test.
Moreover, concerning B class, what is remarkable here is that the most influential factor on the frequency ofpronunciation (0.54) and on the frequency of dictation (0.51) is AQ4: the interest in the BBC, a CALL material.
This is the same tendency as found in total. This result reveals the characteristics of the learners of poor proficiency in English ability. To the learners who are not good at English, but are computer-oriented, English learning
using a CALL material is quite interesting to them, and such interest in a CALL material stimulated their motivation to practice pronunciation and dictation interactively with computer. Actually, the learners can record theirpronunciation through head phones, and their sound waves appear on the monitor just in front of them, and they cancompare their own sound waves with the model simultaneously on the monitor. And also, once they directly typein words, phrases, and sentences, correction program automatically can check their spelling. Such interactive
learning lessons stimulated their motivation to practice actively more and more. As a result, we can safely state thatthe interest to the interactive learning with sounds, letters, pictures, that is, the characteristics of multimedia, is the
motivation for the learners of poor proficiency in English. This supports that CALL system, i.e. multimedia type ofteaching material and CALL lab is effective when promoting TEFL methods.

Conclusion
The present study made it a point to examine whether or not a multimedia type of CALL material and theteaching/learning method supported by computer facilities were effective. Many experiments about a multimedia
type of teaching/ learning methods were based on questionnaires, or questionnaires and test data. The method of
measurement and verification in the present study was an integrated one, consisting of three kinds of data: the preand post-test data, the objective data of the students’ learning records, and the subjective questionnaire about thestudents’ consciousness. And the method of analysis was precise one, making use of Hayashi’s Quantification
Theory as is commonly used in the areas of sociology or psychology and so on. As a result of performing the
integrated correlation analyses, it seems reasonable to suppose that three assumptions of ours were verified. It isalso entirely fair to conclude that a CALL system is fairy effective when promoting TEFL methods.

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References
Alderson, J. C., Clapham, C. & Wall, D. (1995). Language test construction and evaluation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chihara, T. (1995). An evaluation of a computer-assisted EFL speed reading practicum in college. Language
Laboratory 32, 141-149.
Hatch, E. M. & Lazaraton, A. (1991). Research Manual. MA: Newbury House.
Kawanari, M. (1998a). A multimedia type CALL material and a computer assisted teaching method in listeningclass and their effectiveness in learning English. Tokiwa International Studies Review 2: 63-84.
Kawanari, M. (1999). The effectiveness of a multimedia type CALL material on the learning of English and its
methodology. Language Laboratory 36, 77-96.
Pennington,M.C. (1991). Computers in applied linguistics. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Schreck, R.& Schreck, J. (1991). Computer-assisted language learning. In: Marianne Celce-Murcia (ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language, pp. 472-486. MA: Newbury House.
Tarumi, T., et.al. (1992). SPSSx, Analysis version 1. Tokyo: Toyo Keizai Shinpo Sha.

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How Far is Language Learning by CALL
from First Language Acquisition?
Yukio Ikari
Osaka City University, Japan
Abstract
The purpose of this presentation is to consider if language learning by CALL is effective in comparison
with the process of first language acquisition. The CALL system has been widely used in the educational sceneof Japan, replacing the traditional LL system with the new one. Has technical progress or change in the mediaof this kind altered language learning in itself? The question concerned does not seem to have been extensively
discussed yet. The author will introduce in the presentation the models, which are supposed to explain explicitly
the difference in the processes of first language acquisition and language learning by CALL.

Introduction
People naturally master a language from their direct experiences, exchanging information in a particularenvironment exposed to them. On the other hand, language learning takes place through the effective use ofsimulation done by application software so far as CALL is concerned. The environment that people are immersed
in seems to have something to do with the quality and quantity of experiences and their effects on memory. The
author will examine which factors influence first language acquisition and language learning by CALL respectively.

First Language Acquisition
First we will consider the significant factors related to first language acquisition. When examining them,
you need to keep two things in mind, that is, how linguistic elements are processed and how they are stored inmemory. The author will consider them from neuropsycholinguistic point of view.

Independent Processing of Semantic and Linguistic Information
Some studies of aphasia have shown that spoken language processing works mainly in and around Broca’s
and Wernicke’s areas. In the former speech is programmed and in the latter it is decoded. Damasio(1992) has also
proved that linguistic information and semantic information is processed individually though we actually integratethem automatically and instantaneously in the process of production. From what we have described so far, there is
no doubt that the process of mastering a language occurs inside the brain. What is happening in the brain, then?
Ikari(1999) has illustrated in Figure 1 the process of first language acquisition from the viewpoint ofneuropsycholinguistics.
Figure 1 shows how auditory or visual information is being processed in some particular areas of the brain.
The figure could explain fairly well how people cope with the word fish auditorily, comprehending its meaning or
how they deal with the fish visually, producing the combination of sounds correspondingly. As has been mentioned
above, this figure also suggests that semantic information is processed independently of linguistic information.

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←

←

←

←

Primary
Motor
Area

←

/ fi /

←

[fi]
←

To contents

Wernicke’s Area

Linguistic
Processing←←

Primary
Auditory
Area

←

[fi]

Next paper

Semantic
Processing

Secondary← Association ←Area

Primary
VisualArea←

Broca’s Area

/ fi /Figure 1. Brain function and language processing
The Role of Memory
In addition to the independent processing of linguistic and semantic information, memory function should betaken into consideration in order to explain how the inner system shown in Figure 1 works well. Considering theindependent processing of semantic and linguistic information examined above, Ikari(1998) has proposed in Figure 2 the model illustrating how some special organs are related to the overall language processing from the view
point of memory function.

Sensory
Organs

Input
Data

→

→

Hippocampus →Association
Areas

LinguisticallyRelatedOrgansShort-Term
MemorySensory
Memory→→Long-Term
MemoryLinguistic &Semantic
Processing

Sensory
Organs→ Hippocampus →Association
Areas

SemanticallyRelatedOrgans→←Cognitive
System→←Output
Data

Figure 2. Relation between memory and language processing
Figure 2 shows that linguistic and semantic information is processed at the same time and it is also done
individually in some particular areas or organs. Furthermore you should be careful that the organs related to
linguistic processing are restricted to ears and eyes so far as the availability of sensory devices is concerned. On theother hand the ones involving semantic processing can be a nose, a tongue, hands and some other sensors, including
the above two. This could imply that with linguistic or semantic information processing memory functions in adifferent manner, activating some organs specialized in each processing.

Mechanism of Language Acquisition
It follows from what we have considered that concerning first language acquisition linguistic and semantic
information is treated separately in language processing and that memory function is closely related to each processing. Ikari(1999) has introduced in Figure 3 the model of the mechanism of language acquisition to explain thewhole processes concerned.
Figure 3 includes a couple of new elements such as Analytic Procedure and Pattern Recognition. Yet we will
not discuss them here in the presentation because of its complexity. Anyway, with this figure you will see how
linguistic and semantic information are processed in combination with memory functions. Let us reconfirm here
again that spoken language are treated separately in the process of linguistic and semantic information and thisworks in relation to memory functions involved.

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Cognitive
System→→→Linguistic
Processing

Semantic
Processing

Processing throughSensory Organs→

Semantic
Processing→→

Sensory Memory
Input
Data →

To contents→

Linguistic
Processing

Next paper

Short-Term Memory

Analytic
Procedure
Pattern
Recognition→

Analysis by Synthesis
Anticipation

→

Test

Analytic
Procedure
Pattern
Recognition

Long-Term Memory→

Episodic Memory
Semantic Memory

Figure 3. A model of the mechanism of language acquisition

Language Learning by CALL
We have observed thus far some significant factors connected with the process of first language acquisition.
Here we will consider some other important ones that might have a considerable influence on language learning by
CALL.

Five Senses and Language Learning
When looking at the process of language learning from the neuropsycholinguistic point of view, you will seethat language learners only activate the visual and auditory information in a restrictive way through CALL, whilein natural contexts they can make effective use of some other information, activating five senses. From theviewpoint of five-sense activation we will illustrate how people approach to meaning in Figure 4 and Figure 5.
Auditory Information→

hearing

Visual Information→

seeingOsmatic Information→→

smelling→

MEANING
touching

Haptic Information

tasting

Gustatory Information

Figure 4. Approaches to meaning through CALLAs Figure 4 shows, learners can only access to auditory and visual information in the CALL environment
due to the limitation of its own system available. In contrast people can use any of five senses in language acquisition, which is shown in Figure 5 and it is probable that activation of five senses makes it far easier to restore
information for language use by the effective use of neural networks.
The difference in the approach to meaning shown in Figure 4 and Figure 5 makes the mastery of a language
fundamentally distinct in nature between first language acquisition and language learning by CALL. Language
learning by CALL is surely effective in that it could possibly lead the learner to be strongly motivated to master thetarget language through interaction of information with electric devices such as personal computers linked to theInternet. As far as the structure or the grammar of a language is concerned, this learning style seems to be efficient
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because of its nature of abstractness. Yet as to the mastery of the meaning of a language what they have learned
through CALL does not seem to be a real language or a living language. It is something like a pseudo system oflanguage.
Visual Information

Auditory Information→

hearing→seeingOsmatic Information→→

smelling→

MEANING
touching

Haptic Information

tasting

Gustatory Information

Figure 5. Approaches to meaning in language acquisition
Figure 5 shows that in language acquisition people can activate some or all of five senses to access themeaning and through this they can restore some particular information in memory more strongly with the number
of approaches available. Not only the number of approaches but their qualities are significant. The qualities could
be profoundly influenced by direct experiences.

Experiences and Language Learning
As has just been mentioned above, people cannot learn fully the meanings of a language by CALL becauseof its shortage of direct experience. Using computers to access only fairly abstract level of auditory and visual
information is not enough. This relationship is illustrated in Figure 6.

fish

DirectExperiences→fish
Indirect
Experiences

fish

→

Association
with other
Information

Figure 6. Learning of meaning through CALL
The fact that CALL learners are lacking in direct experiences might have a deep influence on the acquisitionof meaning. What would happen to them if they could not make use of direct experiences? They could understandthe meaning of a word abstractly but not concretely. That means language does not work properly or is not fully
activated in the neural network of the brain. In order to work it they must learn from direct experiences.
Figure 7 does not just suggest that as people grow older, they can grasp the total meaning of a word but
implies that they can access the meaning freely with what they have ever acquired. In our assumption direct
experiences would form the basic backbone of memory for language use. It follows from this that we should keep
two points in mind. One is that direct experiences might make it possible to retain more useful information for
language use than indirect experiences alone. The other is that direct experiences could lead you to make use of
more networks to access the meaning.
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fish

→

fish

To contents

fish

→

Association
with other
Information

Indirect
Experiences

DirectExperiences

Next paper

Figure 7. Acquisition of meaning

Different Models of Language Processing
Finally, the models will be designed on the basis of what we have observed thus far from a neuropsycholinguistic point of view. Our observation is that language learning by CALL is effective from the viewpoint of themastery of the linguistic form, but at the same time does not put you in a real state of a particular language so far as
the linguistic meaning is concerned.

A Model for First Language Acquisition○○

In the process of first language acquisition people master their language developmentally through direct andindirect experiences. In processing semantic information, they can access the data based on both experiences,which is shown in Figure 8.
Linguistic Processing

○

○

→

→

○

○

○

Linguistic Processing

→

○
○

→

○

○

○

Cognitive System

Semantic Processing○○

Semantic Processing

⇑

○

L1
Indirect Experiences

○

○

○

Direct Experiences

○

○

○

L1

○

○

⇑

Figure 8. Language process in first language acquisition
As Figure 8 shows, people can use effectively the semantic data based on both direct and indirect experiences. That is the way language works quite well.

A Model for Language Learning by CALL
When learning a language with the CALL system, you usually use a PC that provides you with a feasible
environment to some extent. The environment you are actually involved in is a real one in the way that you arelearning in an actual CALL room. Yet from what we have considered learning by CALL can only take place by useof computer software. This style of learning is therefore considered to be based on virtual reality, or indirect
experiences. People learn a language by CALL through indirect experiences alone, which is shown in Figure 9.
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Linguistic Processing

○

○

→

→

○

○

○

Linguistic Processing

→

○

→

○

○

○

○

Cognitive System

Semantic Processing

○

○

○

Semantic Processing⇑

L2
Indirect Experiences

○

○

○

Direct Experiences

○

○

○

L1

○

○

○

⇑

Figure 9. Language process in CALL learningThis figure shows that learners can access semantic data coming from indirect experiences but not direct
ones. This result might force them to use alternative semantic data based on their first language since it is deeply
rooted in direct experiences, which is shown in small dots. It would lead us to suppose that the language learned by
CALL could not work fully just like mother tongue.

Conclusion
In the presentation we have observed that language learning by CALL might be effective in some ways but
from the viewpoint of first language acquisition it is not always true. The fact that learners are lacking in direct
experiences, in other words, that they are learning a target language in a virtual reality will make it hard for them tomaster a real language. Our conclusion of this presentation is that there seems to be no other way but to leave
learners immersed in real situations for some time in order that they could master the target language in a proper
way by the active use of five senses.

References
Ikari, Y. (1998). A neuropsycholinguistic study of meaning. Jinbun Kenkyu, 50, 12, 1-12.
Ikari, Y. (1999). A neuropsycholinguistic approach to the unification of the theories of language acquisition. Jinbun
Kenkyu, 51, 8, 1-11.
Damasio, A. R. and Damasio, H. (1992) Brain and language. Scientific American (Japanese Version), 22, 11, 62-71.
Damasio, A.R. (1994). Descartes’ error. New York: Avon Books.
Obler, L. K. and Gjerlow, K. (1999). Language and the brain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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How to Use PowerPoint
This article is primarily in Japanese and therefore not all of it
may be readable without the Japanese version of Acrobat.

Shinsuke Yoshida
Setsunan University, Japan

Abstract
Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 is a presentation graphics program designed to help you produce screen
displays, photographic slides, transparencies, and handouts useful in lectures, seminars, etc. In this introduction session, we will walk you through creating a new presentation file and editing slides. It will focus on threeareas: (a) Creating and displaying a new file, (b) Editing text on slides and (c) Editing graphics on slides. Text
editing in PowerPoint is similar to text editing in other application programs, and the controls (buttons, dialog
boxes and menus) that PowerPoint displays for text editing are fairly standard.

はじめに
近年の急速なコンピュータの普及により、企業はもとより学校においても一人一台は周知のこととしてとらえられてる。それに伴いコンピュータや情報教育に関連する教育も、ハードウェアの知識やソフ
トウェアの利活用スキルを重視する時代から、問題解決、計画、表現の手段としての分析、統合、創作、表現の能力を重視するようになってきた（岡本、2000）。このような状況のもとで、教師自身においても決められた時間内で、印象深く、説得力のある表現法を身に付け、教育や研究発表の場で実践できる能力を身に付ける必要がある。そこで、本稿では、はじめにプレゼンテーションの定義、目的、活用場
面について述べ、次に代表的なプレゼンテーションソフトであるPowerPoint 2000（以下、PowerPoint）
を用いて、ビジュアル化に焦点をあてたデジタルプレゼンテーションの作成方法を紹介し、最後にプレゼンテーション本番での注意事項について解説する。

プレゼンテーションについて
定義
プレゼンテーションとは、話し手が限られた時間で情報を分かりやすく正確に聞き手に伝えることをいう。その時、聞き手は提示された内容について理解を深め、判断や意思決定を行い、話し手は自分の提案を受け入れてもらうために、聞き手と積極的なコニュニケーションを行う（永井、他 2000）。

目的
プレゼンテーションの目的は、自分の提案を聞き手に理解してもらうために、テキスト、表、グラ
フ、静止画、動画、音声などを使って視覚や聴覚にうったえて、注視させるように提示することである。

シナリオ
説得力のあるプレゼンテーションを作成するにはシナリオが重要である。
提示したい対象を詳細に分析して、提示する内容、順序、方法などを含んだシナリオに組み立て、必要な数のスライドに展開する。

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このとき、プレゼンテーションを見る人の状況を考慮したシナリオに作り上げるのが重要なポイントである。その際、全体の説明から詳細な説明へと進むことが効果的である（高橋、他 2000）。

場面
プレゼンテーションの場面には、次のようなものがある。１）会議の場面では、提案、報告、説明、発表を行う。２）イベントでは、講演、新製品発表会、各種見学会、コンペが行われる。３）研究では、卒研、修論発表会、および研究発表、パネルディスカッション、シンポジアムがあげられる。４）教育
では、講義、課題研究の成果の発表に用いられる。

プレゼンテーションの構成
一般
一般的なプレゼンテーションは、通常、序論、本論、結論から構成されている。序論では、聞き手の動機付けを行うと同時に、何をどんな順序で提示するかを述べる。本論では、背景の提案と説明、デー
タを示しながらの現状報告、問題点と解決策をそれぞれ示す。結論では、要約、ポイントの繰返しと強調、今後の予定を行う。

研究発表
研究発表などの改まった発表では、はじめににおいて、問題の所在、以前の研究、仮説を述べる。次に方法で、被験者、道具、手続きがそれぞれ説明される。さらに、結果と考察で判明事項をそれについての考察を示し、最後に結論を述べる。

プレゼンテーションの作成
視覚の刺激
プレゼンテーションは人間の五感にうったえるものであるから、その本質を理解した上で作成すればメッセージを的確に伝達できる。人間の五感の情報収集率は視覚(72%)、聴覚(13%)、味覚(6%)、嗅覚(6%)、触覚(3%)といわれており、さらに、伝達方法と記憶力の関係で、5 日後の記憶量を測定したとこ
ろ言葉のみ（聴覚）の場合 10%、図表のみ（視覚）では 20%、さらに言葉と図表（聴覚 + 視覚）では 60%であった。その理由は、人間の感覚で最も発達しているのは「視覚」であり、視覚が刺激を受けると右脳が視覚刺激をイメージで捉え、その後左脳が判断し、言動として表現されるからである（白取、2000）。
これらのことから、わかりやすい資料とは、数値データは表やグラフで視覚化し、文字は聴衆に読ませるのでなく見せ、必要最低限の情報量を備えたものである。

作成手順
最初の情報収集では、文献、データベース、インターネット、アンケート調査、実験などにデータを収集よりする。次の企画では、それらを分析、分類、整理してイメージをまとめあげ、さらにプランニ
ングではテーマにそって情報を整理して組合せ、聞き手に合わせて内容をアレンジし、時間制限に合わせて内容を整理する。このようにして準備した内容を効果的に伝えるため、時間、空間、因果関係などにそってストーリーとしての筋書きを作る。最後に、これらをもとに序論、本論、結論の順にアウトラ

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インを完成する。発表用資料としては、話し手側は提示用、手元用原稿を用意し、聞き手は配布資料を
受け取る。

発表手順
発表は、序論、本論、結論、要約、質疑応答の順に行い、重要度の高いものに時間配分を多くする。
通常１スライドの所要時間は１分前後が適切であろう。

デジタルプレゼンテーション
メリット
プレゼンテーションを効率的に準備、作成、発表するためには、デジタルメディアを活用することが有効であると考えられる。その理由として、デジタルプレゼンテーションの次のようなメリットがあげられる（白取、2000）。
1.

構成⇒テンプレートにより作成時間が短縮される

2.

文字入力

⇒所定の枠内で自動的に書式が設定される

3.

図解⇒描画ツールにより簡単に図が作成できる

4.

配色⇒色彩の専門家が設定したものが使用できる

5.

レイアウト ⇒既成パターンから選択できる

6.

特殊効果

⇒五感へのインパクトが得られる

7.

配布資料

⇒用途別にさまざまな印刷方法が選択できる

8.

リハーサル ⇒発表所要時間の記録が可能である

9.

本番⇒クリックによるか、自動実行にするかの設定できる

10.

管理

⇒デジタルメディアであるため随時変更修正が可能である

作成ステップ
次の順序で作成する：
1.

パワーポイントの起動

2.

原稿ありの場合、「新しいプレゼンテーション」を選択

3.

原稿なしの場合、「インスタントウィザード」を選択

4.

デザインテンプレートの適用

5.

箇条書きで文字入力し、レベルの上げ下げや文字サイズの調整を行う

6.

必要に応じて図解を挿入

7.

必要に応じてグラフを挿入

8.

必要に応じてクリップアートなどからイラストを挿入

9.

必要に応じて画面切り替え効果を設定する

10.

必要に応じてアニメーションを設定する

11.

配布資料の印刷

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ビジュアル化（図解）ビジュアル化（1.

配置
説得力のあるプレゼンテーションを行うには、効果的な視覚効果を行う必要があるが、特に、提示画面上での文字や視覚情報の配置は重要である。通常、画面上での人間の視線は、左から右へ⇒上から下へ⇒時計回り⇒中心から外へと順次流れていくため、情報の重要度に応じてこれらの位置に適宜配置する必要がある。

2.

方法
箇条書きや論理図解では、多くの情報の中から取捨選択してその内容が一目でわかるような文字情報を提示するが、その代表的な方法にKJ法がある。これはアイデアを思
いつくまま書き出し、類似内容をまとめ、グループ化して見出しをつけていくものである（川喜田二郎、1967, 1970）。

3.

図解の種類
PowerPoint では、箇条書き、論理図解、グラフ、表、物理図解、イラストのテンプ
レートが用意されている。これらは元データの種類により 3 つに分類される。文章の場合は箇条書きと論理図解、数値はグラフと表、物体は物理図解である。以下、それらについて解説する。

1.

箇条書き
スライド画面と連動したアウトライン機能を使えば、全体構成を一覧しながらレベル
上げ、レベル下げ、行間設定、レベル移動を駆使して、メモ書き感覚で箇条書きによるプレゼンテーションの作成ができる。文字サイズは最小28ポイント、書体はゴシッ
クか明朝、行数は 5 から 7 行、文字数は 10 から 20 字が適切である。

2.

論理図解
用途に応じて３種類の方法がある。構造・構成概念では分類図、組織図、構成図が、集合・関係概念ではチャート、グループ図が、流れを示す概念ではプロセス図、工程表がそれぞれ用いられる。その際、重要なものは画面中央に示すこと、まとめは太い線で囲むこと、的確な見出しを命名すること、バランスよく配置すること、矢印には意味を書くこと、図形サイズの統一によりリズム感を持たせることにそれぞれ配慮しなければならない。

3.

グラフ
細かい数値よりも差の比較にポイントを置く場合に威力を発揮する。グラフは大きく分けて４つの種類がある。比率を表すには円、帯、層、ドーナツグラフ、格差には棒、積上げ棒、複合棒グラフ、推移には折れ線、近似曲線、層、複合グラフ、分布・相関にはレーダーチャート、散布図、バブルチャートがそれぞれ用いられる。その際、折れ線グラフの線は濃い色で示し、データラベルは必要最低限にする配慮が求められる。

4.

表行と列からなり、数値をはっきり示したい場合に用いるが、細かい数字は見づらくな
る難点がある。そのためスライドショーではグラフを提示し、配布資料に表を示すことが有効であろう。

5.

物理図解
実在するものを抽象化して示すもので、地図が代表的なものである。

6.

イラスト

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独自に描く方法もあるが、既に用意されているクリップアートを挿入するのが便利である。これは文字のみのスライドが続く場合、聴衆の注意をひきつけたり、和やかな雰囲気をかもし出す役目をはたす。また、コミュニケーション、ジェスチャー、シン
ボル、科学技術など、プレゼンテーションのトピックに対応した項目から選択することもできる • B

ビジュアル化（色彩）
ビジュアル化（
色彩は配置と並んで色彩も重要なプレゼンテーションテクニックの一つである。ここでは5つの重要な概念を解説する。色相環は、人間の色覚の基本である赤、黄、緑、青の 4 グループの色が中心となっている色の環で、対角線同士が補色関係にあり、それらはお互いに際立たせる性質を持っている。トーンは人間に心理的効果をもたらすもので、暖色系は膨張色で目立ちやすく、楽しさや活動性を示し、寒色系は収縮色で目立ちにくく、信頼性や控えめな印象を与える。そのため内容にあわせてこれらを使い分ける必要がある。
基調色は、プレゼンテーション全体のイメージを決定する重要な役割を持っており、
主に背景色として用いられるが、淡緑や水色は爽快感を示し、肌色や桃色は温かみを表すとされている。
これが決まれば、色相環での補色対比やトーンを利用した強調色でポイントとなる部分を強調することができる。グラデーションは、色相環、明度（明るさ）、彩度（鮮やかさ）により設定でき、図形に質感を持たせたり、矢印の視線誘導を用いると効果的である。

画面切り替え機能
スライド一覧表示モードのツールバーによりスライド画面の切り替え方法が設定できるが、通常は人間の視線に合わせて左からスライドインさせるのが自然である。オープニングとなるタイトルスライド
はボックスワイプアウト、大きな展開ではチェッカーワイプ（横）、開始と終了には無地のスライドを挿入しておくと効果的であるが、これら以外のスライドの方向は統一性を保つ必要がある。

アニメーション効果
箇条書きを示す場合、動きをつけると効果的なプレゼンテーションができるが、そのときもやはり視覚的に受け入れやすいものにする必要がある。通常はタイトル部分を遮らずに表示し、方向は左からが無難であるが、強調部分はワイプ（右へ）、列挙部分はスライドイン（左から）をそれぞれ使うと効果的である。また、文字の場合、インパクトを与えるためにはズームやスパイラルを、注目させたい場合
はターンを、キーワードを示すときは一文字ずつ表示をそれぞれ使うと印象的である。さらに、線、矢印、円ではワイプを、四角形ではブラインドを使って描かれることが多い。

配布資料
配布資料については、スライドをそのまま印刷したものを用いる場合と、アウトライン表示の形で用いる場合とがあるが、発表内容や聴衆に合わせて選択すればよいであろう。

プレゼンテーションの実施
このようにして作成したスライドショーが効果的に行われたかどうかは、次の項目についてチェック
されて評価される。すなわち全体的な印象は良かったか、内容はうまく構成されていたか、間（ま）、速度、語尾の正確さ、時間配分などの面からみて話し方は適切であったか、アイコンタクト、ジェス
チャー、服装、熱意などの点から発表態度は良かったかの 4 点である。
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おわりにPowerPoint にはここでとりあげたもの以外に、音声や動画をスライドに挿入して、スライドショーの実行中に効果を出したり、プレゼンテーションにハイパーリンクを設定して、プレゼンテーションの中に含まれている目的別スライドショー、別のプレゼンテーション、Microsoft Word 文書、Microsoft
Excel ワークシート、インターネットやイントラネット、あるいは電子メールアドレスなど、いろい
ろな場所に移動することができる。さらに、HTML 形式で保存してブラウザ上でスライドショーをおこなったり、Microsoft NetMeeting をインストールすることによりオンライン会議を開けば、時空を選ばず授業や研究発表のためのプレゼンテーションを行うことができる。
※ Microsoft, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, NetMeeting は、米国 Microsoft Corporation の米国およびその他の国における登録商標または商標である。

参考資料
岡本敏雄 (2000). 情報教育の展望と課題 『情報システム情報学会誌』Vol.17, No.2, pp.79‑84.
川喜田二郎 (1967, 1970). 発想法（正、副）、中公新書
工藤雅俊 (2000). 超図解 PowerPoint 2000 for Windows、 エクスメディア
永井克昇 他( 2000). 30 時間でマスター プレゼンテーション + パワーポイント、 実教出版
白取久美子 (2000). 一流企業をうならせたデジタルプレゼン術、 アスキー
内田志乃、他 (2000). よくわかるトレーニングテキスト Microsoft PowerPoint 2000、 FOM 出版
山口弘明 (1997). プレゼンテーションの進め方、 日本経済新聞社

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The Importance of Learning Environment:
A Case of an International Collaborative Project
Atsuko Kuramoto
Osaka Sangyo University, Japan
Abstract
This research analyzes the usefulness of growing international collaborative efforts among students andteachers to use TV-conferencing systems along with other multimedia for educational purposes. Real time international conferences, via a TV-conferencing system, between Japanese high school students and overseas students who are native speakers of English were held. A questionnaire was conducted after each session. The
results of the data analysis are discussed here using a Vygotskian and sociocultural approach. It is proposed,from the viewpoint of Vygotskian theory and its expansion, that 1) actual activities, and 2) educational environment should be reframed. The analysis revealed the importance of a learning environment which enables learners to have voluntary and mutual interactions. It is concluded that third mediational tools, such as TV-conferencing
systems, and computers, should be more actively utilized in L2 collaborative learning activities in order topromote learners' creativity and proficiency in the target language.

Introduction
This study analyzes an international collaborative work project and attempts to show how important it is forteachers and researchers of second languages to address the issue of learning environment. My thesis will be that
we should focus on providing space to let learners have voluntary and mutual interactions with people in society todevelop individual creativity or higher mental functions if we are to argue for a reframing of the L2 learning
environment.
This research focuses on the growing development of international collaborative efforts among students andteachers to use video/TV-conferencing systems along with other multimedia for educational purposes. One particular on-going international collaborative project will be analyzed to show the significance of utilizing psychological tools in society to achieve the actual "Theory IN Practice" (TINP) activity. Psychological tools, with whichlearners mediate and express what they think in the context of cultural or social activities, now include multimedia,
computers and the cybernetwork.

Vygotskian Perspective
In an attempt to apply a certain theory organically in education practice, the perspectives of "theory inpractice" represents the viewpoint that investigates reciprocally functioning relations of theory and practice as awhole unit. The notion of this perspective coincides with Vygotskian theory, which insists the reciprocal relations
between subject, object, and the intermediate mediational part in environment.
According to Argyris and Schon (1974) and Sato, et al. (1998) the logical conclusion of "theory in practice"is as follows: A research object is a theory which functions within the actions of the teacher and the student, who
are creating educational practice. There is no boundary between theory and practice. Every practice is regarded astheoretical practice and as a research object.

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This perspective is differentiated from "theory into practice" and "theory through practice". Both of theseperspectives are problematic when applied to education practice for the following reasons: "Theory into practice"admits superiority of theory over practice, and places practice at the bottom of the academic hierarchy. "Theory
through practice" aims at structuring theory through the typicalization of one good practice, therefore, paradoxically restricting the teacher's action. These two perspectives regard theory and practice not as a whole unit but as
two antagonistic elements.
At present, education practice seems to be heavily influenced by "theory into practice" and "theory throughpractice". The teacher's practice is controlled and restricted by external factors such as, one-way instruction,
graded curriculum, classroom layouts with the blackboard in front and chairs and desks placed in one direction
facing toward the blackboard, and educational material dominated by authorized textbooks. These outer elements
regulate both the teacher and the student's action physically and metaphorically, therefore, it is essential to redesign
this frame.
According to Vygotskian theory (Vygotsky 1978, 1987), the development of higher mental functions is
deeply related with the environment, including the people and tools of a society. Language learning is included
within the sphere of higher mental functions. The proper learning environment is a place where learners are able towork together with peers and people who maintain the community to which they belong. And the learners also
should be provided with sufficient opportunities to utilize the psychological tools in order to have reciprocal interactions with peers and people in society so they can develop higher mental functions.
From the viewpoint of Vygotskian theory and its expansion, I propose that both 1) actual activities, and 2)
educational environment should be reframed. Now is the time to argue whether multimedia in a learning environment is meaningful. This research thus argues for the feasibility of the theory and the plausibility of the practice in
L2 learning environment via multimedia in an international collaborative work.

MethodThe following procedures were employed in this study. (a) Real time international conferences between
Japanese high school students and overseas students who are native speakers of English via a TV-conferencing
system were held. The numbers of conferences and total participants were: during 1998, 8 sessions, 189 participants, and during 1999, 14 sessions, 196 participants. (b) A questionnaire was conducted to collect data on students' preferences and opinions concerning the international collaborative projects after each session. (c) Amongeight items asked, five items were analyzed. Those are: (a) students' preference for the conference itself, (b) theirevaluation of the usefulness of participation for improving English ability, (c) their evaluation of the usefulness ofparticipation for understanding international relations, (d) their intention for future participation, and (e) the kindsof media used for preparation.

Results
1.

Students' preference of the conference itself: As graph 1 and 2 show, during the two consecutive school years, over 90% of participants replied that the international collaborative program
was interesting. The program includes preliminary preparations through video-phone or othermedia as well as the final international conference using the Video or TV conference system.
The rate for the milder preference, "the program was a bit interesting", in 1999 was 14% morethan that in 1998, however, the stronger preference, "the program was very interesting", in 1999(52%) was 19% less than 1998 (71%). The reason for this decline in the rate will be discussed
later.

2.

Participants' evaluation of usefulness of participation for improving English ability and (c)their evaluation of usefulness of participation for improving understanding of international

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relations: As Table 1 shows, in1998, 82%, and in 1999, 71.3% answered it was meaningful toparticipate in these conferences for the purpose of improving English ability. In '98, 88%, andin '99, 84% answered it was meaningful to participate in these conferences for the purpose ofunderstanding international relations. These results support the view that the international
collaborative program was purposeful. The ratios for "No interests" in both items declined 3.7
points and 2.2 points, however, the ratios for "Not meaningful" increased 14.4 points and 6.2
points.
How do you like it? 1998

How do you like it? 1999
8%

33%
%

26%
26%

8%

52%
52%

40%
40%
771%
1%

very interestinga bit

not interesting

very interestinga bit

not interesting(Kuramoto 1999)

Graph 1. Preference 1999

Graph 2. Preference 1998

Table 1. Evaluation 1998 and 1999
English Ability

International
Understanding

Meaningful

1999
1998

71.3%
82-.0%

84.0%
88.0%

Not
Meaningful

1999
1998

23.4%
9.0%

11.2%
5.0%

No Interest

1999
1998

5.3%
9.0%

4.8%
7.0%
(Kuramoto 1999)

3.

Participants' intention for future participation: The ratios in 1999 of those who replied "Yes, I
will attend the next session" and "Yes, the program was meaningful" decreased, compared withthose in 1998. However, as Table 2 and Table 3 show, for the 1999 data, the ratios of observedcount exceeded those of expected count, that is; 64.9% (6% over) and 74.5% (4.9% over).

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Table 2. Next Application* English Ability Cross Tabulations 1999
English Ability
Not
Meaningful Meaningful

NoInterest

Total

Next Application Yes

Count
Expected Count% of Total

120
109.3
64.9%

28
34.5
15.1%

4
8.2
2.2%

152
152.0
82.2%

No

Count
Expected Count% of Total

13
23.7
7.0%

14
7.5
7.6%

6
1.8
3.2%

33
33.0
17.8%

No
Interest

Total

Table 2. Next Application* English Ability Cross Tabulations 1999
English Ability
Not
Meaningful Meaningful
Total

Count

133

42

10

185

Expected Count

133.0

42.0

10.0

185.0

% of Total

71.9%

22.7%

5.4%

100.0%

Table 3. Next Application* International Understanding Cross Tabulations 1999
International Understanding
Not
Meaningful Meaningful

NoInterest

Total

Next Application Yes

Count
Expected Count% of Total

137
128.0
74.5%

13
16.5
7.1%

2
7.4
1.1%

152
152.0
82.2%

No

Count
Expected Count% of Total

18
27.0
9.8%

7
3.5
3.86%

7
1.6
3.8%

32
32.0
17.4%

Count
Expected Count% of Total

155
155.0
84.2%

20
20.0
10.9%

9
9.0
4.9%

184
184.0
100.0%

Total

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Table 4. Next Application* English Ability Cross Tabulations 1998
English Ability
Not
Meaningful Meaningful

NoInterest

Total

Next Application Yes

Count
Expected Count% of Total

51
49.7
82.3%

1
1.8
1.61%

4
4.5
6.5%

56
56.0
90.3%

No

Count
Expected Count% of Total

43
5.3
6.5%

1
0.2
1.6%

1
0.5
1.6%

6
6.0
9.7%

Count
Expected Count% of Total

55
55.0
88.7%

2
2.0
3.2%

5
5.0
8.1

62
62.0
100.0%

Total

Table 5. Next Application* International Understanding Cross Tabulations 1998
International Understanding
Not
No
Meaningful Meaningful
Interest

Total

Next Application Yes

Count
Expected Count% of Total

50
49.7
80.6%

1
0.95
1.61%

5
5.4
8.1%

56
56.0
90.3%

No

Count
Expected Count% of Total

5
5.3
8.1%

0
0.1
0.0%

1
0.6
1.6%

6
6.0
9.7%

Count
Expected Count% of Total

55
55.0
88.7%

1
1.0
1.6%

6
6.0
9.7%

62
62.0
100.0%Total

4.
The kinds of media used for preparation: The differences between 1998 and 1999 lie in the increase in
the number of web user and the decrease in the number of video letters: 21.9% of participants in 1999 used theInternet, whereas less than 2.6% of participants in 1998 used the Internet.

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Table 6. The Kinds of Media Used for Preparation - 1998 and 1999
Book Web E-Mail

Newspaper Interview

1999

29.6%

21.9%

15.8%

1998

-

2.6%

19.6%

14.8%

(Video) Letter

Others

11.7%

11.7%

20.4%

13.8%

42.3%

16.9%

Discussion
The differences in the ratios for 1998 and 1999 might suggest that there have been gradual changes in thestudents' minds and their preferred learning styles for activities. I suggest there might be a significant correlation
between their intention to apply for the next program and their evaluation of the program.
As the result for item (d) (see Tables 2 to 5) show, the number of observed counts in the 1999 data
exceeded that of the expected number of counts. We might propose the null hypothesis here which would be: Thereis no relation between next application and participants' evaluation of usefulness for improving English ability or
understanding international relations, that is, they are statistically independent.
However, the null hypothesis can be rejected by analyzing the cross tabulation result using chi-square
tests. As for the 1998 data, there are over 3 cells whose expected count are less than 5. Therefore, I cannot adopt
Pearson chi-square, and the null hypothesis cannot be rejected this way. On the other hand, as the asymptotic
significance on Table 6 and Table 7, 1999 data, show, the null hypotheses can be rejected. So there are correlations
between next application and participants' evaluation on improving English ability or on understanding international relations.

Table 7. Chi-Square Tests English Ability 1999

a

Value

df

Asymp. Sig. (2-sided)

Pearson Chi-Square

24.910a2

0.000

Likelihood Ratio

21.4292

0.000

Linear-by-Linear Association

24.7431

0.000

N of Valid Cases

185

One cell (16.7%) had an expected couint of less than 5. The minimum expected count was 1.78.

Table 8. Chi-Squre Tests International Understanding 19999

Pearson Chi-Square
Likelihood Ratio
Linear-by-Linear Association
N of Valid Cases
a

Value

df

Asymp. Sig. (2-sided)

30.762a23.26329.776
184

2
2
1

0.000
0.000
0.000

Two cells (16.7%) had an expected couint of less than 5. The minimum expected count was 1.57.

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In addition to this analysis, I tried nonparametric correlation tests. Table 9 ( 1998 data) shows that there are
no statistically significant correlations between "next application" and "participants' evaluation of usefulness for
improving English ability and of understanding international relations ". On the other hand Table 8, 1999 data,shows that there are statistically significant correlations between these two items.

Table 9. Correlations 1999
Next
Application
Spearman’s rho Next Application Correlation CoefficientSig. (2-tailed)N
English Ability

International
Understanding
How do you
like it?

1.000
191

English International
How doAbility Understanding you like it?
0.353**
0.000
185

0.368**
0.000
184

0.463**
0.000
187

0.642**
0.000
187

0.256**
0.000
185
0.202**
0.000
184

Correlation CoefficientSig. (2-tailed)N

0.353**
0.000
185

1.000

Correlation CoefficientSig. (2-tailed)N

0.368**
0.000
184

0.642**
0.000
187

1.000

Correlation CoefficientSig. (2-tailed)
N

0.463
0.000
187

0.256**
0.000
185

0.202**
0.006
184

188

187

1.000
192

**Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

Table 10. Correlations 1998
Next
Application
Spearman’s rho Next Application Correlation CoefficientSig. (2-tailed)N
English Ability

International
Understanding
How do you
like it?

1.000
62English International
How doAbility Understanding you like it?
0.219
0.087
62

0.058
0.652
62

0.274*
0.032
61

0.521**
0.000
221

0.248**
0.000
220
0.341**
0.000
220

Correlation CoefficientSig. (2-tailed)
N

0.219
0.087
62

1.000

Correlation CoefficientSig. (2-tailed)
N

0.058
0.652
62

0.521**
0.000
221

1.000

Correlation CoefficientSig. (2-tailed)N

0.274*
0.032
61

0.248**
0.000
220

0.341**
0.000
220

221

221

1.000
220

*Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
**Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
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These data show that participants in 1999, compared with those in 1998, have clearer opinions concerning
collaborative work. Those who answered that the program is either meaningful for both purposes or improving
English ability and understanding international relations replied they will attend the next session. Table 8 also
shows that next application and preference for this program have a statistically significant correlation of 0.463.
Even though the ratio for the overall preference decreased by 19 points, those who admitted to meaningful participation in this program appreciate this type of learning style. This means that those who evaluated the collaborative
work and have the intention to improve their language ability and international understanding need this kind ofinteractive learning environment.
Another additional item of data to support this insistence is the statistical result of nonparametric correlations between "next application" and "participants' future interests". The questionnaire asked students how they arestarting to appreciate eight items after participating in the program. The eight items are related to the participants'
future interests and are: (a) To study English, (b) to participate in collaborative work for study, (c) to participate incollaborative work for play, (d) to make overseas friends, (e) to get more information on local culture, (f) to get
more information on global culture, (g) to get more information on daily life, and (h) to get more information
through cybernetwork. As the first column in Table 10 shows there are statistically significant correlations between next application and these 8 items. This result suggests that the students are seeking new learning environments which enable them to have better chances to interact with people in society.
One final item of data which supports the above insistence is the result (e) shown in Table 3 (the media theyused for preparing for this series). The difference between 1998 and 1999 is the increase in the number of web
users. Even with the limited hardware high school environment, students managed to collect information about
their peers through the Internet instead of video letters in order to have a better communication with their peers
overseas. These students' and teachers' collaboration and efforts make the learning environment more attractive
and interactive. Eventually they will enjoy learning English.

Table 11. Correlations 1999
Next
Application
Spearmen’s rho

Coefficient

Next

Sig. (2-tailed)

Application

N

1.000

191

Language Collaboration Collaboration(study)(play)

Friends

Local
CultureGlobalDaily
Culture Information

Cyber
Information

0.298**

0.324**

0.191**

0.445** 0.261**

0.243** 0.223**

0.164**

0.000

0.000

0.008

0.000

0.000

0.001

0.001

0.023

191

191

191

191

191

191

191

191

Conclusion
According to Vygotskian theory, higher mental functioning in the individual derives from social life andhuman creativity is brought out only after manipulating the mediational means properly. Therefore, we needappropriate mediational tools to activate our higher mental processes to interact with everyday concepts.
We need multi-layers of intrapersonal and interpersonal interactions. Multimedia, including the cybernetwork,
enables these interactions for our purpose to promote learners' creativity and proficiency in the target language.
What is essential in teaching L2 is not only promoting learners' direct internalization of the target language but also
their externalization of its dynamic usage.
In the preceding argument, I have compared and contrasted the results of questionnaires taken in 1998 and1999. The analysis revealed the importance of a learning environment which enables learners to have voluntaryand mutual interactions both in local and global collaborative works. From this point, it might be said that the third
mediational tools, such as TV-conferencing systems, computers, and the cybernetwork, should be more actively
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utilized in L2 international collaborative learning activity in order to promote learners' voluntary creativity andproficiency in the target language.

References
Argyris, C. and Schon. D. (1974). Theory in practice. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Sato, M., et al. (eds.). (1998) Shinrigaku to kyoiku jissen no aida de [Between psychology and educational
practice]. Tokyo: Tokyo University Press.
Kuramoto, A. (1999). The report of teleclass questionnaire. Report of Teleclass Project 1998.September-1999.
August: 5-9. Unpublished manuscript.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. (Cole, M, JohnSteiner, V., Scribner, S. & Souberman, E. Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1987). Thinking and speech. (Minick, N. Trans.). New York: Plenum Press.

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Instructors’ and Students’
Perception and Utilization of Technology
Inge Brown
Otmar Foelsche
Dartmouth College, U. S. A.
Abstract
From 1990 to 1999 Dartmouth saw significant changes in the number of students visiting the physicalLanguage Resource Center, in the use of equipment, in materials, in the types of requests for services from thecenter by students as well as faculty, and in the number of individuals logged on to the servers. Dartmouth—
having the reputation of a wired campus—has maintained parallel technology, i.e. availability of traditional
services together with high levels of digital services while no changes in the instruction of languages wereattempted over the last decade. In late 1999 Dartmouth College’s Language Resource Center conducted acomprehensive survey of instructors and students for the purpose of gaining insight into usage and perception oftechnology in teaching and learning. The data obtained in this survey will help us to plan for services andfacilities that should be renovated and become available by about 2004.

Introduction
Ivy League schools in the United States have a fairly high reputation when it comes to instructor qualification, facilities and infrastructure. Being on the inside of such an institution one realizes quickly that these institutions differ little from other institutions. Instructors build their little empires and continue the way they were taught
until there is a new dean, chairperson, or rabble rouser who wants change and is ready to sacrifice his or her life in
the implementation battle. When Otmar first came to Dartmouth, for example, the language lab stations were
owned by individual departments and when, on his second day, he removed the sign “Spanish Department” from agroup of six workstations, he was immediately called by a member of the then reigning junta and told that “youcan’t do this.” He learned his lesson quickly and decided to use diplomacy rather than war to battle with establisheddepartments, prima donnas, and absolutely marvelous instructors.
Diplomacy and respect for the wonders as well as the disasters of new technologies made us go fairly slowly
with complete implementation of new technologies. In fact, we have been following a very careful course of
sticking to what we have been calling parallel technology—we maintain the traditional technology while offering
the option of using digital technologies at the same time. In other words, a student has the option to work on a
Tandberg machine with audio cassette tapes, to work with digital audio files on the computer, and to work directlyon the web with streaming audio and video. In all three cases the quality is the same, the access is different—
sometimes easier, sometimes harder.
Using exit surveys and sending out several questionnaires over the last couple of years accumulated the datafor us that we needed in our implementation process. This year, during the spring term, we did a more comprehensive survey that allowed us to assemble a better picture of how people think about what’s going on with technology
in language instruction.

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1.

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A few disclaimers up front:a.

This is not a scientific survey.

b.

We are dealing with raw data that has not been touched by statistical tools.

c.

Data was collected during transition from traditional lab to virtual lab.

d.

This data is based on a particular institution that is not necessarily typical.

e.

Our conclusions are as good as the sample from which they came, i.e. weshould have some doubts about the general validity.

2.
Our data was collected in a single survey that took place roughly two thirds into our spring term. This
spring term was selected because it has few beginners’ courses. Most students taking language courses would
already have taken one or two courses at the institution and would be familiar with the campus, to analog anddigital facilities, and would have had different instructors. Their perceptions, therefore, would be more realistic
than the perceptions of a student in the first semester.
Since we collected data from instructors as well, the number of instructors teaching different courses on
different levels promised a better data return than a fall-term survey, when many instructors are teaching several
sections of the same course simultaneously.
3.
We sent out a total of 551 surveys to students and received 266 back giving as a response rate of 48%
of which 49% were males and 51% were females. 76% of the students used Macintosh computers and 25% used
Windows-based computers. We sent out 27 surveys to instructors and received 23 back giving us a response rate of
85% of which 19 % were males and 81% were females. On campus 57% of the instructors used Macs and 5%
Windows-based computers. At home 43% used Macs and 10% PCs.
Our student data, therefore, is far more significant (and of greater value to us) than our instructor data,
which, unfortunately, is not sufficiently large enough to allow for very solid conclusions.
Dartmouth College is not a typical institution when it comes to language teaching and learning. Our institution still has a language requirement and has every intention of keeping it. It is interesting to note that few people
on campus are aware of this requirement—everybody takes for granted that students study at least one language if
not two. Dartmouth presently teaches ten languages within complete departments and two on a “demand” basis. We
operate on a quarter system, i.e. four terms per year. We also offer our language students a large number of LSA
Programs (Language Study Abroad) and FSP Programs (Foreign Study Programs) to satisfy the need for intermediate and advanced language and area studies in foreign environments. Internally, i.e. on campus, language courses
on the elementary and intermediate level have four contact hours with an instructors, four contact hours with a T.A.
and often a required or suggested lab experience of two hours per week. The T.A. sessions are highly structured
drill session run by T.A.s who have been trained in the Rassias method.
Utilization of the language laboratory varies widely among different departments, instructors, and students.
Dartmouth’s Language Resource Center does not have a console and does not have instructors or human monitors
inside the lab. Some instructors require attendance, some do not care. We do keep track of the number of visits perterm via a barcode reader at the entrance. The lab has 12 iMac stations, 4 PC stations, and 5 video stations and someother equipment and spaces that have no relevance to the survey.
Usage of “smart” (i.e. electronic) class rooms at Dartmouth College is still somewhat low. The reason lies inthe small number of available rooms—fortunately, the administration has taken steps to correct this situation and is
updating classrooms rapidly. Smart Rooms at this moment contain high-end Macintosh computers with data projection and 100BaseT internet access.

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Why did we conduct this survey? We had two good reasons. The first one had to do with our implementationof digital services. Some of you may have gone to Otmar Foelsche’s talk on streaming audio and video in which hepointed out some of the transition aspects in changing over from traditional lab services to digital lab services. Thissurvey, and preceding surveys, provided us with the essential data that helped us through a fairly easy period oftransition without causing a big stir on campus.
The second reason was a strategic one. We wanted to raise the consciousness level regarding technology andregarding our center among students and instructors. In other words, we didn’t mind at all putting a little guilt trip
on some instructors by making them think about their classes and approaches when filling out our survey form! As
you will see, the survey asks some specific questions about technology usage in classrooms. We are quite sure thatsome instructors took the hint!

Discussion
In the following I’ll go over the most important results by providing you with the questions and results onoverhead transparencies. Each transparency contains the questions in the upper half and the results in the lower halfin diagram format. The letters preceding each question also precede each diagram. The upper part of each diagram
represents represents the students responses, and the lower part represents the instructors responses.

Question 1
0

5

10 15

20

1. Refering to your beginner and intermediate a yes often
yes often
language courses have you read / listened /viewed / visitedb often occas.
often
a. the workbook accompanying your coursec occas. onceb. the audio cassette tapes accompanying youryes oftencoursec. the CD’s accompanying your coursed yes often
yes oftend. the videotapes accoompanying your coursee. the publisher’s web sites for your textbook
e oc.on.
occas.

25 30

35

40

45 50 55

once
occasionally60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100%

no
once

occasionally

no N/Aoccasionally

N/A

N/A
N/A

no

no
occas.

N/A
N/A

occasionally oncenooccasionally

once

N/A
no

N/A

no
no

N/A
N/A

Line a—Our responses clearly indicate that the workbook is used by students and instructors to a very highdegree.
Line e—A publisher’s website, on the other hand, seems to generate more interest among faculty thanamong students at this point, but still shows a little use.
Line b—The use of audio cassettes among students is down to 10%—whereas instructors still make use ofthem.
Line d—Video tapes are used more often than audio cassettes tapes—and this is no surprise!

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Question 2
2. Have you ever visited the

2 Have you (during this term) visited thea. the Language Resource Centerb. the AppleShare Serverc. the NT Server, primarily for PC owners
d. the web site streaming audio and video

0

5

10 15

20

25 30

35

40

45 50 55

60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100%

15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100%
a0 5 10often
occasionallyoncenoo c c a s i on a l lyo nc enoa y e syeso yf teesn o f t e noften
occasionally
once
no
often

occasionally

yes often
bb y e soften
yo fetse no f t e n

once

no

once
occasionallyoccasionallyoccasionally once once
occasionally
on

often

yes often occas. once
cc yoncee s o ftoccas once

no

no
no
no

no

no

no

no

on
occasionally onced often occasionallyo nc ed of tenoccasionallyonceoccasionally

no

on

often
ee often

no

no

no

occasionallyoccasionally

once
on

no

no

Line a—This represents the physical visits to the Language Resource Center. Interesting to note is that 40%
of our students never went to the Center. (This is also in line with general statistics that we kept
over the years that lab attendance is down but server connections are up!)Line b, c, and d—represent server usage.
Line b—For historical reasons, the AppleShare Server, seems to be the most popular among students andfaculty—it has been there for more than five years.
Line c—represents the NT Server—primarily for use by PC owners. Both AppleShare Server and NT Server
use is in line with the distribution of various platforms on campus.
Line d—represents the web site with streaming audio and video, which has only been available for a year at
this point. The fact that 45% of the survey population used the AppleShare Server often and that
15% of the population used the NT server often is indicative to us that digital services are verymuch accepted by our clients.

Question 3

33. Have
Haveyou
youever
everhadhadclasses
classes/ seminars/ seminarsininone

oneofofthe
thetechnologicallytechnologicallyenhanced
enhancedclass-rooms
classlikelike
217217
DartmouthHall,105105
Bartlett,rooms
Dartmouth
Hall,
Bartlett,
105A
Bartlett?
105A
Bartlett?
a.a. DoDoyou
youfindfindthese
theserooms
roomssuperior
superiorinin
comparison
tostandard
classrooms
comparison to standard classroomsforfor
language
languageteachingteachingpurposes
purposes
b.
Do
you
think
your
instructor
b. do you think your instructorisistaking
takingadvantageadvantageofofthethecapabilities
capabilitiesofofthese
theserooms
rooms
feels confident
inc.c. Do
doyou
youthink
thinkyourthat instructor
your instructor
feels
confident
in therooms
use ofandthese
and thetheuse of these
therooms
available
available equipment
equipment

00

55 10
25 30
10 15
15 20
20 25
30 35
35 40
40 45
45 50
50 55
55 60
60 65
65 70
70 75
75 80
80 85
85 90
90 95
95 100%
100%
yes
often
occas.
no
N/A
oc
N /A
no
3 yes often
nooften
occasionallynooften
oc casionally

3

often
aa oftenocnooccas.
no

N/A

often
often

often
bb oftenoccas.
oc no

often
often

oc. no
no
oc
oc.
oc

N/AN / A

oc.
oc no
no

N/A
N /A

N/A

N /A

N/A

often
often

c often
often

N /A
oc.
oc

N /A

N/A
no

no

N /A

Line 3—shows that less than 20% of our students have had the opportunity to have classes in the smart or“technoligically enhanced” classrooms. Instructors have had more exposure since they teach other classes that are
not necessarily language classes as well.

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To contentsLine a—is particularly revealing. 65% of the instructors find smart classrooms superior, yet only ten percentof the students seem to feel that superior instruction can indeed be offered in these rooms.
Line b—Another highly divergent aspect is revealed in line b: Less than 15% of the students believe that the
instructor is taking advantage of the capabilities of the smart classroom, whereas 60% of the
instructors believe that they are taking advantage of the smart classroom.
Line c—Yet, the data becomes even more puzzzling in line c: more students than instructors feel that instructors are confident in the use of technology. On another twist: very few students think that instructors are not confident, whereas many instructors feel that they are not confident.

Question 4
experienced
yourinstructor’s
Haveyouyou
ex perienced
yourins tructor’s
44. Haveuse— thein theclass room—of
use—inclassroom—of
a. audioaudio tapes
tapes ononaacassettecassetterecorder
recorder
a.
b.
tCD’s
(compact
audio
b. CD’s (compact audiodisk)disk)ononaaCD
CDplayer
playerc. video tapes
tapes ono naaVCR
VCR
d.
computertotoaccess
accessaudio
audiofiles
filesono nthethe
d. aa computer
networke. anetwork
computer to access video files on thee. network
a computer to access video files on thef. network
a computer to access texts and images on thef. network
a computer to access texts and images on theg. network
a computer for internet accessh. a computer for reference workg. “ona computerfor internet
accessthe spot”—
to accessthe library,h. databa computer
reference etc.
work “on theases, nfor
ewspapers,
spot”—to access the library, databases,
newspapers, etc.

00

15 20
20 25
25 30 335
40 45
45 50
50 55565 70
70 775
80 85
85 90
90 95
95 100%100%
55 110
0 15
5 40
5 660
0 65
5 80
somewhatnosomewhatnoen
aa oftoften

somewhatsomewhat

often
oft enbb oftenoftnosomewhatsomewhatsomewhatsomewhat

often
oft enyesoftoften
cc yes
en

no
no

sw
sw
somewhatsomewhat

no
no

sw
sw

no
no

no

often
oft ennono

gg oftyesen often
often
oft enoften
oft en

non o

no
no

ee oftyesen oftensw
oft sw
hh oft.

nosomewhatsomewhatsomewhatsw
oft.
somewhatoft somewhat

ff oftoften
en

no

no

en
dd oftoften

often
oft ennonosomewhatsomewhat

often
oft
en

sw
sw

no

no
no

sw
sw

no
no

no
sw
sw

no

no

no

no
no

Lines a, b, & c—Whereas the first three questions deal with rather “soft” issues,
Lines d, e, & f—questions d, e & f deal with “hard” issues.
Line a—The student response shows how little audio cassette machines are used in instruction—only about
12 % of the students use them often!
Line b—shows similar results for compact audio disks, andLine c—makes it clear that the VCR is definitely used more often than audio cassette machines.
Interesting to note: access to digital audio and video via the network seems to reach as many students at thispoint in time as access via cassette recorder and VCR in the classroom. (Compare lines a & c withlines d & e.)Lines f, g, & h—probably indicate that those instructors utilizing the network for audio and video will alsoutilize the network for texts, images, internet access, and for reference work.
Video via VCR and video via the network seem to reach close to 20% of the survey population in theclassroom. Less than 5% (Line h) of the survey population have experienced the instructor’s use of a computer for
reference work “on the spot.”
We find this data rather interesting since it allows us to do some speculating. The most difficult thing to doin the classroom, from a user perspective, is to handle technology that is complicated and not easily manipulated—
searching dictionaries and catalogues in front of students (possibly with unknown results) require enormous
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confidence on the part of the instructor. Operating traditional technology like a VCR or an audio cassette machine,on the other hand, is simple. When looking at lines e and d it also becomes clear that digital technology has gained
momentum and will probably replace the mechanical devices in a short time since its use is becoming easier andtherefore inspires more confidence.

Question 5
Addresses a rather broader area, ranging from stone-age technology to PR (Public Relations).
0

5. Has your instructor provided you with
instructions / advice in the use oftechnology such asa. the workkbook
b. audio tapesc. other (textbook-related) supplemental
materials
d. e-mail in the language
e. web sites
f. additional (not textbook-related) materials
g. opportunities on campus / off campus forpracticing the language5

a often

10 15

often

b oftenoften

c yes often
often

d oftenoften

e often
often

f

20

25 30

35

40

45 50 55

60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100%

occasionallyoccasionallyoccasionallyoccasionally

once

once

no
once

no
no

occasion. on.
no
once

once
occasionallyoccasionally

often
often

occasionallyoccasionally

g oftenoccasionally

often

no
no

no
no

once

occasionallyoccasionallyoccasion.

once
once

no
once
once
no
once
occasionally

no
no

no
no

Line a—Close to 75% of the survey students have been instructed in the use of the workbook by the instructor.
Line b—About 50% of all students have been instructed in the proper use of audio tapes. (This may beinterpreted as instructors’ attitudes towards audio tapes in general...)Lines c & d—More than 60% of instructors talk about supplemental materials and provide instructions in
the use of e-mail.
Line e—Close to 45% of instructors mention web sites. And more than two-thirds of all instructors provide
additional information.
Line d—The high percentage of “e-mail in the language” has probably been caused by Dartmouth’s internal
e-mail culture that started in 1987 with the launch of blitzmail—a very easy to use mail systemthat is more or less part of the Dartmouth culture. The term “blitz me” is in wide use and simply
means “send me an e-mail.” The fact that close to half of the instructors provide advice on websites
at least once during the term is good news.
Otherwise, in our opinion, the data shows very clearly that instructors are doing “their thing,” i.e. there aremany different approaches and individual styles for teaching languages on our campus.

Question 6
Provides solid evidence from students and instructors using the new technologies that integration of technology in the classroom is taking place.

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6. Does your instructor hold you
accountable for work with tapes,
computers and internet activities?
a. are activities referred to in classb. are activities referred to in tests, projects,
etc.
c. are activities listed on the course syllabus

5

10 15

20

25 30

35

40

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45 50 55

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60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100%

6 yes

no

often

no

a yes

no

often

b yes

no

often

no

c yes

no
no

often

Lines a, b, & c —A whopping 2/3 of students and instructors believe that activities are referred to in class,in tests, and in projects, and that activities are listed at the beginning of the term in the course
syllabus. We were surprised and delighted about the survey results in this area!

Question 7
7 is a “what if?” question.
0

5

a yes
7. Would you use more technology if you had

yes

a. more training in the use of technology
b. more completely equipped classroomsc. received more one-on-one support fromvarious departments of the college
d. materials that are more integrated in yourcoursee. more confidence in the reliability of hardware
and software
f. more confidence in your own capabililties ofhandling it

b yes

10 15

20

25 30

35

40

45 50 55

60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100%noperhapsperhapsperhapsnoperhaps

yes

c

yes

perhapsyes

perhaps

no
no

d yes

perhapsperhaps

yes
yes

no
perhaps

yes

f

no

perhaps

yes

e yes

no

no

perhapsnoperhapsnoLine a—Instructors clearly would use more technology if they had more training.
Line c—Yet, as line c indicates, only 25% of the instructors are interested in one-on-one training—so theymust be looking at other types of training.
Line d—And—line d also seems to indicate that instructors want to have more materials that are integrated
in the course (we did not ask the question whether instructors would be willing to produce andintegrate their own materials...).
Line f —shows that instructors want to gain more confidence in handling technology.
Another interesting result can be read out of line a.
In very small surveys about ten years ago we gained the impression that student bodies and their attitudes
towards learning with technology can roughly be divided into three groups: (a) the unenthusiastic technology
supporter, (b). the “let’s see whether technology can really do it better” group, and (c) the opponents of technology.
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Lines a, b, c, and f—show a similar pattern of three fairly clearly defined groups making up thirds of the
population.

Question 8
Deals with the perception of technology in language teaching.
0
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100%
8. Do you perceive technology in the field ofa yes
somewhatnolanguage teaching as
somewhatyes
a. a useful tool for doing word processing / projects b yes
somewhatnob. something that will eventually change teachingyes
somewhatnoand learning
somewhatnoc yes
c. something that will help you to learn morenoyessomewhateffecieintly
somewhatnod yes
d. something that will make your life easier andsomewhatyesnoturn you into a better learnerLine a—Both students and instructors attest to the usefulness of technology in language teaching,Line b—and both groups seems to agree that technology will eventually change teaching and learning.
Line c—Yet a vast majority of students believe that it will help them to learn more efficiently, whereas only
25% of the instructors believe that it will make you learn more efficiently.
But—nevertheless—both instructors and students agree that technology will make your life easier and turnyou into a better learner.

Question 9
Deals with the perception of technology by instructors only in the context of job security and the future oflanguage teaching.
9. (for instructors only) Do you perceive
technology in the field of language teachingasa. threatening your job
b. possibly turning language instruction into
something that could be out-sourced andremoved from the curriculum of liberal arts
collegesc. something that will go away like many otherfads in language teaching and learning overthe last decades

0

5

10 15

20

25 30

35

40

45 50 55

60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100%

a no
b sw.

no

c somewhatnoLine a—None of our instructors seems to be threatened by the technology,
Line b—only a few worry about outsourcing,Line c—but an amazing 15% think that technology might possibly go away again like any other fad of thepast.
These answers are very institution specific. WE are quite sure that a totally different set of answers could beobtained from institutions where the administration is looking at technology as a potential money saver.

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Written Comments
We provided space for written individual comments and received148 from students and 28 from instructors.
Students’ comments range from a straight forward “I hate technology” to many suggestions about how
technology can serve in their learning process. Many of these comments can be traced to individual learning andteaching styles. These comments are a very clear pointer to instructors and centers to use a multitude of approaches
in teaching and assignments and to make many different types of materials available for individualized study.
Students request more areas of interaction, of speaking and listening but are quite aware of the limitations of thetechnology for interactive exercises and particularly for those involving speech recognition. Students want morepronunciation drills with feedback, they want more video, they want more web-sites, they want more access toremedial services and activities and self-help for all aspects of language learning. In general, the comments show ahigh level of enthusiasm and willingness on part of the students to be responsible for their own learning.
Instructors sent us numerous carefully phrased comments about what’s needed. They, too, stress speaking,listening, interaction, and integration. They want to have more and better materials, preferably video and audio.
They stress the need for more smart classrooms, they stress the use of computers in areas where computers could
work well—pronunciation drills, feedback for pronunciation correction, cultural materials, listening comprehension materials, possibly video conferencing across the internet.

Conclusions
For our lab, surveys of this type have provided excellent data for creating internal political pressure for more
smart classrooms, for funding the ever needed replacements of old machines, for network updates and for theacquisition of new materials. In addition, we have raised the consciousness level of administrators, instructors, andstudents about the center and what it can do for them.
We think that our collected data shows a generally high acceptance of technology in language teaching andlearning. But it also shows that a lot of learning is taking place with minimal use of technology.
We also believe that we have to pay quite a bit of attention to a fairly significant section of our clients who do
not like technology at all and need to be provided with alternative means or with utterly convincing technology thatworks extremely well and makes the user possibly forget that he/she is working with technology rather than an
instructor.
So we have quite a way to go. This is an evolutionary process in which the perception of technology willchange as we understand more clearly where it fits in with teaching and learning languages.

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Integrating the Internet into English Language Teaching
Setsuko Hirao
Aichi University, Japan
Abstract
Globalization is a fact, and the rapid development of information technology across cultures has altered
the environment for language teaching. Video watching and listening offers exciting possibilities for English
language learning. The use of electronic mail is a good opportunity for students to exchange their messages
with pen-pals while improving their reading and writing skills in English. Internet web sites provide students
with numerous resources necessary for gaining background cultural knowledge.
The aim of English language learning is to acquire the ability to communicate with others in English.
Communication is the key to language development; the four skill areas of listening, speaking, reading andwriting will serve as organizational conveniences for reaching this aim. The process of English language
teaching should also be communicative. The use of video and the Internet is useful in the communicative
approach to English teaching.
This paper is to study the teaching process of video, the E-mail and the World Wide Web Site system in the
CALL classroom, focusing on the validity of the communicative approach to English teaching as well as thepracticability for cross-cultural understanding.

Aims
This paper consists of three parts: the aim of the first part is to focus on the use of video as an authentic
teaching material. The interview video material, “Impressions of Britain” was produced by the presenter in cooperation with three teaching staff at the University of Manchester. Video listening activities will be followed bygiving presentations in groups regarding the profiles of the five interviewees in the video and their cultural backgrounds.
The aim of the second part is to let students develop their communicative writing and reading abilities byexchanging E-mail messages with the interviewees in the video film, based on the pre-view and post-view activities.
The aim of the third part is to let students acquire background knowledge by opening Internet web sites: e.g.
CNN News Articles, USA Today, UK Guide, etc. Reading activities on the Internet will be followed by giving
presentations in groups.
Subjects in this study are 500 students at Aichi University: sophomores belonging to the Faculty of Law
and Business Administration. Having learned English as a foreign language for about seven years in schools, they
have approximately a low to intermediate level of English.

Methods for Improving Computer and Internet Literacy
It is necessary to let students acquire computer and Internet literacy in order to operate computers, word
processing, managing the Internet, sending or receiving the E-mail messages, graph and list making and composing
the web site pages. Aichi University has various kinds of seminars open for students to improve their computer
literacy before attending English CALL classes.
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Seminars for Improving Students’ Computer Literacy
1.

Students: Compulsory for 1,000 Freshmen

2.

Date: Monday - Friday (Everyday)

3.

Levels:(a)Computer Operating(b)

TypingSeminars for the Internet Literacy
1.

Students: Elective for All-Grade-Students

2.

Date:

3.

Levels:Monday and Thursday(a)Word Processing(b)

The Internet(c)E-mail Message(d)Graph and List Making

Self-taught Laboratory for the Internet Literacy
All the CALL classrooms having 300 computer machines in total are open to the students available at any
time during the whole period of the academic school year: from 8:00 a.m. until 20:00 p.m. each day. School
environment and facilities are necessary for students to have chances of self-taught lessons for information technology using multi media as extra activities.

Strategies for Integrating 4 skills by Using the Internet
Procedures for improving English four skills by using the Internet are:1.

Listening comprehension drills by using videos

2.

Reading web site articles by means of the Internet

3.

Writing E-mail messages

4.

Giving presentations on the summary of the reading material.

Video Listening Comprehension
Objectives of Off-Air Video Extract
For teachers in non-English-speaking settings, recordings of English language broadcasts of satellite are afruitful source of authentic material for their English classes.
MacWilliam (1986) points out as follows:
Video is most widely used to introduce and stimulate interest in a topic to give information on
cultural background and for general language spin-off. Video is found most helpful in developing
aural/oral skills, particularly listening skills....
Off-air material has the advantage of being free, offers a range of high quality, and is ready accessible. Offair material makes video synonymous with using authentic material. In order to meet students’ needs and interests,
the video extract was selected from BBC news broadcast, the Olympic Games 2000 in Sydney.
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Criteria for Selecting Video Materials
Arcario (undated) points out that comprehensibility is a major criterion in selecting programs for language
presentation. Comprehensibility of a video is primarily affected by (a) the degree of visual support, (b), the clarityof picture and sound, (c) the density of language, (d) the speech delivery, (e) the language content, and (f) the
language level.
When using video to present language, it is important to choose scenes with a high degree of visual support.
Sydney Olympic Games 2000 are of great use for visual support.
Clarity of speech, speech rate, and accent are all factors in determining how difficult an off-air video extract
will be for students to comprehend. BBC broadcasters are professionals in delivering the news articles with clear
sound, correct pronunciation, and standard accent, which will contribute to the good teaching material for Japanese
students. The rapid speech rates, however, will be difficult for low- and even intermediate-level students.
The most crucial factor to consider in selecting video programs for Japanese students is the language density—the amount of language spoken over the course of a particular scene.
The level of difficulty of the language in an off-air video extract is another crucial factor for low-intermediate-level students to consider in selecting material for comprehension. Arcario suggests that there are two ways touse video programs that contain language too difficult for the level of students. First, you do not need to show thewhole program. Second, give the students an easy task in conjunction with viewing.

Tasks to Help Students: (1) Reading Material and (2) Clues about Key-Terms.
1.

Reading Articles from CNN Web Sites“Takahashi takes Japan’s first Olympic marathon gold”
SYDNEY, SEPT 24 (AP) Naoko Takahashi became the first runner from Japan to win an Olympic
gold medal in the marathon on Sunday, when she destroyed a world-class field in the heat of the
Sydney sunshine to take the women’s 42.2-kilometer race. She pulled away from her opponents withsome fearless front running in the latter stages, crossing the finishing line in Stadium in an Olympic
record 2hrs 23min 14sec, a world-class time despite the tough course in hard conditions. It was thefirst ever Olympic athletics gold for a Japanese woman.
2.

News Articles from CNN Web Sites

See Figure 1.

Activities
Wills (1983) points out that the activities should provide the opportunity for purposeful viewing; it should
create a need for students to be actively involved in processing the information they receive. That is to say, an
activity should represent a useful achievement on the part of the students.
According to McGovern (1983) the video has three roles. First of all, it beautifully contextualize the newteaching items. Secondly, it offers a ready context for review of material. Thirdly, it enhances students motivation
by varying the classroom activity.
As Stempleski (1990) reminds us, there is no one right way to use video in the classroom. Nevertheless, thefollowing guidelines are suggested in using the medium for intensive language practice and presentation:1.

to show short sequences2.

to allow for repeated viewing

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to encourage active viewing

4.

to present activities before viewing

5.

to familiarize students with the material

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Roles of Video in the Language Classroom
Willis (1983) proposes six categories for roles for the use of video as follows:1.

to give listening practice and chance for oral practice2.

to show target situations where in students can use their own words, e.g. role plays

3.

to illustrate the target language in use

4.

to expose students to messages which illustrate discourse structures5.

to provide a source of information which is relevant to students’ needs and interests

6.

to provide materials to act as a stimulus for classroom activities

Figure 1. News articles from CNN Web sites

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Video Filmed Material
We can make use of many kinds of resources: the idea for video production is a way of producing creative
and authentic teaching materials which will encourage students to practice English in the communicative way.

Video Filming Project
The steps in doing a video film project are as show in Table 1.

Table 1. Doing a Video Film Project
Step

Details

1.

Title:“Impression of Britain”

2.

Topics:Weather, Food, Pub, People, etc. in Britain

3.

Data Set-up:(a) Overall sight-shots around the University campus(b) Interviews

4.

Interviews:

With students form Germany, Cyprus, Greece, Switzerland, and Poland

5.

Place

Campus in the University of Manchester

6.

Production Dates:

Filming and Editing : July, 1998

7.

Running Time:

15 minutes

Aims of Video Production
The aims of video production are:1.

to present cultural topics
Interview films can provide a good “way in” to a topic and can be an excellent introduction to
British culture for the students.

2.

to develop listening skills
Listening comprehension is undoubtedly helped by the visual element, and students can understand far more in a video sequence than they can from an audio dialogue.

3.

to stimulate conversation and discussion
Students are very keen to talk about what they have seen in a video. They exchange their opinions on different characters in an interview.

4.

to build descriptive and narrative skills
As a continuation of interviewing, video sequences can be used to develop students’ ability todescribe people, places, and situations, and also to develop narratives.

5.

to show what people from different countries think about British culture
It is a matter of interest for students to know what opinions people have from their different
points of view.

6.

to stimulate motivations to learn English language

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Overseas students from various countries speak good English as a foreign language, and theyexpress themselves frankly with an open-minded attitude, answering actively in the interview.
To listen and watch the video will stimulate our students in Japan to improve themselves inlistening and speaking English.

Questions and Answers in the Interview:•

Where are you from?

•How long have you been in Britain?

•

What’s your impression of British food?

•

What do you think of British pubs?

•

What do you most like about Britain?

•

What do you most dislike about Britain?

•

What’s your impression of British people ?

•What do you think of British women?

Worksheets for “Impressions of Britain”
1.

Where are Dina, Berna, Ute, Sina, and Gregory from?

2.

Give presentations about profiles of Berna, Dina, Ute, Sina, and Gregory in groups.
Dina:•

Dina was born in Greece. She likes BBC programmes.

•

She dislikes the weather in Britain, because it’s very terrible. It’s cold and wet.

• She loves the British pub because of its cozy atmosphere as a place of communication.
Berna:•

Berna comes from Cyprus, in the Mediterranean, South Turkey.

•

She likes the way British people handle her. Everybody takes good care of her•

In Cyprus it‘s very hot; boiling hot. The weather in England is cold for her.

•Ute is from Germany and She has been staying in Britain two years.

•

She likes English language, people’s hospitality and the nature in Scotland.

•

Sina is from Switzerland and she has been in Britain only for ten days.

•

She likes British people, who are very friendly.

Ute:

Sina:

Gregory:•

Gregory is from Poland, and he has been in Britain for a month. This is his 4th visit.

•

He likes rock music, dance, disco music, and the night life in Britain.

•

He likes the Indian food, which has become a part of the British cuisine.

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Effects of Video Listening and Watching
There are a lot of effects and benefits from using self-made video film as a teaching material.
1.

It is a means of internationalization
Video introduces people of different countries, ages and types. This is valuable in a non-English-speaking environment, where students do not have much contact with people abroad.

2.

It provides a full context for English
Students not only listen to the language, but also learn who is speaking, what they look like, andwhat they are interested in. Students are aware of non-verbal information by watching facial
expressions and gestures. This helps them to work out the meaning of what is said.

3.

It provides background cultural information“Impressions of Britain” has a clear cultural context regarding Britain, and this lets students beinterested in the culture along with the language in a natural way.

4.

It is memorable and motivating
Students are very interested in video programmes, made by their own teacher. Her enthusiasm
seems to lead students to highly motivated language learning.

5.

It is part of contemporary life
“Impressions of Britain” forms an important part of contemporary British culture: how people
enjoy their food, weather, pubs, and what they think of people of the opposite sex.

6.

It adds variety to the classroom
This is one of the main benefits of video. Working with video is seen as fun. It also encourages
students to send their e-mail messages to persons in the interview on the video.

E-Mail Writing
This paper shows how such a video production can be combined with an E-mail exchange project: students
correspond by E-mail with pen-pals in another country, learning about each others’ lifestyles and cultures. Then, in
response to their pen-pals’ questions and comments, inter-cultural communication will begin based on mutual
cultural awareness.

Details of the E-Mail Exchanges
At the University of Manchester, I made contact with teachers who were willing to join the video production
as interviewees in the filmed interview, to exchange E-mail messages with students of their universities. They arefrom Greece, Cyprus, Germany, Switzerland, and Poland. All of them are interested in such an E-mail exchange
project. They want their students to have direct contact with people living in another country.

How to Use the E-Mail System
A seminar for Computer Processing and E-mail System was held at the Aichi University Computer Center atthe beginning of each semester. Students had their own E-mail address registered at the Computer Center. In my
English classes, students’ responses to this project were very positive. Students were divided into five groups sothat each group would give their presentation on the profile introduction of each interviewee in the video.
Students in each group got extensive practice in reading and writing in English and had a chance to develop
their language skills by getting information necessary for giving presentations from the Internet Web-sites.
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Effect of the E-mail Exchanges
1

To provide students with chances to practice communication in English, thus resulting in an
increase in their English communicative skills, both written and oral, while dealing with theInternet-related tasks.

2.

To enable them to expand their personal scope of life by learning through the Internet different
values in comparison with their own.

3.

To encourage them to see things more with international points of view.

4.

To enable them to attain confidence in expressing themselves.

Results
The survey given to students at the end of the semester shows their attainments as follows.

Table 2. Listening Comprehension on Video (%)
Excellent Good

Fair

Poor

1.

Effects of Video Listening

23

57

18

2

2.

Familiarity with listening activities

18

67

14

1

3.

Context for English language

16

63

20

1

4.

Background cultural information

26

62

11

1

5.

Memorable and motivating factors

23

52

24

1

6.

Part of contemporary life

18

65

16

1

7.

Video adds variety to the classroom

20

57

20

3

n = 500
Other comments:•

Video watching is a great fun.

•

It is easier to understand English.

•

It’s a good activity to understand the different cultures.

•It’s interesting to know how people in other countries think.

Table 3. Giving Presentations (%)
Excellent

Good

Fair

Poor

1.

Make preparations in a group

17

57

24

2

2.

Group-works

22

46

31

1

3.

Give presentations in a group

10

45

43

2

4.

Preparation for giving presentations

20

48

30

2

14

41

41

4

5.
Self-evaluationn = 500

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Other comments:•

Making preparations before giving presentations is very important.

•Group-work is well-done.

•It’s nice to cooperate with each other in giving presentations.

•

It is a good practice to speak before the audience.

•

It is effective to improve our speaking ability.

•

The quality of our presentation has been improved.

•

It is difficult to give presentations.

•

I am nervous. I am at high tension.

Table 4. The Internet Related Work (%)
Excellent

Good

Fair

Poor

1.

The Internet experiences

21

20

28

31

2.

English learning by the Internet

55

34

11

0

3.

Word processing

29

54

16

1

4.

Computer operating

36

38

20

6

Excellent Good

Fair

Poor

n = 500

Table 5. CNN Web-site Reading (%)

1.

Reading CNN web-sites

24

55

20

1

2.

Reading articles on Nobel Peace Prize

29

53

18

0

3.

Understanding the web-site articles

17

43

37

3

4.

Summary writing

9

50

40

1

5.

Giving presentations

17

40

42

1

n = 500

Table 6. E-mail Writing (%)
Excellent Good

Fair

Poor

1.

E-mail exchanges

25

39

35

1

2.

E-mail writing

12

38

46

4

3.

Sending E-mail messages abroad

35

37

25

3

n = 500
Other comments:•

It is a fun for me to practice writing E-mail messages.

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E-mail exchange is motivating.

•E-mail message exchange is the short cut to mastering English.

•

It’s very interesting to open the different web-sites.

•

It’s interesting to read the www- articles about foreign countries.

•

It takes me much time to get used to computer processing.

•It’s great fun to open the web-sites abroad.

•I like the Internet English class.

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These results suggest important pedagogical implications for promoting the development of students’ communicative skills.

Conclusion
We are in an age of rapid technological development. Computers will be able to produce acceptable speech
patterns and will provide another means of interacting with the video/computer screen. Authenticity for languageteaching video must take into account the needs of students to focus on reactions to what are important for language
learning. Video production as well as creating web-sites on the Internet is full of exciting challenges. The nextchallenge is to produce “authentic” material which will provide an effective and satisfying response in the classroom. It is essential to pursue a way forward to further development in multi-media equipment and software inorder to provide materials to meet the needs of students to improve their communicative competence in English.

References
Kinginger, C. (1997). E-mail in the Language Classroom.
Lonergan, J. (1984). Video in Language Teaching. Cambridge, CUP.
MacWilliam. (1986). Video and language comprehension. ELTJ 40(2), 131-135.
Stempelski S. & Arcario P. (Eds) (undated). Video in Second Language Teaching: using, selecting, and producing
video for the classroom. TESOL, Inc.
Willis D. (1983). The potential and limitations of video. In McGovern, J. (ed.) pp. 17-27.
Willis J. (1983). 101 ways to use video. In McGovern, J. (ed.).

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Appendix 1
Syllabus for Integrated Multi-media English ClassClass

Integrated English for Multi-media

Students

2nd Year: 40 Students

Aims

1.

To let the students develop communicative ability in English

2.

To encourage the students to foster a positive attitude toward communication

3.

To let the students understand intercultural communication

1.

Listening Comprehension by watching video material

2.

Speaking Drills in pairs as post-video-viewing activities

3.

E-mail Writing Drills as post-video-viewing activities

4.

Reading Web-Pages to get more information for intercultural communication

5.

Giving Presentations in groups

1.

“Multimedia Classroom” CALL, PC, Analyzer, VTR, VID, CD, LD, etc.

2.

90 min. class, Once a week, 13 weeks a semester

1.

Impressions of Britain

2.

Guide to Britain (BBC)1.

CNN: http://www.cnn.com

2.

UK Guide: http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk

1.

Pre-Listening...... Overall Understanding about Britain

Activities

Methods
Videos
Web-sites
Procedure

2.

3.

4.

a.

Video viewing before listeningb.

Tape-recordingc.

Checking key-terms in the interview

While Listening....
a.

Checking topics in the video interviewb.

Matching items with what is heardc.

Multiple-choice questionsd.

True or false questionse.

Gap-fillingf.

Questions and Answers

Post-Listening...
a.

Role-play / simulation in pairs or groupsb.

Dictation

Assignmentsa.

Transcription

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Previous paperb.

Summary Writingc.

Preparation for giving presentations about profiles

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2nd Period
Procedure 1.

Review2.

3.

a.

Summary presentation of Dina’s profile in groupsb.

Summary presentation of Ute’s profile in groupsc.

Giving presentation of Sina’s profile in group

E-mail writinga.

Self-introduction in English in pairsb.

Exchanging E-mail address in pairsc.

Opening the Internet Netscape “Mail Message” sited.

Input the E-mail address of the partner in the “Mail To:”e.

Input the E-mail address of the instructor in “Cc:”f.

Input the mail message in Englishg.

“Send” it

Post activities a) Open Web Pages as a reference for background information
Manchester University: http://www.man.ac.uk
Oxford University: http://www.ox.ac.uk
UK guide: http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk

4.

Assignmentsa.

E-mail writing to Dina, Berna, Ute, Sina, or Gregory

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Appendix 2
Samples of E-Mail Writing
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1999 11:10:02 +0900
Hello Sina,
Nice to meet you! My name is DAISUKE. My overseas friends call me DAI. I’m a university student inJAPAN. My major is chemical engineering. During my English class, our teacher Ms Setsuko Hirao showed us avideo about impressions of Britain, and I watched your interview.
It appears that the night life in Britain is very exciting and diverse. I am interested in ENGLAND. I’d like to
study English there. I know England is a brilliant and lovely place.
I visited England one month ago. I often went to pubs just like you. I always drank” CIDER”. It’s sweet beer.
I also like tuna sandwiches.
Prof.HIRAO told me you would kindly introduce your student to me. So please introduce me a beautiful girlpenpal!. I’d like to exchange E-mail messages with her.I have never been to Switzerland. So I’d like to know about
Switzerland. It’s a great pleasure for me if you kindly introduce me to one of your students. I am looking forward tohearing from you and your student.
WITH BEST WISHES
DAI
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1999 21:01:01 +010
Dear Dai
Thank you for your message. I have just come home from my holidays in Italy.
I was lying on the beach and relaxed from teaching. You will get your answer for the first e-mail later. Please
send me your address. I’ll try to find you a female penfriend. But our students usually do not have e-mail; so they
have to write back by good old post-mail.
Please write more details about yourself. How you live, how you spend leisure time, how life differs fromlife in Europe etc.
Best wishes
Sina

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Interactive Web Pages for Cross-Cultural Learning
Seiko Oguri
Tetsuo Kato
Chubu University, Japan
Abstract
This presentation will demonstrate how the learning environment can be enriched for ESL students byusing an interactive web site. As a part of collaborative learning projects using the Internet in the field of ESL
education, the Japan Today Trivia Quiz project was first designed in 1998. The purpose of the project was toprovide students a global framework where students can experience cross-cultural communication in English.
This project attempts to optimize the interactive feature of the WWW and depends largely on the collaborationfrom ordinary people participating from different countries. The focus of incorporating the Internet is shiftedfrom net surfing or email exchange to inter-cultural communication with people from different parts of theworld.

Internet-Based Collaborative Learning
The Internet enables EFL learners to expose themselves to authentic language and communication in reallife situations. This project attempts to optimize the interactive features of the World Wide Web. In 1996, Professor Shuji Ozeki and the author initiated Internet-based collaborative learning projects at Chubu University's Language Center. Two years later, the Japan Today Trivia Quiz was developed. The quiz was a project developed tocultivate students' writing skills, specifically in the area of constructing explanations.
Other aims included enhancing students’ awareness of their own culture, building a foundation for understanding other cultures and increasing interest toward other languages, including English.

Figure 1. Japan Today Travia Quiz front page
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Quiz Writing Project
The first task for students is to select one quiz topic each. Next, and most importantly, they are to observe
their culture as objectively as possible. They are instructed not to select topics which would likely be dealt with inpublications, for example, traditional habits, events or customs. Instead, the students are told to choose topics fromitems or events in their daily lives. The author assists them in finding things they may take for granted or think they
thing are "too ordinary". The students and instructor discuss the topic via e-mail. After topics are agreed upon,each student goes on to prepare quiz questions.

Interaction on the Web
When the quizzes are ready, the instructor puts them onto the database established for the project, andpublishes them on the web site. The site is controlled to accept quiz postings only from the instructor. Each quizconsists of either a photo or sound file plus a brief question.

Figure 2. A quiz pageThe process of making a quiz may seem easy, but for most students, this can be the most time consuming partof the project. They learn how to make the quizzes interesting for people from other cultures. Though the postingof quizzes is restricted, responses are welcome from anyone in any part of the world who is interested in responding
to the questions. The instructor helps find quiz participants, preferably people with a non-Japanese cultural background, by posting invitations on relevant mailing lists or newsgroups. Submissions of "answers" are reflected on
the web page in real time.

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Figure 3. Response submission page

Figure 4. Responses listed on the web page

Writing about Their Culture
While waiting for responses, students start to write explanations for the quiz items. Explanations are expected to be concise but should sufficiently lead to a better understanding of Japanese culture. From the responses
posted on the web site, students not only learn English expressions, but also realize how much of every day JapaLearning Together Using the Internet [Poster Presentation]362

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nese culture is understood or misunderstood by people from other cultures. A considerable amount of writing
instruction for the project is given via a local newsgroup which has been set up for EFL classes and is only
accessible on campus. The newsgroup has enabled students to write in an open forum. However, the number ofstudents who work at home using e-mail has increased rapidly. Starting in the fall semester of 2000, the author also
started using the class mailing list in order to enable students to work from anywhere. All the e-mail sent to themailing list is published on the web so that students can still have an opportunity to trace and learn what their peers
have written.

Figure 5. Students’ explanation page

Database System Supporting the Web Page
Trivia Quiz Project consists of Web Server, CGI Application, and Database software. Web Server software
employed is WebSTAR running on Power Macintosh. CGI Application is made with Tango for File Maker Pro andCommunicate with File Maker Pro database. There are two components in this quiz system. One is publication
CGI for the quiz panelists and the students. The quiz panelists can see the trivia quiz and send their responses through web interface. The students on the other hand can read panelists’ submissions by publication CGI,
using their own browsing software. Another component is administration CGI for the instructor. The instructor cancontrol the whole data of the trivia quiz site. For example, the instructor can publish the students' quizzes andresponses on the web page. If she wishes to delete any of the submissions made, she could do it from anywhere,
using browsing software. Using Macintosh for Web Server is easy because all the interfaces are given in GUI and
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it is familiar interface than using UNIX system for Web Server. The biggest advantages of this system is publication and administration in real time. Also, if we use a web interface as a communication tool, all the users do nothave to be familiar with the background system. All they have to know is the URL of site.

Interaction for More Learning
Besides strengthening their writing skills, the experience of preparing cultural quizzes and explanations
helps students develop their cross-cultural awareness. At the beginning, students find it difficult to select accurate
expressions for their explanations. As they go on, they find that constructing an explanation is not only a matter ofusing expressions and vocabulary correctly. They are also challenged to improve upon the content of their explanations. When the explanations are almost finished, the instructor publishes them on the web. If the audience getsinterested, they send us more feedback on the web. Students' focus is then shifted from writing to cultural comparison. In some cases, considerable communication takes place between students and quiz participants via e-mail.
The author continues to search for better ways to allow EFL learners to learn more from interaction on the Internet
using web sites like this.

Figure 6. Students’ report on the feedback

Toward More Collaborative LearningThis project will be rearranged next term to make it more diverse and more collaborative. The next phase of
the project will reverse the role of the participants; participants from other countries will present quizzes of theircultures and our students will be respondents. The project will continue exploring the possibilities to allow participants to learn more from the interaction at the web site.

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Intercultural Understanding: Factors Influencing Transculturation
and Ambiguity Tolerance in a Study Abroad Program
Ken Matsuta
Tohoku University of Community
Service and Science, Japan
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of students’ experiences in a study abroad program. In
particular, my discussion will focus on their changes of intercultural understanding, transculturation, and ambiguity tolerance after the study abroad program. Two types of questionnaires were administered to 230 university sophomores before and after the study abroad program. The first questionnaire was designed to measure
variances in the students’ intercultural understanding and transculturation. The data was analyzed by factor
analysis. The analysis extracted five factors among 24 questionnaire items. Six items proved to be unsuitablefor inquiring into intercultural understanding and transculturation. The second questionnaire was designed tomeasure levels of students’ ambiguity tolerance. The results of changes in the five factors and ambiguity tolerance are discussed. Suggestions for future research are also discussed.

Introduction
A growing number of students have been participating in study abroad programs in order to improve theircommunication skills in English. Such programs are a recent trend in education and many universities are now
creating unique overseas experiences. The Asia University America Program (AUAP) is a five-month study abroad
program in the United States designed to expose students to spoken English and deepen their understanding ofanother culture. Over 7,000 students have taken part in the AUAP since the pilot program in 1988. Although manystudies show that students’ scores in English proficiency tests such as TOEFL increase significantly after a study
abroad program as compared to those in a control group, little research has been conducted to examine the effect ofstudents’ intercultural understanding, transculturation, and ambiguity tolerance.
Intercultural understanding is defined as objectively understanding and respecting differences and similarities between one’s own culture and different cultures (Ishii, 1997). This means that people need to understand andrespect not only the different cultures but also their own cultures. Transculturation involves the transcendence
from a narrow monocultural situation into bi- or multi-culturalism (Iwama, 1991). Through this process the individual embraces both (or all) cultures without rejecting either. In other words, transculturation describes a stage
where the individual reaches a level that s/he is aware of cultural prejudices or stereotypes and has overcome theidea of ethnocentrism. Chapell and Roberts (1986) define ambiguity tolerance as “a person’s ability to function
rationally and calmly in a situation in which interpretation of all stimuli is not clear” (p. 30). According to Imagawa(1981), there are many ambiguous situations in our daily lives. While some people perceive ambiguous situations
as psychological discomforts or threats, others don’t care about them at all. This reflects individual differences ofcognitive tolerance toward ambiguities. Ambiguity tolerance may have a great influence on students’ processes ofintercultural adjustment because they have to deal with many ambiguities in the study abroad program such as
different languages, customs, and beliefs.
The purpose of the study is to examine the effects of students’ experience in the AUAP and the changes of
their intercultural understanding, transculturation, and ambiguity tolerance after the AUAP.
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MethodSubjects
The subjects were 230 university sophomores (male: 97, female: 133) who participated in the AUAP.

Period in AUAP
Below are the universities and the periods that students attended the AUAP. The students were divided into
each university.
Western Washington University: September 23, 1997 – February 19, 1998
Central Washington University: September 19, 1997 – February 15, 1998
Eastern Washington University: September 15, 1997 – February 11, 1998
Boise State University: September 5, 1997 – February 1, 1998

Procedures
Two different types of questionnaires were administered to 230 university sophomores before and after the
AUAP. The first questionnaire (Questionnaire A) designed to measure variances in the students’ intercultural
understanding and transculturation has twenty-four questionnaire items that were selected from previous studies
on the same topic. The second questionnaire (ATS-IV developed by Imagawa) was designed to measure the levelof students’ ambiguity tolerance. The ATS-IV was chosen because it was demonstrated to have high validity andreliability.

Analyses
The data of Questionnaire A was analyzed by factor analysis. In order to examine the differences of factors
in Questionnaire A and ambiguity tolerance in ATS-IV between Pre- and Post-AUAP, a t-test was performed.
Subjects indicated their reactions to each questionnaire item using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 “strongly
disagree” to 5 “strongly agree.” SAS statistics package for Windows was used for the statistical analysis.

Results
In order to examine the appropriateness of the questionnaire items in Questionnaire A as a means of measuring intercultural understanding and transculturation, factor analysis was employed. The data was analyzed byfactor analysis that extracted five factors among 24 questionnaire items. Six questionnaire items of the 24 questionnaire items were excluded from Questionnaire A because they didn’t belong to any factor. Table 1 shows theresult of a varimax rotation. The questionnaire items with factor loading of .40 and above are displayed. Table 2
shows the questionnaire items that belong to the five factors.

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Table 1. Questionnaire Items with Factor Loading of .40 and above
Item

Factor 1

Factor 2

Factor 3

Factor 4

Factor 5

A24
A23
A22
A5
A15
A9
A14
A13
A18
A17
A16
A12
A4
A3
A2
A6
A20
A21
A19
A1
A11
A10
A7
A8

0.86900.86130.80860.3878-0.06400.1057-0.0079
0.06050.12610.10300.1519-0.0583
0.0793-0.0545-0.04420.17040.05750.09900.17210.0798-0.0158
0.10340.3809-0.01900.02820.04320.1081
0.09420.5997
0.52650.50100.48340.4946
0.41900.32760.28290.07740.03050.0561
0.04620.04370.00300.24250.17600.04040.20250.17080.1071-0.0488-0.0037
0.05590.3027-0.0662
0.12100.07540.02260.0724-0.0069
0.06730.13070.7666
0.66950.59620.45550.06570.00840.09860.1357-0.06120.12130.24580.09170.12870.10980.08110.1896-0.05910.03960.01020.02090.21500.05960.25070.16560.02980.14940.03180.04890.77690.67610.3306
0.2686-0.18360.18970.01820.08530.0256
0.0311
0.05160.3006-0.0034
0.31890.05390.0666
0.05480.12520.25410.08980.0723-0.0858
0.13380.25720.10200.03320.0311-0.05260.60730.57260.47480.2840Eigenvalue

2.5443

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Table 2. Questionnaire Items of Five Factors
Factor 1 (Motivation of Learning English)
A24. I’m interested in working in foreign countries in the future.
A23. I’m interested in learning in foreign countries in the future.
A22. I’m interested in working in English in the future.
Factor 2 (Transculturation)
A15. I view which country is more superior to the other when I compare Japanese culture to theforeign culture.*
A9. It’s annoying to learn how to associate with foreign people and follow their rules.*A14. When I observe the actions and speech patterns of a person from a particular country, I don’t
consider it to be typical of all people in that country.
A13. I don’t interpret foreigners’ customs to be similar to Japanese.
A18. I feel neither a superiority complex nor an inferiority complex with foreigners when I speakwith them.
A17. I don’t think that it’s impossible to understand foreigner’s values even though people thinkmainly about the values that support their own culture.
Factor 3 (Understanding and Interests in Own Culture)
A4.
A3.
A2.
A6.

I’m interested in maintaining traditional Japanese culture.
I understand Japanese culture well.
I’m proud of Japanese culture.
I’m interested in the differences between Japanese culture and foreign cultures.

Factor 4 (Independent from Group Consciousness/Self-Reliance)
A20. I am not afraid of doing things differently from others.
A21. I state my opinion clearly even if it is different from other’s.
Factor 5 (Interests in Different Culture)
A11. I think that it is impolite to foreigners if we maintain Japanese etiquette in foreign countries.
A10. I think that there are still things to learn from foreign countries, though there are good things
in Japanese culture and life.
A7. I’m interested in becoming a friend of foreigners.
(* reversal items)
Factor 1 was named as “Motivation of Learning English” because it contains questionnaire items that ask
reasons for learning English in the future. Items in Factor 2 indicate “Transculturation” because it describes asituation which avoids cultural stereotypes and prejudices caused easily from a single cultural situation and overcomes the idea of ethnocentrism. Factor 3 shows understanding and interests in Japanese culture and was named“Understanding and Interests in Own Culture.” Factor 4 was named as “Independent from Group Consciousness/
Self-Reliance” because items refer to thinking and acting independently. Factor 5 was named as “Interests in
Different Culture” because the questionnaire items ask people’s interests in different culture.
The change of evaluation value of five factors that had been obtained from factor analysis and ambiguity
tolerance were examined by t-test in order to see the differences between Pre- and Post-AUAP.

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Table 3. Comparison of Evaluation Value of Five Factors and Ambiguity Tolerance between
Pre- and Post-AUAP
Factor
Factor 1
Factor 2
Factor 3
Factor 4
Factor 5
A-T

Pre-AUAP
Mean (SD)3.95 (1.00)
2.38 (0.60)
3.34 (0.71)
3.22 (0.95)
4.39 (0.59)
16.84 (18.81)

Post-AUAP
Mean (SD)3.87 (0.94)
2.52 (0.60)
3.51 (0.68)
3.61 (0.93)
4.36 (0.57)
120.60 (22.00)

t value-1.42ns
3.04**
3.52***
6.28***-0.66ns
2.79*****p < .001 **p < .01 *p < .05

Discussion
There was a significant difference in Factor 3 (Understanding and Interests in Own Culture) between Preand Post-AUAP (p<.001). The change of Factor 3 indicates that students became more aware of Japanese culture
after the AUAP. According to Yoshida (1990), the more Japanese bilinguals acquire the English language systemin the United States, the more they feel differences between Japanese and Americans and raise their self-consciousness as Japanese. This might be the case with the AUAP students: They realized the differences between Japaneseculture and American culture through the AUAP and raised their consciousness to Japanese culture.
There was also a significant difference in Factor 4 (Independent from Group Consciousness/Self-Reliance)
between Pre- and Post-AUAP (p<.001). This means that the students—through their experience in the UnitedStates, a country which values Individualism—were able to overcome the psychological discomfort or threat created by differing from others.
There was a significant difference in Factor 2 (Transculturation) between Pre- and Post-AUAP (p<.01). The
statistical change of Factor 2 indicates that the students became more aware of the stereotypes and prejudiceswhich easily happen in a single cultural situation and tried to avoid the idea of ethnocentrism.
A significant difference was found in ambiguity tolerance between Pre- and Post-AUAP. The students’levels of ambiguity tolerance increased through the AUAP experience. In other words, they became more tolerant
toward cultural ambiguities through the study abroad program.
It is interesting that no significant difference was observed in Factor 1 (Motivation of Learning English)
between Pre- and Post-AUAP. The students might have lost their interests in developing their careers in English
when they had communication problems with American students and realized that it’s not so easy to live and workin the United States. There was also no significant change in Factor 5 (Interests in Different Culture) between Preand Post-AUAP. These results may reflect a gap between what they expected prior to going to the AUAP and what
they actually experienced in the AUAP.

Conclusion
Ultimately, there are four points that are revealed in this research. First, the levels of students’ ambiguity
tolerance have increased through the study abroad program. This suggests that students have become more tolerant
towards sociocultural differences between Japan and the United States through the AUAP. Second, the students’
understanding and interests in their own culture have been deepened by the program. Third, the students haveInternational Understanding [Oral Presentation]

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overcome their anxiety and fear of doing unique things through the study abroad program. Fourth, the students
have become more aware of stereotypes and prejudices against other cultures and tried to avoid the idea of ethnocentrism.
It is interesting that the students became more aware of their own culture after the AUAP when there was no
significant difference in Factor 5 (Interests in Different Culture) between Pre- and Post-AUAP. However, this isjust the tip of the iceberg to understanding the effects of a study abroad experience. In the future, it is necessary to
make a more valid questionnaire that can more effectively measure intercultural understanding and transculturationin order to more fully understand the effects of students’ experience in a study abroad program.

Note
This paper is a revised version of “A study of transculturation and ambiguity tolerance in a study abroad
program” in Language Laboratory 35.

References
Chapelle, C. & Roberts, C. (1986). Ambiguity tolerance and field independence as predictors of proficiency inEnglish as a second language. Language Learning, 36(1), 27-25.
Imagawa, T. (1981). Development of ambiguity tolerance scale: Item analysis and its reliability. Journal of
Hokkaido University of Education Section 1C Education, 32(1), 79-93.
Ishii, S., Okabe, R., & Kume, T. (1997). Intercultural communication. Tokyo: Yuhikaku.
Iwama, H. (1991). A study on factors influencing transculturation of Japanese overseas teenagers. Bulletin of theCenter for Education of Children Overseas (Tokyo Gakugei University), 6, 19-43.
Matsuta, K. (1999). A study of transculturation and ambiguity tolerance in a study abroad program. Language
Laboratory, 35, 149-166.
Yoshida, K. (1990). Knowing vs. behaving vs. feeling: Studies in Japanese bilinguals. In L. A. Arena (ed.),Language proficiency: Defining, teaching, and testing, New York: Plenum.

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International Student Exchange and Intensive Chinese Courses in China
Setsuko Hirao
Aichi University, Japan
Abstract
Globalization in education has been one of the most crucial issues today. The importance of communicative competence has been realized in the world and the rapid advance of information technology has drasticallyaltered the environment for foreign language teaching.
Making use of newly developed technologies in communication has been on a great move. For example,
E-mail exchange programs by using the Internet are popular among universities as well as high schools, andteachers are involved in the production of the authentic teaching material on the web sites. Students exchange
programs between sister universities abroad and the intensive language courses for students have been introduced. These programs by means of the efficient use of multimedia are mainly for teaching English.
It goes without saying that not only English but also other foreign languages will be important for the
global communication. Cultural awareness between people all over the world is essential for language learning.
This presentation will be focused on the international student exchange program between Nankai University in Tenjing, China, and Aichi University in Japan, together with the intensive Chinese courses and fieldworks in China which have been progressively under way since 1997.

Aims
The aims of the programs in this presentation are:1.

to improve students’ Chinese proficiency, the language other than English, for interculturalcommunication2.

to promote students’ cultural awareness in China

3.

to encourage students to exchange opinions with Chinese students across cultures4.

to report the case study on students’ field work in China

5.

to evaluate students’ benefits of Chinese language learning and culture understanding, and6.

to suggest the further pedagogical implications for language teaching

Historical Background
Aichi University was founded in 1946, originated in Dobun Shoin University in Shanghai established in
1901. Since 1950 Aichi University has concluded the General Agreement for Academic and Student Exchange
Programs between universities in the United States, Britain, France, and China in order to promote students’ language learning as well as the cultural awareness.

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Aichi University has sister universities in China as follows:1.

Nankai University, Tenjing

2.

Beijing University, Beijing

3.

Beijing Foreign Language University, Beijing

4.

Fudan University, Shanghai

5.

Shanghai Foreign Language University, Shanghai

6.

Shanghai Kotu University, Shanghai

7.

Sian Kotu University, Sian

8.

China College of Technology, Beijing

Methods
Every year 200 freshmen of Faculty of Modern Chinese are sent to China for 4-month-course in the second
semester, after having learned Chinese language and culture by means of the Internet and the computerized Chinese
language learning system in the first semester in Japan. In the meantime students exchange ideas with the Chinese
students by exchanging e-mail messages.
It is the first experience for students, who have been studying English for six years at high schools, to learn
Chinese and study abroad in China. Therefore, students are highly motivated to study Chinese as a new second
foreign language.
The presenter visited Nankai University in November,1998, staying with Aichi University students at Nankai
Aidai Kaikan (Joint Research Institue for Nankai University and Aichi University) for two weeks.

Programs in China
Intensive Chinese Courses Compulsory
1.

Students:

Compulsory for 200 Freshmen, Faculty of Modern Chinese

2.

Period:Sept. 4 - Dec. 23 (4 months)

3.

Sent to:Nankai University, Tenjing

4.

Class:

10 Classes

5.

Curriculum: a.

Chinese Languageb.

Chinese Culturec.

Field Work

Study on Chinese Culture
1.

Date:

Monday and Wednesday

2.

Course:a.

Calligraphy and Artb.

Dance and Dramac.

Musical Instruments

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Field Work
1.

Place:

Tenjing City, China

2.

Period:3 weeks

3.

Fields:a..

Marketing and Financeb.

Schools and Educationc.

Factories and Social Lifed.

Marriage and Family Lifee.

Women Status and Occupation

Cultural Exchange Meeting & Discussion with Chinese Students
1.

Place:

Nankai University, Tenjing

2.

Date:

The last week of the course in December

3.

Programs:a.

Oral Presentation and Discussionb.
c.

Performance of dramas, dancing, musical instruments, aikyokuken, etc.
Exhibition of art, calligraphy, etc.

Table 1. Time Schedule for Language Learning:
Period

Time

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thurs

Fri

1-2

8:00 - 9:40

IR

L

SC

ER

IR

3-4

10:00 - 11:40

SC

ER

IR

L

SC

5-6

14:00 - 15:40

CC

TC

CC

TC

Exam

7

16:00 - 16:50

Taikyokuken

IR = Intensive Reading
ER = Extensive Reading
L = Listening

Taikyokuken

Taikyokuken

SC = Spoken Chinese
CC = Chinese Culture
TC = Things Chinese

Strategies for Integrating Language Learning into Cultural AwarenessProcedures
1.

Listening comprehension

2.

Reading3.

Writing

4.

Giving presentations

5.

Performance of Chinese dramas, Chinese dancing, Chinese music, calligraphy, Chinese
traditional sports, etc.

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Credit-Transfer-System
1.

8 credits will be given for the whole course of language learning.

2.

4 credits will be given for the course of Chinese culture.

Language Examinations
Language examinations will be given every other week in 4 months: i.e. eight times during the whole course.
Those who have failed in the exam must take supplementary lessons and try to take the exam again.

Teaching staff
Thirty Chinese professors and instructors at Nankai University teach Chinese language, Chinese culture andthings Chinese for Aichi University students.

Tutor SystemStudents can ask Chinese students of Nankai University to be their own tutor to have better understanding of
their lessons at their own expenses. As a whole, all students make good use of merits of the tutor system.

Facilities in Tenjing
Nankai Aidai Kaikan, a newly built five-storied-building, has 10 classrooms, library, lecture hall, auditorium, catering system, dinning room, administration office, clinic office, 100 accomodation rooms (twin rooms),
etc. Such facilities built on the Joint Research Institue for both Universities, in China and Japan, are not found inJapan except our case of Nankai University and Aichi University.

Effects of Intensive Chinese Course
1.

It provides students with chances to practice Chinese communication both written and oral.

2.

It enables students to expand communication both written and oral.

3.

It enables students to expand personal scopes of life.

4.

It encourages students to see things more with international points of view.

5.

It lets students have confidence in expressing themselves for language learning.

Program for Field Study
The third year students can apply for the field study program and those who have passed the exam formembership will be able to have an opportunity to join the field study in China.
1.

Students:

50 students (Juniors) Faculty of Modern Chinese

2.

Period:Aug 1-Aug 31 (1 month)3.

Place:

Beijing University, Beijing, China (1999)
Fudan University, Shanghai, China (2000)

4.

Group:

10 Groups

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Time Schedule for Field Study:
1st week:

Survey ona.

Marketing and Financeb.

Schools and Educationc.

Factories and Managementd.

Environment and Social Lifee.

Marriage and Family Lifef.

Women Status and Professiong.

Environment Issues

2nd and 3rd week: Field Study and Writing Reports
4th week:

Oral Presentation and Discussion with Chinese students

Effects of Field Study
1.

It provides authentic material for language learning.

2.

It broadens the students’ view of life.

3.

It is good for expanding the students’ outlook on the world.

4.

It provides a glimpse for Chinese culture and way of life.

5.

It is a means of globalization.

Findings
The result of students’ questionnaire reveals that they have learned how important to communicate witheach other beyond cultures. They have had mutual understanding with Chinese students by exchanging ideas andopinions both in Chinese and English. All of the students are shocked to find that Chinese students are far better atEnglish than they are.

Table 2. Results of Aichi University Student Survey
Good

Fair No Good

1.

Chinese People

100

0

0

2.

Chinese Dishes

35

40

25

3.

Speaking Chinese

29

55

16

4.

Motivation for Learning Chinese

100

0

0

5.

Culture Understanding

25

55

20

6.

Life in China

57

37

6

7.

Taikyokuken

29

53

18

8.

Chinese Tutors

38

49

3

9.

Travel in Mongolia

17

41

42

10.

Health Condition

18

37

45

n = 200
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Conclusion
According to the “Japan Almanac” published by Asahi Shimbun the following facts and data are shown:

Table 3. Japanese Students Abroad as of 1995
Total:

160,000

In U.S.A.:

82,000In China:

1,000

Table 4. Foreign Students Studying in Japan as of 1997
Total:

51,000From China:

43.7 %At Aichi University:

16%

Table 5. Foreign Students Studying in Nankai University as of 1997
Total from 40 countries

750

From Aichi University

200

The project is meant for the global communication and cultural awareness by means of Chinese, the language other than English. Most of the students were highly motivated to study abroad in China and proved to
become good at listening, speaking, reading, and writing Chinese owing to the 4-month-course of intensive language learning. After coming back to Japan, students are going to take lectures taught all in Chinese by native
professors of Chinese in the second year classes.
The questionnaires given to students showed how effective the intensive language courses were. Students
found that their oral presentations and discussion with Chinese students regarding their field works made in China
were so exciting, and instructive. They enjoyed talking with Chinese students about various topics they had
surveyed in Tenjing and Beijing. They are eager to learn much about China and some studentswill apply for the
Field Study Course in their third grade. Their written reports titled “Tenjing Diary” and “Life and Field Work in
Beijing” have been published by International Exchange Bureau, Aichi University.
In short, the students’ positive and enthusiastic attitudes towards the intercultural communication will surely
lead to the mutual understanding of different cultures and will contribute to the borderless globalization in education.

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An Introduction to Streaming Multimedia:
Utilizing Real-Time Resources in the Language Classroom
M. D. Depoe
N. T. Edwards
Kanazawa Institute of Technology, Japan
Abstract
This paper will serve as a useful introduction to and review of Streaming Media. This powerful new
medium of communication can be a valuable language teaching resource and tool. Relevant hardware andsoftware concerns for viewing streaming files and for creating new materials will be addressed in user-friendly
language that even new computer users will understand. Practical advice on classroom use includes an actual
case study at a private Japanese technical university. The pros and cons of using Streaming Media will be
examined. Finally, the future of this new technology will be discussed.

Introduction
Streaming media is one of the hottest new technologies available on the web right now. With streaming
media, long download times are a thing of the past. You can watch video live or on-demand without waiting. Of
course the system isn’t perfect but the technology is getting better every day. With high speed internet connections
becoming more popular, streaming media will soon become a household word. What is streaming media and how
can it be a useful tool for language teachers? These questions and more will be answered in the following paper.

What is Streaming Media?
Streaming media can be defined as a sequence of moving images that are sent in compressed form over theInternet and displayed by the viewer as they arrive. Streaming media allows for on-the-fly playing of audio, video
and animation files. In other words, the data is being sent to the user’s computer and displayed as it is being sent.
Using a browser plug-in or application, the user can now watch video-on-demand programs and even live images
and sounds.

Compared to normal media
A few years ago, before viewing a multi-media file, the user had to download it to the computer’s hard disk
and then play it. These files were usually very large so downloading could take anywhere from a few minutes toseveral hours. The user was unable to view the file until it had been completely downloaded. With streaming
media, the viewer can view the file while it is being sent to the computer. With streaming media, long download
times are a thing of the past.

Basics of Streaming MediaIn order to view the compressed streaming files, the user will need to be equipped with a player. The twomost popular streaming players are: RealPlayer and Windows MediaPlayer. The following is a brief introduction toeach player.
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RealPlayer. The RealPlayer is one of the most popular streaming media players and is updated continuallywith improvements and new features every few months. RealPlayer7, the latest version, comes as a free version or
relatively inexpensive pay version, although the difference in picture quality seems very slight. This viewer is very
user-friendly and like most streaming media viewers resembles a television set with a screen and surrounding dials
and settings. It comes with 150 pre-programmed Internet radio station settings, and many Internet TV news andspecialty channels. The RealPlayer homepage is a valuable authentic English media resource featuring links toshort films, cartoons, movie trailers and video interviews with famous actors and directors.
To download the free version go to the RealPlayer homepage (www.realplayer.com) and click the Realplayer
8 FREE icon near the bottom of the page. (Note: this may take some searching. Naturally the pay version has amore prominent icon!) Click RealPlayer 8 Basic on the next page to appear. A simple questionnaire will appear.
An email address is required. At this point, it is possible to continue the process in Japanese if you wish bychanging the language selection at the top of the page. Click Download FREE RealPlayer 8 Basic. Choose Save to
disk when prompted and click Download program. This may take a few minutes to half an hour at the most. A
message will appear when the download is complete. Go to the RealPlayer icon that has been placed on yourdesktop screen. Click it to install the program by following simple instructions which will appear. To use the
RealPlayer, simply click on the icon and select an Internet radio or TV channel.
Windows MediaPlayer. If you use Windows, you may already have the Windows MediaPlayer installed onyour computer ready to use. It is very similar in appearance and function to the RealPlayer viewer. The updated
version is the Windows MediaPlayer 7 and can be downloaded from the Windows MediaPlayer homepage(www.microsoft.com/windows/mediaplayer/en/default.asp) by clicking on the 7 Player icon and following thesame basic steps outlined above. The separate Windows Media homepage (www.windowsmedia.microsoft.com
has a large selection of audio and video headlines including links to interesting educational site listings.
Creating Your Own Content. With the right tools, teachers may create their own content to be publishedon the Internet. The following is a very short procedure for creating streaming files for RealPlayer.
After videotaping the desired content, you will need to digitize the tape. For this you will need a video
capture card. If you own a newer Mac, the chances are that you already have a video capture card built in. To see if
you have one, turn your computer around and look at the ports. If you see a round port labeled “Video In” (probably
with a yellow ring around it), you’re in luck. Unlike Macs, most PCs don’t have built-in video capture capabilities.
You will have to purchase one and install it.
Remember, when capturing video, always use a computer with a fast processor. Windows users should use
Pentium 133 or faster computers. Also capturing data requires a lot of disk space. You should set aside at least 2 GB
for video capturing.
The next step will be to edit the video using a video editing program. Adobe Premiere is one of the mostpopular programs as well as Apple Final Cut Pro for Macintosh. The editing process will bring the file size down
to a manageable level. This will be accomplished through the use of Codecs (abbreviation of COmpression /DECompression). Codecs can shrink a 30MB video to one as small as 80KB. The final step of the editing process
will save the video into one of the basic movie formats (.AVI, .MPG, .MOV).
Once the movie has been captured and edited, it is ready for encoding. The encoding process will further
compress the file so that it can be streamed. One of the most popular streaming media formats is .RM or .RAM
which can be used by RealPlayer. The basic encoding program, RealProducer, can be downloaded from the
RealNetworks web site at no charge. It will convert .AVI and .MOV files into the RealMedia format. It’s a very
simple, drag and drop procedure. Once the files are converted to .RM format, they are ready to be uploaded to theserver for streaming.

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Practical Application of Streaming MediaThe practical application of streaming media in language education is still in its infancy. However the obvious benefit of integrating live and on-demand video and audio images can no longer be overlooked. Some of theapplications of streaming media include: supplementary materials for listening, self-study programs, and as asupplement to distance learning programs. The web has become a cornucopia of audio and video images, that canbe used for students learning a language. The availability of news, sports and entertainment programs is expandingat an exponential rate.
With the potential of streaming media in mind, let’s examine a case study of an actual classroom. The
following is a description of how streaming media was used in a project class at a private university in Japan.

Description of Project Class
Student Profile
The class, taught at a private Japanese university specializing in science and technology, was composed oftwenty-six undergraduate environmental and mechanical engineering students, who had each completed the prerequisite amount of five semesters of general four-skills English instruction and basic grammar review. Being apurely elective course, the students had chosen it out of genuine interest and were especially motivated to participate. Interestingly, the class was nearly evenly divided between male and female students although female students
made up only a fraction of the general student population. The students’ lower to high intermediate reading andwriting skills were slightly more developed than their listening and speaking ability.
The elective course which I designed, entitled Watching Science News on the Internet was intended as a
topic-based content course incorporating an integrated four-skills approach with an added emphasis and the weakerareas of listening and speaking. The stated course objectives in the syllabus were as follows:
You will learn to identify the topic and main idea of a news story and discuss it in some detail.
You will be able to ask and answer questions about a variety of exciting science topics reported in thedaily news. You will develop more active listening and speaking skills, and strategies for learning new
vocabulary. You will be encouraged to pursue more independent learning.
The course took place over eighteen regular one hour class sessions, ending with a nineteenth speciallydesignated self-check and course evaluation class period.

Teaching Methodology
A conscious effort was made to pursue a primarily top-down approach to language learning with an emphasis on the communication of ideas and meanings. As much as possible, I tried to focus the students’ attention on thecontent of what they were saying and writing as opposed to merely the mechanical form. This meant giving feedback only on glaring surface level grammatical, lexical or phonological errors committed by the students in homework assignments or class activities. Priority in the use of error awareness techniques by the teacher was given toerrors which interfered with or led to a breakdown in effective communication. However, this approach had to bebalanced with the students’ own desire to have all surface level errors corrected.
A key stated objective of the course was for the students to be “encouraged to pursue more independent
learning.” This meant making the class less teacher-centered by giving the students more responsibility for theirown learning.
I also felt it was necessary to expose them as much as possible to authentic written and audio English texts
that they would encounter on the Internet and in other media sources after graduating. It was carefully explained toIntroduction to Streaming Multimedia [Poster Presentation]

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them that they would not be expected to understand one-hundred percent of the news stories presented to them, andthat even native-speakers rarely had a one-hundred percent comprehension rate of a detailed news story containing
specialized vocabulary and related background information.
By processing non-textual information such as pictures and graphs, drawing on their own subject knowledge, brainstorming in groups and making “mind maps”, creating and answering their own questions about eachstory, making predictions, identifying key words and guessing the meaning of new words from context they learned
how to quickly identify the topic and main idea of a general science news story without being intimidated by theauthentic, native-speaker level of the text and automatically throwing up an affective filter.
Each regular class contained the following stages:
1.

Introduction to a general science topic (based on an on-line article assigned for homework after
the first session).

2.

Pre-listening activities (For example, brainstorming in groups, making or expanding “mindmaps”, creating or expanding lists of questions about a particular topic).

3.

Video and/or audio Internet news story on screen in class.

4.

Comprehension check and feed-back.(For example, students write questions on the blackboard
for other groups to answer. Attention is drawn by the teacher to surface level errors only if thequestion cannot be clearly understood by other groups).

5.

Pair/group work discussion, activity or role play based on news story or related topic (Forexample, interview between a news reporter and scientist or group debate on the pros and consof a topic such as nuclear power).

Mars
astronautrocketplanethelmetsun
Space Travel

dangercolonyadventuretechnology

travelfuel

futuresciencegas

oxygenFigure 1. Sample mind map
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Follow-up homework assignment. New on-line article assigned to read and prepare for following class. Once students have installed and are able to use a “streaming media” player, they are
asked to view the video clip(s) embedded in the text of a story, write and attempt to answer
their own questions about the information presented clip. Occasionally students are encouraged
to vote on-line on various issues on the BBC site and to email in their opinions on selected
topics.

Students were given a model worksheet to use when reading and/ or viewing news stories assigned forhomework. It contained the following instructions:
1.

Make a “mind map” (Figure 1) of vocabulary for the next topic. Look up at least seven new key
English words in your dictionary that you would like to know. Mark word stress. (An example
of such a mind map or clustering was provided using the topic of space travel and showing thebranching web of related words around it).

2.

Find the assigned homework article to read and video clip at the site www.bbc.co.uk/news andclick with your mouse on “sci/tech” at the top of the main page. Next, scroll down the list to findthe article and click on the title. Before reading the article and viewing the streaming media
video clip, think carefully about the title and study any pictures or graphs. Try to predict what
the article is about. Write down seven questions you have about the article.

3.

Read the article once quickly to find the main idea. Read it again. Try and answer your own
questions. Underline only a few key words (not every one!) that you do not understand. Try toguess the meaning of new words from context. Use your dictionary if you are still not sure.
View the video clip.

Equipment and Needs Assessment
All of the students were equipped with the same laptop computer they were issued upon entering the university. There were Internet connections located in the library, and several special study areas throughout the campus.
However, there was only one Internet connection available in the classroom in the teacher’s console. Streaming
media news items could be projected from my own laptop onto the main classroom screen using a projection device
located on the ceiling and controlled from the teacher’s console.
In the first class, after introducing the course and reviewing the syllabus, I issued a written questionnairetranslated into Japanese to determine: a) if the students knew how to use a web browser to find information on theInternet, b) if the students had a streaming media viewer, and c) if they knew how to download and install a freeplug-in (a program which once installed on a computer, automatically opens and functions when it is required)from a site on the Internet.
Surprisingly, there were actually two students in the class who had never used the Internet and required
private tutoring in that regard. Only one student had downloaded and was using a streaming media viewer to watch
news stories on a regular basis. Five students required instructions on how to download and install the free streaming media viewer plug-in I had selected. I chose the popular, free version of the RealPlayer streaming media viewer
because that was the viewer I was most familiar with.

Testing and Evaluation of Students
Students were evaluated based on their level of class participation, homework assignments, short listeningcloze tests combined with open answer type questions based on streaming media video clips examined in class, andoral reports in which they summarized on-line articles of their own choosing and answered questions from classmates.
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Course Evaluation Using Student Questionnaire
The final nineteenth session, the Self-evaluation Period was a valuable opportunity to get student feedbackon the course. A questionnaire was translated into their native language. It was carefully explained to them that
their responses would not affect their final grade. The students responded to the following six questions:

English Project Questionnaire1.

Do you think using the Internet is important for learning English?

Result: All of the students answered “yes”, citing, for example, that there are many interesting, entertaining
and educational English web-sites and that most of the information on the Internet is in English.
2.

Was it difficult to download the RealPlayer G2?

Result: Students had no difficulty with this after receiving a minimal amount of instruction in class. Japanese
language support was also available at the site.
3.

Do you think RealPlayer is useful? Why or why not?

Result: All the students agreed that it was useful. Many students mentioned that it could be used to listen tolive radio programs in English-speaking countries, to watch music videos and news clips. However, many students
expressed frustration at frequent “net congestion” in the peak afternoon times which interrupted programs.
4.

Did you know about the RealPlayer G2 or other streaming media viewers before this class?

Result: Only one student knew that it was possible to use his computer like an international television/radio
set, using free streaming media viewers to watch free video files on the Internet.
5.

Do you prefer using a textbook for a course or a web-site like the www.bbc news? Why?

Result: All of the students answered that they preferred web-site based instruction to static, quickly outdated
textbooks . Students found the current news stories stimulating. They enjoyed the combination of vivid highdefinition pictures, written text, and embedded audio and video clips. The interactive story features, such as emailingin opinions to be displayed on-line around the world, and on-line voting on various issues were extremely popular.
The archive feature of the BBC site and rich lists of related links provided with each story allowed them to search
for more information on topics which particularly interested them
6.

As a result of this course, are you now more interested in learning English by yourself in your freetime?

Result: Six students did not answer the question. One answered “no,” citing time constraints. All of theremaining students answered yes.

The Downside of Streaming Media
Although this paper has shown some of the positive aspects of streaming media, in the interest of fairness,
the following negative aspects will also be presented.
First of all, streaming media files are generally of lower-quality than downloadable clips. This is mainly due
to the compression of the file. When the media file is encoded, much of the redundant bits of information are
omitted in order to keep the file size to a minimum. The smaller file size means that the quality of the audio andvideo is diminished.

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Another downside of using streaming media is the connection speed. In order to fully utilize these streaming
files, a high speed connection is required. Without the necessary bandwidth, the streaming files may experience netcongestion causing the file to be suspended. This can be a very irritating thing if it happens frequently. As of thistime, the bandwidth requirements of streaming media is the number one drawback to its effective use. However,with cable and high speed connections being used more frequently, this problem may soon disappear.
A further negative aspect of streaming media is that the user is required to download some software in order
to view the files. Windows users probably already have Windows Media Player installed. RealPlayer must be
downloaded from the Real.com website. This can be a major inconvenience especially for users with older modelcomputers.
Finally, as in all types of innovation, there may be a reluctance to incorporate this new technology into theclassroom. At all levels of the education system, new technologies and methods of teaching must prove their worth
before being accepted at large.
In contrast, some of the advantages of using streaming media are that the video or audio clip plays almost
immediately, it is easily accessible for learners outside the classroom and it allows for different styles of learning.
Furthermore, students may play back the clip as often as they need to. These positive features in addition to thenearly unlimited resource for video and audio content make streaming media a very exciting and viable resource
for language teachers.

Future Directions of Streaming MediaThe future of streaming media seems to be very bright indeed. With the addition of new technologies such as
cable and fiber optics, high bandwidth internet connections could be as common as the television in the 21st Century. However until these new technologies are available to every household, other methods of data transfer will be
explored. New and improved compression technologies will assist where bandwidth restrictions apply. Furthermore, wireless data transfer will allow internet connections where none were possible before. The widespread useof the Internet for entertainment will only increase the opportunities for streaming technologies. All of these advancements seem to indicate that streaming media is here to stay.

Conclusion
In this world of ever evolving mass communication and information technology , streaming media has surged
to the forefront as a viable resource and tool for language education. Language teachers need to be familiar withthe basics of this promising new technology as well as some of its applications for language learning. This paper
has presented an introduction and overview of streaming media and the benefits of using real-time resources in thelanguage classroom. Finally, the future directions of this internet-based media have been discussed. The sky is thelimit for the uses of streaming media in the 21st century.

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Appendix
Useful Streaming Media Sites
British Broadcasting Corporation Online

http://www.bbc.co.uk/

Broadcast.Com - Streaming Audio

http://www.broadcast.com

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Online

http://cbc.ca/

CBC Newscast

http://cbc.ca/news/live/newscast.html

CBC Newsworld

http://cbc.ca/newsworld/

Kanazawa Institute of Technology Streaming
Media Database

http://vod.kanazawa-it.ac.jp/mbase/Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab

http://www.esl-lab.com/

RealConference 2000-03-11

http://real.jli.net/

RealPlayer Audio and Video Guide

http://realguide.real.com/

Seattle Media Site

http://media.ci.seattle.wa.us/Streaming Audio Web Page Creation for
Language Learning

http://www.esl-lab.com/online/

Streaming Business Intelligence

http://www.streamingmedia.com/index.asp

Streaming Media 101

http://www.realnetworks.com/getstarted/index.html

Streaming Media World

http://streamingmediaworld.com/

Web Events for Windows Media Player(Audio/ Video Guide)

http://WindowsMedia.com/Default.asp

Additional Streaming Media References
Authoring Content for RealPlayer
http://www.realnetworks.com/devzone/rp7auth/index.html(March 11, 2000)

Breaking the Silent Barrier on the Web - Backgound, by Randall S. Davis
http://www.esl-lab.com/tutorials/lesson1.htm(March 11, 2000)

FireWire and Creating Web-Based Video Content
http://www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/information/tesl-ej/ej14/int.html
How to add video to your site: Hardware and software. available:
http://builder.cnet.com/Graphics/Video/ss02.html(March 11, 2000).

Streaming Audio Web Page Creation for Language Learning, by Randall S. Davis
http://www.esl-lab.com/online/(March 11, 2000)

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Notes
Pros
•

Streaming video plays almost immediately—after a few moments of buffering, viewers canbegin watching the clip. (short wait time)•

Video on Demand•

Easily accessible for learners outside of classroom•

Students may replay as often as desired•

Nearly unlimited resource for video and audio content and expanding daily•

Good for students who need several different types of input to learn.

•

Bit streaming video is generally lower-quality than downloadable clips.

•

Problems with connection•

Net congestion•

Requires viewers to download and install software•

Reluctance to incorporate technology into the classroom

Cons

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Investigating Comprehension Strategies by L1 and L2 Readers
Using an Internet-Adapted English Cloze Test
Haruyo Yoshida
Shinsuke Yoshida
Setsunan University, Japan
Abstract
First, the authors introduce a newly developed 'Internet-Adapted English Cloze Test' and examine its
usefulness when investigating comprehension strategies employed by L1 (native English speakers) and L2 (native Japanese speakers) readers as they complete cloze passages. Second, both verbal protocol data and written
protocol data (from the chat room ) are shown along with the categorization of the strategies used by L1 and L2
readers. Third, the usefulness of the chat room to find out the correct answers, while explaining their reasoning,
is evaluated. Finally, the strategies in filling in the blanks used by L1 and L2 readers are compared.

Introduction
Thanks to modern technology, information service using computers has spread and penetrated all over theworld. As for the field of EFL (English as a foreign language) education in Japan, a learning style using computers
is generalized and learning software aimed at acquiring practical English skills is developed.
In 1999, we developed the IAECT (Internet-Adapted English Cloze Test) and proved the usefulness of thesystem and analyzed the answer pattern of the L2 (native Japanese speakers) readers (Yoshida, 2000).
In this study, we used think-aloud protocols to investigate L2 readers' comprehension strategies using an
IAECT. Think-aloud protocol analysis is a process-oriented research technique which allows researchers to gain
insights into the performance strategies by the participants, asking them under controlled conditions to verbalize
what they are doing or thinking. It was first devised and developed as a kind of refined and elaborated introspective
method by Ericsson and Simon (1984, 1993).
Block (1986) first attempted to use think-aloud protocols as a tool to investigate the comprehension strategies of readers in L2. She compared the verbal data reported by L2 college students with L1 (native English
speakers) readers in the United States. Two interesting results were reported. First, all readers can be categorized
as integrators who effectively incorporate their own schematic knowledge into the textual information, and nonintegrators who exclusively give attention to the detailed textual clues, and this distinction is common to both L1and L2 readers. And second, the total amount of verbal production is almost equal in L1 and L2, which suggeststhat L2 readers perform the task with as much ease or discomfort as L1 readers.
In Kletzien's (1991) study, American high school students first filled in the blanks of the English cloze
passage in which only context-dependent content words were deleted and then verbalized the reasons for theircloze responses. The analyses of the verbal data suggest two main points. In producing responses, participants
make use of such strategies as key vocabulary, re-reading, making inferences, and previous experiences. Also goodand poor readers both use the same type and number of strategies on the easy passage, but as the passage difficultyincreases, good readers surpass poor readers in the variety as well as the number of strategies.

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This paper analyzes data from four groups and examines the comprehension strategies employed by L1 andL2 readers as they complete the IAECT.

Methodology
Participants
The data for this study was provided by four groups. Group A consisted of 108 first-year Japanese university
students (L2 readers) enrolled in a required EFL reading class. Group B of 20 third-year Japanese university
students (L2 readers) enrolled in a seminar class. Group C included 21 second-year graduate school students (L2readers). Group D consisted of 29 native English-speakers (L1 readers), who vary in age from 24 to 52.

System and Materials
Using the Windows-NT computer terminals, L2 students can access the IAECT from individual terminals.
The cloze test software system: 1) may be used at any Internet access point without a time limit, 2) collects responses and immediately issues individual KR (Knowledge of results) upon task completion, and 3) logs supplied
responses for future error analysis. The "Helen Keller" text has 118 words with 10 blanks words in narrative
writing with a Flesch-Kincaid Readability Index of 3.8 served as the cloze test reading materials (See Appendix).

Procedure
Four groups supplied data for this study. Group A had a 15-minute limit to fill in the blanks in the passage on
the computer screen. Group B was encouraged to use the group discussion chat room for exchanging their strategies in their L1 (Japanese) when taking the IAECT. Group C was allowed to produce think-aloud protocols in their
L1 (Japanese) for their strategies while writing correct answers using IAECT and the responses were audio-recorded for analysis. Group D filled in the blanks and chose the strategies they used to complete the task from thestrategy list. Kletzien's (1991) comprehension classification scheme for strategies was applied to classify the strategies, and they are:1.

passage's main idea,

2.

blank-preceding textual contents,

3.

blank-subsequent textual contents,

4.

idiomatic or phrasal knowledge (vocabulary),5.

structural constraints of sentence (grammar),

6.

background content schemata (background knowledge),

7.

other strategy.

The data of Group A was used for investigating the difficulty level of the IAECT and gathering their various
answers. The chat room output of Group B and the verbal protocol of Group C provided the data for examining
which comprehension strategies were employed to complete the IAECT. The data of Group D was used for inspecting the difficulty level for L1 readers and their comprehension strategies to solve the cloze test in comparison withL2 readers’.
Alphabetic input data, supplied in the cloze blanks, were collected as CSV files which are easily imported
into Excel spreadsheets. The verbal protocol data were transcribed by the authors, and the written protocols in thechat room were collected on-line and saved.

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Results and Discussion
Group AThe outcome of the cloze test indicates that the total average score is 36.4%. There are six answers of thecontent words (Q1: books, Q2: traveled, Q4: woman, Q7: became, Q8: loved, Q10: parents) , and four answers of
the function words (Q3: is, Q5: was, Q6: she, Q9: they). The average score of the content words is 22.6% and of thefunction words is 57.0% which is about 2.5 times as high as the content words. L2 readers take points from thefunction words probably because the function words can be filled out with the knowledge of grammatical rules
rather than referring to the contents of the passage.
In this system, credit was given by the exact word method, which means the right answers should be exactly
the same as the words in the original text. Since this cloze test is an exact-word only, there were many cases whereanswers are the same as the part of speech as the right answers, and there are many cases where answers are
acceptable, but are not the exact word.
However, in Q3, the right answer is in the sentence "But the surprising fact about Helen Keller (3: ) this: she
could not see and she could not hear." was mistaken by twelve L2 readers. They put “like” in the blank probably
because L2 readers easily associate “like” with “this” considering the subsequent expression “she could not see andshe could not hear.”Group B
There were two groups consisting of seven L2 readers, and one group of six L2 readers. They used the chatroom on the Internet to find out the correct answers by exchanging their strategies. The outcome of the cloze test
indicates that the total average score of these three groups is 53.3% and the part of speech of all items wereanswered correctly. This implies that the group chat can produce more accurate answers than individual readers. As
the characteristic of this group is that readers don’t fill the blanks in order, but fill the ones for which they are sureof the right answers. Here are some examples of chat logs (the translations are ours.):---------------------S1:

I don’t understand why the Q3 is “was”. Someone explain it, please.

S2:

Because “this” in the sentence of “ the surprising fact about Helen Keller (3:subjective complement.

S3:Well, the sign “:” means equal, so “was” is a right word.

S4:

Wait a minute, this sentence is a fact, so “was” should be replaced by “is”.

) this:” is a------------------------S2:There are many answers for Q9. Let’s discuss it later.

S3:

That’s a good idea. Shall we go back to Q8?

S2:

Q8 will fit “and”, but I don’t know why.

S3:

I don’t think “and” is a right answer, but I can not find any alternate answers.

S4:

I can’t find a suitable word for Q8, but I am sure that blank will be filled with the verb.

S3:

If you put “and” for Q8 the following next word is “and”. So there are many ands. That’s
funny.

S5:

I think Q8 is a verb and the meaning concerns Helen Keller. For example her parents “encouraged”, “cured”, etc.

--------------------------------The frequencies of the strategies which were used by these three groups are shown in Table 1.
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Table 1. Total Strategies Used by Group ChatGroup AGroup B

Group Ca)

Passage’s main idea

0

0

9

b)

Blank preceding textual content

16

20

21

c)

Blank subsequent textual content

12

16

19

d)

Idiomatic or phrasal knowledge (vocabulary)

1

4

7

e)

Structural constraints of sentence (grammar)

40

39

40

f)

Background content schemata (background knowledge)

4

0

8

g)

Other strategy

0

0

0

73

79

102

Total

There is a slight difference among the groups in the general use of strategy, but it seems evident that L2
readers always use grammatical knowledge to solve the cloze test. Within the paragraph, both strategies of using
blank-preceding textual contents and blank-subsequent textual contents are employed. On the other hand, L2 readers seldom use the passage’s main idea or background knowledge. In other words, readers are doing local processing from the beginning.

Group CThe outcome of Group C members cloze test indicates that the total average score is 42.86% (see Table 2).
L2 readers in Group C use 15.4 strategies and 5.57 different kinds of strategies for 10 items. The average score of
the content words is 14.8% and of the function words 28.1% which is about twice as high as the content words. L2
readers take points from the function words probably because the function words can be filled out with knowledgeof grammatical rules rather than referring to the contents of the passage. These results correspond with the result ofGroup A.

Table 2. Descriptive Statistics for Cloze scores, Total Strategy Use,and Number of Strategy Types
N

Means

SD

Total strategy use

21

15.14

2.15

Number of strategy types used

21

5.57

0.93

Score (%)

21

42.86

14.88

Table 3. Average Frequency of Strategy of Function Words andContent Words for Each Participant
Function words

Content words

Local processing

3.50

0.98

Global processing

0.20

0.77

The frequency of the strategy for function words and content words of each participant item is demonstrated
in Table 3. According to L2 readers’ verbal protocol, Kletzien's (1991) comprehension classification scheme forInvestigating Comprehension Strategies by L1 and L2 Readers [Oral Presentation]

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strategies was applied to classify the strategies. We divided the seven classifications into two which are a “local
processing” strategy and a “global processing” strategy. First, we categorized b) blank-preceding textual contents,c) blank-subsequent textual contents, d) idiomatic or phrasal knowledge (vocabulary), and e) structural constraintsof sentence (grammar) as the local processing strategy. And then we categorized, a) passage's main idea, f) background content schemata (background knowledge), and g) other strategys as the global processing strategy.
We noted that obviously e) structural constraints of sentence (grammar), b) blank-preceding textual contents, and c) blank-subsequent textual contents were the major textual resources preferably employed by many
participants. The result suggests that their general resources for processing cloze passage consist basically in blanksubsequent and -preceding textual information as well as grammatical clues and L2-to-L1 translation, which areusually referred to as “a local processing strategy” by a number of researchers including Carrell (1988).
From Table 3, each L2 participant used a “local processing strategy” about 4.62 times as often as a “global
processing strategy”. The ratio of “local processing strategy” for function words was 3.57 times more than content
words. On the other hand, the ratio of global processing for content words was 3.85 times more than function
words.
The results reported above suggest that in function word cloze blanks, the students' use of textual resources
is relatively limited to blank-preceding and -subsequent semantic and grammatical restraints, and this corresponds
roughly to the strategy which is usually called “local processing”. On the other hand, in content word cloze blanks,
more global textual clues as well as local clues are to be pursued by the students. The possible interpretation of thisresult seems to be that students begin to be engaged in somewhat more “top-down” or “global” type of textual
processing in handling with the content word cloze items.
Next, we confirmed that the cloze responding order was almost the same as the blank order in the cloze
except for Q8 (loved) and Q9 (they), which means that participants tried to fill in the blanks as they went throughthe passage. As for Q8 (transitive verb loved, on the other hand, they tend to withhold their judgment and comeback to the blank later probably because of the structural constraints of the sentence.

Group DThe outcome of the cloze test for Group D L1 readers indicates that the total average score is 71.0% (seeTable 4). Group D members use 16.45 strategies and 4.97 different kinds of strategies for 10 items. This corresponds with the results of Group C (L2 readers), which suggests that cloze performing ability between L1 and L2
readers is not dependent on the type and the number of strategies used in this passage.
The average score of the content words is 69.5% and of the function words is 73.3% which does not show asignificant difference. Neither the function words nor the content words affect L1 readers’ cloze test solving strategies.

Table 4. Descriptive Statistics for Cloze scores, total strategy
N

Means

SD

Total strategy use

29

16.45

5.26

Number of strategy types used

29

4.97

0.98

Score (%)

29

71.37

15.52

The frequency of the strategy for function words and content words of each participant item is demonstrated
in Table 5.

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Table 5. Average Frequency of Strategy of Function Words and Content Words
Function words

Content words

Local processing

2.81

1.19

Global processing

0.21

1.02

From Table 5, each L1 participant used a “local processing strategy” about 3.25 times as often as a “global
processing strategy”. The ratio of “local processing strategy” for function words was 2.36 times more than content
words. On the other hand, the ratio of global processing for content words was 4.85 times more than function
words.
In the cloze blanks of the function words (Q3, Q5, Q6, Q7), the L1 readers' use of textual resources was
relatively limited to grammatical restraints (58.5%), which is referred to as a local processing strategy.
We confirmed that obviously e) structural constraints of the sentence (grammar), c) blank-subsequent textual contents, and b) blank-preceding textual contents were the major textual resources employed by L1 readers.
The result suggests that their general resources for processing cloze passage, especially for function words, consist
basically of blank-subsequent and -preceding textual information as well as grammatical clues. The result also
implies L1 readers complete the content word blanks with both local and global processing strategies.
Next, we asked L1 readers to write their comments on this processing cloze test. Here are some comments:•

I know the story of Helen Keller, which helped me to fill in the blanks especially in the latter
part.

•

I personally use grammatical knowledge for filling in the blanks through the entire passage.

•

My general resources for processing cloze passage consist basically in the blank-subsequentand -preceding textual information as well as grammatical clues with the background knowledge of the story.

•

It took me a long time to fill in Q8, because the word “love” was not used in this passage, so I
tried to use all sorts of strategies for this item.

The Comparison of L1 readers and L2 readers
According to cloze scores and the number of strategy types used by each participant, the average score forthe function words is higher than the average of the content words by L2 readers. The blanks Q3, Q5, Q6, and Q9are easy items to answer, where L2 readers mainly used grammar oriented local processing with the help of background knowledge. On the other hand, the average scores for the function words and the content words do not show
a significant difference among L1 readers. And according to L1 readers' after use comments, L1 readers may haveused grammatical clues with or without noticing their using schematic knowledge for completing all the cloze
items. This supports Block's (1986) study where he writes, "… all readers can be categorized as integrators who
effectively incorporate his own schematic knowledge into the textual information, and non-integrators who exclusively give attention to the detailed textual clues…"
L2 Group C readers and L1 Group D readers, according to cloze scores, total strategy use, and the number ofstrategy types used by each participant, show nearly the same strategy for processing the cloze passage. Since thereadability of this passage is on the fourth grade level, this cloze passage can be described as an easy passage.
Kletzien's (1991) study may explain the reason of the similarity of L1 and L2 readers’ strategy: good and poor
readers both use the same type and number of strategies on an easy passage if we consider L2 readers as poor
readers and L1 readers as good readers in this IAECT score.

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Concluding Remarks
The findings that the present study provides us can be summarized as follows:1.

In taking the IAECT, L2 readers (Group A) earned more points from function words.

2.

L2 readers’ (Group A) mis-answers were acceptable in the semantic meaning of content words.

3.

Using the chat room of the Internet (Group B) can produce more accurate answers than individual readers.

4.

Using the chat room is effective for L2 readers to exchange their strategies and use their strategies to explain their choices to other members.

5.

L2 readers (Group B and C), as a rule, answer cloze items in almost the same order they were
presented.

6.

In filling in the cloze blanks, both in L1 (Group D) and L2 (Group C), in general, attend to local
processing resources such as blank-subsequent and blank-preceding semantic information as
well as grammatical constraints.

7.

However, in the function word blanks, both L1 and L2 readers' use of textual resources isrestricted to such local processing cues as the ones used in 6) above.

8.

On the other hand, in the content word blanks, both L1 and L2 readers tend to make more use of
global textual resources, being engaged in more or less global type of text processing.

9.

Both L1 (Group D) and L2 (Group C) are similar in total strategy use, and the number ofstrategy types because of this easy cloze passage.

Naturally, both L1 and L2 readers, when they are given easy-to-answer items such as the blanks of function
words, do not use a wide variety of textual clues including local and global ones. They only attend to the minimum
set of necessary clues, because global cues are often not necessary for filling in those easy blanks.
For all the shortcomings this technique might contain, the oral protocol analysis is still a useful method in astudy like the present research whose purpose is not to provide decisive empirical evidence, but to pursue a further
tentative research hypotheses. In part, this technique might reveal more about human on-line cognitive activity likereading which was previously considered to be inaccessible except by the usual evaluation methods of post-reading
comprehension tests, summary writing, and so on.

Acknowledgements
We wish to thank Charles McHugh of Setsunan University and David Rands of Ritsumeikan High School,
and their colleagues for participating in this study.

References
Block, E. (1986). The comprehension strategies of second language readers. TESOL Quarterly 20, 463-494.
Carrell, P. L. (1988). Some causes of text-boundedness and schema interference in ESL reading. In Carrell, P.,
Devine, J., and Eskey, D. (eds.), Interactive approaches to second language reading. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Ericsson, K. A. & H. A. Simon. (1984). Protocol analysis: Verbal reports as data. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
The MIT Press.
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Ericsson, K. A. & H. A. Simon. (1993). Protocol analysis: Verbal reports as data. (Revised Ed.). Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Kletzien, S. B. (1991). Strategy use by good and poor comprehenders reading expository text of differing levels.
Reading Research Quarterly 26. 67-86.
Yoshida, H. (2000). Nettowaakukeishiki ni yoru eigo kurouzu tesuto no kisoteki kenkyu [A basic study on using
a network style English closed test]. Kotoba no kagaku kenkyu [Speech Science Research] 1. 83-105.

Appendix
Helen Keller was a famous American. She was a writer and a speaker. She wrote (1:) and articles about
education and politics. She (2: ) to every part of the world. But the surprising fact about Helen Keller (3:) this:she could not see and she could not hear. This blind, deaf (4:) was a very special person. Helen Keller (5:)
not always blind and deaf. She was all right when (6:) was born on June 27, 1880. But she (7:) very sickthe next year. After that, she was not the same. Her parents (8:) her and (9:) tried to take care of her. But
it was not easy. Her (10:) could not show her what to do.

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Issues and Aspects Surrounding English and the English Educationof Children in Asian Countries.
Miyuki Takahashi
Chubu Gakuin University, Japan

English Aspects of the various Asian countries.
As the use of English continues to spread in the areas of international trade and communication, politics, andscience, ministries of education in a number of Asian nations have begun to implement English language instruction in their elementary schools. In Japan, the Ministry of Education announced that English lessons would be
included in the elective subject, “International Understanding.” This program will start in all of Japan’s elementary
schools beginning with the 2002 school year. As a point of comparison, this paper reviews the recent introductionof English language instruction in the elementary schools of South Korea, China, Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines as well as pilot schools in Japan. After reviewing the experiences of Asian countries with English-language
instruction in their primary schools, I will conclude by outlining some recommendations for educational language
policy implementation at the elementary school level in the Japanese context.

Extensive Use of English—Economic, Political and Cultural Perspectives
In Asia, there are two sorts of English in use. One is as the second language, such as in Singapore and thePhilippines, and the other is as a foreign language such as in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
For example, in Singapore, along with being the official language, English can also be seen as an assistantlanguage, as the people who use English as their second language place it as a tool for communication between themultiple races. On the other hand, in Japan, English was one subject by which knowledge of advanced Westerncountries could be learned, so people learning English learn it as a foreign language for the entrance examinations
to elite schools. This will most likely change with the new curriculum.
“The concept of English” varies in each country, and therefore a difference is seen in the consciousness of
the learner toward English education, as well as the way the state treats English education as a whole.
The issues and aspects surrounding English Education can be classified into the three factors of (a) language
policy, (b) language consciousness, and (c) the language environment.
Factor (a) language policy = state policy directing the use of English ( English as an official language,
tutorial language, or foreign language). This influences English education; the starting age, the curriculum, and theimportance put on English in tertiary education.
Factor (b) language consciousness = the purpose for which people try to use English. This will show in theprevalence of learners wishing to study abroad, and the importance put on communication skills in business and theeconomy.
Factor (c) language environment = the conditions under which people have contact with English. This will
be dependant on geographical elements, historic influences, inter-ethnic communication needs, and modern media
and trade.

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When comparing ESL communities and EFL communities, a great difference was seen in the conception ofEnglish, particularly in the area of language policy and language environment.
When examining the language policy, we see that English has been retained, from the colonial government,
as the administrative language in the Philippines and Singapore.
In the Philippines, English is not only one of the official languages, but also the conversant language ofhigher education.
In Singapore, of the four official languages of Malay, Mandarin, Tamil and English, English is the only one
which is not Asian in origin. It is hence regarded as ‘neutral’ for inter-group relations. Moreover, the importanceof English is perceived in its use in higher education, international trade, and modern industry and technology
which have strengthened over the years. T he government deems an expansion of the proficient use of English
necessary for the continued growth of the economy. It is obvious that English is of instrumental value both from thesocietal perspective of economic growth, and from the individual perspectives of social mobility and economic
gain.
Therefore, in the Philippines and Singapore, in homes which put emphasis on education, there is a tendency
to include the tuition of English from a very early age.
On the other hand, in South Korea, Taiwan, China and Japan, where it has been treated as a foreign language,
English is considered a necessary tool for gathering the knowledge and culture of advanced Western countries.
However, in preparation for the global media age, South Korea and Taiwan have already taken steps to upgrade the level of English to be on a par with countries like Singapore and the Philippines. In South Korea, policychanges have brought about the introduction of English in Primary schools at the Grade 3 level since 1997.
In Taiwan, the Ministry of Education announced that English lessons would be included in the required
curriculum at all elementary schools beginning in the 1999-2000 school year.
In Japan, English education will be introduced into public elementary schools from the 2002 school year,
although at present English education only begins from the 1st grade of junior high school.
However, in contrast to the clear-cut National Education Policy, the concrete curriculum, and the re-education of teachers in South Korea and Taiwan, Japan’s language policy is still not apparent. In spite of these differences we can still see a movement of ESL communities towards becoming EFL communities.
Therefore, in almost all Asian countries, importance is attached to English more than other foreign languages, as the curriculum and the entrance examination subject demonstrate.
Japan has always treated English as an elective subject, although in reality its appearance is close to that ofa compulsory subject within the junior and senior high school curriculum.
When examining the classification of language consciousness, we see that it varies greatly between eachstate, due to historical influences and economic backgrounds.
For example, in Singapore, English is the language of foreign investment and technical support. Furthermore, its neutral position allows each race to communicate on an equal basis . Both in Singapore and the Philippines, proficiency in English means the gateway to high salaries, in-company promotion, and stable employment.
Therefore, among ESL countries, English is recognized as the elitist’s language, and English education iscarried out accordingly.
In South Korea, the three years of American Military Administration after the end of the 2nd World War in1945 began the influence English was about to have on education. America’s participation in the Korean War (1950
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To contents- 1953) further strengthened the correlation between English and economic development. This continued for over
20 years. English education was first fostered so the people could have access to world knowledge and culture. It
has now been introduced into elementary schools, because the focus has moved to communication and global
understanding.
As Japan also holds the idea of “English as a World language,” English lessons cover almost half of all
foreign language classes taught on television and radio programs. Furthermore, in general, English language andculture classes take a much higher percentage of students than other foreign language or culture classes.
When examining the language environment of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, we find that, because eachis composed of a single race, there is no necessity for a separate common official language, as there are no marked
dialectal differences.
On the other hand, in Singapore, race composition ratios are 76% Chinese, 15% Malay, 7% Indian withvarious mother tongues being used at home. Moreover, this mixed parentage of the people is influenced by such
cultures as India, China, Arabia, and Malay. Likewise, the Philippines has over 130 languages. Therefore, inSingapore and the Philippines, English has become the common language, bridging the gaps between the domestic
languages of each race.
One important difference can be seen between Japan and South Korea. This is designated by the financial
and economic independence of each country. Since South Korea’s National Economic Development Policy in
1980, it has felt a need to focus its internationalization program on the culture and life style of the United States inparticular. In accordance with this, foreign language education has been strengthened, and English has been introduced into elementary schools as a compulsory subject. On the other hand, in Japan, English remains as part of“General Education,” an elective subject.

Questionnaire Investigation
Using a questionnaire about the consciousness toward English education, I compared 5 countries with theJapanese case. The subjects were university students in EFL and ESL environments. Please see Tables 1 and 2.

Table 1. The Language Considered Necessary for Global Communication
1

2

3

4

5

South Korea

EnglishKoreanJapanese

ChineseFrenchChina

EnglishChineseJapanese

FrenchRussianTaiwanEnglishMandarin JapaneseTaiwanese

SpanishSingapore

EnglishChineseJapanese

FrenchGermany

Philippine

EnglishTagalog

SpanishChineseJapanese(1997 - 1998)

Elementary School English Education— A Comparison of Various Asian Countries and Japan —The purpose of introducing elementary school English education varies for each country. For example,
Japan introduced it as an “elective subject”, and English activities will become a part of the “International Understanding” education. While other Asian countries introduced it as a “Compulsory subject”, and English education
is a regular class throughout elementary school.
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Table 2. Do you Agree that English is the Most Suitable Language for a “World language” ?
Strongly agree

Agree

NeutralDisagreeStrongly disagree

South Korea

10

49

29

10

2

China

18

52

10

17

3

Taiwan

27

61

8

4

0

Japan

17

62

18

2

1

Singapore

7

59

17

6

1

Philippine

49

38

10

3

0

(1997 - 1998)

Reasons for Introducing English
The following comments were given by the Asian countries as the purpose for elementary school English
education.
South Korea. It is clear that “employment perspectives” are enhanced when one can speak the global
tongue, English.
Taiwan. The need for “usable English” rose from social problems.
China. There are many Chinese people who think that: “in order to absorb the science and technology
of various advanced countries”, the knowledge of English as the world language is indispensable.
Singapore. It is important to develop “English to enhance employment ability”. English is the “lingua
franca of the multiracial nation”. English means “State economic prosperity”. It is a “political” and “educational” term.
The Philippines. English cultivated “employment ability”. It became the term of “school education”,
introduced when the colonizing country changed from “Spain” to “America”.

Introduction, Starting Age, Course Contents and Learning Goals
Table 3 shows the conditions at the point of introduction of English tuition, the starting age of the learners,
brief course overviews, and the learning goals within each country.

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Table 3. Elementary School English Education of Various Asian Countries
Country
Name

English Education Introduction
Conditions

EnglishEducation
Starting AgeAmount ofInstruction

Goals forLearning

Contents ofLearningJapan

2002 introduction
schedule

At present, from junior high school 1st
year.
From 2002, from 3rd
Grade in elementary
school.

About one hour per
week.

Touches on learninga foreign language,
and getting accustomed to foreign lifeand culture.

Korea

1997 (extra-curricular activities since1982).

Elementary education from 3rd Grade.

Two-hours a week.
(So that they may
learn English at amore leisurely pace,this has changed to
one-hour a week forthe third and fourth
graders from thisyear onwards.)

To develop the ability to express one’s
ideas and thoughts,
and to express themin English. Also todevelop communication strategies andwith an ability offundamental English.

Learning activities
suitable for elementary school grades,
leading to a basic
interest in things foreign.
Foreign language
education (such as
simple English conversation), done aspart of the “international understanding” education.
1. In order to raise
the will towards
learning English,
make the activities
pleasurable.
2. In order that thechildren may learn
English naturally,
focus on enjoyable
activities which incorporate speaking
and listening.
Spoken English iscentral to the curriculum.
The contents gradually increase in difficulty (in terms of
vocabulary meanings and the level
required for understanding).
Course content is restricted to the levelof vocabulary recognition in the 3rd and4th grades, and expression of ideas ishandled in the 5 tha n d 6 th g r a d e s .
Speaking and reading comprehension
is done in co-operation with native- English speaking assistants.

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Table 3. Elementary School English Education of Various Asian Countries (Cont’d)Country
Name

English Education Introduction
Conditions

EnglishEducation
Starting AgeAmount ofInstruction

Goals forLearning

Contents ofLearning

China

Concern rose after
the 90’s.

Elementary school,
Grades 4-6.

Tenshin: Twice a
Week (45 minuteseach).

Many Chinese believe that in order toabsorb science andtechnology fromvarious advanced
countries, theknowledge of English as the world
language is indispensable.

In spite of thegovernment’s wayof thinking, JuniorHigh textbooks
haven’t changed.
Also, school children do not seem tobe especially conscious of the urgency to learn English, either.

Shanghai:Four times
a week.

TaiwanIt will be introduced
as a compulsory
subject in the wholeelementary school
curriculum in 2001.

Elementary school
Grades 5-6.

Two-hours a week.

The improvement oforal communication
ability, and practicalEnglish learning.

Teacher education isdone by native
speaker so that classcommunication canbe carried out by appropriately trained
homeroom teachers.

The
Philippines

In Manila English
education started in
1898.
At 7 elementary
schools, the students
were taught English
by the American soldiers.

From Grade 1 elementary school,
English is the language of Education.

80 minutes everyday.

For the full term ofschool education.
People try to use
English as a tool forcommunication between the multiple
races.

Philippine English isunder the bilingual
education policy
since 1974.
Training is done bycompetent trainersof English communication.

Singapore English is the language of educationfrom the elementary
school onwards,
since 1984.

From Grade 1 elementary school,
English is the language of Education.

For the lower
grades, 6 hours aweek.
For the upper
grades, 9 hours aweek.
As other subjects arealso done in English,
it is really several
hours a day.

English is the mainmeans by which
Singaporeans cancommunicate withother people.

Emphasis is placedon the acquisition ofeffective communication skills ( thosebeing the 4 skills ofnatural English)

Elementary School Education Education as a Part of “International
Understanding” Education in Japan
Here it is important to consider the relevance of English education in Japanese elementary schools. The
following conclusions can be made:1.

With relevance to “International Understanding” education and the education of English, theobjective is to increase children’s interest in, enjoyment of, and willingness to learn English.

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2.

It endeavors to make the most of the medium of English, endeavors are made to correlate theirexperiences so that children will further have an interest in, enjoyment of and willingness tolearn more about international understanding.

3.

It is important to attempt to use English as the medium of communication between different
cultures.

In Japan, English education at pilot schools has worked well so far. Most children at pilot schools enjoy
English activities, and most elementary school teachers think that English education should be done with pleasure.
This can then be connected to English education at the Junior High School level with good preconceptions toward
English. However, as recent trends are to only doing simple activities like playing games and singing songs, it isdoubtful whether these activities will bring on good results for further English education.
On the other hand, English education in the elementary schools of most of the Asian countries, is modeled on
the same methods of teaching immigrants in England and the United States. For not only Singapore and thePhilippines, but also South Korea and Taiwan, the purpose for elementary school English education is the same.
The people of these countries are longing for skills in English communication. It is therefore natural that suchcountries should have brought in the same method.
However, this method is not necessarily suitable for Japan. Japan being different from its Asian neighbors
concerning the purpose for introducing English and the environment in which it is taught, I propose that English
education for elementary schools should follow a curriculum that is true to Japan’s goals and purposes.

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It’s Not Just a Language Lab Anymore: IALL’s Perspective on
Trends in Language Learning Technology
Otmar Foelsche
Dartmouth College, U. S. A.
Abstract
Language Resource Centers will go through massive changes in (a) the technologies and materials
that are used in the centers, (b) the activities that take place in them, and (c) in the demands that are put onthem by the administration, by instructors, and also by other disciplines. We’ll have to redefine our territory,
learn how to share expensive technical resources while maintaining control over those aspects of our centersthat are unique to language teaching and learning.

Technologies and Materials
The technological race powered by current economic conditions is running at full speed. Vendors of language
laboratory equipment have been eyeing experimental hardware and software over the last decade and are becoming
more and more uncertain about which path to take for providing a product that could fulfill traditional needs but could
also take advantage of the new information technologies. In the meantime, hardware vendors, with little concern for
the needs of language laboratories in higher education, have relentlessly pushed up the ante by providing more
speed, more storage, better sound, and better color at ever decreasing prices for their wares. Information technologies have invaded, if not flooded, institutions of higher learning and have become essential resources of almost all
disciplines.
At my home institution, at Dartmouth College, information technologies became part of the main stream
seventeen years ago with the introduction of the Macintosh computer to every faculty member, every student, andevery room on campus. In 1989, only 11 years ago, Apple demonstrated Hypercard, sound, and a stamp-sizedversion of a QuickTime video on Macintosh computers. The potential of these innovative applications of information
technology in education was immediately recognized not only at Dartmouth but at many other institutions as well.
Change did not happen independently. It happened in all areas of the institution and particularly in thosedepartments that recognized early that implementation of information technologies would be to their advantage.
Today information technologies are ubiquitous and language resource centers have to learn to live with them, integrate them, and optimize them in cooperation and collaboration not only within the boundaries of their own campus
but also within national and even international consortia.
Fifteen years ago language resource centers, after decades of providing students with audio tapes in all
formats, experienced the impact of video in PAL, NTSC, and SECAM formats on tape, laser discs, and fromsatellite feeds. The learning curve for the staff was not terribly difficult, since all the video technologies were similar
to the existing technologies in the lab. Even video standards conversion was no big deal to our staff. The location fordelivery, the location for meeting the clients, the location for maintenance of machinery remained at the physical siteof the “lab.”
When information technologies in the form of word processing computers entered language resource centersin the mid-eighties, the staff was seriously challenged with equipment that had little relationship to what they were

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used to before. Rapid technological progress brought, in quick succession, graphics, audio and video in the earlynineties, adding to the already considerable frustration of the staff. Multitudes of software packages—many of them
containing more bugs than software—put enormous burdens on the staff to train themselves, to train faculty members, to assists students. Operating systems changed monthly, computers were obsolete after 12 months, networks
became outdated and too slow, and in all this chaos language resource centers managed to provide reliable services
for all language learners.
The challenge today is to implement and optimize existing technologies while preparing for the next future
shock in whatever we do. Audio delivery via audio tape will be with us for many years to come until our clients get
tired or until the superiority of alternate delivery systems becomes obvious to all. Today’s audio delivery systems can
do a lot, tomorrow’s will probably do better. Today’s choices are between “streaming” and “file-shared” delivery.
The difference is critical. Users of interactive applications that require instant delivery of audio upon a mouse-click
will not be satisfied with the usual 5 to 12 second delay before the sound arrives at the workstation. These users
need “file-shared” audio files that perform in the required manner.
Delivery of audio materials can now come from a compact audio CD, from a CD-ROM, directly from a harddisk, and from a network, i.e. from a server. All these technologies require knowledge of the capabilities of theindividual workstations, the capabilities of the network, the capabilities of the server, the various production andarchiving standards, and the potential for conversion into future standards. We can assume that almost all sound will
be delivered via networks in the future—if publishers go along.
Standards for audio files have already proliferated. Names like QuickTime, MP3, Wave, RealAudio, “hinted,”
are rapidly becoming standard vocabulary for our staff. This is not the place to discuss the various merits of theseformats. If we look into the future we can simply state that we need one format that has the highest audio quality,
total platform compatibility, the smallest file size, delivery instantly at the lowest possible bandwidth to the client.
Standards for video files have proliferated as much as those for audio files. Names like MPEG, MPEG1 and
MPEG2, DVD, and QuickTime (which is only a container for various files identified by codecs used for compression like Cinepac, Sorenson etc.) are also standard lingo spoken in language resource centers. Here, too, we need
the same as for the audio files: highest video quality, total platform compatibility, the smallest file size, and delivery
instantly at the lowest possible bandwidth to the client.
Production of audio and video files is still rather time consuming and expensive. Audio files for distribution on
networks can be produced in about double real time. High quality Sorenson encoded video for delivery via a networkor delivery via a web site requires between twenty and thirty hours for each hour of playable video. This ties up a
high-end workstation. Staff has to be trained to make responsible decisions when it comes to overall quality, color
balance, contrast, frame rates etc. during the production process.
Other materials in current use, primarily learning environments, provided on CD-ROM media are really too
constricted (sometimes this may be useful, particularly for remedial aspects) for the motivated learner. We haveseen publishers’ attempts to provide complete packages—consisting of textbook, compact audio disks, CD-ROMs,
and web pages that are updated weekly. These packages seem to point into the direction of future materials to be
used in language instruction. My impression is that we’ll see a much higher degree of sophistication in the userinterface. We’ll see the voice-controlled computer and we’ll see an interface that is appropriate to the student’s
learning style and strategy. Authentic materials on the web will be combined with local, narrowly-focused materials,
providing a rich environment of text, graphics, audio, and video that will have various tools and interfaces that adjust
automatically to the needs of a particular student.
Delivery of audio and video via local servers is common practice these days. Maintenance of servers requires
a lot of technical knowledge and a lot of responsibility. The best current technologies are based on UNIX, Linux,
Windows 2000, AppleShare, and OSX (also Apple). All of these technologies have advantages and disadvantages
and it falls upon the language resource center to make responsible decisions when putting this type of machinery into
service.
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The four areas of audio, video, learning environments, and servers I discussed so far point to the enormous
amount of technical know-how that has to be available inside a language resource center from now on.
But this is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. There are many additional areas which need to be touched
upon that will challenge us in the future.
Among them (a) Infrastructure issues. Very few new resource centers have focused on future infra structure needs in the planning and design phases. High-end video delivery should not be done via wireless networks! The
network (or at least the conduits for the network) must allow future updating to very high speeds. Decisions of thistype are normally campus-wide and a director of a language resource center needs to understand these technologies to be a competent spokesperson for his/her area when it comes to institutional planning. Among them (b)Software support issues, particularly in the less commonly taught languages. This does not only mean to be able set
the web browsers to different encodings, it means competent handling of users’ request all the way up to configuringa machine for doing all kinds of things in all languages. It requires knowledge of resources and search engines on theweb. It also requires networking with colleagues in the same field.
A quick look at some statistics (1987 – 2001) will demonstrate the massive changes we have discussed.

Lab Statistics and Projections 1987 - 2001

audio cassette
stations
VCR stations
multi-standard VCRs
satellite dishes
SCOLA

other TV providers
dedicated campus
cable channels
laserdisc stations
DVD stations
Multi-standard DVD

87

95

97

99

01

50
0
0
1
no

40
7
3
4
yes

22
6
3
5
yes

10
6
1
9
no

5(?)
6(?)
1
9
no

0

0

2

5

5(?)

1
5
00
0

4
3
00
0

6
1
00
0

10
1
11
1

10+
1
54(?)
4(?)

Figure 1. Traditional LL technologies from 1987 to 2001
We can see (in Fig. 1) the demise of traditional language lab technologies. We can also see the peeking oflaserdisc technology and its quick demise. Satellite technologies, on the other hand, seem to be going strong. We canalso see (in Fig. 2) the rise of computers, file serving and streaming technologies. Most significant seems to be theincrease in storage capacity of the servers.

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Lab Statistics and Projections 1987 - 2001

high speed cass.
copiercassette tapes
purchased

87

95

97

99

01

1

1

1

1

1

1500

1000

500

0

0

7
2

9
2

15
6

7
7

computers (Mac) 1
computers (PC)none
file servers
file server
capacity
AppleShare
NT

0

1

5

5

5

0
no
no

300meg
yes
no

4gig
yes
no

200gigyes
yes

400gig
yes
yes

Linux
CSX (Apple)
AIX
streaming video(SIG)
streaming video(RTSP)

no
no
no

no
no
yes

no
no
yes

yes
yes
yes

yes
yes
no

no

no

yes

yes

no

no

no

no

yes

yes

Figure 2. Increase in computers, etc., from 1987 to 2001
Last but not least, we can see in Figure 3, a proliferation of networks across campus, a much higher diversityof equipment, and a very significant decrease in the number of actual visits to the Language Resource Center.
The data in Figures 1 through 3 is not unique for Dartmouth’s situation. We are quite sure that other institutions can provide similar data. The new technologies will lead to lab setups that are very different from what we areused to. Fig. 4 shows the technologies in use in Dartmouth’s lab at the beginning of the fall term in 2000.
The center of the lab (Public Lab in Fig.4) provides the old and the new technologies. The Service Lab,
invisible to the users, providers servers, and production facilities. The virtual lab (on the network) is accessible fromall campus network ports and, if desirable, is accessible from anywhere in the world for purposes of distanceeducation.
The technologies in future language resource centers, therefore, will provide the very basis from which ourservices will originate. The capability to manage these technologies and to make them comprehensible to faculty andstudents in the context of language learning and teaching will guarantee our place in the institution and with that anassured place next to the library and other providers of information resources.

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Lab Statistics and Projections 1987 - 2001

87

95

97

99

01

0

1

2

2

2

CD burner
CD blanks
purchased
DVD burner

0

2(4x)

2(4x)

2(4x)

3

0
no

10
no

100
no

300
no

?
yes

network Appletalk
network Ethernet(10BT)
Network Ethernet(100BT)
beds connected to
network

20

30

30

2

1

0

10

30

10

1

0

0

7

15

30

all

all

all

all

all

backbone

10

100

100

100

1000

visits per week
(fall term)
space occupied

1500
1500

1200
1500

1000
1500

800
1500

400
?

number of
languages
served

8

9

11

12

13

FTEs

3.5

2.5

3

3

3

DDS backup drive
systems

Figure 3. Increase in networks and decrease in visits to the Language Resource Center

Activities
The traditional audio tape machine allowing listening, recording and comparing was the raison d’être oflanguage labs of the past. The machinery was expensive, had to be in a separate room, and had to be supervised.
Students’ use could be controlled and monitored. Teachers could listen in to the activity, even interrupt it. There is
not much evidence of the usefulness of the most common activities in this type of language lab. In fact, many labs
were used for listening only. A majority of the faculty in my institution, for example, could not see any point ininstalling a console into the last traditional lab installation we did in 1988. Activities need to be integrated in a courseof instruction. If students realize that the activity makes sense, and if students realize that the activity that is supported by technology helps them to learn more easily, faster, more efficiently—they’ll go for it. If not—they’ll readthe newspaper.
This makes it clear that activities should not be carried out for technology’s sake but for the learner’s sake.
Technology offers us an enormous opportunity to be creative and playful. A language resource center’s role will be
to interpret the technology, make suggestions, try out new materials, register faculty and students’ reactions—andpush for the very best. The broadening of activities is possible through the availability of the new technologies. We
can now foresee activities that can be carried with the assistance of compact audio disk players, DVD players,
multi-media/networked computer stations, the web, video conferencing, in various electronic chat rooms, in virtual
discussion groups, and more.
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Service Lab
Servers
400
gigabytes
We/FileMaintenancel

Audio
Production→
analogVideo
Production→
analogdigitaldigital

Back-upmechamisn
Tape
CD
DVD/RAM
copying

RedundanceDistance
Ed
Other

Remaining
AnalogServices

Public Lab
100BaseT Campus Back Bone
IMAC

IMAC

IMAC

IMAC

IMAC

PC

PC

PC

PC

IMAC

IMAC

IMAC

IMAC

IMAC

IS10

IS10

IMAC

IMAC

Traditional Language Laboratory Stations
IS10

IS10

IS10

IS10

IS10

VCR

VCR

IS10

IS10

IS10

VCR Stations
VCR

VCR

VCR

Campus Satellite Dishes
Local Satellite Dishes

Other Stations
DVD

DVD
NTSC

DVD 1nt.Reg
PAL/SL

1nt.Reg

1nt.Reg

1nt.Reg

1nt.Reg

1nt.Reg

1nt.Reg

Virtual Lab

Figure 4. Public Lab
It is impossible to predict all the new types of activities that may take place in the lab or will be provided byservers to dormitory rooms or even provided into distance education channels. A few seem to be obvious: voicerecognition, feedback on pronunciation, usage of human monitors via the web, and adaptive workstations.
What is not so clear at all is the pedagogy. Some early twentieth century pedagogues and their students
survived the language lab period without apparent harm. Over the last decade pedagogy has had a respite from thepressure of providing better services at lower cost. This may change in the future. At this point the pressure will be
put on to distinguish clearly which activities belong to technology and which activities belong to the human instructor.
This may change instruction dramatically and it may also change the role of technology in the learning process.

Demands
Figure 5 attempts to highlight some of the demands that are currently placed on the Language Resource
Center in my institution. “Direct/on Location” represents the traditional physical language resource center. “Streaming” and “File Serving” represent redundant services. “Other Services” represent the standard services that need tobe carried out in centers whether there is a lot of technology or not.
Obviously the demands have increased and will continue to increase.

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Audio Cassettes

Audio Cassettes

Video Cassettes

Video Cassettes

Compact Audio Disks

Compact Audio Disks

CD-ROM

CD-ROM

DVD ???

DVD ???

Laser Disc

Laser Disc

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Floppies

Streaming

File Serving

Language Resource Center
Direct/On Location

Other Services

Print Materials

Repairs/Maintenance

Audio Cassettes

Media Preparation

Video Cassettes

Training / Consulting

Compact Audio Disks

Video Satellite Serv.

CD-ROM

Wordprocessing Serv.

DVD Discs

OCR/Scanning Serv.

Laser Discs

Printing/Copying

Figure 5. Demands placed upon the Language Resource Center
The times of copying audio tapes and handing them to students are over. The times of living in a protected
niche on campus doing just languages have gone by. Language resource centers will find themselves within the mainstream of information technology providers on campus. They will have to compete for clients, for budgets, and forspace. They’ll have to reinvent themselves every day and justify their existence. I personally believe that we havea lot of reasons to exist within the framework of all the other providers. The quality, integrity, and viability of ourservices cannot be provided by the library or by computer centers—just as we cannot provide all the services of acomputer center. But—we need to constantly redefine our territory and cooperate and collaborate where it makes
sense. At the same time we have to stick to our basics, being, what we believe (and can prove) essential components of language learning and teaching.

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Japanese Reading Support System Focusing on Learner’s Needs
Riko Wakita
Fukui University

Youji Ochi
Yoneo Yano
Tokushima University, Japan
Abstract
Kanji is a big barrier against learning Japanese for overseas learners, especially non-Chinese. It isdifficult to acquire enormous kanji for limited time. What is the best way to learn their needed kanji based on the
educational demand efficiently? In these days, we can get vast information via Internet. Learners have much
Japanese stimuli on Internet nevertheless their Japanese proficiency level. Can they apply enormous Japanese
information resource for their learning? So we have developed Japanese reading support system focusing on the
educational demand, called JUPITER (JUkugo Learning Environment through PlaIn TExt Reading). Our system supports the learners to learn kanji based on the Japanese text document in which they are interested. We
introduced JUPITER to Japanese reading class at Fukui University in 1999-spring semester. Compared with
consulting a paper dictionary, they have extremely shorter time to check the reading and meaning of the kanji.

Background
Kanji is a big barrier against learning Japanese for overseas learners, especially non-Chinese. In general,they begin to learn a simple stroke kanji in an elementary course. After learning 500 basic kanji, they must learn
more than 1,500 kanji and a vast amount of kanji compounds which consists of two or more kanji for daily life. It
is difficult that they can acquire an enormous kanji for the limited time. What is the best way to learn their needed
kanji based on the educational demand efficiently?
The above background considered, there are some approaches to solve the educational demand. The one islearning kanji based on the frequency at the specialized fields (Nozaki, et al. 1995). The feature of this approach
depends on the frequency of the original data. The frequency always does not correspond to the learner’s educational demand. The second approach is ready for the database of many teaching materials (Sakayauchi, et al.
1994). In this approach the kanji data is restricted in the teaching materials.
Recently we can get vast information via Internet (WWW, e-mail, Netnews, etc.). Learners have much
Japanese stimuli on Internet nevertheless their Japanese proficiency level. Can they apply enormous Japanese
information resource for their Japanese reading learning?
There is an approach to take notice of Japanese information resource via Internet. For example, Dict-Linker
analyzes Japanese plain text into Japanese morpheme, links to kanji database in the system, and displays the kanjimeaning on WWW (Kitamura, et al. 1999). Although we take the similar approach to Dict-Linker, in our approachlearner can add and correct the kanji data to the database in the system, and realize the personal kanji-learning
environment. We explain our system in detail in the following chapter.

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JUPITER: Japanese Reading Support System
We have developed Japanese reading support system focusing on learners’ needs, that is the educational
demand, called JUPITER (JUkugo Learning Environment through PlaIn TExt Reading) (Wakita, et al. 1997, Ochi,
et al. 1998). Internet has come into wide use in these days, it is easy to obtain many Japanese plain text documents
through Internet. We treat “learners’ needed kanji” as the kanji in which they want to read an optional Japaneseplain text.

Outline of JUPITER
Figure 1 shows the learning environment of JUPITER. First of all, learners download the JUPITER systemform the web site (http://n65.is.tokushima-u.ac.jp/ochi/software/index.html) and install it on the windows PC.
Learners take the optional Japanese text document in which they are interested. They copy the target text documents freely on the electric media and paste them on the JUPITER. As the documents have many kanji in theirnormal browsing, it is hard to understand them. However JUPITER analyzed the kanji data in them and shows thereading the kanji by printing it in hiragana on its upper side automatically. If they want to know the meaning of the
kanji, JUPITER indicates it by linking the kanji to a kanji dictionary with the mouse-click on the kanji, too.
JUPITER has the function monitoring learners’ kanji action and records their kanji learning information. In order
to confirm their needed kanji, JUPITER does not display the reading of the kanji that the learner should understandon purpose.

Learning Strategy
The goals of the system are to support the Japanese text document reading and learners’ acquirement of the
kanji knowledge gradually.
The learning strategies of JUPITER are as follows.
1.

Selecting Japanese plain text document freely from electric media. (Open-ended teaching materials.)

2.

Controlling the printing of the kanji reading in hiragana on its upper side according to learners’
educational demand. This means that JUPITER does not show the kanji reading that the learners should have learned. If learners select the all reading mode, all reading of kanji are displayed.

3.

Indicating the meaning and reading by a mouse-click on the kanji. And the same reading of
kanji that already has learned is listed at the review window.

4.

Creating a reading practice mode, as most of kanji have 2 more than readings.

5.

Adding and correcting the kanji data to the kanji database on the system. (An open-ended kanji
database.)

System Configuration
JUPITER consists of 3 main parts. There are the kanji database, the resource controller, and the learning
environment. The database has about 2000 single kanji data, 16,000 two-kanji compounds, and 10,000 three-kanji
compounds based on EDICT (Breen, 1994). The resource controller consists of Learner Model and Japanesemorpheme analyzer which links to original Japanese test document and the kanji database. Using Japanese morpheme analyzer, more than four-kanji compounds are analyzed an appropriate single kanji and kanji compounds.
Expanding kanji database KIDS-II (Ochi, et al. 1995), the system controls the reading of single kanji in the compounds.

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Figure 1. Interface of JUPITER

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Practice of JUPITER to Japanese Class
Outline of Japanese Class
We introduced JUPITER to Japanese reading upper class at Fukui University in 1999-spring semester. Springsemester had 15 weeks, one school hour was 90 minutes and the Japanese class was held once a week. There were
12 overseas learners at the class; 6 Chinese, 4 Malaysian, 1 Vietnamese, and 1 Israeli. On the learners’ frequencyof PC use, 50% learners used it everyday, 33% learners used it once a few days, and 17% learners used it once a few
weeks. Learners could use only three JUPITER-installed PCs in the overseas students room.

How to Introduce JUPITER to Japanese Class
The aim was assisting Japanese reading of raw materials. In this class we used Japanese paperback “thesecret of 101 hit-goods in Japan” as a textbook. There are 101 topics on the hit-goods in the book and one topic has
about 1,000 words in Japanese. A teacher changed the paperback into the text documents by OCR software and put
them in the PCs. And the teacher added unregistered kanji data to the database on the system. Learners must pick
one topic up from the paperback, read it by using JUPITER, and research it. Before every class, they had a duty to
use JUPITER and prepare their lessons. A few learners took a presentation of their topic (an abstract of thepaperback and research) in every class.

Results and Future Works
Results form the questionnaires
We took a questionnaire on JUPITER use at the end of class. The questions (4 multiple-choice ones and afree comment) and answers are as follows.
1.

Did you know the reading and meaning of kanji on the paperback?
Very well 8%, Well 17%, Ordinary 17%, Not well 8 %, Not Very Well 17%, No Answer 33%

2.

How many times did you use JUPITER?
Always 0%, Sometimes 25%, Hardly 42%, Not At All 8%, No Answer 25%

3.

Do you think JUPITER is available for Japanese reading?
Yes 75 %, No 8%, No Answer 17%

4-1.

4-2.

If did you “Always/Sometimes” use JUPITER, what were the advantages?
1)

To know the reading and meaning of kanji without a dictionary.

2)

To display the reading of kanji quickly.

3)

To check all Japanese text documents as well as all the teaching materials of this class.

If did you “Hardly/Not at all” use JUPITER, what were the disadvantages?
1)

No time to go the overseas students room. (A lack of JUPITER installed-PCs.)2)

The displayed reading of kanji was not always correct.

3)

No comprehension how to use JUPITER.

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Free comments
1)

I hope all PCs at the university could permit to install JUPITER.

2)

I hope the displayed readings were 100% correct.

Judging from the questionnaires, most learners approved the validity of JUPITER for Japanese reading
support system. Though they could use it on only 3 PCs, it was low frequency of use on the hole. The advantages
were as follows. Compared with consulting a paper dictionary, the learners had extremely shorter time to check thereading and meaning of the kanji. Especially non-Chinese set a high evaluation on it and were grateful for it. They
could check the reading and meaning of kanji at not only the teaching materials of this class but also all Japanese
text documents on the electric resource.

Future Works
We argue future works from the two points; one is from issues out of system, and the other is on the system.
Out of System. It is necessary for learners to make an environment of using the system always. To use
JUPITER, it is necessary to install it to PCs. As no learners at this class had their own PCs, they could not install
JUPITER at their PCs. In addition to it, we could not permit other PCs at the university to install the system. So if
they use JUPITER, they must have gone to the PCs at overseas students and the chance to use it has extremely
restricted. On this issue, one solution to a problem is to remake JUPITER on WWW. WWW does not depend on
the platform or the procedure of installation, however it needs the environment to connect to Internet always.
On the System. The showed readings of kanji on JUPITER were not perfectly correct. It is impossible tochoice 100% correct reading in using the latest technique. Especially a long kanji compound is difficult to divide
appropriate morphemes by the latest morpheme analyzer. And some kanji compounds have 2 readings and 2
meanings (e.g. “kon-nichi (these day)” and “kyou (today)”, “si-jyou (exchange)” and “ichi-ba (market)”). Though
men can judge the appropriate reading on the text circumstances, the present system can not. We will make aneffort to refine the accurate reading.
The second issue is to add a grammatical function newly to JUPITER. A reading support does not mean
only to support the reading and meaning of kanji. The next step is to learn the sentence patterns or special expressions and understand a sentence structure on JUPITER.

Summary
We have developed Japanese reading support system focusing on learners’ needs called JUPITER. And
we have introduced it to Japanese class at Fukui University. The merits using JUPITER is as follows. The one isthat learners could check the reading and meaning of kanji on JUPITER. As compared to a paper dictionary, they
can know them quickly. The second one is that Japanese plain text documents were not restricted, that is, learners
can use an open-ended Japanese teaching material on the electric resources. The third one is to add and correct the
kanji information on the database by a user, that is, an open-ended database.
On the other hand, there are future works. From the issue out of system, it is necessary for learners tomake an environment of using the system always. From the issues on the system, the showed readings of kanji on
JUPITER are not perfectly correct. It is impossible to choice 100% correct reading in using the latest technique.
But we will make an effort to refine the accurate reading. The second issue is to add a grammatical function newly
to JUPITER in order to reinforce the reading support.

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Acknowledgement
This research has been supported in part by the grant-in-aid for Scientific Research (B) No.09558017 from
the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture in Japan.

References
Breen, J. (1994). EDICT. ftp://ftp.cc.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/edict.dic
Kitamura, T., et al. (1999). Development and evaluation of a support system for Japanese reading comprehension
with learning process management function. Japan Journal of Educational Technology, 23(3), 127-134.
Nozaki, M., et al. (1995). Lexical survey for Japanese language education. Proceedings of the 11th Japan Society
for Educational Technology, 591-592.
Ochi,Y., et al. (1995). The development of a kanji compound dictionary system for deriving their meaning andreading. Proceedings of International Conference on Computers in Education (ICCE), 549-556.
Ochi, Y., et al. (1998). JUPITER; A kanji learning environment focusing on a learner’s browsing. Proceedings ofAsia Pacific Computer Human Interaction (APCHI), 446-451.
Sakayauchi, M., et al. (1994). Development of CASTEL/J (1). Proceedings of the 4th Japan Society for Related
Educational Technology,1, 327-328.
Wakita, R., et al. (1997). Teacher’s customizable CAI system for kanji compound learning. Memoirs of the Facultyof Education, Fukui University, 32, 39-50.

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Joint Venture in China:
A Simulation for Teaching Chinese Business and Language1
Robert Hart
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U. S. A.
Abstract
Joint Venture in China is Web-based, multimedia, single-user simulation courseware which teaches Chinese business language and practice in the context of an extended business task. Students play the role of theAssistant Vice President of Development for VekTech, an American maker of computer peripherals intent onestablishing a business presence in the People’s Republic of China. They work through four modules in which
they successively develop a business strategy and choose an entry mode, find a potential Chinese partner, negotiate a contract for a joint venture, and finally operate the enterprise. In the course of doing this work, students
must read email (internal to the simulation), consult with fictitious colleagues and Chinese officials and businesspeople, study various documents, write reports, and do decision making which will affect the course of negotiations and the eventual success of the joint venture. The simulation is databased, allowing quick implementationof new content without modification of the programming framework.

Introduction
The increasing globalization of business at the beginning of the twenty-first century has been accompanied
by an increasing demand for instruction in language for business purposes. China’s growing economy and its
burgeoning trade ties with the United States have made knowledge of the Chinese language a particular priority formany American business people. Unfortunately, conventional business language instruction often consists ofgeneric readings that are not situated in any actual business context. Joint Venture in China (referred to subsequently simply as Joint Venture) allows business Chinese to be acquired in the context of an actual business task.
Joint Venture is a is Web-based, multimedia simulation courseware which asks the student to play the role of
the Assistant Vice President of Development for VekTech, a (fictitious) American maker of computer peripherals
intent on establishing a business presence in the People’s Republic of China. Students progress through four
modules, in which they develop a business strategy and choose an entry mode, find a potential Chinese partner,
negotiate a contract, and finally operate the enterprise. In the course of doing this work, students must read email(internal to the simulation), consult with fictitious VekTech colleagues and Chinese officials and business people,
study various documents, write reports, and do decision making which will affect the course of negotiations and theeventual success of the joint venture. The simulation is single user: each student interacts only with the coursewareand not with other students. To some extent, Joint Venture evolved from German Newsroom (Hart, 1994), a databased,
multimedia environment for teaching intermediate-level German writing and listening comprehension.
Joint Venture is aimed at two audiences: first, international business students with an interest in China andintermediate proficiency in Chinese (equivalent to about six semesters of study); second, business people without
Chinese language competence who need a working knowledge of Chinese business practice. To accommodate thesecond group, the simulation can be set to provide an “interpreter” for all Chinese content.

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Instructional Design
The courseware has the dual objectives of teaching Chinese business language as well as business culture,procedures and technicalities specific to the People’s Republic, with about equal emphasis on each. It is task-basedin the sense that students read and hear Chinese only in the context of an ongoing, complex simulated business task
— that of establishing a Chinese/American joint venture. After completing Joint Venture, students should have agood understanding of the procedures, options, and pitfalls associated with establishing a joint venture in China, as
well as proficiency in the relevant Chinese language.
To guarantee that the business aspect of the simulation will be substantive and not simply an excuse for
language use, we based the business content on models derived from a careful study of the business literature on
Chinese and other joint ventures. This preliminary research conducted under the direction of Chen suggests thatthe general factors and specific components shown in Table 1 characterize successful joint venture partners:

Table 1. General Factors and Specific Components Influencing
Suitability of Joint Venture Partners
General Factor

Specific Components

Goals and expectations

time commitment
workforce size
educational level of workers

Human resources

engineering force
workforce training
government ties

Government incentives

government incentives

Location

location

Infrastructuretransportation
communication

Factory facilities

size
potential market size

Market powersales force
sales strategy and customer service
distribution channels

Foreign experience

direct export authority
current joint venture partners
financial record

Financetriangle debt
foreign exchange accessOtherrecord of protecting intellectural property
concern for workers safety

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This model, which constitutes the main business content of Module 2, is made available to the reader as an“internal VekTech document” and is also internalized in the operations of the simulation.
The authors of the simulation have developed three fictitious Chinese companies: Red Star Electronics,
based in Shanghai, Ningbo Electronics, in Ningbo, and Huaxia Electronics, in Xian. These three companies weredevised to vary significantly with respect to the factors of Table1: Huaxia is a government-owned, money-losing
company with heavy triangle debt but good government contacts. Ningbo is smaller, privately owned, low debt,
but largely without government contacts. And so on. The available information is specified in such a way that
Shanghai is clearly the best choice as partner, Ningbo second, and Huaxia a poor third.
The modules themselves guide the students through the major phases of setting up a joint venture in China.
Module 1 (Developing a Strategy) simulates some discussion with VekTech colleagues of VekTech’s overall business situation and joint venture strategy. The main purpose of this module is to assure that students have a working
knowledge of VekTech, something essential for later work, and a good knowledge of the partner choice model
displayed in Table 1. The needed information is all within the simulation. Students have access to a library of
documents where they can read about VekTech’s finances, operations, and business strategy. They can also consult
simulated email, in which the VekTech CEO gives instructions about how the joint venture is to be approached.
Equally important, they can learn about the characteristics that make a good (or bad) joint venture partner.
In Module 2 (Choosing a Partner), students examine a number of Chinese companies as potential joint
venture partners and choose the best one for further negotiations. Students make simulated site visits to each of thethree Chinese companies, where they may “interview” various individuals and collect detailed information about
the business (Figure 1). For students who have elected to work in Chinese, all of this information will be given in
Chinese. In the present version of the simulation, Chinese text (characters) and Chinese audio are presented,
accompanied by still images of the various personnel; as the program develops, we expect to replace the audio
material by video clips. Since a great deal of information is available, an on-line notebook is provided wherestudents can take notes. The goal at the end of the three site visits is to decide which company is the best option asa joint venture partner.

Figures 1. Discussion during site visit to Red Star Electronics
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Students may request information on any of the topics listed at the left of the figure. One of the Chinese
personnel pictured at the top of the window will reply with some information. After absorbing the reply, students
generally have the choice of several responses: ask additional questions about the same topic or choose anothertopic.
To succeed in Module 2, students must collect a sufficient amount of relevant information and must thenintegrate that information to reach the right decision about which partner to pursue. Students are warned that, as ina real interview, they cannot request an unlimited amount of information but will have time for only a fixed numberof inquiries. This serves to focus attention on what information is important to partner choice (as defined by Table
1) and what is irrelevant. Both essential and irrelevant information are available, and students are free to ask foreither. However, the program keeps track of student requests and, at the end of each site visit, evaluates each
student’s information-gathering efficiency. If students fail to collect essential information or spend too much timegathering irrelevant information, the program explains this.
After the last site visit, students are asked to rate each of the three companies on each of the factors in Table
1. When a rating is clearly at variance with the information collected, the program gives appropriate feedback andasks for a new rating. After all the ratings have been satisfactorily completed, students asked to select the best joint
venture partner. This requires correctly combining all of the rating information into a bottom line decision. If thestudent does this incorrectly, the program will note the wrong decision and explain to the student why the assigned
ratings do not justify the choice made.
In Module 3 (Negotiating a Contract), the chosen company becomes the target of negotiations aimed atarriving at the legally binding joint venture contract. The focus is then on negotiating model, negotiating strategy,
and differences between Chinese and American negotiating styles (Breth & Kaiping, 1991). The main interaction
is a simulated negotiation between VekTech (represented by the student) and the Chinese company (whose negotiators are simulated by the program).
Module 4 (Operating the Venture), which (like Module 3) remains to be written, will follow the newly
established joint venture through several years of operation. It stresses the kinds of difficulties that can lead to
failure of the joint venture. These cover a wide range of legal, economic, and cultural difficulties, as discussed forexample in Lewis et al. (1996).
Since students are assumed to be at an intermediate competence level, the main objectives are to learn
relevant vocabulary, specialized constructions, genre and discourse conventions, and important points of businessculture. The most important tools for learning Chinese are an English translation, to aid where direct comprehension of the Chinese is not possible, and a , currently under development. The dictionary contains specializedbusiness vocabulary and gives extended explanations of the more complex or culture-specific concepts, much as inLi, et. al. (1993).
The materials are meant to teach reading and listening; in the current version, no productive skills are exercised. The nature of the task automatically provides a considerable degree of vocabulary and form repetition,
which aid language acquisition. Module 2, for instance, involves repeated interviews covering the same topics andutilizing much of the same vocabulary.
The nature of the joint venture task dictates that Chinese language be introduced gradually. The first module, situated at VekTech’s California headquarters, involves very little Chinese since the discussion is among Americans, whereas later modules, which involve site visits and negotiations with Chinese business people, utilize Chinese almost exclusively.

Technical Considerations
The programming of Joint Venture, which is done completely in HTML and Netscape Navigator’s Javascript,
constitutes a general-purpose simulation shell (indeed, the shell provides features such as timing and scheduling
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not used in Joint Venture). This meets the dual design goals of making the program widely available while minimizing the special hardware and software that must be installed to run the simulation. The simulation requires
Navigator version 4.7 or better and does not currently run on Internet Explorer. Audio materials are delivered instreaming RealAudio format, using the Language Learning Laboratory’s RealServer. Since this makes potential
users dependent on UIUC resources and could create a delivery bottleneck, we plan also to distribute the multimedia materials on CD.
All simulation content is completely databased. Such architecture allows new simulations to be developed
without modifiying the program, simply by developing new content and installing it in a database. We judge suchflexibility to be essential, because both economic reality and business law within the People’s Republic are continually evolving; if the simulation can not be updated quickly and easily, it will soon be obsolete.
Data are entered into text files with data items of different types tagged by a set of keyword labels. This
scheme, rather similar to XML, will allow easy conversion of the database syntax to XML when XML become
more widely available. Any text editor can be used to author the content. In some cases, the data can contain
HTML formatting, so it can even be convenient to use a specialized HTML editor. The drawback of this approach
to authoring is that one must learn the tag syntax. Since the simulation requires a number of different databases(interview, library, email, personnel, etc.), this is a non-trivial learning task. In a more complete system, a Webpage authoring interface would bypass the tag syntax and at the same time allow for data validation during input.
As with any complex courseware, one session may not suffice to complete the task. IBM’s ASP (Active
Server Pages) technology is used to save the simulation status and allow users to resume work where they stopped
at the end of the previous session.
The core of the simulation is provided by a handful of interaction formats. Some of these, such as simulated
email and an on-line library, provide access to static documents. More central are formats that simulate interactive
discussion. As in many on-line fantasy games, this is handled by presenting information (usually information
stated by a fictitious person) and allowing students to select a response to that information from a list of predetermined alternatives. Depending on the alternative chosen, a branch is taken to display new information. The
information, the alternatives, and the destination branches are all hand-coded into a static database. This approach,though simple and direct, does not allow for any dynamic changes in the database or for inferential capability, suchas would be provided by the “knowledge base” techniques of artificial intelligence. All possible branches must beplanned for ahead of time, whether or not they will actually be followed. Hence, the data are somewhat exacting
and time-consuming to author.

Further Development
Joint Venture shows one way in which new multimedia capabilities can be combined with database technology to provide a heavily contextualized, task-based learning activity. Of course, various extensions and improvements are possible:
1.

At present, students’ input is restricted to menu choices. This limits the realism of the dialog
activities; in addition, it discourages a constructive, creative element in student responses. We
intend to replace or supplement menu-driven responding by typed pinyin input using a limited
Chinese grammar and vocabulary. Thus, rather than choosing “triangle debt” as a discussion
topic, students would have to recall (or infer) that “triangle debt” is an important factor inevaluating potential partners, then type an appropriate Chinese phrase to request information
about it. Such active manipulation of knowledge should lead to more effective learning and at
the same time making the dialogs more interesting.

2.

All modules need to have a deeper model of the task and of student activity. Module 2 (Choosing a Partner) currently keeps track of each item of information requested by the student. This

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request history is adequate to allow the program to determine whether the student gathered
information efficiently and integrated properly, and to give feedback accordingly. Since student requests have no effect on the environment, no dynamic model of the environment need be
maintained. But Module 3, which concerns negotiation, requires more sophisticated modeling.
As offers and counter-offers are made, then accepted or rejected, the overall negotiating situation changes continually and the program must keep track of it so that the appropriateness ofsubsequent moves can be assessed. In addition, students’ negotiating moves must be recorded
and compared to a negotiating model so that proper instructional feedback can be given forpoor moves. Although Javascript is an object-oriented language which can support moderately
complex data structures, such complex modeling of the sort we envisage may eventually exceed Javascript capabilities and require interfacing with more powerful languages such as Prolog
or Lisp.
3.

The realism of Joint Venture is currently limited by our rather basic multimedia materials,
which utilize audio/still images to simulate site visits in China. Although this implementation
is a compromise imposed by our limited resources, a great deal of business and language canundoubtedly be learned from this audio-based design. In the future, however, we would like toreplace the combination of audio/still images by video materials created on location. The added
concreteness and authenticity of video made in China would greatly increase the attractivenessand realism of the simulation. There is also the possibility of extending the collaboration to use
real, rather than fictitious Chinese companies as potential partners, which would allow a muchricher, more detailed presentation of the companies. On the negative side, however, it would notthen be possible to arbitrarily manipulate the characteristics of each company. This would
create pedagogical difficulties when students apply the partner choice model.

4.

Better tools should be provided for data authoring, so that authors do not need to learn theinternal database syntax. At present, data are validated at the time they are read into the simulation program. An authoring interface would also help to guarantee data validity by checking
data as they are entered.

5.

In the current version of the simulation, a great deal of programming is devoted to managing
the simulation’s highly dynamic interface in the context of Navigator’s very non-dynamic document object model. With the advent of the dynamic document objects of Navigator 6, it should
be possible to simplify greatly all of this display programming in a way that would make display capabilities both more flexible and more robust.

Note
Joint Venture in China is a joint project of the CIBER Center (Center for International Business Education
and Research) and the Language Learning Laboratory of the University of Illinois. CIBER support for this project
derives from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Supervision of the Project is provided by Professor Robert Hart,
Associate Director of the UIUC Language Learning Laboratory; Professor Joseph Cheng, UIUC CIBER Director;
and Professor C.C. Cheng, UIUC Department of Linguistics (now City University of Hong Kong). Professor
Linnei Li, Deakin University Department of English, provided various image materials. Graduate Students who
have contributed to the project include Hang Zhang, Justina Hsu, David Chen, and Steven Amjad.
1

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References
Breth, R. & Kaiping, J. (1996). Business negotiations with the People’s Republic of China. Victoria, Canada:
Victoria College Press: Burwood,Hart, R. (1994). The German newsroom. Educational Technology Exchange, 2, 7-12.
Lewis, D. (1996). The life and death of a joint venture in China (Second Edition, Revised). Hong Kong: Asia Law& Practice Publishing and Euromoney (Jersey) Ltd.
Li, L., Geddes, W., Ko, L., & Endry, A. (Eds.) (1993). English-Chinese dictionary of new economic terms used incontemporary China. (No publisher).

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Language Learning Strategy Use and Learning Achievement
by High School EFL Learners:
An Analysis of Latent Factor Structure
Hiroaki Maeda
Hiroshima University Graduate School, Japan
Abstract
This paper presents a general idea about language learning strategy use by Japanese high school EFL
learners. The Strategy Inventory for Language Learning by Oxford (1990) and a C-test designed for the study
were used to elicit the data. With a large number of subjects from various backgrounds and approximately
normally distributed test scores, the results can be regarded as being characteristic of high school learners inJapan.

Introduction
Though some lists of language learning strategies have been produced and many surveys conducted following them, there has been little research showing results with sufficient subjects, concerning the total number andtheir bias of sample extraction. Moreover, the presented results so far often lack enough information for re-analysis
or meta-analysis. In order to overcome such problems, this paper aims,
1.

to present sufficient data to represent the general tendency of Japanese high school EFL learners’ strategy use,2.

to investigate the validity of the defined factors which the Strategy Inventory for Language
Learning (Oxford 1990) shows in terms of the learners,

3.

to explain the learners’ learning achievement though their strategy use.

The SILL (Strategy Inventory for Language Learning), which is one of the most widely used inventorys forstrategy resarch, was chosen to conduct the survey in order to compare the current results with preceeding studies
and to investigate to what extent Oxford’s (1990) six categories can be applied to Japanese high school EFL
learners.

The Survey
Since this study was intended to report on the general tendency of Japanese high school EFL learners’
strategy use, a large number of learners were required. In total, 23 high schools agreed to participate. As a result,valid data concerning 1,557 learners’ strategy use and learning achievement were obtained.
The SILL, which consists of 50 items, was used to measure strategy use. All items were translated into
Japanese by three Japanese teachers of English, and revised through a pilot study to some Junior high school
students. A C-test was made for the study. A tale from Chang (1969) was selected for the text. SPSS 10.0 andAmos 4.0 were used for data analysis.

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The Analyses and the Results
Descriptive statistics from the C-test are shown in Table 1. The distribution of subjects’ learning achievement can be regarded as a normal distribution, because skewness and kurtosis are near zero and the scores are welldeviated from the mean and the standardised deviation (S.D.) can be judged appropriate. This indicates that theresults of the survey can explain Japanese high school EFL learners’ characteristics well, as it draws on a large
number of samples from different backgrounds.

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics for the C-test Score

Total

n

Full Score

Mean

S. D.

Skewness

Kurtosis

1557

64.0

30.8

8.4

-0.3

0.3

The learners’ responses to each question item of strategy use are shown in Appendix 1, and Appendix 2
presents the correlation matrix, the covariance matrix, and the variances of each variable. Though these tables takemuch space, I include them here as they are essential for any further research.
Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) were computed several times, following the important points of decision(Maeda 2000, Maeda and Yamato 2000). Missing values were eliminated by the pairwise method. Twenty-eightitems from SILL were then extracted as being efficient ones for the analysis with six latent factors assumed behindthem (Table 2). In other words, 22 variables were eliminated because some of them were too biased or the goodness-of-fit indexes of the model were not acceptable to others. The number of latent factors was decided from thepoint of view of such indexes and original number six, which Oxford (1990) suggests.
A Confirmative Factor Analysis (CFA) using the ML for the estimation of missing values indicated that themodel with six factors and 28 variables is acceptable to explain the obtained data quite well (CFI = .977, RMSEA= .062).
In order to examine the contribution of each factor to the learning achievement, Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was performed. The variable named “Achievement,” which is subjects’ C-test score, was added to theprevious CFA model. Indexes of goodness of fit indicates that the model (Figure 1) is acceptable in terms of modelfit (CFI=.978, RMSEA=.061). Rectangles refer to observed variables, ovals factors as unobserved variables, andcircles errors or a distribution of measurement respectively. Each an arrow with a single point refers to the effectfrom a variable at the start to another variable at the end. An arrow with points on both ends indicates correlations.

SummaryThis survey can be assumed to have accomplished the aims mentioned above. Some points worthy ofmention are the following: 1) Generally, subjects don’t use the language learning strategies included in the SILL.
Therefore, there would remain some possibility to revise the inventory to investigate their strategy use. 2) The sixfactor model of Oxford (1990) approximately fits the obtained data. However, some items deviated from this anda reorganisation of the items seemed necessary. 3) Some of the strategy groups showed nagative or little effect onlearning achievement. Since strategy use was not very frequent, further investigation is needed.
Apart from these remaining issues, the main aim was to present sufficient reliable data to be re-analysed. It
is hoped that this paper will help further research on language learning strategies.

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Table 2. EFA Result of Six Factors with 28 Observed Variables (ML, Promax Rotation)
QS01

.30

.24

-.05

-.12

.09

.11

.33

QS02

.03

.15

.05

.03

.31

.04

.27

QS03

.24

.04

-.20

-.15

.68

.00

.52

QS04

-.15

-.04

.03

-.05

.74

.06

.44

QS10

.66

.07

.12

-.13

-.06

-.19

.41

QS11

-.21

.07

.36

.26

.25

-.06

.39

QS12

.35

-.02

.34

.06

.10

-.16

.35

QS15

.32

-.09

.25

.08

-.02

-.03

.21

QS18

.42

.32

.00

-.04

-.11

.05

.38

QS19

-.11

.58

-.12

.14

.12

.00

.33

QS20

.08

.80

-.06

-.01

-.13

.00

.52

QS21

.03

.59

-.03

.05

-.03

.01

.35

QS22

-.02

.33

.18

.03

.02

.04

.25

QS23

-.10

.34

.20

.08

.05

.04

.28

QS24

.36

.30

.05

-.06

.09

-.09

.39

QS25

.49

-.13

-.04

.18

.12

.04

.31

QS29

.64

.09

-.14

-.01

.04

.06

.46

QS31

.33

.08

.32

.03

.04

.02

.49

QS32

.32

-.05

.42

.04

.07

-.06

.41

QS33

-.16

-.09

.85

.01

.03

.00

.54

QS34

.03

.06

.64

-.12

-.14

.11

.42

QS38

.12

-.06

.59

-.14

-.12

.28

.50

QS39

-.19

.13

.14

.05

-.03

.60

.46

QS40

-.01

-.05

.11

.02

.11

.65

.59

QS41

.32

-.09

-.06

.04

.11

.43

.43

QS45

.88

-.13

-.14

.14

-.11

.00

.53

QS46

-.10

.17

-.04

.86

-.06

.03

.73

QS48

.40

-.06

-.08

.61

-.13

.04

.47

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Figure 1. SEM Result (Standardised solution)

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References
Chang, I.C. (1969). Tales from old china. New York: Random House.
Maeda, H. (2000). Kouseigainen no datousei no kensho: Nihon no eigo kyouikugaku kenkyuu ni okeru keikou totenbo. JLTA Journal. 3. 119-126.
Maeda, H. & K. Yamato. (2000). Learner strategy use and learning achievement: An analysis by structural
equation modelling. Language Laboratory. 37. 143-162.
Oxford, R.L. (1990). Language learning strategies: What every teacher should know. New York: Newbury House
Publishers.

Appendix 1. Frequency Distribution and Descriptive Statistics of Items
item

1

2

3

4

5

n

Mean

S.D.

Skew‑

Kurto‑

ness

sis

item

1

2

3

4

5

n

Mean

S.D.

Skew‑ Kurto‑
ness

sis

QS01

33.8

28.0

28.6

7.9

1.7

1555

2.2

1.0

0.5

-0.6

QS26

30.6

35.3

22.5

7.5

4.1

1555

2.2

1.1

0.8

0.0

QS02

27.4

39.9

23.4

7.5

1.9

1557

2.2

1.0

0.6

0.0

QS27

23.5

32.7

29.5

10.5

3.9

1555

2.4

1.1

0.5

-0.4

QS03

18.2

26.0

30.7

17.4

7.7

1554

2.7

1.2

0.2

-0.8

QS28

37.5

35.1

20.1

5.7

1.7

1554

2.0

1.0

0.8

0.2

QS04

26.0

32.2

26.8

11.0

3.9

1557

2.4

1.1

0.5

-0.5

QS29

14.9

19.3

36.6

21.1

8.0

1553

2.9

1.1

0.0

-0.7

QS05

44.3

37.1

12.6

4.2

1.9

1557

1.8

0.9

1.2

1.3

QS30

25.0

37.8

25.4

9.4

2.4

1557

2.3

1.0

0.6

-0.2

QS06

52.6

25.9

14.7

5.2

1.5

1555

1.8

1.0

1.2

0.7

QS31

20.8

31.0

33.4

10.8

3.9

1553

2.5

1.1

0.4

-0.4

QS07

64.2

23.2

8.7

2.6

1.3

1557

1.5

0.9

1.8

3.1

QS32

15.6

30.7

35.1

13.9

4.6

1555

2.6

1.1

0.3

-0.4

QS08

37.9

36.5

19.6

4.9

1.0

1553

2.0

0.9

0.8

0.1

QS33

36.0

32.5

23.3

5.7

2.6

1555

2.1

1.0

0.8

0.1

QS09

36.3

32.8

22.5

6.8

1.5

1554

2.1

1.0

0.7

-0.2

QS34

33.3

39.6

19.2

5.7

2.2

1557

2.0

1.0

0.9

0.4

QS10

9.7

13.8

28.6

25.3

22.6

1555

3.4

1.2

-0.3

-0.8

QS35

50.0

35.2

11.3

3.1

0.4

1557

1.7

0.8

1.1

1.0

QS11

30.6

33.0

21.6

8.4

6.4

1552

2.3

1.2

0.7

-0.2

QS36

45.6

35.9

13.4

3.9

1.2

1555

1.8

0.9

1.1

1.1

QS12

24.2

31.2

27.9

11.6

5.1

1556

2.4

1.1

0.5

-0.5

QS37

44.4

31.7

14.9

4.5

4.5

1555

1.9

1.1

1.2

0.9

QS13

23.1

36.0

26.9

10.8

3.2

1555

2.4

1.1

0.5

-0.3

QS38

31.3

28.9

28.3

7.6

4.0

1557

2.2

1.1

0.6

-0.3

QS14

42.0

34.2

16.5

4.9

2.4

1557

1.9

1.0

1.1

0.7

QS39

32.9

34.2

23.1

7.3

2.5

1556

2.1

1.0

0.7

-0.1

QS15

29.6

28.0

23.3

11.9

7.2

1556

2.4

1.2

0.6

‑0.7

QS40

33.6

35.5

21.8

6.0

3.2

1554

2.1

1.0

0.8

0.2

QS16

56.9

26.8

11.1

2.8

2.5

1556

1.7

1.0

1.6

2.3

QS41

25.3

27.6

27.8

12.2

7.0

1555

2.5

1.2

0.4

‑0.7

QS17

54.5

28.5

11.5

3.0

2.5

1556

1.7

1.0

1.5

2.0

QS42

30.5

30.0

24.7

10.1

4.7

1557

2.3

1.1

0.6

‑0.4

QS18

24.4

24.7

26.7

16.1

8.2

1557

2.6

1.2

0.3

‑0.9

QS43

68.9

21.5

6.7

2.2

0.7

1556

1.4

0.8

2.0

4.1

QS19

26.6

37.6

23.5

8.9

3.4

1554

2.3

1.1

0.7

‑0.1

QS44

58.7

28.0

11.0

1.5

0.7

1556

1.6

0.8

1.4

2.0

QS20

22.8

28.5

30.9

13.4

4.4

1557

2.5

1.1

0.3

‑0.6

QS45

16.3

18.0

30.8

21.6

13.3

1556

3.0

1.3

0.0

‑0.9

QS21

23.1

29.7

29.6

13.1

4.5

1555

2.5

1.1

0.4

‑0.6

QS46

38.5

30.1

19.7

8.0

3.7

1556

2.1

1.1

0.8

‑0.1

QS22

22.9

36.5

27.3

10.0

3.3

1555

2.3

1.0

0.5

‑0.3

QS47

45.8

32.1

17.0

3.9

1.3

1556

1.8

0.9

1.0

0.6

QS23

32.4

38.4

21.2

6.4

1.6

1555

2.1

1.0

0.7

0.1

QS48

41.6

27.6

20.1

7.4

3.3

1555

2.0

1.1

0.9

0.0

QS24

17.7

25.8

38.6

12.7

5.1

1554

2.6

1.1

0.2

‑0.5

QS49

41.4

33.4

18.8

4.6

1.8

1556

1.9

1.0

0.9

0.4

QS25

17.4

21.1

31.7

19.7

10.1

1556

2.8

1.2

0.1

‑0.9

•@ Q S 5 0

35.3

31.6

23.4

6.6

3.1

1556

2.1

1.1

0.8

0.0

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Appendix 2. Correlation Matrix (Lower Triangle), Covariance Matrix(Upper Triangle), and Covariances (Diagonals)
QS01

QS02

QS03

QS04

QS05

QS06

QS07

QS08

QS09

QS10

QS11

QS12

QS13

QS14

QS15

QS16

QS17

QS01

1.07

0.37

0.44

0.26

0.17

0.06

0.10

0.29

0.19

0.38

0.17

0.32

0.33

0.20

0.28

0.08

0.23

QS02

0.37

0.95

0.37

0.34

0.21

0.17

0.15

0.22

0.18

0.21

0.29

0.28

0.28

0.29

0.19

0.18

0.24

QS03

0.36

0.32

1.38

0.55

0.23

0.14

0.13

0.22

0.27

0.42

0.26

0.41

0.36

0.23

0.24

0.13

0.24

QS04

0.23

0.32

0.43

1.20

0.33

0.15

0.23

0.12

0.27

0.18

0.40

0.26

0.33

0.32

0.20

0.28

0.28

QS05

0.17

0.23

0.21

0.32

0.87

0.16

0.20

0.09

0.22

0.07

0.33

0.17

0.23

0.22

0.14

0.22

0.18

QS06

0.06

0.18

0.12

0.14

0.17

0.97

0.17

0.24

0.15

0.24

0.13

0.25

0.14

0.21

0.17

0.10

0.20

QS07

0.11

0.18

0.13

0.24

0.25

0.20

0.73

0.15

0.18

0.01

0.28

0.19

0.24

0.26

0.19

0.24

0.19

QS08

0.31

0.24

0.20

0.12

0.10

0.26

0.19

0.86

0.22

0.33

0.17

0.35

0.22

0.19

0.30

0.14

0.23

QS09

0.18

0.18

0.23

0.24

0.24

0.16

0.21

0.23

1.00

0.22

0.24

0.32

0.27

0.19

0.23

0.21

0.20

QS10

0.29

0.17

0.29

0.13

0.06

0.19

0.01

0.28

0.18

1.54

0.11

0.56

0.30

0.15

0.30

-0.02

0.14

QS11

0.14

0.25

0.19

0.31

0.31

0.12

0.28

0.16

0.21

0.07

1.36

0.49

0.43

0.52

0.28

0.49

0.28

QS12

0.28

0.25

0.31

0.21

0.16

0.23

0.20

0.34

0.28

0.40

0.37

1.27

0.39

0.40

0.45

0.27

0.34

QS13

0.30

0.28

0.29

0.28

0.24

0.13

0.27

0.23

0.25

0.23

0.35

0.33

1.10

0.46

0.37

0.28

0.33

QS14

0.20

0.30

0.20

0.29

0.23

0.21

0.30

0.21

0.19

0.12

0.45

0.35

0.44

0.99

0.41

0.45

0.41

QS15

0.22

0.16

0.17

0.15

0.12

0.14

0.18

0.26

0.19

0.19

0.19

0.33

0.29

0.34

1.50

0.35

0.40

QS16

0.08

0.20

0.12

0.27

0.25

0.11

0.30

0.16

0.22

-0.02

0.44

0.25

0.28

0.47

0.30

0.91

0.40

QS17

0.24

0.25

0.21

0.26

0.20

0.21

0.24

0.26

0.21

0.12

0.25

0.32

0.32

0.42

0.34

0.44

0.92

QS18

0.35

0.25

0.32

0.20

0.13

0.15

0.07

0.29

0.19

0.36

0.13

0.29

0.31

0.21

0.25

0.12

0.26

QS19

0.20

0.24

0.31

0.27

0.29

0.18

0.23

0.15

0.24

0.15

0.27

0.20

0.29

0.23

0.12

0.21

0.19

QS20

0.38

0.28

0.33

0.27

0.25

0.08

0.16

0.17

0.21

0.29

0.24

0.30

0.29

0.23

0.19

0.16

0.18

QS21

0.26

0.22

0.28

0.26

0.23

0.13

0.18

0.20

0.21

0.22

0.26

0.24

0.31

0.26

0.19

0.21

0.21

QS22

0.19

0.27

0.22

0.21

0.28

0.12

0.21

0.25

0.23

0.17

0.26

0.22

0.24

0.28

0.15

0.19

0.22

QS23

0.26

0.26

0.22

0.26

0.20

0.12

0.23

0.23

0.22

0.15

0.24

0.23

0.31

0.31

0.20

0.23

0.24

QS24

0.36

0.27

0.35

0.27

0.13

0.12

0.11

0.28

0.22

0.35

0.20

0.30

0.32

0.24

0.22

0.15

0.23

QS25

0.21

0.17

0.28

0.21

0.10

0.13

0.16

0.13

0.17

0.25

0.23

0.25

0.26

0.28

0.28

0.16

0.22

QS26

0.14

0.20

0.17

0.21

0.22

0.09

0.24

0.12

0.16

0.10

0.31

0.18

0.23

0.30

0.14

0.30

0.22

QS27

0.19

0.13

0.17

0.11

0.12

0.10

0.05

0.15

0.09

0.13

0.06

0.14

0.13

0.09

0.17

0.08

0.14

QS28

0.21

0.21

0.20

0.26

0.26

0.14

0.22

0.12

0.18

0.08

0.30

0.15

0.28

0.27

0.12

0.24

0.22

QS29

0.34

0.24

0.38

0.21

0.12

0.09

0.06

0.24

0.22

0.40

0.13

0.32

0.29

0.21

0.19

0.07

0.21

QS30

0.25

0.32

0.22

0.31

0.27

0.12

0.22

0.20

0.22

0.13

0.40

0.24

0.37

0.45

0.20

0.34

0.32

QS31

0.38

0.33

0.36

0.30

0.23

0.15

0.16

0.33

0.26

0.34

0.27

0.36

0.36

0.33

0.29

0.24

0.30

QS32

0.27

0.24

0.30

0.25

0.20

0.13

0.13

0.28

0.24

0.30

0.27

0.35

0.30

0.31

0.26

0.22

0.28

QS33

0.18

0.25

0.15

0.28

0.24

0.15

0.26

0.24

0.21

0.15

0.37

0.29

0.24

0.36

0.25

0.36

0.31

QS34

0.28

0.25

0.20

0.18

0.24

0.21

0.20

0.43

0.19

0.24

0.26

0.33

0.27

0.26

0.22

0.22

0.29

QS35

0.16

0.24

0.12

0.26

0.29

0.20

0.29

0.25

0.25

0.09

0.39

0.29

0.30

0.42

0.25

0.39

0.36

QS36

0.29

0.28

0.24

0.28

0.25

0.19

0.23

0.29

0.25

0.19

0.35

0.37

0.34

0.40

0.35

0.40

0.39

QS37

0.29

0.27

0.20

0.27

0.18

0.16

0.23

0.30

0.21

0.19

0.32

0.34

0.28

0.40

0.31

0.38

0.39

QS38

0.31

0.23

0.22

0.21

0.17

0.20

0.19

0.33

0.21

0.28

0.27

0.33

0.26

0.33

0.28

0.24

0.31

QS39

0.23

0.23

0.19

0.26

0.29

0.13

0.25

0.19

0.23

0.11

0.31

0.22

0.28

0.31

0.19

0.23

0.29

QS40

0.30

0.31

0.28

0.31

0.25

0.16

0.27

0.30

0.21

0.19

0.33

0.32

0.36

0.44

0.25

0.29

0.33

QS41

0.30

0.23

0.32

0.26

0.20

0.14

0.17

0.24

0.24

0.27

0.19

0.30

0.32

0.26

0.27

0.15

0.25

QS42

0.14

0.14

0.15

0.19

0.19

0.11

0.17

0.17

0.19

0.14

0.22

0.17

0.19

0.15

0.13

0.14

0.18

QS43

-0.04

0.11

0.03

0.22

0.26

0.12

0.30

0.08

0.20

-0.09

0.31

0.07

0.16

0.28

0.03

0.32

0.20

QS44

0.20

0.15

0.16

0.22

0.14

0.15

0.19

0.18

0.20

0.11

0.19

0.22

0.21

0.23

0.17

0.15

0.26

QS45

0.31

0.19

0.25

0.13

0.04

0.12

0.03

0.24

0.14

0.42

0.07

0.31

0.21

0.15

0.29

0.01

0.18

QS46

0.06

0.21

0.07

0.22

0.27

0.12

0.25

0.09

0.19

-0.03

0.41

0.20

0.27

0.35

0.16

0.35

0.24

QS47

0.20

0.23

0.18

0.20

0.21

0.21

0.25

0.26

0.23

0.14

0.29

0.36

0.30

0.41

0.30

0.32

0.35

QS48

0.18

0.18

0.15

0.12

0.13

0.20

0.17

0.19

0.17

0.11

0.23

0.24

0.26

0.29

0.24

0.23

0.27

QS49

0.16

0.23

0.19

0.24

0.17

0.15

0.20

0.23

0.21

0.14

0.31

0.30

0.32

0.43

0.24

0.32

0.33

QS50

0.26

0.21

0.23

0.26

0.18

0.14

0.23

0.25

0.27

0.20

0.29

0.32

0.30

0.32

0.37

0.31

0.36

C-test

0.13

0.10

0.08

0.08

0.01

-0.02

0.02

0.09

0.01

0.08

0.09

0.08

0.08

0.12

0.10

0.07

0.11

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Appendix 2. Correlation Matrix (Lower Triangle), Covariance Matrix(Upper Triangle), and Covariances (Diagonals) (Cont’d)
QS18

QS19

QS20

QS21

QS22

QS23

QS24

QS25

QS26

QS27

QS28

QS29

QS30

QS31

QS32

QS33

QS34

QS35

0.45

0.22

0.44

0.30

0.21

0.26

0.40

0.26

0.16

0.21

0.22

0.41

0.26

0.41

0.29

0.19

0.28

0.14

0.30

0.25

0.30

0.24

0.27

0.25

0.28

0.20

0.21

0.14

0.20

0.26

0.31

0.34

0.25

0.25

0.24

0.20

0.47

0.38

0.43

0.37

0.27

0.25

0.45

0.40

0.21

0.22

0.23

0.51

0.26

0.45

0.37

0.18

0.22

0.11

0.27

0.31

0.32

0.32

0.24

0.27

0.31

0.28

0.24

0.13

0.28

0.27

0.34

0.35

0.28

0.32

0.19

0.24

0.15

0.29

0.26

0.24

0.27

0.19

0.13

0.11

0.22

0.12

0.24

0.12

0.26

0.23

0.20

0.23

0.21

0.23

0.18

0.18

0.08

0.15

0.12

0.11

0.13

0.15

0.09

0.10

0.14

0.10

0.12

0.16

0.13

0.15

0.20

0.16

0.08

0.21

0.15

0.18

0.19

0.19

0.10

0.16

0.22

0.05

0.19

0.06

0.19

0.14

0.12

0.23

0.16

0.20

0.34

0.15

0.18

0.20

0.24

0.20

0.28

0.15

0.12

0.14

0.11

0.25

0.19

0.33

0.27

0.23

0.39

0.19

0.24

0.25

0.24

0.24

0.24

0.22

0.24

0.21

0.17

0.10

0.18

0.25

0.22

0.27

0.25

0.21

0.19

0.20

0.56

0.19

0.40

0.30

0.22

0.18

0.47

0.38

0.13

0.17

0.09

0.57

0.16

0.45

0.39

0.19

0.29

0.09

0.19

0.33

0.31

0.34

0.32

0.27

0.26

0.33

0.38

0.07

0.34

0.17

0.47

0.34

0.34

0.44

0.30

0.38

0.41

0.24

0.37

0.30

0.26

0.26

0.37

0.34

0.22

0.17

0.17

0.41

0.27

0.43

0.41

0.34

0.36

0.27

0.41

0.32

0.34

0.36

0.26

0.31

0.36

0.33

0.26

0.14

0.28

0.35

0.39

0.40

0.33

0.25

0.28

0.26

0.26

0.24

0.26

0.28

0.29

0.30

0.26

0.34

0.32

0.10

0.27

0.24

0.46

0.35

0.32

0.37

0.26

0.34

0.38

0.15

0.26

0.25

0.19

0.23

0.29

0.41

0.18

0.23

0.14

0.27

0.25

0.38

0.33

0.32

0.26

0.25

0.14

0.21

0.17

0.22

0.19

0.21

0.15

0.19

0.30

0.08

0.22

0.07

0.33

0.24

0.22

0.35

0.20

0.30

0.31

0.19

0.19

0.23

0.22

0.23

0.24

0.26

0.23

0.15

0.20

0.23

0.32

0.30

0.28

0.31

0.27

0.28

1.54

0.33

0.55

0.41

0.31

0.27

0.46

0.43

0.20

0.29

0.24

0.57

0.27

0.47

0.46

0.28

0.38

0.15

0.25

1.10

0.46

0.39

0.28

0.27

0.30

0.21

0.30

0.12

0.28

0.27

0.30

0.27

0.27

0.23

0.19

0.23

0.40

0.40

1.24

0.55

0.34

0.32

0.45

0.26

0.25

0.17

0.32

0.40

0.34

0.43

0.33

0.30

0.32

0.17

0.29

0.33

0.44

1.24

0.34

0.32

0.39

0.29

0.26

0.12

0.30

0.34

0.33

0.41

0.31

0.26

0.26

0.17

0.24

0.25

0.30

0.29

1.08

0.33

0.37

0.23

0.24

0.26

0.26

0.26

0.31

0.34

0.33

0.29

0.28

0.20

0.23

0.27

0.29

0.30

0.33

0.93

0.33

0.19

0.22

0.13

0.30

0.23

0.35

0.30

0.28

0.32

0.25

0.23

0.34

0.26

0.38

0.32

0.33

0.31

1.15

0.36

0.20

0.20

0.28

0.47

0.32

0.47

0.39

0.23

0.28

0.18

0.28

0.16

0.19

0.21

0.18

0.16

0.27

1.48

0.38

0.18

0.18

0.50

0.29

0.39

0.41

0.24

0.23

0.23

0.15

0.27

0.21

0.22

0.21

0.21

0.17

0.29

1.16

0.12

0.28

0.29

0.39

0.29

0.25

0.31

0.21

0.25

0.21

0.10

0.14

0.10

0.23

0.13

0.17

0.14

0.10

1.15

0.13

0.30

0.11

0.20

0.13

0.07

0.13

0.08

0.20

0.27

0.30

0.27

0.26

0.31

0.26

0.15

0.26

0.13

0.96

0.24

0.38

0.34

0.27

0.26

0.18

0.25

0.40

0.22

0.32

0.27

0.22

0.21

0.39

0.36

0.23

0.25

0.21

1.31

0.34

0.52

0.43

0.18

0.29

0.13

0.22

0.28

0.30

0.29

0.29

0.36

0.30

0.24

0.35

0.10

0.38

0.30

1.03

0.47

0.36

0.42

0.29

0.32

0.36

0.24

0.37

0.35

0.31

0.30

0.41

0.30

0.25

0.18

0.33

0.43

0.44

1.12

0.52

0.42

0.44

0.26

0.35

0.24

0.28

0.26

0.30

0.28

0.34

0.32

0.22

0.12

0.26

0.36

0.34

0.47

1.11

0.46

0.35

0.24

0.22

0.21

0.26

0.23

0.27

0.33

0.21

0.19

0.28

0.06

0.26

0.15

0.40

0.39

0.43

1.05

0.45

0.33

0.31

0.19

0.29

0.24

0.27

0.27

0.27

0.19

0.20

0.13

0.19

0.26

0.29

0.42

0.34

0.45

0.95

0.29

0.15

0.27

0.19

0.18

0.23

0.29

0.20

0.23

0.28

0.09

0.31

0.13

0.39

0.29

0.28

0.40

0.36

0.67

0.31

0.22

0.28

0.28

0.26

0.29

0.30

0.24

0.26

0.16

0.29

0.26

0.40

0.42

0.36

0.43

0.41

0.52

0.27

0.15

0.26

0.25

0.25

0.31

0.29

0.25

0.21

0.13

0.23

0.26

0.33

0.43

0.38

0.50

0.43

0.41

0.30

0.19

0.29

0.26

0.26

0.28

0.31

0.27

0.18

0.15

0.22

0.31

0.30

0.47

0.38

0.46

0.46

0.34

0.24

0.24

0.28

0.25

0.25

0.25

0.20

0.20

0.25

0.09

0.24

0.22

0.36

0.32

0.30

0.34

0.34

0.38

0.31

0.24

0.28

0.27

0.31

0.31

0.28

0.32

0.24

0.17

0.32

0.33

0.41

0.40

0.36

0.38

0.35

0.40

0.30

0.22

0.27

0.24

0.23

0.26

0.29

0.32

0.17

0.14

0.20

0.35

0.26

0.40

0.33

0.26

0.29

0.25

0.19

0.24

0.22

0.21

0.14

0.17

0.13

0.13

0.16

0.06

0.18

0.19

0.20

0.24

0.22

0.22

0.23

0.22

0.00

0.21

0.10

0.13

0.15

0.25

0.05

0.04

0.19

0.02

0.23

-0.05

0.29

0.12

0.10

0.27

0.20

0.33

0.18

0.19

0.16

0.15

0.15

0.1=9

0.23

0.17

0.14

0.09

0.24

0.18

0.19

0.25

0.25

0.24

0.23

0.33

0.36

0.10

0.23

0.18

0.16

0.10

0.33

0.38

0.07

0.17

0.09

0.47

0.14

0.33

0.34

0.15

0.18

0.13

0.10

0.25

0.14

0.16

0.20

0.27

0.09

0.22

0.28

0.04

0.27

0.10

0.36

0.26

0.23

0.31

0.18

0.39

0.20

0.21

0.21

0.18

0.19

0.28

0.20

0.21

0.21

0.18

0.23

0.21

0.35

0.30

0.29

0.34

0.31

0.41

0.19

0.13

0.13

0.17

0.14

0.16

0.16

0.31

0.19

0.10

0.22

0.23

0.27

0.32

0.27

0.21

0.18

0.29

0.24

0.15

0.17

0.17

0.19

0.27

0.20

0.25

0.28

0.13

0.23

0.22

0.36

0.29

0.27

0.32

0.23

0.34

0.29

0.19

0.27

0.20

0.22

0.25

0.30

0.28

0.23

0.13

0.23

0.27

0.33

0.40

0.37

0.35

0.28

0.34

0.08

0.02

0.06

0.03

0.12

0.06

0.12

0.14

0.07

0.05

0.04

0.17

0.13

0.09

0.09

0.11

0.06

QS36

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Appendix 2. Correlation Matrix (Lower Triangle), Covariance Matrix(Upper Triangle), and Covariances (Diagonals) (Cont’d)
Q36

QS37

QS38

QS39

QS40

QS41

QS42

QS43

QS44

QS45

QS46

QS47

QS48

QS49

QS50

C-test

0.27

0.32

0.35

0.25

0.32

0.37

0.17

-0.03

0.17

0.40

0.07

0.19

0.21

0.16

0.28

1.15

0.24

0.28

0.24

0.23

0.31

0.27

0.15

0.09

0.11

0.24

0.23

0.21

0.20

0.22

0.22

0.78

0.26

0.26

0.28

0.23

0.34

0.45

0.20

0.03

0.15

0.38

0.10

0.20

0.19

0.22

0.29

0.79

0.28

0.32

0.25

0.30

0.35

0.35

0.24

0.18

0.19

0.18

0.27

0.21

0.15

0.25

0.30

0.72

0.21

0.18

0.17

0.28

0.24

0.22

0.20

0.19

0.10

0.05

0.28

0.18

0.13

0.16

0.18

0.05

0.17

0.17

0.21

0.14

0.16

0.17

0.12

0.09

0.12

0.15

0.13

0.19

0.22

0.14

0.15

-0.20

0.18

0.22

0.18

0.22

0.24

0.17

0.16

0.20

0.13

0.04

0.23

0.20

0.16

0.17

0.21

0.16

0.24

0.30

0.33

0.18

0.29

0.26

0.18

0.05

0.13

0.28

0.09

0.22

0.19

0.20

0.25

0.67

0.22

0.22

0.23

0.24

0.21

0.28

0.22

0.15

0.16

0.18

0.21

0.22

0.18

0.20

0.29

0.04

0.21

0.26

0.37

0.14

0.24

0.39

0.20

-0.09

0.11

0.65

-0.04

0.16

0.15

0.16

0.26

0.83

0.37

0.41

0.35

0.38

0.40

0.26

0.29

0.28

0.18

0.11

0.53

0.31

0.30

0.35

0.36

0.86

0.38

0.42

0.41

0.26

0.38

0.41

0.22

0.06

0.20

0.43

0.25

0.38

0.30

0.33

0.38

0.76

0.32

0.31

0.30

0.30

0.40

0.40

0.22

0.13

0.18

0.28

0.32

0.29

0.30

0.32

0.33

0.67

0.36

0.43

0.36

0.31

0.45

0.31

0.17

0.22

0.18

0.19

0.38

0.38

0.32

0.42

0.34

0.97

0.39

0.40

0.37

0.23

0.32

0.40

0.18

0.03

0.17

0.44

0.21

0.34

0.32

0.29

0.48

0.99

0.34

0.39

0.25

0.23

0.29

0.17

0.16

0.24

0.12

0.01

0.37

0.28

0.24

0.29

0.31

0.55

0.33

0.41

0.33

0.28

0.33

0.28

0.20

0.15

0.20

0.22

0.26

0.31

0.28

0.31

0.37

0.92

0.34

0.36

0.41

0.31

0.41

0.44

0.27

0.00

0.18

0.56

0.14

0.23

0.26

0.28

0.38

0.82

0.21

0.17

0.22

0.26

0.27

0.27

0.29

0.17

0.16

0.13

0.29

0.20

0.15

0.15

0.21

0.21

0.28

0.32

0.35

0.32

0.32

0.35

0.28

0.09

0.15

0.32

0.18

0.22

0.16

0.18

0.32

0.54

0.28

0.30

0.32

0.29

0.32

0.32

0.27

0.11

0.13

0.25

0.20

0.19

0.21

0.18

0.24

0.30

0.24

0.28

0.29

0.27

0.33

0.28

0.17

0.12

0.12

0.21

0.23

0.18

0.16

0.20

0.24

1.04

0.25

0.33

0.29

0.25

0.31

0.29

0.19

0.18

0.15

0.12

0.28

0.26

0.17

0.26

0.26

0.51

0.29

0.34

0.36

0.22

0.31

0.37

0.16

0.04

0.19

0.44

0.11

0.20

0.19

0.21

0.34

1.09

0.27

0.33

0.36

0.25

0.40

0.46

0.18

0.04

0.17

0.58

0.29

0.24

0.42

0.30

0.36

1.42

0.25

0.25

0.21

0.28

0.27

0.22

0.20

0.16

0.12

0.09

0.34

0.21

0.22

0.29

0.27

0.60

0.15

0.15

0.18

0.11

0.19

0.18

0.08

0.02

0.07

0.23

0.05

0.18

0.12

0.14

0.15

0.41

0.26

0.25

0.23

0.24

0.32

0.23

0.20

0.17

0.19

0.12

0.29

0.21

0.24

0.22

0.24

0.30

0.27

0.32

0.39

0.26

0.39

0.48

0.24

-0.04

0.17

0.67

0.13

0.22

0.28

0.24

0.32

1.63

0.36

0.37

0.33

0.37

0.43

0.32

0.23

0.23

0.16

0.18

0.40

0.33

0.30

0.36

0.36

1.10

0.40

0.50

0.54

0.35

0.44

0.50

0.29

0.09

0.21

0.44

0.30

0.30

0.37

0.30

0.44

0.79

0.35

0.43

0.44

0.32

0.39

0.42

0.26

0.08

0.21

0.45

0.26

0.29

0.31

0.28

0.42

0.83

0.40

0.55

0.51

0.36

0.41

0.32

0.26

0.21

0.19

0.20

0.35

0.32

0.24

0.32

0.38

0.95

0.36

0.46

0.49

0.35

0.35

0.34

0.26

0.15

0.18

0.23

0.19

0.28

0.19

0.22

0.29

0.47

0.38

0.36

0.31

0.32

0.34

0.25

0.20

0.21

0.22

0.13

0.35

0.31

0.26

0.27

0.29

0.45

0.81

0.55

0.45

0.34

0.41

0.32

0.19

0.15

0.21

0.24

0.29

0.31

0.29

0.31

0.37

0.82

0.56

1.17

0.66

0.39

0.49

0.39

0.19

0.17

0.26

0.30

0.30

0.33

0.29

0.32

0.46

1.60

0.45

0.56

1.20

0.46

0.52

0.46

0.29

0.11

0.26

0.37

0.22

0.36

0.30

0.30

0.40

1.37

0.37

0.35

0.41

1.06

0.54

0.44

0.35

0.19

0.22

0.21

0.38

0.29

0.27

0.29

0.31

0.58

0.45

0.44

0.46

0.51

1.07

0.60

0.25

0.18

0.22

0.36

0.38

0.37

0.35

0.40

0.40

0.73

0.30

0.30

0.35

0.36

0.49

1.42

0.39

0.09

0.28

0.58

0.31

0.37

0.39

0.36

0.44

1.17

0.18

0.15

0.24

0.30

0.21

0.29

1.30

0.17

0.23

0.21

0.29

0.28

0.30

0.19

0.22

0.19

0.22

0.21

0.13

0.24

0.23

0.09

0.20

0.60

0.19

-0.11

0.29

0.19

0.16

0.18

0.16

-0.14

0.30

0.30

0.29

0.26

0.26

0.29

0.25

0.31

0.64

0.20

0.15

0.23

0.17

0.18

0.24

0.09

0.21

0.22

0.27

0.16

0.27

0.39

0.14

-0.12

0.20

1.58

0.17

0.34

0.45

0.32

0.40

1.38

0.29

0.25

0.18

0.33

0.33

0.24

0.23

0.34

0.17

0.12

1.23

0.37

0.62

0.42

0.36

0.36

0.37

0.33

0.36

0.30

0.38

0.33

0.27

0.27

0.30

0.29

0.36

0.87

0.35

0.47

0.37

0.56

0.29

0.25

0.25

0.23

0.31

0.30

0.24

0.18

0.19

0.33

0.51

0.34

1.21

0.46

0.44

0.84

0.36

0.30

0.28

0.29

0.39

0.31

0.17

0.24

0.23

0.26

0.39

0.51

0.43

0.94

0.46

0.67

0.39

0.40

0.35

0.28

0.36

0.35

0.18

0.19

0.28

0.30

0.31

0.37

0.38

0.44

1.12

0.53

0.11

0.18

0.15

0.07

0.08

0.12

0.02

-0.02

0.01

0.13

0.04

0.07

0.09

0.08

0.06

70.54

Note: Correlation matrix is shown in the lower triangle, covariance matrix in the upper triangle, and vairance in the diagonals.

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Laputa Project:
The Potential of the 3D Interactive Education System
in College English Education
Satomi Takahashi
Toshihiro Shimizu
Narahiko Inoue
Yubun Suzuki
Shoichi Yamauchi
Kyushu University, Japan
Abstract
In an effort to apply a form of networked multimedia to college English education, we set up the “Laputa
Project” in April 1999. In this project, we have been developing the educational application of the 3D Interactive Education System (3D-IES). The current study examined the effectiveness of the “3D virtual reality chat,”
one component of the 3D-IES, by focusing on its effects on “proficiency” and “class evaluation.” The improvement in students’ English proficiency was examined in the pretest-posttest design. Furthermore, class evaluation questionnaires were administered to the students at the end of the treatment. The two stages of experiments
revealed that no difference was observed between the 3D-IES classes and the regular English classes in terms of
the increase in students’ English proficiency. However, the more positive class evaluation was found for the 3DIES classes and, in particular, for the class that emphasized the use of 3D virtual space.

Introduction
In April 1999, we set up the “Laputa Project,” supported by a grant for Kyushu University Interdisciplinary
Programs in Education and Projects in Research Development. This project is intended to develop the educational
application of the Three-Dimensional Interactive Education System (3D-IES) in collaboration with the Nomura
Research Institute (NRI), NRI Network Communications, SONY, and SONY Marketing. The 3D-IES has threemajor components: (1) Chat in the 3D virtual reality space, (2) Nettutor (networked TOEIC exercises and sample
tests), and (3) Live lecture. Of the three, the 3D virtual reality chat has been applied to several English classes
offered at Kyushu University, and its effectiveness is being investigated. While the emerging outcomes are still
exploratory in nature, we will present parts of our findings here in an attempt to construct more effective tools forcollege English education. Henceforward, we will refer to the 3D virtual reality chat as the “3D-IES.”“Chat” Function in the 3D-IES
Unlike chat systems presently available in network environments, the 3D-IES provides us with opportunities
to “chat” with communication counterparts in 3D virtual reality space (see Figure 1). Specifically, we created a“virtual campus” on the Web (SONY Community Place browser), which currently consists of three chat rooms(Virtual Campus, Virtual Lab, Tunnel Park). Students can go into any of these chat rooms by projecting themselves
onto their “avatars,” graphically created animation characters. They can communicate in English with any other
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To contentschat participants in that particular space. Students use their own “handle names” which guarantee them anonymity.
This creates an environment in which students can express themselves freely without being embarrassed by what
they said under their own real identification. Currently, “chat” in the system is text-based, but research is under
way toward the realization of “oral chat.”

The Study
The current study was undertaken through two stages of experiments. Experiment 1 was conducted to
examine the effectiveness of the 3D-IES classes in comparison with regular English classes that did not make useof this particular system at all. In Experiment 2, we compared the performances observed in the following two
types of classes: the “integrated class,” which attempted to use the 3D space maximally along with the chatactivities, and the “chat-oriented classes,” which focused on the chat activities. In both experiments, the targets ofthe comparison were the effects on “proficiency” and “class evaluation.”©FLC Kyushu University, NRI, NRI Network Communications)Figure 1. 3D Space and Chat Logs
Experiment 1 (3D-IES classes vs. Regular classes)
Research Questions:
1.

Does the 3D-IES promote improvement in students’ English proficiency?

2

Does the 3D-IES influence students’ class evaluation?

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Method: First, all the subjects were students at Kyushu University, Japan. They took general English
classes from the authors in the year 2000. Table 1 summarizes the classes our subjects were assigned to. The 3DIES classes took place in the computer labs.
Second, the aim of both the 3D-IES classes and the regular classes was the same: teaching English discussion and debate used the same treatment material: “Taking Sides” (Motegi, et al. 2000), a textbook for discussion
and debate in English.

Table 1. Class assignment for Experiment 1
Class Type

NumberMajor

3E-IES86 (5 classes)

Literature (16), Science (20), Medicine (19), Science (16), Law (15)Regular86 (2 classes)

Pharmacology (39), Engineering (47)

Number of students shown in parenthesis.
Third, as the experimental materials, we used (1) the reading section of SLEP (the Secondary Level English
Proficiency developed by the ETS) for Research Question 1 and (2) a class evaluation questionnaire for Research
Question 2. The questionnaire includes the following questions:1
Q5:

Did you enjoy this class?

Q6:

Did you feel able to express yourself in English activity in this class?

Q7:

Did the classroom tasks hold your attention throughout the class?

Q8:

Do you think you were able to improve your overall English proficiency in this class?

Q9:

Do you think you were able to improve your English production skills in this class?

These questions could be answered according to a 5-point scale .
Results and Discussion; Figure 2 indicates the results of the pretest/posttest means of the SLEP (full score= 75) for the 3D-IES classes and the regular classes. For both groups, the posttest scores were substantially higher
than the pretest scores.2 However, the results of a two-way repeated measures ANOVA revealed that there was nota significant interaction effect of “Group x Proficiency” (F(1, 153) = .891, p = .3466). This statistically indicatedthat the students in these two types of classes could increase their English proficiency equally. We further performed a one-way ANCOVA with the pretest scores as a covariate. However, we could not detect any significant
treatment effects between the 3D-IES and the regular classes (F(1, 152) = 1.302, p = .2557). Based on this finding,Figure 2. 3D-IES vs. Regular (Proficiency)

ScoresScores

60
55
50
45

Pre

Post

3D-IES

52.84557.662

Regular49.39355.095SLEP
SLEP

Figure 2. 3D-IES vs. Regular (Proficiency)
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we cannot conclusively claim that the 3D-IES is more effective than the regular instruction in improving students’English proficiency (for Research Question 1). At the same time, we should also note some possible intervening
variables affecting the results. For example, the forms of instruction examined here might not have caused theincrease in the students’ proficiency; such an increase may be the result of more effective instruction in the other
English classes in which the students participated in this particular semester. Hence, we cannot definitely contend
that the 3D-IES is as effective as regular instruction in improving students’ proficiency or vice versa.
The findings for the class evaluation will be presented by focusing on Evaluation Questions 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.
For all five questions, the class evaluation from the 3D-IES classes surpassed that of the regular classes, and thedifferences here were all significant at p < .0001 (see Figure 3). Hence, we can definitely claim that the 3D-IES canenhance the students’ class evaluation to a greater extent than the regular instruction (for Research Question 2). In
particular, the highly positive responses to Questions 5, 6, 7, and 9 indicate that the 3D-IES enables students toconcentrate on their classroom tasks to a greater extent and provides them with more opportunities to express
themselves in English than regular English classes. This further suggests that more active interaction was realized
Figure3D-IES
Regularin the 3D-IES classes between the instructor
and3.students
andvs.
among
students themselves.

(Class Evaluation)

6
Evaluation
Scores4
2
0

Q5
3D-IES 4.519
Regular 3.302

Q6
3.654
2.64

Q7
4.37
3.628

Q8
3.444
2.709

Q9
3.728
2.698

Figure 3. 3D-IES vs. Regular (Class Evaluation)
In fact, the students in the 3D-IES classes commented in the class evaluation questionnaires (Questions 10
and 14) that they could gain more opportunities for self-expression in English.3 But it should be noted that thisevaluation cannot lead us to a definite conclusion concerning the real cause of the larger amount of English selfexpression by the 3D-IES students: they might feel like this simply because of the discussion/debate activities
themselves or they might do so because of the computer-based chat. Furthermore, we should note that the 3D-IES
students highly evaluated the course contents in that they felt that they could substantially improve their fluency inEnglish. This would probably be because of the anonymity realized by “avatars.” All these descriptive data support
the finding that the students using the 3D-IES did enjoy this kind of computer-based interaction in their English
classes. In light of this, it would be advisable to encourage the introduction of the 3D-IES to college English
classes, where monotonous, unilateral lecture-type lessons are still often observed.

Experiment 2 (Integrated Class vs. Chat-Oriented Classes)
Research Questions
1.

Does the use of 3D virtual space promote improvement in students’ English proficiency?

2.

Does the use of 3D virtual space influence students’ class evaluation?

Method: All the subjects were students at Kyushu University, Japan. They took general English classes
from the authors in the year 2000. Table 2 summarizes the classes.

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All the classes were relatively small and took place in the computer labs. The chat-oriented classes were thesame classes used for Experiment 1. They mainly used the text-based chat for discussion and debate. The integrated class used not only the chat but also the virtual reality space, and giving the students various tasks such asrole playing activities in the virtual reality space.
As the experimental materials, we used (1) the reading section of SLEP for Research Question 3 and (2) aclass evaluation questionnaire for Research Question 4.

Table 2. Class Assignment for Experiment 2
Class Type

NumberMajor

3E-IES

22 (1 classes)

Agriculture (22)Regular86 (5 classes)

Literature (16), Science (20), Medicine (19), Science (16), Law (15)

Number of students shown in parenthesis.
\

Results and Discussion: Figure 4 shows the pretest/posttest means of SLEP for the integrated class and thechat-oriented classes. The results of a two-way repeated measures ANOVA demonstrated that there was a significant interaction effect of “Group x Proficiency” (F(1, 90) = .6.312, p < .05). In other words, the students in thechat-oriented classes were able to increase their proficiency to a significantly great extent, whereas the students in
the integrated classes could not do so. The results of a one-way ANCOVA with the pretest scores as a covariate
also confirmed this tendency (F(1, 88) = 5.325, p < .05). Hence, we could argue that the use of 3D virtual spacedoes not necessarily promote improvement in students’ English proficiency (for Research Question 3). A possible
explanation here would be that the students in the chat-oriented class had to “read” the chat conversation to agreater extent than the students in the integrated class did. Because the proficiency measure here was the reading
section of SLEP, the increase in
the SLEP
scores for theclasses
may precisely reflect the increase in
Figure4. Integrated
vs.chat-oriented
Chat-oriented(Proficiency)
their ability to “read” English.

ScoresScores

60
55
50
45
45

Pre

Post

Integrated
Integrated

52.47652.47653.33353.333Chat-oriented
Chat-oriented

52.84552.84557.66257.662SLEP
SLEP

Figure 4. Integrated vs. Chat-Oriented (Proficiency)
Related to Research Question 3, we further analyzed the classroom evaluation in the framework of “integrated vs. chat-oriented” by focusing on Evaluation Questions 13-2 (Did 3D-space/avatars contribute to the improvement in your English production skills?) and 13-3 (Did “chat” contribute to the improvement in your English
production skills?). The notable findings here were: (1) the evaluation of the 3D-space/avatars was relatively highwith more prominence in the integrated group (Means for “integrated” = 3.773, Means for “chat-oriented” = 3.173,
significant difference in the means at p < .05); and (2) the students in both groups thought equally that the computer-based chat contributed to the improvement in their English production skills (Means for “integrated” = 4.636,
Means for “chat-oriented” = 4.235, no significant difference in the means (p = .0563)). In the integrated class,
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however, it was also found that there was a significant difference between the means for the 3D-space/avatars andthe means for “chat” at p < .01 with the larger mean for “chat.” All of these indicate that the key to the improvement in English production skills is the chat task, not the presence of 3D-space/avatars. It seems that the 3D-space/avatars only contributed to the classroom tasks inasmuch as they produced more realistic interactional environments. In this sense, we could interpret “chat” as having a primary role in developing students’ English abilities,
and “3D-space/avatars” as having a secondary role in this respect.
The results for the class evaluation (Questions 5 – 9) were summarized in Figure 5. Three points ought to be
noted here. First, the integrated group was more likely to feel able to express themselves in English actively thanthe chat-oriented group (significant differences in the means for Questions 6 and 9). This tendency might partly be
induced by the topic selection for the activities. Specifically, the topics selected in the integrated class wereconcerned with the students’ daily lives and thus it was easy for them to express themselves in English. On theother hand, the topics chosen in the chat-oriented classes were social topics (e.g., “Should Nuclear Power Plants be
5.might
Integrated
vs. difficulty
Chat-oriented
Abolished in Japan?”) and thus theFigure
students
have somein expressing their opinions about them in(ClassEnglish, leading them to a less active involvementin Evaluation)
the tasks.

6
Evaluation 4
Scores20Integrated
Chat-oriented

Q5
4.773
4.519

Q6
4.136
3.654

Q7
4.727
4.37

Q8
3.773
3.444

Q9
4.364
3.728

Figure 5. Integrated vs. Chat-Oriented (Class Evaluation)
Second, the classroom tasks held the integrated students’ attention throughout the class to a significantly
greater extent than the chat-oriented group (Question 7). This is probably because the integrated group had tosimultaneously attend to both the 3D space and the chat. Furthermore, variation in the tasks for the integrated classmight lead to this result.
Third, both the integrated and the chat-oriented classes showed that they failed to increase their “overall”
English proficiency (Question 8). The possible explanation here would be that the activities in these two groups
did not require listening and speaking abilities and thus the students did not feel an improvement in the four
language skills as a whole. The finding here is further supported by the descriptive data available from the classevaluation questionnaires. Some students commented that they were disappointed about lack of “oral” communication and showed their interest in communication using their listening and speaking skills.
On the whole, however, it could be argued that the presence of 3D virtual space well motivates students tolearn English, as shown in the results for Evaluation Questions 6, 7 and 9. Hence, we could conclude that the useof the 3D space positively influences students’ class evaluation (for Research Question 4).

Conclusion
The present 3D-IES system failed to promote the improvement of students’ English proficiency. In fact, nodifference was observed between the 3D-IES classes and the regular classes in the increase in students’ proficiency. This tendency might further be supported by the students’ class evaluation on the “improvement in overall

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English proficiency.” Since the present 3D-IES provides text-based chat only and thus does not require listening
and speaking skills, the obtained results are understandable. If “oral chat” is incorporated into the future system,
however, a more balanced course design would be achieved. Furthermore, “oral chat” will surely solve the following major problems identified in the students’ descriptive data: (a) students’ poor typing skills hindered the textbased chat and (b) the text-based chat took more time (than oral communication). In view of this, we eagerly await
the emergence of sound-based chat in the near future.
The more positive class evaluation was found for the 3D-IES classes and for the integrated class in particular. This suggests that the 3D-IES can surely contribute to the enhancement of students’ motivation to learn
English and, in this sense, its introduction to college English classes should be encouraged. However, we should
also note some problems which need to be solved urgently. Three of them will be mentioned here. First, wecurrently do not have a system for feedback to students’ English. The descriptive analysis revealed that some of thestudents in the 3D-IES classes were concerned about receiving little or no linguistic correction from the instructorin the chat. We need to keep in mind that some students do expect to improve their English in “accuracy” as wellas in “fluency.”
Second, the present 3D-IES interaction does not involve native speakers of English. Some students voiced
fears concerning the possible ineffectiveness of communication among non-native English speakers only in their
attainment of higher English proficiency. Hence, we will need to establish a more extended communication network involving native speakers of English (and preferably people with various linguistic/cultural backgrounds).
Third, the present study suggests that “chat” plays a primary role and “3D-space/avatars” a secondary role in
improving students’ English production skills. Some students even pointed out that the 3D virtual reality space ispresently unnecessary for the chat. Hence, we need to explore the role of the 3D virtual reality space so that thegreater connection could be established between the chat and the 3D space. These problems above ought to besolved before we go on to future plans for an application of the 3D-IES to foreign language education in general at
Kyushu University.

Notes
1

The questionnaire contained a total of 14 questions. However, we primarily focused on Questions 5 – 9 in this study.

2

The post-hoc test showed that there were significant differences between the pretest and theposttest scores for the 3D-IES classes (F(1, 70) = 46.338, p < .0001) and for the regular classes(F(1, 83) = 84.292, p < .0001).

3

Similar comments were obtained from the students in the regular classes.

References
Motegi, H., et al. (2000). Taking sides. Tokyo: Kinseido.

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Large-Scale Implementation of Computer-Based, Multimedia
Achievement Testing
Harold H. Hendricks
Brigham Young University, U. S. A.
Discussion
As technology has penetrated the classroom, bringing multi-media into the teaching of languages, achievement testing has often lagged behind, relying on traditional paper and pencil, and emphasizing reading and grammatical skills rather than the oral and listening proficiencies (Gonzalez Pino, 1989, p. 487). In an early attempt toenhance the testing experience for first- and second-year Spanish students, faculty at Brigham Young University
began bringing classes into the language lab for group achievement testing, where audio, and sometimes video,
could be incorporated as test prompts. To deal with the large numbers of students being tested, computer scan
sheets were printed to ease the burden of test correction. These procedures were satisfactory for a time, but ascomputer technology advanced it became apparent to many that achievement testing could be enhanced to provide
a much more complete assessment using seamlessly integrated multi-media.
The opportunity to experiment with computer-based, multi-media testing presented itself in 1994, when the
traditional audio language lab at BYU was replaced with a hybrid audio-computer configuration. Almost immediately work was begun to computerize the scan sheet tests, and digitize the audio and video. Over the past sevenyears, BYU has continued to improve the methods of creation and delivery of multi-media, computer-based testingfor not only Spanish, but other language and humanities classes as well. Achievement tests now assess all language
skills by including both written and oral responses prompted by the appropriate media: text, graphic, audio, orvideo.

Benefits of a Separate, Multi-media Language Testing Center
The transformation of the traditional language lab into a central, multi-media language testing center hasbrought about several benefits—some of which were unanticipated:
Increased class time: Immediately upon adopting the new computer-based testing program, Spanish
instructors found they had ten class periods previously used for in-class testing returned to them forteaching activities. This is a significant addition of classroom contact hours in which communicativeskills can be improved.
Test security and storage: Security of test items is maximized since there are no copies floatingaround, and the file cabinets that once housed thousands of test forms and copies are no longer needed.
Increased flexibility in scheduling: Spanish students may now take their chapter, midterm and final
exams over a two-day period providing some flexibility in study and scheduling.
Equality in testing surroundings and delivery of prompts: Each student is assured that the test will bepresented in the same way (barring the occasional computer problem), within quiet and monitored
surroundings.
Assessment of all Language Skills: The multi-media nature of the computer-based tests balances
what use to be mainly reading comprehension and grammar understanding. Now items include a great
deal of digitized audio for listening comprehension, maps and graphics for geographical and spatial
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understanding, and video for both listening and visual comprehension. Student responses are nolonger confined to the traditional fill-in-the-blank, and multiple choice answers, but also to oral open
ended written essays.

Administration and Management of the Language Testing CenterTo administer the operation of a 34 station testing center open 15 hours per day obviously requires full-timesupervision. The testing center staff is comprised of one full-time administrator who schedules the lab, sets policy
and operating procedures, hires and trains part-time lab proctors, and assists the faculty with test creation. Several
part-time student employees monitor the lab, proctor tests and assist in test data entry and programming.
To accommodate the scheduling of the 6,000 Spanish tests given each semester, a computer-based sign up
program has been created that automatically lists the test days and times available to the students. The program
checks the class enrollment to verify the student is allowed to take a particular test, and provides the means for the
student to modify the scheduled test time if necessary through the use of a personal password. Students may sign
up for the next test up to seven days in advance.
At the scheduled test time the student presents a photo ID card to the test proctor who verifies through thecomputer system that the student has indeed signed up for that test time. The student is then seated at a computer,which has a menu showing all tests available for the day. The student chooses the appropriate test and the computerverifies enrollment, name and student ID number before beginning the test. After running a sound check forheadset and microphone volumes, the computer presents the items to the student without feedback. Throughout thetest the computer constantly saves the test information so that in case of computer problems the test can be resumed
where the student was last working. There is no score given the student at the end of the test because the raw
computer score does not include any essay scores that must be read and scored by the instructor.
The instructor prints out the test results for each section taught and then is able to go over the responses
checking for any answers that might be correct, but counted wrong by the computer, as well as scoring the essay
and short answer responses. A set of transparencies showing the test questions as they appeared on the computeris provided to the instructor so that the test may be reviewed in class.

Template Test Creation Program
To facilitate the large number of tests to be created, edited, and revised, a template program has been developed that sets up test items through step-by-step instructions. After choosing the item response type, the programprovides simple procedures for inserting textual and media files. The program builds the test items and prepares
the test without the instructor needing to know the underlying programming language.

Conclusion
To both improve the quality and breadth of language assessment, as well as to expedite the administration of thousands of tests, BYU has created a separate, computer-based, multimedia, testing center. Programs tocreate, administer, and schedule these tests have been written to aid the instructors, testing center administrator,
and the test proctors throughout the testing process. Thanks to this system, instructors have increased class timeand students have more flexibility in test scheduling. Of most importance, the skills tested are now more completewith items assessing listening, reading, writing, grammar, and speaking. The result is a more valid and interesting
testing experience.

References
Gonzalez Pino, B. (1989). Prochievement testing of speaking. Foreign Language Annals, 22(5), 487-496.
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Learning English Through Web-Based MOO Activities
Seikyung Cho
Kyung Hee University, Korea
Abstract
Since the early nineties, educational Multi-User Dimensions Object-Oriented (MOO) has captured language teachers’ attention as they provided learners with a collaborative and autonomous learning environment. However, technological limitations prevented language teachers from adopting MOOs to language learning.
Today, with the advent of web-based (webbified) MOO, users are allowed to readily use the MOO, thereby theefficiency of language learning is considerably enhanced. This study investigates the effectiveness of MOO asa tool for learning English. SchMOOze University MOO was employed because this MOO server allows enCore
Xpress interface which provides the telnet/java window in a web browser. MOO was proved to be a very effective form of on-line interaction that can be used for foreign language learning and culture by providing a highly
encouraging environment for autonomous and collaborative learning in a very fun and playful way.

Introduction
The importance of the Internet services as a tool for foreign language learning has been widely recognized byproviding a forum for the discussion and exchange of ideas. One of those services, MUD Object-Oriented (MOO)
is a web-accessible text-based environment that allows language learners to connect and interact with other users
from different parts of the world in real time. This service is especially a valuable system by which foreign
language learners may converse and move around a virtual world, thereby offering an environment for more spontaneous and synchronous use of language. In this study I’ll introduce and examine the advantages of using a webbased MOO for foreign language learning and teaching.

What is MOO?
MOO stands for MUD Object-Oriented. MUD itself is an acronym for Multi-User Dungeon. As the namesuggests, MUD started as a game software which requires several participants at once. As the educational use of
MUDs began to spread, some educators began to use MUD for Multi-User Domain because they felt that thisinterpretation of MOO is more accurate than Multi-User Dungeon.
Then, what is MOO? It is a second generation MUD, a piece of software, a text-based environment, thatallows a number of users to show up at a single Internet site and interact with each other in real time. Therefore, on
a MOO, students can smile, wave, and say things just as they do in real life; they can also create, describe, andmanipulate objects such as rooms, pets, and clothing that are either imaginary or based on real life. This provides
users with the opportunity to extend and fashion the environment according to their own needs, thus making MOO
activities more meaningful, engaging, and stimulating. This is not possible in other Internet programs. MOO isalso a database of information responding in real time to commands entered by a user.

Advantages of MOO for Foreign Language Learning
Many researchers have documented the advantages of MOO use in language learning and teaching (Higgins,
1997; Schwienhorst, 1998; Warschauer, 1996). Their reasons for choosing a MOO as an effective tool for foreign
language learning and teaching can be summarized by the following three principles: communication, collaboration, and constructions (Danford, 1999).
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First, communication. MOOs provide both synchronous and asynchronous mechanisms of communication,
both privately and to groups of individuals. These levels of communication provide opportunities for student
contacts that extend beyond what is capable in the traditional classroom. Furthermore, synchronous communications on the web-based MOO, which we will look at later, include not only simple chat, but also can include
simultaneous viewing of MOO objects and external web sites.
Secondly, collaboration. Following Vygotskyan (1978, 1986) tradition, the importance of collaboration inlearning has gained momentum in recent years. MOO collaborations can be easily accomplished; joint ownershipof objects as well as shared written spaces provide unique situations for student/student and student/professor
interactions. Depending upon application, collaborative writing and editing can be accomplished in the classroom
setting as well as in independent group work. MOO collaborations can extend beyond the scope of the usualclassroom experience. For example, students can benefit by interactions and collaborations with students locatedin other geographical areas and representing divergent cultures. Both formal collaborations like group assignments
and informal collaborations among students interacting with others socially enhance the affective learning experienced by all.
Thirdly, constructions. MOO constructions, whether produced individually or by collaboration, can include
written materials and web pages, with embedded multimedia resources (graphics, animations, sound, video). MOO
constructions can persist and thus be used and modified over time. These constructions, from simple note objects(like blank pieces of paper upon which one can write) to complicated interactive MOO objects, can be designed tomeet specific academic or pedagogical objectives.
There are other advantages in using MOO for language learning purposes. Conversations during a MOO
session can easily become non-linear. In real life conversation, the turns taken by people are linked together in asequential chain. In contrast, during a MOO session, people can post responses to someone’s assertion at any pointof conversation they want. Therefore, there are multiple lines of thought to reflect upon, and more is happening all
at once for the language learners.
MOO conversations have a further advantage in that they can help overcome learners’ psychological barriers. Some students simply feel more comfortable conversing via the computer screen. They feel less self-conscious about their own personal appearance and more confident that they will be judged based upon their intellectual merit. In addition, outside of conversation, a MOO environment is a creative space in which students can
exercise their imagination in interesting ways.

Web-Based MOO
Thanks to just mentioned advantages, educational MOOs have captured language teachers’ attention since
the early nineties. During these early years, however, users had to master considerable technology to use the MOO
including basic MOO commands and MOO programming usually through telnet connection at slow speed. This
prevented language teachers from adopting MOOs to language learning. Today, however, with the advent of webbased MOO, users are allowed to readily use the MOO with a minimal number of commands to be effective in
multimedia dimension thereby the efficiency of language learning is considerably enhanced.
The Web-based MOO client I used was enCore Xpress, a new web-based MOO client that brings a featurerich, and graphically enhanced hypertextual interface to your MOO experience. It incorporates the power of MOO,
HTML, Java and JavaScript into one easy to use application. EnCore Xpress resides remotely on the MOO you areusing, and you run it in your web browser, thus, there is nothing to download or install.
Here’s a figure showing enCore Xpress.

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Figure 1. Sample page from enCore Xpress
The enCore Xpress client window has three areas. On top is the menu area with buttons for various MOO
applications such as the Help Browser, the Web Browser, the Mail Browser, and Editor. In the middle, there is chatarea where text that users type is displayed. At the bottom, there is the hypertext output area which shows descriptions of rooms, players, and other objects that users explore.

An Application – SchMOOze University MOO
During the spring semester of this year, I adopted MOO to a English learning class at Kyung Hee Univ.
Seoul, Korea. SchMooze University MOO was employed because this MOO server allows enCore Xpress interface. SchMOOze University was established in July, 1994 as a place where people studying English as a second or
foreign language could practice English while sharing ideas and experiences with other learners of English. It is
located at: http://schmooze.hunter.cuny.edu:8888/
As this URL shows, SchMOOze University is located in a host computer in Hunter College of City University of New York. Even though it is a virtual university, SchMOOze University, like an ordinary university, hasmany buildings such as a library, an administrative building, the Student Union, and classrooms. There is a dorm
for students where the user has his own room. Any user who has basic proficiency in English such as using
greetings or introducing oneself can participate in MOO activities. However, higher levels of discussions or conversations with native speakers require an advanced level of English.

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A variety of users come to SchMOOze University. They vary from non-native students studying in Englishspeaking countries like United States and England, to students from other countries such as Japan, Korea, Singapore,and Hong Kong. Since so many different students gather on SchMooze MOO, the users greet others, introduce
themselves, and talk about interests just as they do in the real world. There are many classrooms for group activities on various topics. Students also have opportunities for enjoying interesting language games in the Game
Room. They can find documents about SchMOOze University and literary works done by SchMOOze users in thelibrary. They also can decorate their own dorm rooms so that other users can see the descriptions and messages
when they come in and go out of the rooms.

The Adoption of MOO to an Actual Class
Following Healey’s (1997) suggestion, I used the SchMOOze University MOO in the following ways.
As pre-computer activities:
1.

I asked students to imagine a university campus map.

2.

I asked students to look at a printed version of the SchMOOze map.

3.

I had students describe how to get from the Entrance Gate to the Classrooms, and the Student
Union.

As activities on the computer:
1.

I asked students to hold a whole-class discussion.
a.

Give each student or group of students a specific question to discuss.

b.

Assign a sentence to paraphrase, with each person’s paraphrases shared with the wholegroup.

c.

Start a discussion of a class reading, using questions related to details.

2.
I had students get some specific information from people online. I had students start a polite conversation, then ask people their opinion on a current news topic. They can compare the opinions of people from different
countries, perhaps of different ages, and write a report.
3.

I had students to explore SchMOOze and discover resources there.
a.

Ask students to find answers to some of the following questions:•

How do you get to the classroom, and what can you learn there?

•

What games can you play in the Student Union?

•

Where is the Grammar Maze and how do you get out of it?

•

What books are in the library?

•

What is growing in the garden?

•

Are there any animals at SchMOOze?

•

How do you become a regular character rather than a guest?

•

What might be useful for you to do at SchMOOze?

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As Post-computer Activities:
1.

I asked students to do any of a number of things based on their SchMOOze experience. Hereare a few ideas:a.

Write a summary of a group discussionb.

Write a Tourist Guide to SchMOOze.

c.

Share the results of the explorations.

Outcomes from the ClassAt the end of the semester, I conducted a small survey to find out how students felt about the use of MOO in
English classes. Results from the survey indicate that MOO is a very effective form of on-line interaction. Basedon students’ responses I summarized the good points of using MOO in language learning.
First, MOO activities provide a highly encouraging environment for autonomous and collaborative learning.
Once the students have mastered the basic commands and concepts, they are in control of their learning experiences on the MOO. MOO activities are also very conducive to cooperative learning among learners. Joint ownership and shared written spaces provide a stimulating situation for the interaction among users. Secondly, MOO
activities are very fun and playful. Learners tend to use humorous and entertaining language. This is primarily due
to the highly interactive nature of MOO where a person’s attractiveness can be exhibited only through words.
Thirdly, the authenticity of language and contexts provided by MOO environment as well as autonomous, collaborative and entertaining nature of MOO activities increase students’ intrinsic motivation, and thus enhance theefficiency of learning language and culture.
On the other hand, results also show that learning English through MOO activities poses some problems.
First, the MOO can appear confusing and overwhelming at first, especially to students whose English or typing
skill is not good enough to interact on the MOO. Secondly, since MOO activities still require technical skills, ittakes a relatively long time for students to find their ways on the MOO. Thirdly, Students may encounter undesirable users who disrupt the attention and intimacy that is achieved on MOOs.

Conclusion
In conclusion, as Danford (1999) mentions, the web-based MOO presents opportunities to communicate
effectively, to promote collaborations, and to construct MOO objects which convey information to future learners.
The marriage of MOO and Web provides the best of both - the interactivity of the MOO and the multimedia
dimensions of the Web. For today’s active language learners the web-based MOO can be used to enhance educational opportunities and to promote all the good stuff such as interactive learning, learner-centered learning, selfdirected learning, autonomous learning, critical thinking, problem solving, communication, collaborations, andconstructions which are essential for successful language learning.

References
Danford, T. (1999). Techniques for the new MOOlenium: Using the webbified MOO. Available: http://
www.northern.wvnet.edu/~tdanford.html.
Healey, D. (1997). English Language Institute Technology Tip of the Month. Available: http://osu.orst.edu/Dept/
eli/dec1997.html.
Higgins, R. (1997). Milking the MOO cow: Combining interim technologies for learning in cyber space. Available: http://leahi.kcc.hawaii.edu/org/tcc_conf97/pres/higgins.html.
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Schwienhorst, K. 1998). Co-constructing learning environments and learner identities-Language learning invirtual reality. Paper presented at the ED-Media/ED-Telecom, Freiburg.
Vygotsky, L. S. 1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1986). Thought and language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Warschauer, M. (1996). Computer-mediated collaborative learning: Theory and practice. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii, Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center.

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Learning Strategies for Technical Terms without Context
Koji Hirose
Meirin College, Japan
Abstract
Vocabulary learning strategies concerning dental terms were provided without context to students, inwhich a teacher simply allows students to use a word list. Subsequently, the learning strategies that students
actually employed were examined over a period of two years. In the first year’s investigation, a remarkableincrease in use of strategy was mentioned specifically in cognitive, affective, and social strategies. In the second
year’s study, significantly increased items were recognized in memory, cognitive, affective, and social strategies.
The main reason for these strategy uses seems that learners have not used these strategies before or they havenot noticed their own use of them. Usual teaching methods and styles, and the learning environment aroundstudents also seem to affect students’ strategy choice.

Introduction
Background to this Study
Previous to this study, the first year’s participants were asked what vocabulary learning strategies they had
employed. The main reason why we attempted to discover our students’ experiences of strategy use was as aprelude to strategy training for our students. It was a less-structured self-report survey. Results of the preliminary
survey show that students’ strategy use was very limited to fewer than we had expected. We see from Table 1 thatmost students used rote memorization (ƒÔ2(2) = 140.237, p < .01). These results support Oxford and Scarcella(1994)’s view of Asian learners’ preferencea in the method of vocabulary learning. They write, ”Rote memorization is popular in some cultures from which L2 students come, particulary Asian culture.” We suppose that teaching a large variety of learning methods to our students contributes to facilitating effective learning of vocabulary
words.

Table 1. Preliminary Survey on VocabularyLlearning Strategies
Rote memorization (memorizing by writing words repeatedly)

74 (97.4%)

Word list (made by students themselves)

1 (1.3%)

Dictionary use

1 (1.3%)In this study, we are using vocabulary words to refer to technical dental terms. These terms were taught byuse of a word list without using context. Although it is optimal that vocabulary can be acquired through reading,intentional and direct teaching of vocabulary has proved to be effective among good EFL learners in poor educational materials situations (Gu & Johnson, 1996, p. 646). We have not yet found a text including dental terms
appropriate for students of junior college dental hygiene courses.

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Purpose of this Study
The purpose of this research was (1) to provide students with vocabulary learning strategies training in thedecontextualized situation which means that we don’t use discourse context, but rather word lists and (2) to examine to what extent learners actually utilize vocabulary learning strategies.

MethodParticipants
Seventy-eight of the first year and 66 of the second year freshmen attending a junior college dental hygiene
class participated in this study. They were all females. They took an English class as a required subject during their
two-year associate degree program. In this class, a knowledge of English dental terminology was provided andEnglish conversations which might take place at a dental clinic were practiced.

Teaching Materials
Teaching materials are composed of two types. One type has a dental terminology list and the other includes
training material for learning strategies concerning vocabulary. Both types of materials, a terminology list and an
activity sheet for training, are original and will be revised for better use by the students. Eighteen or nineteenterms, which would culminate in a total of 255 terms to be appropriate for a dental hygienist in fifteen lessons for
six months, were presented in each lesson over fifteen lessons using a dental terminology list. At the beginning ofa lesson a multiple-choice type quiz was given in order to confirm the students’ comprehension of terms theylearned during a previous lesson.
Vocabulary learning strategies which could be used in this study were determined based on Oxford (1990)’s
classification of learning strategies. These were applied to decontextualized vocabulary learning. In other words,
these strategy items are sort of a modified version of SILL (Strategy Inventory for Language Learning). Those
items are composed of six categories: memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, affective, and social strategies. The teaching material for strategy training also entailed two types of materials: knowledge type and activity
type. With regard to an activity type, a study sheet for activity was prepared by a teacher and performed by astudent. For the strategy which was not so easy to organize as an activity, knowledge type materials were preparedto give an explanation of each strategy.

Procedures
In both years, 1998 and 1999, 255 dental terms which could be needed when students are employed as dental
hygienists were presented over fifteen lessons for six months. The technical terms were taught for the first threelessons without strategy training. During the fourth lesson the questionnaire was completed as a pre-measure forgetting the information of students’ strategy use which has frequently appeared before the strategy training. From
the fifth lesson through to the fourteenth lesson the vocabulary learning strategies were guided with the dental
terms’ instruction. During the fifteenth lesson the questionnaire was carried out again as a post-evaluative measure
to estimate students’ actual strategy use during the strategy training.
At the beginning of each lesson, a quiz of terms learned during a previous lesson was given. The dental
term’s pronunciation, its Japanese meaning, its definition, and its origin were taught according to a term list for theterminology instruction. On the other hand, for the strategy training, two types of strategy instruction, knowledge
type and activity type, were provided by means of each strategy item’s character. It was too demanding to preparea strategy activity for every strategy item so that students could accomplish a task by themselves.

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Assessing Strategy Use
Ramirez (1986:138) reports the usefulness of using a self-report inventory as a means of assessing learning
strategies. We made an evaluation form appropriate for vocabulary learning in a decontextualized situation basedon SILL (the strategy inventory for language learning) version 7.0. This modified version of SILL was an evaluation instrument used both before and after the strategy instruction. The SILL is composed of 50 learning strategy
items. But our modified strategy inventory is a 28-item list of first year terms and a 38-item list of the second year
terms, Likert-scaled, self-report instrument. The second year’s questionnaire items were revised and increased
from 28 to 38 items, adapting extra items which could be applicable to vocabulary learning.

Data Analysis
The two years’ information gained from pre- and post- questionnaires of our strategy inventory was analyzed
by both the Wilcoxon Match-pairs signed-ranks test and ANOVA. The Wilcoxon Match-pairs signed-ranks test
was applied for interpreting the ordinal scale information drawn from the questionnaire. ANOVA was employed to
examine the effect of the vocabulary learning strategy instruction. For putting ANOVA into operation, students
were divided into the two groups: the upper and the lower group by the means of the results of quizzes given threetimes before strategy instruction. The Likert-scaled numerical values obtained from the questionnaire were transferred to scores which were analyzed by a two-way (ability and test) ANOVA.

Results and Discussion
Results and Discussion of the First Year’s Wilcoxon Match-Pairs Signed-Ranks Test
By observing the results obtained from the Wilcoxon Match-pairs signed-ranks test (see Table 2), we canfind that only one strategy item, which is “Cognitive, practicing naturalistically,” was significantly used manytimes furing both years. This cognitive strategy expresses the notion that “I say the word I have already learned
when I see the real thing, say, at a dental office”. Looking at the results of ANOVA, it is also proved that the use ofthis strategy was increased. We would speculate the reason of this strategy use from the fact that students often
have a chance to see real objects at a dental-related class or a practical exercise. In these learning circumstances
using this strategy should be familiarized and be very natural for students and comprehension of a term would growwith association with the real thing.
The seven items were significantly and frequently used only in the first year’s research. They are“Metacognitive, organizing”, “Metacognitive, self-monitoring”, “Affective, using progressive relaxation”, “Affective, taking risks wisely”, “Affective, writing a language learning diary”, “Affective, discussing your feelings”, and“Social, cooperating with proficient users”. These seven items had also significance with ANOVA.
Now we will take a brief look at each one of them in detail. To begin with the “organizing” strategy could
be stated in the strategy inventory such that “I plan my schedule so I will have enough time to study English”. It isconsidered that a number of students had not routinized learning English before the strategy instruction and thenincreased the strategy use. Secondly, the “self-monitoring” strategy denotes that “I will know which term I often
use incorrectly and I will deliberately try not to make a mistake”. Due to a giving a quiz every lesson, students
seemed to pay close attention to any term which tends to be easily mistaken.
Thirdly, three strategies of “using progressive relaxation”, “writing a language learning diary”, and “discussing your feelings” fall into affective strategy category. The “using progressive relaxation” strategy signifies that “I
try to relax whenever I study English”. The “writing a language learning diary” strategy means that “I write down
my feelings in a memorandum”. The “discussing your feelings” strategy indicates that “I talk to someone else
about how I feel when I am learning English”. Since the use of these three strategies was increased and English wasa tough subject for many students, some of the students seem to have felt strain or stress studying English.
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Especially, the students from the lower group more often than the upper group used the “discussing your feelings”
option (ANOVA). Fourthly, the “taking risks wisely” strategy expresses that “I venture to say something using theterms already learned”. We can recognize students’ efforts to use the terms they learned as in the strategy “practicing naturalistically”. Lastly, the “cooperating with proficient users” strategy denotes that “I ask for advice as to
how to remember words from other students who can remember many words”. It follows from what has been said
that students’ positive attitude for technical term learning can be admitted.

Table 2. Results of Wilcoxon Match-Pairs Signed-Ranks Test
Strategy Item
Memory strategies, Grouping
Memory, Associating, Elaborating
Memory, Placing new words into a context
Memory, Using imagery
Memory, Semantic mapping
Memory, Using keywords
Memory, Representing sounds
Memory, Structured reviewing
Memory, Using mechanical techniques
Cognitive, Repeating
Cognitive, Formally practicing with sounds
Cognitive, Practicing naturalisticallyCognitive, Using resources
Cognitive, Analyzing expressions
Cognitive, Analyzing contrastively
Cognitive, Translating
Compensation strategy
Metacognitive, Overviewing and linking
Metacognitive, Paying attention
Metacognitive, Organizing
Metacognitive, Setting goals and objectives
Metacognitive, Seeking practice opportunities
Metacognitive, Self-monitoring
Metacognitive, Self-evaluating
Affective, Using progressive relaxation
Affective, Using music
Affective, Using laughter
Affective, Making positive statements
Affective, Taking risks wisely
Affective, Rewarding yourself
Learning Strategies for Technical Terms [Oral Presentation]

p Value (Significance Level)
1st Year
2nd Year.3967(ns).9621(ns).0542(ns).8493(ns).4885(ns).5695(ns).3307(ns).6959(ns).1074(ns).3981(ns).2068(ns).0001(**)—.3114(ns).5450(ns).2236(ns).7700(ns)—.5877(ns).0315(*).2339(ns)—.0170(*)—.0116(*)———.0423(*).7526(ns).0231(*).0334(*).0633(ns).0823(ns).0178(*).3348(ns).9397(ns).3324(ns).7963(ns).7047(ns).3091(ns).0102(*).9107(ns).5030(ns).6213(ns).5264(ns).1720(ns).2793(ns).3087(ns).5752(ns).0978(ns).2872(ns).4751(ns).7267(ns).0878(ns).0589(ns).1486(ns).6608(ns).2004(ns).0524(ns)447

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Table 2. Results of Wilcoxon Match-pairs signed-ranks test (Cont’d)Strategy Itemp Value (Significance Level)
1st Year
2nd Year

Affective, Listening to your bodyAffective, Writing a language learning diary
Affective, Discussing your feelings
Social, Asking for clarification
Social, Asking for correction
Social, Cooperating with peers
Social, Cooperating with proficient users
Social, Developing cultural understanding.9661(ns).0070(**).0091(**)——.3220(ns).0047(**—.8516(ns).1858(ns).2442(ns).1090(ns).3734(ns).4938(ns).9050(ns).0931(ns)*p < .05 **p < .01

Results and Discussion of the First Year’s ANOVAIn addition to those seven strategy items that proved to be used significantly from the Wilcoxon match-pairs
signed-ranks test as has been mentioned in 3.1, three more items were significantly and often used in the first year’s
research by ANOVA (see Table 3). They are ”Memory, placing new words into a context”, “Memory, representing
sounds in memory”, and “Memory, using mechanical techniques”. On one hand the students from the upper groupincreased the use of “placing new words into a context” strategy. On the other hand, the students from the lower
group increased the use of both “representing sounds in memory” and “using mechanical techniques” strategy. It
follows from this that the students from the upper group managed to put a new term in a sentence (Japanese or
English) made by themselves and to remember it. However, the students from the lower group payed close attention to the sound included in the term and remembered a term with the learned one which had a similar sound to it,
and they made use of a word card to remember when they encountered a new word.

Table 3. Items Proven to be Significantly Different (1st Year Results)
Higher
Memory, Placing new words into a context

Lower

**

Test
+(post)Memory, Representing sounds in memory*

Memory, Using mechanical techniques*

Cognitive, Practicing naturalistically**

Metacognitive, Organizing*

Metacognitive, Self-monitoring*

Affective, Using progressive relaxation*

Affective, Taking risks wisely+

Affective, Writing a language learning diary**

Affective, Discussing your feelings
Social, Cooperating with proficient users***(post)**+p < .10 *p < .05 **p < .01

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Results and Discussion of the Second Year’s Wilcoxon Match-Pairs Signed-Ranks Test
From the results of the Wilcoxon Match-pairs signed-ranks test, three strategy items proved to be significantly used often only in the second year’s reaseach (see Table 2). They all fall into memory strategy, “Memory,grouping”, “Memory, associating”, and “Memory, semantic mapping”. The “grouping” strategy signifies that “Iclassify new words into groups according to the topic (instruments, dentition, anesthesia), the similarity (full denture, partial denture), and the contrast (mesial proximal surface, distal proximal surface)”. The “associating”
strategy implies that “I think of the relationships or the association between the words I already know and a newword”. The “Semantic mapping” strategy shows that “I remember terms creating a semantic map, a diagram inwhich the key concepts (stated in words) are linked with related words via arrows or lines”. Setting up more
activities for these strategies instruction in the second year’s study than in the first year’s may affect students’choice of those three strategies among many items. It was also relative easy for a teacher to make a diagram linking
key concepts with related terms in meaning. It is also recognized that the use of those three items increased
significantly from the data of ANOVA, too.

Results and Discussion of the Second Year’s ANOVA
It is proved that the strategy item “Memory, representing sounds in memory” was significantly and often
used in both the first year’s and the second year’s research from the results of ANOVA (see Table 4). Irrespectiveof the students’ ability to understand terms, learners payed attention to the sound and linked a new term to thelearned term with similar sound so as to remember it.
Two items of “Metacognitive, self-monitoring” and “Affective, using progressive relaxation” were alsosignificantly and frequently used in both the first year’s and the second year’s research. Particularly, the students
from the upper group used the strategy remarkably often in “self-monitoring”. It is considered that they were very
conscious of a quiz and payed more attention to a term which tends to be mistaken than the students from the lower
group.
The other six items were significantly and often used in the second year’s research. They are ”Cognitive,
repeating”, “Cognitive, formally practicing with sounds”, “Metacognitive, self-evaluation”, “Affective, using music”, “Affective, rewarding yourself”, and “Social, asking for clarification”. The students from the lower groupfrequently used the strategy with both the “repeating” and the “formally practicing with sounds” strategies. To put
it the other way round, it is said that they wrote and pronounced a new term aloud several times to remember it. The
students from the upper group used the strategy of “self-evaluating” many times. They paid close attention to aterm which tended to be mistaken and confirmed their understanding of a term by the quiz they made after practicing terms. The upper group students’ attempts lead to the fact that the means of the upper group (36.5 marks) werehigher than those of the lower group (31.1 marks) at the retention test (50.0 full marks) as an end-of-term examination carried out two weeks after technical terms and strategy instruction were accomplished.
From the results of ANOVA analysis, we could see the significant tendency in using three strategies of“using music”, “rewarding yourself”, and “asking for clarification”. This fact suggests that students became awareof an affective factor, for example, they were relaxed listening to music and praised themselves for their success inlearning terms. They also worked with other students cooperatively asking for the meaning of a term.

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Table 4. Items Proved to be Significantly Different (2nd Year Results)
Higher

Lower

Test

Memory, Grouping*

Memory, Associating, Elaborating*

Memory, Semantic mapping**

Memory, Representing sounds in memory+(pre)

Cognitive, Repeating**(pre)

Cognitive, Formally practicing with sounds****(pre)Cognitive, Practicing naturalistically**+(pre)

Metacognitive, Self-monitoring**(pre)

Metacognitive, Self-evaluating***(pre)Affective, Using progressive relaxation+

Affective, Using music+

Affective, Rewarding yourself+

Social, Asking for clarification++p < .10 *p < .05 **p < .1

Conclusion
In this study, dental technical terms were taught using a word list without context for freshmen in a dental
hygiene class at a junior college. Learning strategy instruction focused on vocabulary was provided at the sametime. In order to evaluate students’ use of strategies, the same questionnaire was answered before and after the
strategy instruction. The strategy inventory we employed was constructed from modifying Oxford’s (1990) SILL
version 7.0 for vocabulary learning. The information obtained from the questionnaire was analyzed by both the
Wilcoxon Match-pairs signed-ranks test and ANOVA.
As we have seen in the preceding chapter we can acknowlege some strategy items’ protrusive utilization. It
may be desirable to mention again briefly the reason for these strategy use. The reason for using these four
strategies use of “representing sounds in memory”, “practicing naturalistically”, “self-monitoring”, and “using
progressive relaxation” seems to be that usual teaching methods and styles, and students’ needs or learning environment as well as strategy instruction influenced students’ strategy use. As for three strategies of “representing
sounds in memory”, “self-monitoring”, and “using progressive relaxation,” we could point out that the dental
terms’ teaching methods we usually adopted led to using these strategies in a roundabout way. In dental terminology some words cannot be found in the English-Japanese dictionaries, which students habitually refer to. Moreover, some students are observed to be bewildered by encountering those terms for the first time. For assisting
students in pronouncing these unfamiliar words, pronunciation description using Katakana is put into service. In
utilizing the strategy of “representing sounds in memory” students may have paid attention to the sound within aterm since we forcused students’ awareness on the pronunciation presenting Katakana-transcription on transparencies for an overhead projector. With respect to the “self-monitoring” strategy we gave students a quiz every lesson
to have them study and to confirm their comprehension of those terms they learned. Actually, before a quiz most of
the students were seen to study terms. Moreover, they tried to check for mistakes by themselves to make sure thatthey grasped the form and the meaning of a term correctly. On the subject of the strategy “using progressive

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relaxation” we recognized the fact that English was a tough subject for most of the students and they seemed tohave excessive stress when studying English. Their learning attitude changed to be positive gradually by stimulating their interests in a certain dental area and encouraging their participation in a learning activity. With reference
to the strategy “practicing naturalistically”, we could specify the rich learning situation around the students. The
college has a dental clinic attached to it. Students often had the opportunity to see real objects such as instruments
at a dental clinic during a practical exercise as a dental hygienist.
Cohen (1998, p. 95) enumerates some examples of criteria which can be used to evaluate the strategy training. These criteria such as improved student performance, general learning skill improvement, and maintenance ofthe new strategies are certainly perceived as influential tools for the program evaluation. One of the most vital
factors in learning strategy training in foreign languages is the need for strategy training to be informed, integrated,
and to involve a high level of self-control (Graham, 1997, p. 83-84). It would be beneficial if students were more
conscious of the objective and usefulness of strategy training. In addition to students’ efforts, a teacher will needto revise the content of strategy instruction for students’ benefit of effective use of strategy and for fully completing
the instructional cycle.

References
Cohen, A. D. (1998). Strategies in learning and using a second language. Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman
Limited.
Graham, S. (1997). Effective language learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.
Gu, Y. and Johnson, R. K. (1996). Vocabulary learning strategies and language learning outcomes. Language
Learning 46(4), 643-679.
Oxford, R. L. (1990). Language learning strategies: What every teacher should know. Boston: Heinle & Heinle
Publishers.
Oxford, R. and Scarcella, R. C. (1994). Second language vocabulary learning among adults: State of the art invocabulary instruction. System 22(2), 231-243.
Ramirez, A. G. (1986). Language learning strategies used by adolescents studying French in New York schools.
Foreign Language Annals 19(2), 131-141.

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A Lexical Analysis of Oral Communication A / B Textbooks
for Japanese EFL Learners
Naoki Sugimori
Osaka Electro-Communication University, Japan

Akinobu Tani
Hyogo University of Education, Japan

Toshiko Koyama
Ohtani Women’s College, Japan
Abstract
The objective of our research is to examine the lexical authenticity of Oral Communication A/B textbooks
for Japanese EFL learners. A dozen Oral Communication textbooks were chosen and were given computational
lexical analysis to observe if they use particular lexical items which are commonly used in spoken English. Suchitems include adverbials, discourse markers, and response forms. The results of the analysis have shown thatmost of the OC textbooks did not use these items sufficiently and only a few introduced a wide variety of these
items. It is concluded that more items should be introduced so that the textbooks can help students increase theirspoken vocabulary size and consequently improve their communicative skills in spoken English.

Introduction
English teaching in Japan has often been criticized for its neglect of teaching communicative skills. In 1994
the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture introduced Oral Communication (OC) A/B/C into
the Course of Study as a solution to this problem. Since then, OC has been taught in Japanese high schools with the
textbooks authorized by the Ministry. The general goals of OC are: (1) to develop communicative skills of students, such as understanding a speaker’s intentions, and expressing their own ideas in spoken English; and (2) tocultivate positive attitudes among students toward communication in English. Since OC is virtually the only
subject offered to learn spoken English communication for most of the Japanese high school students, the importance of this subject should be recognized enough.
The Course of Study issued by the Ministry states that the objectives of Oral Communication A (OCA) areto develop students’ abilities to understand a speaker’s intentions and to express their own ideas in spoken English.
Activities in speaking and listening exercises in OCA should be based on everyday situations. Therefore, the OCA
textbooks are required to include expressions essential to conveyance of feelings or opinions around a variety of
topics. The main goal of Oral Communication B (OCB) is to develop listening skills of students, such as understanding a speaker’s intentions or ideas in spoken English. In addition, expressions that are useful in asking for
confirmation should be taught as well. Topics used in OCB textbooks should be expressed in dialogues, speeches,
recitations, etc. As for Oral Communication C (OCC), its objectives are to develop students’ abilities to organize,present, and discuss their own ideas. The textbooks should use expressions that are useful in conveying suggestion, assertion, argumentation, etc. Recitation, speech, discussion and debate should be used to express topics.
Since the number of OCC textbooks published so far is very limited and OCC is rarely adopted as an OC subject
rather than OCA and OCB, OCC textbooks are not examined in this study.
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The Data and its Overview
For our research, we selected most popular 13 OC textbooks (6 OCA textbooks and 7 OCB textbooks), andthey were subjected to computational lexical analysis. First, an OC-textbook corpus was constructed from theelectronic data of the OC textbooks supplementarily distributed by the textbook publishers on floppy discs. This
corpus contains all the passages, dialogues, and exercises in the textbooks. Then the corpus was statisticallyprocessed by our concordance software including WordSmith and MonoConc. The data from the 13 textbooks
amounted to 122,281 words in token and to 5,560 words in type. The data size of each textbook is shown in Table
1. Table 1 shows that the size of each textbook varies widely: OCA1 uses 1,394 words in token in the textbooks,
while OCA4 uses only 702 words. The OC textbooks show a great difference in the number of words used, eventhough all of them have passed through the same textbook authorization system given by the Ministry. Consideringthat the Ministry’s instruction for the Course of Study allows an OC textbook to use up to 2,000 words in type, OC
textbooks could and should introduce a greater number of words to enrich their contents.

Table 1. Number of Words Used in OC Textbooks
Textbook

Type

Token

Textbook

Type

Token

OCA1

1,394

7,200

OCB1

1,194

4,403

OCA2

945

7,250

OCB2

1,346

7,289

OCA3

917

15,916

OCB3

1,254

8,093

OCA4

702

2,796

OCB4

918

3,639

OCA5

1,206

10,755

OCB5

1,549

14,268OCA6

779

11,715

OCB6

2,475

18,667

ODB7

1,754

10,290OCB Average

1,499

9,521

OCA Average

991

9,272

Analysis
Carter & McCarthy (1997) show that in spoken English certain adverbs play an important part and are usedfrequently by speakers to indicate personal attitudes and judgments. According to Longman Grammar of Spoken
and Written English (LGSWE), adverbials can be divided into three major classes by their functions: circumstanceadverbials, stance adverbials, and linking adverbials. Circumstance adverbials are used to add information about
the action or state described in the clause. Stance adverbials are used to express mental state, judgment, or attitudeof the speaker. LGSWE statistically shows that these two classes of adverbials tend to be used more frequently inconversation than in other registers. The third group, linking adverbials are used to state the speaker’s or hearer’s
perception of the relationship between two units of discourse, and they are also common in conversation. Since
these adverbials play important roles in spoken English communication, we have examined how they were used in
the OC textbooks. Approximately 50 adverbials were selected from LGSWE, and their appearances in each textbook were counted using concordance software. The results are shown in Table 2. We will discuss the results inthe next section.
Some other lexical items fulfil various communicative functions in spoken discourse, i.e. discourse markers,
response forms, response elicitors, and fillers. Discourse markers generally serve to signal various functions suchas shared knowledge, proclaimed knowledge, topic shift, pre-closings, boundary marking, and many other interactive and structural functions. Response elicitors have the role of inviting agreement or confirmation from the
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hearer. They can also be classified as backchannels because they also signal feedback to the speaker that themessage is being understood and accepted. The function of fillers is to enable the speaker to pause in the middle ofa message, signaling the wish to continue speaking. Since these items are indispensable to natural conversational
English, it is desirable that OC textbooks introduce these items. From LGSWE, we selected major items which
belong to each category, made their lexical analysis, and observed how many of them were actually used in the OC
textbooks. The results are shown in Table 3.

Discussion
Table 2 and Table 3 indicate how many adverbials and discourse items are used in each textbook. The
number of occurrences is significantly different from one textbook to another. For example, while OCB6 andOCB7 introduce many kinds of adverbials and discourse items, OCA6 introduces only four kinds of adverbials andfour kinds of discourse items. It is inferred from the data that the authors of OCB6 and OCB7 carefully selected
vocabulary for teaching authentic spoken English. They must have considered that these adverbials and discourse
items are essential to natural conversation. Most of the other OC textbooks, however, introduced much fewer
adverbials and discourse items. Considering the importance of these items, students who are taught Oral Communication with this kind of textbook could suffer a disadvantage when trying to communicate in spoken English.
Let us discuss in more detail the results of the analysis. Among circumstance adverbials, amplifiers were
given special attention to observe if the OC textbooks properly reflect the frequent use of these adverbials in actual
conversation. Our analysis has found that common amplifiers like extremely, completely, and terribly are
underrepresented in the textbooks even though they are among the top 2,000 words of the Spoken Vocabulary ofLongman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE).
Among the subcategories of stance adverbials, the best represented are epistemic stance adverbials expressing doubt and certainty, like maybe, of course, certainly, and those expressing actuality such as really. Other
epistemic adverbials, however, are not sufficiently used in the textbooks, although many of them are listed among
the top 1,000 words of the Spoken Vocabulary of LDOCE, i.e. probably, definitely, surely, possibly, likely, andactually. Further, other subcategories of stance adverbials are not properly represented in the textbooks. According to LGSWE, stance and linking adverbials are two to three times more frequent in conversation than in otherregisters, such as fiction and news. These adverbials which contribute a lot to adding one’s attitudes or viewpoints
to a proposition should be introduced appropriately in OC textbooks.
The examination of the use of discourse markers, response elicitors, response forms, and fillers revealed that
the OC textbooks are defective in these lexico-discoursal aspects. While the most basic discourse markers (well,now, so, and then) were properly treated, multi-word markers (I mean, you know, and you see) were not properly
represented even though they are the most representative and the most frequent. Furthermore, markers such as kindof and sort of, which are used to soften the tone of utterances, were also poorly introduced in most of the textbooks.
As for response elicitors, only the word right occurs in some of the textbooks and the other two items were rarely
used. As for response forms, while some typical forms like sure, all right, and OK were frequently used in the
textbooks, others were not used very frequently. As for fillers like err and um, more than half of the textbooks
didn’t use them at all although they are considered to be essential to keep the floor in the turn-takings without being
interrupted. Our analysis of the use of discourse items unveiled that most OC textbooks tend to use only typicalitems, and they are lacking in variety in the use of such items.

Conclusion
The results of our analysis show that the OC textbooks have the following problems concerning lexical
items:

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1.

Too few words are used in OC textbooks although the Course of Study issued by the Ministry of
Education permits the introduction of up to 2,000 different words in the textbook. More spoken
vocabulary should be used in order to enrich the contents of the textbook.

2.

In spite of their importance in spoken English, adverbials and discourse items are not properly
introduced in the textbooks. In other words, they are underrepresented. The discourse items
investigated in our research are concerned more with interpersonal and textual functions thanwith a propositional one. They are indispensable to natural conversation in that they can establish rapport in conversation and smooth communication. The OC textbooks should use themmore frequently so that students can learn how to use them effectively in actual conversation.

3.

The number and the variety of adverbials and discourse items used in a textbook is greatly
different among the OC textbooks. Although they are all published as OC textbooks, it is likelythat there is a difference of authenticity and difficulty among them. Teachers who teach OC
should be aware of this and carefully try to select the textbooks for their students.

According to the Ministry of Education, all the OC textbooks are scheduled to be revised in 2003 in accordance with the new Course of Study. We expect that the OC textbooks will be improved to solve these problems
and will be optimized to introduce appropriate spoken vocabulary so that students can effectively learn how tocommunicate in spoken English.

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Table 2. Disribution of Adverbials
Items/Textbooks
Adverbials

OCA1 OCA2 OCA3 OCA4 OCA5 OCA6 OCB1 OCB2 OCB3 OCB4 OCB5 OCB6 OCB7 Total

CIRCUMSTANCE Adv

amplifie
extre
fully
highlyespeciallyawfullyterribly
prettycompletely
totally
Subtotal
Number of types

r
m
1
1

2
1
1

1

3

1

2

1

3
2

1
2

2

5

2

5
3

11
4

9
4

2

2
1

7
5

3

1
4

1

10
7

1

1
2

2

10
3

13
3

7
11
2
6

1
2

2
2
2

3
3

6
2

1

3
4

13

1
1

1
1

1
1

5
1

10
2

3y
26
1
24
2
3
16
2
0
77
8

STANCE Adv

EpisteEP-doubt
probably
maybe
perha
of course
certainly
definitely
surelypossibly
likelyundoubtedly
no doubt
EP-actuality
reallyactuallyin fact
as a matter of fact
EP-source
apparently
obviouslyaccording toEP-limgenerallyin generalmostlyin most cases
mainlynormally
basically
EP-viewpoint
personallyAttitudeunfortunately
fortunately
surprisingly
hope fno wondeexactly
Stylehonestly
to be honest
frankly
seriously
in a word
in short

4
1

7

1
5
22
15

1
1

2

1

2
2

1

1
4
2
3

1

4

2
2

1
1

1
1
1

17
8
1
1

7
2
2

32

4

17

1

1

6

10
1

8
2

1

2
2

3

31
1

1

18
3
2

1
1

1

30
9
4

1

1
2
4

1
3

2
1

1

3

2

1
2

1
1
1
1

1

1
1

1
4

2

2
u
2
1

r

3

1

2

2

185
27
12
3
2
0
7

1
2

15
38
3
30
38
16
2
1
2
0
0

2

7
5
6
1
1
4
1
1
1
7
2
y 0
5
8
0
1
1
1
3
0

1
1
1
3

LINKING Adv

finally
there
Subtotal
Number of types
Total
Total number of types

42
12
44
14

26
7
29
10

87
5
93
7

1

9

9
5
10
6

29
5
30
6

8
3
9
4

Lexical Analysis of Oral Communication [Oral Presentation]

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f
27
11
32
14

1
30
13
41
17

14
8
23
12

3

5

13
7
18
8

48
6
58
8

1
1
91
24
101
27

1
39
13
52
16

26
1e
463
34
540
42

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Table 3. Distribution of Discourse Items
Items/Textbooks
Discou
well
now
so
then
I meanyou know
you seekind ofsort ofanywaySubtotal
Number of types
Response Elicitors-right?
-OK?
-huh?
Respo
n
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Sure.
Absolutely.
All right.
OK.
Exactly.
That's right.
Fillers
err…
um…
Subtotal
Number of types
Others
I see.
The thing isLet's say
Let me see
Let's seSubtotal
Number of types
TOTAL
Total number of types

OCA1 OCA2 OCA3 OCA4 OCA5 OCA6 OCB1 OCB2 OCB3 OCB4 OCB5 OCB6 OCB7 Total

17
3
3
1
3
1
1

13
4

75

15
1

r
10
4

4
4
3
1

6
7

8
4
3
1

8
1

7
2

1

12
16
7
5

57
12
4
2

1

3
1

1
1
1
30
8

17
2

81
2

1

2

11

2
1
11

12

2
3
6
1
1
2

16
2

22
4

2
2
1

3

12
4

4
20
5

10
3

1

10
3

41
5

2
1
1

3
2

2
1
82
8

16
13
1
4
5
5
1
3
1
49
9

1

1
1

16
1
0

5
1
10

31
1
7
4
1

59
7
116
0
45
30
2
34
11
12
333
11

3

1
3

2
1

4
1

1

1

1

1

2

2

6

5
8
1
6

1
8
5

11
5

1
8
6

1
13
5

1
38
9

8
54
8

3

15

28

3

1

3
5
2
4
4
5
22 37 103
3
3
76 157 113
13 20 20

33

11

29

2

5
6

12

2

2
5

1
8

1

12

1

11
16
7

28
7

91
6

17
4

36
3

11
3

5

8

7

7

3

3

3

3
2
10
3
56
18

3
2
10 10
2
2
55 182
11 10

1
1
1 e
9
4
3
2
42 62
9
9

1
1
5
3
33
13

3
6
2
27
10

0
0
13
4

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2

0
0
14
6

4
2
22
11

242
62
29
21
8
11
1
2
6
9
391
10

85
0
0
20
22
127
3
851
24

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Appendix
Titles of 13 OC Textbooks Selected for the Study
Departure Oral Communication A (Taishukan)
English Street Oral Communication A (Daiichi Gakushu Sha)
Hello There! Oral Communication A (Tokyo Shoseki)
On Air Communication A (Kaitakusha)
Revised Edition Expressways Oral Communication A (Kairyudo)
Select Oral Communication A (Sanseido)
Departure Oral Communication B (Taishukan)
English Street Oral Communication B (Daiichi Gakushu Sha)
Evergreen Communication B (Daiichi Gakushu Sha)
Hello There! Oral Communication B (Tokyo Shoseki)
On Air Communication B (Kaitakusha)
Progressive Oral Communication B (Shogakusha)
Sailing Oral Communication B (Keirinkan)
Note: The order of textbook titles shown here does not correspond with the order in Table 2 and Table 3 (OCA1,
OCA2, etc).

References
Biber, D., Johanson, S., Leech, G. N., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman Grammar of Spoken andWritten English. London: Longman.
Carter, R. (1998). Vocabulary: Applied Linguistic Perspectives (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
Carter, R. & McCarthy, M. (1997). Exploring Spoken English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Halliday, M.A.K. & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.
Japan. Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture. (1989). Koutou Gakkou Gakusyu-Shido Youryo Kaisetu:
Gaikokugo [The Course of Study for Senior High Schools: Foreign Language]. Tokyo: Kyoiku-Shuppan.
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. (1995). Third editon. Harlow: Longman.
McCarthy, M. (1998). Spoken Language and Applied Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schiffrin, D. (1987). Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Making and Using Teaching Materials on the Internet
Mitsuaki Hayase
Mie University, Japan

Akihiro Mikami
Suzuka National College of Technology, Japan

Yasuki Kondo
Mie Prefectural Kawagoe Senior High School, Japan

Hideki Yokota
Mie Prefectural Kawananishi Senior High School, Japan

Kenji Hirabayashi
Aichi Prefectural Shinkawa Senior High School, Japan

Shoji Nakagawa
Kuwana Municipal Ryosei Junior High School, Japan

Takayasu Hayashi
Matsusaka Municipal Chubu Junior High School, Japan
Abstract
In the Research Society of Teaching Materials on the Internet (President: Mitsuaki Hayase, Mie University), seven members work together for the creation of a database of English teaching materials. In this paper,
two practical studies that have been done as research projects for the group are summarized and reported on
separately. The first article, "The First Step of Using the Internet for English Language Teaching”, focuses on
one effective way to start using the Internet for English language education. It will be helpful for those who areinterested in introducing the virtual world into their classes. The second article, "Rap'n'Read: To teach Japanese Junior High Students Correct Rhythm of English”, shows how to teach the rhythm of spoken English bymaking use of Rap music. The writer is concerned with theory and practice of making and using his original
English pronunciation materials.

Introduction
In the Research Society of Teaching Materials on the Internet (President: Mitsuaki Hayase, Mie University),
seven members work together for the creation of a database of English teaching materials. Each member has theirown research project related to English teaching and the Internet. In this paper, two practical studies that have been
done as research projects for the group are summarized and reported on separately.
The first article, "The First Step of Using the Internet for English Language Teaching”, focuses on one
practical and effective way to start using the Internet for English language education. The writer of the article
started using the Internet in college classrooms in 1999. Based on his experiences, the summarization discusses
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effects and problems that occurred in the course of the study. It also includes the students’ reactions to the program.
It will be helpful for those who are interested in introducing the virtual world into their classes.
The second article, "Rap'n'Read: To teach Japanese Junior High Students Correct Rhythm of English”, shows
how to teach the rhythm of spoken English by making use of Rap music. It is based on the writer’s extensive
experience both in teaching English and playing and composing music. Some teaching materials and original music
composed by the writer are included in our database, which is open for public use (http://engserve.edu.mie-u.ac.jp/~eg6011).

The First Step of Using the Internet for English Language Teaching
Introduction
The present study reports on how the writer began to introduce the Internet for English language teachingat the college level. It details one practical and realizable way of teaching English using the Internet. It also reveals
the effects of the practice, and problems and difficulties that are faced in using resources on the Internet as English
materials.
The findings of this study will be helpful for the many English teachers who would like to start using theInternet in the near future.

School and Classes
Suzuka National College of Technology has five engineering departments: Mechanical, Electrical, Electronic and Information, Chemical and Biochemical, and Material Science and Engineering. It provides a comprehensive five-year course of general and technical education for students aged 15 to 20.
English language teaching with the Internet was given to students aged 15 to 16 in three 1st grade classes of
the English IA course at the college. The same teacher (the writer) taught all three classes and it was the first time
for both the teacher and students to use the Internet for English language teaching.

Processes
The following steps were taken when we began to use the Internet for English lessons.
1.

A questionnaire on students’ Internet use and analysis of the results

2.

Planning the lessons

3.

Implementation of the plan

4.

An analysis of the results of the post-questionnaire and students’ assignment

Pre-Questionnaire
In November, 1999, our pre-questionnaire was given to the participating 1st grade students (128 students inall) in order to understand their history of Internet use. According to the results, about half of the students use theInternet by themselves, for the sole purpose of information retrieval and collection, and Japanese language e-mailexchanges with friends. We cannot say that they are using the Internet to its fullest potential in their everyday lives.
We have to teach the students how to use the Internet for English language learning so that many more students canunderstand the advantages of the Internet and use it fully.

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Planning and Teacher’s Preparation
The teacher considered the results of the pre-questionnaire and the computer environment at the college.
Unfortunately, teachers and students cannot use computers during their English class times, so it was decided thatstudents should be given the opportunity to use the Internet as a tool for information retrieval and collection outside
the English classrooms.
First of all, the teacher used the Internet to identify web-sites that might be useful in helping both teachersand students to understand more deeply the contents of the lessons presented in their textbook. The procedures
followed are shown below:
1.

Drawing out keywords from the text

2.

Keyword retrieval and collection

3.

Selecting useful web-sites for teachers and students

It is very difficult to find web-pages which are appropriate for the students, because many web-sites, eventhose written in Japanese, are too difficult and professional for the students. We found having the students look forand report on their own favorite web sites related to the subject at hand to be one of the best ways to find appropriate materials.
Finding web-pages that can be used as an English material for the students is also very time consuming forthe teacher. However, the resources presented on our research group’s web-page ( http://engserve.edu.mie-u.ac.jp/~eg6011 ) can be accessed to speed up the process.

Practice for 1st Grade Dtudents
Purposes.
1.

Helping the students deeply understand the content of the lesson in the textbook.

2.

Giving the students direct exposure to authentic English materials.

3.

Increasing the quantity of the English input

4.

Helping the students to become familiar with computers

Material. Lesson 7, Facing Up to the World Population Crisis, from One World English Course I Revised
Edition (Kyoiku Shuppan, 1999).
This lesson is about the world population crisis that has caused various kinds of environmental problems. To
understand the content of the lesson on the world population crisis, students were required to read English information on the following web-site, EcoKids Clubhouse(http://www.ecokids.earthday.ca/), which was selected by theteacher.
The web-site “EcoKids Clubhouse Stories” displays a picture book regarding environmental problems. The
story is written for children in Canada, so the English expressions are comparatively easy and there are many
pictures to help students understand the text. It makes us think about the relationship between human-beings,
animals (especially birds) and the environment. By reading it, students can also experience reading an interactive
story in which they can enjoy different plot lines according to the way they answer the questions at the end of theeach page.
How Students Completed the Task. Each student went to the information center after school and used theInternet. Students read an English picture book on environmental problems in the above web-site and summarized
it in Japanese as their assignment. However, the center does not have a sufficient number of computers to accommodate all of the students at the same time. The teacher had to divide each class of about forty students into four
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To contentsgroups and set different deadlines for each group. Afterwards, the teacher gave them a questionnaire about theirassignment. From the results of the questionnaire and the assignment, the effects of using the Internet as well as thestudent’s cares and problems were analyzed.
Results and discussion. Table 1 shows the results of the post-questionnaire. About half of the students
answered that they could understand the story. The number of the students who answered “it’s interesting” was thelargest. More than half answered “I want to use the Internet more from now on.”Table 1. Results of the Post-Questionnaires(1)

Do you understand this story? (121 in all)I understand very well. (3: 2%)

I do not understand very well. (22: 18%)

I understand almost all of it. (57: 47%)

I do not understand at all. (6: 5%)

I do not know. (33: 27%)
(2)

Do you think this report with the Internet is interesting? (125 in all)Very interesting. (4: 3%)

Not so interesting. (26: 21%)

Interesting.

(48: 38%)

Not interesting at all. (16: 13%)

I do not know. (31: 25%)
(3)

Do you want to use the Internet more from now on? ( 125 in all)Yes. (69: 55%)

I do not know. (37: 30%)

No. (19:15%)

Effects of the Practice. We can confirm some major effects of the practice from students’ impressions of
the assignment as reported in the post-questionnaire. Some of them reported that they enjoyed studying a picturebook written in authentic English by using the Internet. Through the story, some became more familiar with environmental problems and came to understand their importance. Some found a large and diverse quantity informationon the Internet. Some friends collaborated and taught each other how to use the Internet or its search engines. The
point is that students, by referencing a web site written in authentic English, became familiar with computers,interested in environmental problems and practiced their language skills, all the while enjoying themselves andhelping each other.
Problems and Difficulties. The following problems and difficulties are found in using the Internet for
English language teaching.
1.

English language difficulties
Giving notes in advance will help students understand English texts on the web-pages moreeasily, as most sites have many difficulties in regards to vocabulary, length of sentences, sentence structures complexities and so on. Moreover, some students did not understand the plot of
the picture book well. It must be noted that teachers should make students develop the different
kinds of reading skills required for the reading assignment. (scanning, skimming etc)2.

Computer familiarity problems
Computer literacy levels vary according to the students. The teacher tried to be in the computer
center to help students when they used the computer or with any other problems they had. This
practice is recommended. It should be noted however that the students who participated in thisstudy were quite willing to help each other. This willingness could also be utilized.

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Computer (Internet) environmental problems
Available facilities limit the students’ activities. Teachers have to limit themselves to assignments that can be achieved within a reasonable timeframe. An environment where students canuse the Internet during the English lessons is needed.

Teacher’s Roles. The following are the teacher’s main considerations in the present study of using theInternet for English language teaching.
1.

Selecting web-sites for students2.

Helping the students solve problems and difficulties that they face in using computers.

3.

Promoting students’ Internet use by making and giving them a variety of tasks. (introducing
useful web-sites, letting students present their impression of the web-sites that they discovered,giving students the opportunity to introduce the web-sites they selected etc.)

Conclusion
1.

How do teachers teach students the knowledge and skills needed for computer and Internet use?
When and what do teachers teach? We need to develop teaching plans and curriculums integrating English language and computer use.

2.

Information retrieval and collection is not of itself of sufficient value to justify the continued
use of the Internet. It is necessary that students output their ideas and opinions through the webpage making. In the long run, students should manage their own web-page.

3.

Computer environments are needed where teachers and students can use the Internet during
their lessons. Individual learning with the computer outside the classroom should be supporting
the whole class lesson.

The present study can be mentioned only summarily. For further details of it, see the writer’s home-page(http://www.suzuka-ct.ac.jp/genl/fl/mikami/index.html).

Notes
1.

Sections 1 and 2 were written by Akihiro Mikami and Section 3 was written by Shoji Nakagawa.

2

These two studies were undertaken as part of the Research Society of Teaching Materials on the Internet,
Internet Eigo Kyozai Kenkyukai, (President: Mitsuaki Hayase, Mie University), which was recognized as
one of the project team by the Chubu English Language Education Society.

References
Miyagawa, Y.,et al. (1999). One World English Course I, Revised Edition. Tokyo: Kyoiku Shuppan.
Yamanouchi, Y. (1996). インターネットを活用した英語授業 . Tokyo: NTT Publishing co. Ltd.

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Appendix: A Representative Application
Rap’n’Read : To Teach Japanese Junior High Students Correct Rhythm of English
Introduction
Rap’n’Read, which is my own naming, is an English pronunciation material for pronunciation. I choose text
( sometimes I write original text ) for it, analyze the rhythm structure of it, and compose accompaniment music. I
think that they have the same importance and related each other closely. I have been creating it for more than 15
years. In this article I am going to write about theory, practice and prospect of it.

Concept of Rap’n’Read
Generally speaking, so called pop music (here I would like to include rock, ‘J-pops’, rap music etc.) is basedon western music. Rhythm structure of melody is the same as that of verse, or historically I should say that verse
bears melody. So I can say that rhythm of pop music, as includes melody, rhythm section, and all accompanimentelements, is that of European language itself.
Pop music is very popular especially to young generation. It is no exaggeration to say that it is a part of theirlife. In spite of the fact that Japanese junior high school students listen pop music very much, their pronunciation,
especially rhythm, is monotonous or flat, which is the very characteristics of Japanese language. I thought that pop
music material for pronunciation was very effective. For pop music is very familiar with students and music is avery good example of rhythm of English.
Consequently the main concept of Rap’n’Read would be : oriented to Japanese English education, goodcombination of text and music, and music familiar to students.

Differences from Jazz Chants
Famous Jazz Chants have maybe the same concept as Rap’n’Read. But there are some differences. I willshow them below.
1.

Music is different. Jazz Chants uses jazz, which is not so popular among Japanese students. I
think that music has a very important role in such materials.

2.

Jazz Chants are not based on English education in Japan. English education in Japan is based on
the national curriculum, which limits vocabulary and grammatical matters.

3.

Jazz Chants is not basically for English learners in Japan. They have their own difficulties inpronunciation which is a little bit different from learners in other countries.

Analysis of Practice
About 15 years ago, I sometimes composed to English text and let my students repeat with music. The
reaction was far better than I expected. In 1990 and 1991 I composed rhythm materials systematically, using the
texts in the textbook. I used them for the first graders mainly at the beginning of the class for the second and thethird semester. Both in October and at the end of school year I let the students write the questionnaire including freecomposition.

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For the October investigation I let the students write the impression freely. It was just after finishing the first
Rap’n’Read. I sorted students’ composition as followings below:
Group A. Concerning with evaluation of Rap’n’Read (A1. Affirmative A2. Negative A3. First
negative then affirmative A4. Having difficulties)
Group B. Concerning with test
Group C. Others
The results were the followings: A1 → 76 (students), A2 → 5, A3 → 8, A4 → 14, B → 37, C → 7
At the end of school year I let the students write the questionnaire as well as free composition. The items ofquestionnaire were the followings below:
A. Concerning with Rap’n’Read itself: A1 → music, A2 → text, A3 → others
B. Concerning with the effects: B1 → memorization, B2 → achievement, B3 → will to study
C. Concerning with test
On each item I put the affirmative content on the left, negative content on the right, giving six ranks between
them. I gave 6 points to the left, 5 points to the second left …. 1 point to the right. I made 32 questions. The results
were the followings below:

Table 1. Mean Values for Each Category
Category

Mean Value

A1
A2
A3
B1
B2
B3
C

4.0
4.7
3.6
5.3
3.3
3.5
3.7

( I analyzed compositions of 96 students out of 158 students in the school. )According to the results, I can say that Rap’n’Read is the most effective for memorization.
Next I will show the analysis of free composition. I analyzed students’ composition on the following items: A →memorization, B → test, C → will to study, D → music, E → achievement, F → others.

Table 2. Results of Free Composition Analysis
Category

Number of Descriptions

A
B
C
D
E
F

60
59
38
42
29
48

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According to the results, the number of description concerning with memorization is the greatest. Though
the detailed analysis can not be shown here, as a result, I can say that students takes Rap’n’Read affirmatively andthat it is the most effective to memorization.

Making of Rap’n’Read
Rhythm Analysis of the Text. I don’t have clear way of rhythm analysis. In other words it is sensuous andintuitive. I read the text again and again. Then rhythm of the text came to me, and I write it down on music paper.
One thing I can say is that an English sentence has a tendency to have rhythm of 3/8 or 6/8 in many cases whichmakes syncopation or triplet rhythm.
Taking sentences from textbook, I will show the example of Rap’n’Read.
(one and a half bar introduction)
16 8. (4) /Brian’s mother: Hello.
16 8. (4) 16 8. 8 8 / 16 8. 8 8 8 8 4 /Koji: Hello.

This is Koji. May I speak to Brian, please?

1616 8 8 8

8. 16 (4)/ 16 8. 8 8 16 8. (4)/Mother: Sorry, but he’s out right now. Can I take a message?
8 8(4) (4) (4) /Brian: I’m home.
4 8 1616(8)8

8 8 / 8 8 4 8 16 16 (4) /Mother: Oh, here he is now. Brian, Koji is on the phone!
(from New Horizon English Course Book II Unit 3 A Phone Call)
Note: figures above show music note: 4 à quarter-note, 8 à eighth-note, 8. à dotted eighth-note, (4) Æquarter-rest / Æ bar line
Of course, this is not the only solution. Instead of ‘This is (16 8. )’, ‘This is (8 8)’ is possible. But ‘This is (168. )’, which contains syncopation, is far better. It is both rhythmic and natural. The same thing can be said concerning with ‘Can I’, ‘May I’. There are ‘impressive’ sycopations in ‘right now’, ‘here he is now.’, and ‘on the phone’.
students might have some difficulties in these parts, but they will be sure to enjoy that rhythm.
Composing Music. First I write down music for the text as most composers do. Next I use a sequencer(Logic Audio) on the computer and input music data. It takes a lot of time to do so. But recently very convenient
software appeared, which is called ‘ACID pro’. All you have to do is just drag music sampling data to the scorescreen. Using ACID pro, you could compose music for Rap’n’Read in a short time, though it will take you muchtime if you want to compose a complicated one.

Possibility of Co-operation on the web
It is very hard to compose Rap’n’Read by only one person. I think co-operation on the web is very good way
to spread Rap’n’Read. On the web you can share and revise to make it better one. And you can co-operate making
process and save time.

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The followings are co-operation items that I am planning:
1.

Text writing

2.

Rhythm analysis

3.

Sound making

And you can give ideas of revision on those items. So far my home page is for just introducing Rap’n’Read.
In the near future I would like to make a home page for doing that.

Conclusion
For nearly 15 years I have been making Rap’n’Read ( in fact its name changed ) . During these 15 years I
experienced three junior high schools and circumstances or level of the students different. Some English materials
may be effective to the students of one junior high, but others are not to the students of another junior high. Only
Rap’n’Read is always effective. The biggest problem has always been that mass production is difficult. To haveenough stock, as I mentioned above, co-operation on the web is one of the solution. Another solution is to make‘non textbook oriented’ Rap’n’Read . I am planning to make Rap’n’Read according to situation and function
shown in Course of Study for Junior High Schools.

References
Asano, H.,et al. (1996). New Horizon English Course Heisei 9 Version Book II. Tokyo: Tokyo Shoseki
Lengeling, G.,et al. (2000). Logic Audio Platinum ver. 4.5. Rellingen, Germany: Emagic Soft-und Hardware
GmbH
Nakagawa, S. (1992). ロックのリズムによる英語音声指導. A report for National Education Research Conference. Tokyo: Japan Teachers Union
Nakagawa, S. (1992). 豊かな授業へのヒント . Sanseido English Teaching No. 17, pp. 9-10. Tokyo: Sanseido
Nakagawa, S. (1994). 音楽英語のすすめ . Meiei ENGLISH REPORT No. 41, pp. 5-7. Nagoya, Japan: Meieitosho
Sonic Foundry. (1999). ACID Pro, Ver. 2. Madison, U.S.A.: Sonic Foundry, Inc.

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Making More Effective Use of On-Line Reading Material
Joyce Maeda
Yoshiko Kawamura
Kumiko Kaneniwa
Tokyo International University, Japan
Abstract
Material available over the Internet in English offers numerous possibilities for use in the language
classroom. But at the same time it offers teachers a challenge in how to assess and manage this seemingly
boundless resource for instructional purposes. The authors have developed an on-line tool which automaticallychecks the proportion of words in a text that come from the high frequency words of English, the AWL and words
outside of these levels. This tool has been named the Frequency Level Checker and was developed with a grantfrom Tokyo International University. This paper discusses the rational for the use of this type of tool, and offers
one example of how it was used to look at the vocabulary level of different kinds reading material often used inlanguage classrooms. An explanation is also provided of how to access this tool and the different features it
provides the user.

Introduction
The Internet has made it possible to access a wide variety of English language material for use in the language classroom. Material runs from authentic resources (newspapers, interviews, news broadcasts) to material
designed with a specific pedagogical goal in mind such as vocabulary building, grammar, or listening. However,this valuable resource also requires language teachers to be selective in order to use it effectively. There need to be
guidelines for selecting and grading materials according to the level of difficulty for a given group of learners. The
authors have focused attention on the possibility of grading reading material from the perspective of vocabularyfrequency levels. For this purpose an on-line tool, the Frequency Level Checker, was developed to assess theoverall difficulty of a text in terms of vocabulary level. The Frequency Level Checker (FLC) compares words in atext with high frequency words, words from the Academic Corpus, and the words outside of the groups .
This paper will first focus on an explanation of the words included in the vocabulary levels and how thesewould be helpful for determining the level of a given text. This is followed by an explanation of how to input text,
how to send the data and how to read the results. The results page offers the teacher a variety of feedback on the text
which can be used to 1) determine the approximate level of the material based on the proportion of words from thedifferent word frequency levels, 2) identify potentially difficult or unknown words for a particular group of learners, and 3) identify key words in a text. It is also possible to use this tool to devise vocabulary study lists and test
materials.
The results of a comparison of simplified texts and unsimplified texts was made to determine in what ways
these texts differ in terms of vocabulary. The results are reported here with suggestions for how this might be used
to grade reading material found on-line.
This tool and instructions for its use are available to the public free of charge at: http://language.tiu.ac.jp/flc/
tool.html. At this stage the tool is mainly designed to help teachers grade and analyze texts on the basis of the
vocabulary load and the possible burden of unknown words for a given group of students. Future versions of thetool are planned for student use as an aid for self-study.
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Background
Language proficiency rests on a number of competencies, and knowledge of vocabulary has been identified
as an important subskill in numerous works. Research on the relationship between vocabulary knowledge andreading competency of ESL/EFL learners has looked at the effect of vocabulary size on reading comprehension(Laufer and Sim, 1985; Nation, 1992).
Of particular interest here is the claim made by researchers that a learner’s vocabulary size is a good predictor of reading comprehension in a foreign language ( Laufer, 1992; Nation, 1997). These studies have focused on
how much vocabulary must be known for a learner to read fluently and be able to apply reading strategies from theL1 without becoming overloaded with a large number of unknown words. These studies indicate that 95% of thewords in a text must be known before the learner can be said to read fluently. Laufer takes this one step further andasks how many words would need to be known to the learner to read unsimplified texts. Her study indicates thatabout 3000 word families would give 95% coverage.
Let us look at a text from the perspective of how often certain words are likely to occur. There are roughly
2000 word families that constitute the high frequency words of English. Research in frequency of vocabulary
reveals the coverage of an average text by words from the high frequency levels will differ according to the type oftext (Nation, 1992; Coxhead, 2000). It has been estimated that these high frequency words cover up to 90% of
fiction texts, up to 75% of non-fiction texts, and up to 76% of the Academic Corpus (Coxhead, 2000). Thesefigures point to the importance of learning these words as a first step to reading comprehension and fluency.
Furthermore, instructors need to gauge their students vocabulary level in order to decide what material
would be appropriate If a learner has a good working knowledge of the high frequency words of English, then he or
she will probably know about 80% of the words in the text. But this would not be enough to handle an unsimplified
text as we saw above, since 95% of the words or about 3000 word families in a text need to be known to ensure
fluency, Therefore we must be selective of the texts that we give learners if our goal is to develop fluency andcomprehension through extensive reading
In order to facilitate the selection of materials and gain insight into what words a text includes, the authors
developed an on-line tool, the Frequency Level Checker (FLC), for automatically checking the high frequency
words in a text, and other categories of frequency.

The Design of FLC
The Frequency Level Checker divides and counts the words in a text into four word frequency groups, here
referred to as levels. The levels contain the following types of words:

Words and Families
Level 1 contains the most frequent 1,000 word families of English. Included in this list are articles,
prepositions, and pronouns, and other function words that would appear in any type of text
fairly frequently. Depending on the material being examined, words in this level will coverfrom 70 to 80% of a text.
Level 2 contains the second most frequent 1,000 word families. These words will cover from 5-10%
of a text.
Level 3 contains 570 of the most frequent word families found in the Academic Corpus. It does notinclude words from Levels 1 and 2. The occurrence of words from this level will vary depending on whether the material is academic or not.

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Outside Levels is a list created of all words outside Levels 1, 2, and 3. This list will also include proper
nouns.
Words used in the levels are grouped into families. A family consists of the headword and the inflected forms
and certain derived forms of the word (Bauer & Nation, 1983). For example, the word accept would have thefollowing family:
accept (headword)
accepts
accepted
accepting
acceptable
acceptability
acceptanceunacceptable
This procedure of grouping words is followed since we can assume that if a learner knows the meaning of theheadword, he or she will not have any difficulty learning the meaning of its family members. For this reason thesewords do not need to be treated as new words. Words in the Outside Levels do not show family groupings and willappear as individual words.

Accessing the Frequency Level Checker
In order to process a text with the Frequency Level Checker, the following procedure is used. (Fig. 1)
Using the copy and paste function of the computer, a text created on a word processing program can be copied andpasted into the text-box or typed in directly. Then by clicking on the Enter key the text is sent for processing, withthe results page appearing shortly.

Figure 1. Input page of Frequency Level Checker

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Another feature of the input page allows the user to choose a color for the different words in the text
according to their frequency level. The default setting can also be used so that all words from Level 3 and words
outside the levels will appear in red, Levels 1 and 2 in black. The default settings can be changed easily by clicking
one of the colors for a given level. Choosing a color code for a particular level has the effect of highlighting thosewords and making it readily apparent how they are distributed in the text.

Results Page
After a text is sent for processing the results will appear on the screen with the following three features.
(Fig. 2)

Figure 2. Results Page of Frequency Level Checker
The three features are (a) the original text with words color coded either using the default settings or thosechosen by the user, (b) a word list of all words appearing in the text, and (c) two charts giving totals for various
word counts.
An example of the original text as it appears in the results page can be seen in Fig. 2. Here the page appears
in black and white. However, on the user’s computer screen words in the text would be in the colors of the default
settings or user choices. The list of all words in the text appears on the right hand side of the screen. Each word
appears with its family headword and the number of times the word and possibly its other family members appeared. This grouping into family units can be very helpful for teaching the derivatives of words and their various
inflections, particularly with learners who are still trying to master the high frequency words.
The words in the list to the right of the screen are listed in the order they appear in the text. Clicking on aword in the text will bring it to the top of the word list for easy reference. In a long text, this makes it easy to checkthe frequency of the word and the other inflected or derived forms the text contains.
The last feature to be discussed is the charts at the bottom of the screen on the results page. These give threedifferent word counts for the text that was sent for processing.

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1.

The top tiers of both charts show the total number of all words (tokens) at each level and thetotal for the text. Percentages are in parenthesis.

2.

The bottom tier of the chart on the left shows the number of types and percentage for each leveland for the whole text. This is the number of different words (types) that appear in the text. In
other words, a specific word form is counted only once and is not counted again if it is repeated.

3.

The bottom tier of the chart on the right shows the number of word families in the text forLevels 1, 2, and 3, but NOT for words in the Outside Levels (words outside the three highfrequency levels).

Practical Application of FLC
Comparison. A comparison was made of texts from simplified readers with controlled vocabulary and online newspapers (unsimplified texts) to ascertain what percentages of the vocabulary comes from the different
word frequency levels analyzed by FLC. This information in turn could be used to determine the appropriatenessof material for learners. Although limited in scope, this study attempts to answer the following two questions:
1. How do these types of texts differ in terms of vocabulary?
2. How appropriate would these different texts be for students who at the 2000 word family level?
Data. Three simplified readers were chosen, each from a different vocabulary level. Vocabulary at eachlevel is controlled so as to avoid huge amounts of new vocabulary being introduced too quickly. The levels were the
1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 word levels of the Ladder Series published by Yohan Publication, Inc. Books at the 1,000
word level would contain words from the 1,000 word families used at this step. The newspapers selected were theon-line editions of the Seattle Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Daily Yomiuri. The results are reported below.

Table 1. Percentage of Words (Tokens) from Different Word Frequency Levels
Materials

Level 1 (%)

Level 2 (%)

Level +2 (%)

Level 3 (%)

Outside (%)

1,000 Words

87.5

3.7

91.4

1.0

9.6

2,000 Words

85.9

5.7

91.6

0.3

8.1

3,000 Words

86.9

5.8

92.7

1.2

6.2

Seattle Times

77.9

5.1

83.0

3.3

13.7

Chicago Tribune

73.2

4.3

77.5

5.3

17.2

Daily Yomiuri

67.6

6.3

73.9

6.9

19.2

Table 2 Percentage of Words (Types) from Different Word Frequency Levels
Materials

Level 1 (%)

Level 2 (%)

Level +2 (%)

Level 3 (%)

Outside (%)

1,000 Words

82.1

8.1

90.2

2.2

7.5

2,000 Words

75.8

11.6

87.4

0.8

11.8

3,000 Words

76.2

13.0

89.2

2.0

8.8

Seattle Times

55.8

10.4

66.2

8.3

25.6

Chicago Tribune

52.7

8.5

61.2

11.0

27.8

Daily Yomiuri

49.0

11.3

60.3

12.1

27.7

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Results and Discussion
If we look at Table 1 above, we see that the percentages of running words (tokens) from the high frequency
levels (combined levels 1 and 2) are 90% for the simplified readers. In contrast the percentage drops to about 80%
or lower for newspapers.
Furthermore, simplified texts used fewer words from the AWL than the unsimplified texts. The lower
number of words from the AWL in the simplified texts would decrease the vocabulary load on those learners at the2000 word level. An examination of the AWL words showed that in the simplified texts over half were repeated 2
or more times. In contrast, there were more words from the AWL in the newspaper texts and fewer of these words
were repeated.
Lastly, the number of words outside the high frequency and AWL (outside levels) differed between simplified and newspaper texts as well. The number seems relatively high in the simplified text (6%-9%), and this might
be interpreted as placing a burden on the learner. However, it was found that from half to two-thirds of the list
contained proper nouns. For example, in the 1,000 word level simplified text, 64% of words in the outside lists
were proper nouns. This contrasts with newspapers where 41% of the words in the Outside Levels were proper
nouns. Proper nouns are often defined or explained in the text, and therefore do not interfere with reading fluency
as would an unknown lexical item.
Research has indicated that 95% of the words in a text need to be known for comprehension and fluency. But
it is important in selecting a text to look at the type of text and the frequency level of the words in the text. As seenin the tables above, 90% of words in the simplified texts are from the high frequency levels. Add to this the proper
nouns found in fiction and we have roughly 95% coverage. For students at the 2000 word level this type of text
would be appropriate. In contrast, the newspaper texts show a lower percentage of words from the high frequency
levels (less than 80%) and more variety in words from the AWL and outside levels. For students at the 2000 wordlevel this type of text would place a considerable burden on the learner in terms of unknown vocabulary. If the
purpose of a reading course for this level of student is to develop fluency, then a great deal of pre-teaching would
be necessary to prepare students for reading.

Conclusion
The Frequency Level Checker is able to analyze a text for the number and proportion of words that comefrom the high frequency levels of English, academic texts, and also to give a list of all other words in a text. This
tool enables a teacher to quickly check the level of a text for an intended group of learners and make a decision
about its appropriateness, or the need to pre-teach certain vocabulary items. As we saw from a comparison of
vocabulary levels in simplified readers and on-line newspapers, texts will vary widely in the type of vocabulary
they contain. What should an instructor keep in mind when selecting a text for the appropriate vocabulary level fora group of learners at the 2000 word level? The following suggestions could be used as guidelines:
1.

To promote fluency and aid comprehension for learners at or below the 2000 word level, ateacher would need to select a text with at least 90-95% coverage by Levels 1 and 2 (the 2000
high frequency words).

2.

It would also be worthwhile to look at the number of proper nouns which appear in the outside
lists and check to see whether or not they would be easily understood within the context of thetext itself.

3.

Check the other words in the outside lists to see what families could be created. Grouping
words into families will make learning easier. It would also be useful to check which words areused most frequently and may be central to understanding the text. These words could beselected and taught prior to reading, or they could be given a gloss on a separate sheet.

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Check the number of words from the AWL and look at the words to see their usefulness for theintended group of learners. For students who intend to study at the college level, adequate
exposure to and practice with these words is crucial.

A careful examination of vocabulary in a text reveals one dimension of its readability or ease of comprehension. However, it is one dimension and does not guarantee total comprehension of a given text. Factors such as
background knowledge, knowledge of English syntax, and reading skills in general will also determine how well alearner understands a text. These other factors must also be considered when deciding on the appropriateness of atext for learners.
It is hoped that this tool will aid individual teachers in selecting reading material for their particular group of
students. Comments and suggestions on this tool can be sent to the e-mail address at the beginning of this paper.

Notes
1.

The Frequency Level Checker was developed with a research grant from Tokyo International
University (Kawagoe City, Japan). The authors wish to express their gratitude for the university’s
support.

2.

The word lists used for the levels in the program were adapted with permission from I. S. P.
Nation’s work at the University of Wellington, New Zealand. The original word lists for Levels
1 and 2 on were adapted from the General Service List of English, by West and later developed
by Nation. Level 3 is the Academic Word List developed by A. Coxhead. For details on the
Academic Corpus from which the AWL was developed see: Coxhead, A., 2000. A new Academic Word List. TESOL Quarterly 34;2: 213-238.

3.

P. Nation’s vocabulary levels test can be given to learners to get a rough guide to vocabulary
size.

References
Bauer, L. & Nation, P. (1983). Word families. International Journal of Lexicography 8(6), 255-279.
Coxhead, A., (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly 34(2), 213-238.
Hirsh, D. & Nation, P., (1992). What vocabulary size is needed to read unsimplified texts for pleasure? Reading in
a Foreign Language, 8(2), 689-696.
Laufer, B. & Sim, D. D., (1985). Measuring and explaining the threshold needed for English for academic purposes
texts. Foreign language annual, 18, 405-413.
Laufer, B. (1992). How much lexis is necessary for reading comprehension?. In J. J. L. Arnaud & H. Bejoint (eds.),
Vocabulary and Applied Linguistics (pp. 126-132). London: Macmillan.
Kyongho, H. & Nation, P. (1989). Reducing the vocabulary lead and encouraging learning through reading newspapers. Reading in a Foreign Language, 6(1), 323-335.
Nation, P. (1983). Learning and Teaching Vocabulary. Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University.
Nation, P. & Coady, J. (1988). Vocabulary and reading. In Carter, R., et al (eds.) Vocabulary and language teaching:, (pp. 97-110). London: Longman.
Nation, P & Waring, R. (1997). In Schmitt, N. & McCarthy, M. (eds.) Vocabulary: Description, acquisition andpedagogy. (pp. 6-19). London: Cambridge University Press.

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Maximizing Potential in the Design of Multimedia Environments
Gordon B. Liversidge
Otsuma Women’s University, Japan
Abstract
The article presents in four sections some of the factors in designing two new multimedia rooms at
Otsuma University. The sections are results of a questionnaire, main design parameters, problems with designs
tendered by companies, and the outcome. Prominent factors in the process were: differences in designing rooms
for language and literature, and culture courses as opposed to computer and IT courses; and intended pedagogic
procedures. Specific key words are multi-purpose, amphitheater, dead space, sideways-room. The conclusion
includes general comments about education and technology in Japan.

Introduction
In the summer of 1998, a decision was taken to replace two existing language laboratories, one at the Chiyoda
Campus and one at the Sayama Campus. In contrast to the purposes of AV lecture theaters and computer rooms,
these LLs had been primarily for the use of the Department of English Literature. The author’s role was to provide
a framework from within which the project team and faculty could discuss the central factors in creating multimedia rooms. An overview of this is reported here in four sections: the results of a questionnaire given to the department, the main parameters required in the design, problems with designs provided by companies, and the outcome.
Each section includes brief comments on salient or interesting points. The sections do not follow a strict chronological order, do not provide detailed technical specifications, nor do they address administrative or financial
issues. As such this report does not claim to be comprehensive but seeks to provide valuable pointers to those whoare placed in similar positions of responsibility.

Questionnaire to Faculty
A detailed questionnaire consisting of sixteen sections, each section having as many as fifteen selectableoptions, sought the faculty’s opinions about the proposed multimedia rooms. The main areas addressed were: (a)their place in the curriculum; (b) detailed desired areas of use for language, culture, and literature courses; (c) the
intended pedagogic procedures they would adopt - (the preferred methodology was to start with a lecture style classor teacher-centered practice and then move to individual work or practice; rather than always being at the masterconsole, most staff favored moving around the classroom); (d) the desired layout of the rooms - (Staff stated that
their main dislike of the existing LLs was their physical alienation from students, namely being unable to easily getout from behind the master console, and being a long way from some students); (e) the amount and type of selfaccess necessary for their courses -(listening practice, watching English closed-captioned videos, working on assignments, particularly graduation theses, and using CD-ROMs for various kinds of study and research); (f) system
requirements; (g) opinions and needs concerning authentic and non-authentic materials for language, culture, andliterature courses - (closed captioned versions of films, news and documentaries; literature; pre-installed CD-ROM
learner dictionaries, especially interactive ones, with pronunciation practice, pictures and videos clips); (h) avail-Maximizing Potential in the Design of Multimedia Environments [Poster Presentation]475

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able and desired support - (all the time, or at the beginning classes; all Otsuma AV lecture theatres, LLs, andcomputer rooms have an on-call phone link to the AV support staff); and (i) possible and desired training.
Comment: There is contradiction in the answers for (c) moving around the classroom, and (d) dislike ofphysical alienation. In Japan, students invariably place their bags in the aisles, and even when repeatedly asked not
to do so they often forget. This is because the practice is not perceived as being an obstacle to the teacher or
lecturer. It reflects the fact that for most of the students’ educational life, certainly in junior and senior high school,
their teachers have remained at the front of the class. This fact has consistently had a negative effect on the designof LLs, AV and computer rooms. Therefore, the opinions of faculty were divided as to whether, in the case of arectangular-shaped room, it was better to have the master console at the end of the room as it traditionally is, orwhether to place it in the middle of one of the long walls.

Parameters for Multimedia (MM) Rooms
The parameters below were based on: the results of the questionnaire, examination of recently installed
multimedia rooms at other universities, including Waseda, Rikkyo, Aoyama, Sophia, and Tokyo Metropolitan,
discussions with lecturers and teachers from other universities, multimedia specialists, and consultations withpublishers of educational computer software. The following are some of the key parameters: (a) flexibility ofroom and system for multi-purpose usage; (b) a system framework which allows later expansion and additions, e.g.
USB ports on monitor screens; (c) user-friendly system for staff and students; (d) an open system which allows
interaction inside the multimedia room, within the university and beyond the university; (e) easy physical accessand movement for students and staff: interaction, assistance, getting to printers etc; (f) vision and contact: staff andstudents able to see / speak to each other physically or over the system; (g) amphitheater in front of master console;(h) master console: on the long side or at the end the room; (i) easy access with split master console; (j) loweredor embedded screens and keyboards; (k) an additional shared central monitor for each pair of students; (l) on themaster console, a separate monitor for continual viewing of student computer screens; and (m) 100% alignment ofseating layout with the displaying of it on the control panel.
Comment: The underlined proposals resulted in the greatest division of opinion. The proposed side-wallorientation meant that teachers would be a maximum of four or five rows away from any student, as opposed to thestandard room where students can be up to eight to ten rows away.

Problems with Requested Designs
The Sayama campus’s room shape was less elongated than that of the Chiyoda and has different accesspoints (doors). Thus, companies tendered about twenty different designs. Before the designs were tendered, ameeting was held at which the parameters above were outlined and their rationale explained. However, about halfof the proposals failed to appreciate educational needs and the designs showed little flexibility for multi-purpose
usage. It was the old problem of fusing the technological and educational elements. Particular problems were: (a)too much dead space; (b) poor physical access for staff and students; (c) bad lines of vision; (d) dominance ofperception of teacher-controlled usage; (e) options reduced by department and administration demands for rooms
with capacity for 70 students; (f) only one company had a system that was able to map the sideways-room seatingplan identically with that of the master console display, if any single row across the room has more than eightstudents; (g) poor system technology for splitting master console; and (h) difficulties in interfacing traditional LL
speech system and computers.
Comment: The poorest designs reflected the dominant image of computers as being for IT (Johoshori classes)
where students would be seated at a screen learning programming languages or the use of programs such as Word,
Excel, or PowerPoint. There was no allowance for interaction, either physical or on the system, which would benecessary with language or content courses; this would be necessary when working as pairs or groups on the
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editing and compiling of assignments such as on an American author or literary work, cross-cultural gestures, orchanging attitudes to sport in the UK. Better designs produced more open plans with circular or triangular shaped
modules for 6 – 12 students. However, unless the students were multimedia specialists or engineers who as part oftheir course needed to get behind the equipment to make and change connections, that space became dead space.
The shape of these modules, although visually attractive, made the practicalities of moving within the room difficult. It also meant that some students would have their backs to the lecturer or teacher, thus making activities which
required switching between on screen and physical eye contact more difficult.

OutcomeThe requirement of having rooms capable of seating 64 students meant that the master console had to belocated at the end of the room. The master console was not split, nor was there space for an amphitheater.
•

Easy access and movement through rows and aisles. Why is there always a desire to maintainperfect symmetry? We changed the original plans for the Chiyoda Campus to a non-equidistant
3-3-2 grouping of rows, and for the Sayama Campus to a 4-4 grouping. For Chiyoda, thiscreated blocks of 24, 24 and 16 students. There is comfortable space for students and staff tomove across the rows within these blocks. However, the even wider spaces between the blocks
make movement across the room very easy. Furthermore, 5 cms were taken off each paired
student module. Contrary to older designs, not as much desk space was needed because, first,
liquid crystal (ekitai) slim screens have replaced the old style monitor and, second, the keyboard rests under the desk table but is visible through a glass surface and is also extractable.

•

The additional shared monitor per pair of students is essential. It allows flexibility of usage.
Students can view any other student’s personal screen or any machine of the master console
system (computer screen, DVD, OHP). For example, if a class is being trained in Internet
advanced English searches and has to follow a number of stages, these can be viewed on thecentral monitor. Alternatively a student’s screen displayed on the shared monitor allows otherstudents, who are stuck on the same point, all to view the screen of a student who is being
coached through it.

•

Separate Computer and LL Speech Systems. The reasons for this were ease of use for students
and staff; avoidance of compatibility problems; and weaknesses in speech recognition software, and the paucity of good non-authentic computer materials, although the situation is rapidly improving.

Conclusion
Whatever system is installed, sooner rather than later it will be dated by rapidly improving computer capabilities and newer technologies such as ADSL, 3G mobile phones, and Bluetooth. However, having looked at andused newly installed systems at other universities and the experiences of my own university, it seems that here in
Japan many of the lessons of the first generation of LLs have not been learnt and that the same mistakes are being
repeated. Primarily, there is still a tendency to provide finance for hardware alone, and to install some very impressive systems without addressing the fundamental areas, which have not changed. First, there is the need to clarify
and establish the role held within the curriculum for multimedia rooms, which blend the new technologies, thesoftware, and the courseware. Second, more research is needed to establish what areas of learning are helped by
the new technologies and how these should be incorporated into pedagogic procedures and much more effort must
be placed on the development of materials. Third, for the first two areas, budgets, training, and support are
essential. Fourth, even if the first three areas are satisfied, students need to have easy access for self-study from on
and off campus.

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Two more areas are worthy of special mention. First, there is the question of the extent to which systems
should be open or closed for e-learning, accessing the campus from home, and general Internet access. Second, forself-study or assignments, whether during class time, in AV centers, or off-campus, there is a need for clear andaccurate guidelines on copyright laws, especially where the activity is for educational use without charge. Underlying, both of these areas are ethical and legal issues. The first is that of prescriptive views of the appropriacy of
certain materials or how they are accessed. The second is that of protection of students and also retaining control
over their actions, which reflects the extent to which the university can or thinks it can be held liable. All theseissues must be carefully considered because each university visited had different policies, and these also differed
between departments. The positions adopted by both administrations and publishers of materials were and are notalways totally accurate.
Almost one year has passed since the submission of the outline of this presentation. The students and staff
clearly enjoy the layout and general functionality of the multimedia rooms. In addition to the learning requirements for the language, literature and culture courses, students, some of whom were absolute beginners andtechnophobes, have gained a confidence with computers and the Internet. The experience of Otsuma, while special, is not unique, and contains aspects frequently encountered in Japan. There is still much room for improvement concerning the fundamental question of defining the role of the rooms in the curriculum, and of correctly
blending the technologies, staff and student training, courseware, software, budgets, and staff and student access.

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Motivational Aspects of Using CALL for Reading and Writing in EFL
Kazunori Nozawa
Ritsumeikan University
Abtract
One of the primary benefits of CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) is that it increases student
motivation. This paper reports a brief review of literature and discusses EFL reading and writing through
CALL, shifting paradigm of CAC (Computer-Assisted Composition), synchronous “chat” and asynchronous
discussion, and CALL at a private university in Japan. One of the principal findings of the study is that bothlearners’ and teachers’ responses to the questionnaires such as the one developed for this study can represent
positive evidence of instrumental reliability. However, negative motivational variables such as not submitting
written assignments and not actively participating in cooperative learning projects were also found. This paper
reports these findings and concludes by describing how data on EFL learners’ motivational factors can inform
efforts toward improving foreign language education policy and program evaluation in Japanese universities.

Brief Review of the Literature
The motivational aspects for reading and writing have been widely studied and there is a vast of literature
dealing with the issue. Here I would like to discuss the motivational aspects focusing on “differences in learning
styles and preferences among students”.
Soo (1999) claims that students have significantly different language learning preferences and these preferences make any instructional environment, method or resource more effective for some learners and less effective
for others. Soo concludes that the answer to deal with differences in learning styles among language learners does
not lie in finding one super method that can cater to all learning styles and there can be no such method. However,
the key to teaching all learners as effective as possible lies in identifying the needs and preferences of each learnerand not fulfilling learners’ needs according to their preferences but helping them develop new ways to learn. The
computer seems versatile enough to be such a medium if it is driven by well-designed software or courseware andproperly utilized by well-trained teachers.
Under the similar discussion Ngeow (1999) also describes three complementary principles for addressing
learning styles and strategy training in the CALL classroom and discusses ways to apply the principles to theplanning and design of learning activities that enhance and extend students’ learning strategy repertoires. Ngeow
concludes that diversity in learning needs and preferences calls for flexibility in teaching and learning approaches
in the CALL classroom and that teachers need to be insightful and sensitive in creating opportunities for various
kinds of computer-enhanced activities while students need to take responsibility for their learning by enhancing
and extending their learning preferences to meet the challenges of different contexts.
Spratt (1999) also reports on the comparison of learners’ preferred activities with teachers’ perceptions ofwhat those preferences were. The results have implications for syllabus and materials design and also for classroom practice and studies of teachers’ decision-making processes.
In addition, Bailey et al. (1999) discusses the minimal finding on learning style variables and suggests
possible questions for future research and makes recommendations for understanding foreign language anxiety andincreasing foreign language learning.

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EFL Reading through CALL
Questions concerning web reading have recently received considerable attention, but there are a few researches to give appropriate answers. Hunter (1998) examines the emerging form of text on the English World
Wide Web (text nouveau) and how it is influencing reading, in particular reading by non-native readers of English.
Hunter claims that (a) web reading materials is radically different from traditional print forms with their pages ofdense text and line wrap, (b) visible text structure cues and information-revealing document structure can enhanceaccessibility of text and reduce the readers’ cognitive load, and (c) there is a need for a foundation framework forcharacterizing accessibility of text structure.
Singhal (1999) investigates the role of the computer as it relates to reading and concludes that in essence,computer assisted instruction and computer programs to teach reading hold great promise for becoming powerful
instructional tools that increase students’ engagement in reading, enhance reading comprehension, and improvereading skills. Such tools can also assist the teacher in developing a truly individualized reading program that canbetter meet the varied needs of students found in most classrooms. By using such a tool, teachers can vary the paceof instruction, review and reinforce learning, teach and address specific skills, enhance motivation, and provide
immediate feedback. These features combined increase the likelihood that students’ engagement in reading instruction will be increased. It must, however, be recognized that the computer is not meant to replace the teacher,but rather improve and enhance classroom reading instruction. Well-designed multimedia computer programs canallow students to apply what they learn in meaningful reading activities that meet their individual needs, and suchprograms can also stimulate interest and increase motivation. Instructional programs can be developed to teachreading and comprehension skills and strategies that go beyond simple busy tasks that students often respondnegatively to. Reading through the computer has the potential to actively engage students in the reading andlearning process because of its capabilities to meet their varied needs, and can help students perceive the value ofsuccess, and their own potential as readers.
Ganderton (1999) describes some of the interactions in the context of observing learners’ reading strategies
in performing reading tasks in L2 web-based authentic materials. He also discusses the strengths and limitations of
the medium of the Web for the development and application of specific reading skills and knowledge areas, such asinferencing, use of text structure and synthesizing new information.

EFL Writing through CALL
Phinney (1996) mentioned that the early studies of CAC focused almost exclusively on word processing.
Many of the publications dealt with case studies or anecdotes about the encounters of one teacher or writer withword processing. The promise of the computer as a writing tool seemed to match the newly strengthened emphasison the writing process in English composition and rhetoric. Teaching methods that focused on multiple revisions
seized on a tool that seemed to make those revisions easier and faster.
Among the motivational studies on the positive side, students who use word processors have been said toimprove their attitude toward writing (Daiute, 1985; Phinney, 1991; Phinney and Mathis, 1990; Schwartz, 1984).
Thus a good deal of the early research tried to support the hypotheses that computer-using students would write
more, revise more, and produce better papers. One the other hand, studies done by Hawisher (1989) that compared
CAC to composing with traditional methods often yielded mixed results.
In the nineties the CAC reached a certain level of maturity and the emphasis in CAC research has shifted tothe changing writing behaviors and pedagogies engendered by the electronic medium, and the ways that computer
technology affects how we think about the writing process. Although word processing in and of itself does notproduce better writing or better writers, it does appear to change the way writers approach writing process. Haas
(1989), for example, observed that in the word processing condition there was less planning overall, less conceptual planning, and more local planning than in the pen and paper condition.
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Shen (1999) exams how computer-assisted writing (CAW) can help to ease learner’s anxiety, and thus to
improve writing proficiency through a pretest-posttest study and reports that the final results indicate that due to thenatural learning environment, autonomy, and free space, CAW does to some extent, ease learner’s anxiety in writing and helps to improve writing both in quantity & quality.

Shifting Paradigm of CAC
In the recent CALL classrooms the CAC community has moved from a focus on the word processor as a tool
to an examination of the interactions among teachers, learners, and technology. The recent topics of interest haveincluded the use of hypertext and hypermedia (multimedia) in writing, collaborative writing environments, electronic mail (e-mail), synchronous and asynchronous conferencing, and the changing relationships between teachers and learners in the CALL classroom.
E-mail has become the new ”toy of choice” for many teachers who have discovered the Internet. Many
teachers have tried to incorporate e-mail into their writing classes in some way. In the ESL/EFL teaching, the mostcommon use of e-mail may be pen pals (Hoffman, 1996). In a basic pen pal activity, students write electronic
messages to their pen pals much as they might write traditional letters. The difference is, of course, that mail if
almost delivered almost immediately, so students can write many more letters than might be possible otherwise. I
have found that my students enjoy what they perceive to be more personal contact and will write me short notes on
e-mail to address questions or problems they would not normally bring up in class. Most importantly, the variety of“documents” my students have made using the computer has engaged their interest, motivated them to use English
even outside the classroom, and helped them to learn the cooperative skills they will need in the future working
world.
Asao (1995) examines the role of the Internet in the teaching of EFL and its pedagogical implications. Asao
finds that lack of motivation on the part of the students in writing courses is largely a reflection of too muchemphasis on accuracy and also in the traditional format of a writing course the students have no readers to whomthey should address their messages and the content of their messages are often neglected. As Marshall McLuhan’saxiom “the medium is the message” applies to e-mail, Asao claims that it is possible to compensate the neglectedarea of language learning and reformulate its paradigm.

Synchronous “Chat” and Asynchronous Discussion
One of the major benefits of a networked writing class can be found in both synchronous “chat” and asynchronous discussion. Synchronous “chat” allows writers to conduct information exchange or discussion throughthe keyboard. Their comments can read at almost real-time speed by other participants, who can then respond.
Batson (1993) points out that more students participate in an online classroom because several students can be
writing their contributions at the same time.
Kitao (1998) discusses the role that communication in general and synchronous communication in particular
plays in language learning and how students can be introduced to it at two Internet sites, SchMOOze University andDave’s ESL Café Chat Central. Kitao also reports the results of a survey of non-native English speaker who uses
synchronous communication sites for, at least in part, the purpose of improving his/her English proficiency, even if
the person is not currently involved in formal English courses. Kitao concludes that among the many uses of theInternet for English language students, synchronous communication in an activity with particular promise, because
it allows students to interact with others in English in real time. This study involved participants at two such sites.
In addition, Kitao & Kitao (1999) further discuss the justification of for using chat and resources available on theInternet for the students and teachers who want to use chat.

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To contentsMarkley and Herbert (1999) examined a widely used software program, the Interchange application of theDaedlus Integrated Writing Environment, and claims that it is a flexible tool for use in a foreign language classroom which can provide an excellent learning environment for Japanese students. Because it allows large groupsof students to have time-efficient communication in a non-threatening atmosphere, even when the class is composed of students of mixed levels.
In their second section review of New Ways of Learning and Teaching: Focusing on Technology and Foreign
Language Education (Muyskens, 1997). Bradley and Lomicka (1999) reported that technology-enhanced interaction can foster virtual learning communities, promote interaction across linguistic and cultural boundaries, andprovide a different set of classroom discourse conventions in which to communicate.
Freiermuth (2000) also suggests that online chatting as tool allows students an avenue of more relaxedinteraction compared to speaking aloud so that they have more time and produce more language without having acommunication breakdown.
Asynchronous discussion allows writers to express their opinions or discuss on a particular topic with theirclassmates or other writers even at a different institution through the Internet. One of the outstanding EFL writing
examples through CALL while enhancing electronic literacy is collaborative learning projects among students who
belong to different universities called “Interactive Writing Community (IWC) on BBS web site.” (Imamura &Mizuno, 2000). The main concept behind such a project was “write to be read.” It led to become aware of theprocess writing while increasing the motivation to get feedback on their work and exchanging ideas among students who share similar interest. In addition, IWC extended with “Intercultural Classroom Connections (ICC)”that was based on Japanese cultural topics and exchanged opinions on them among students. Obviously overseas
students learned much about Japanese culture through the writing activities.

Reading and Writing Using CALL at a Private University
Nozawa (1999) reports that a new web-based CALL program was added to the 1998 revised EFL curriculum
for freshmen and sophomores in two faculties (Economics and Business Administration) at Ritsumeikan University and discusses the pros and cons in relation with the information literacy. One of three selective courses is an
English-only course with 12 credit hours for the minimum requirement for a bachelor’s degree. Among the subjects English 4, 8, and 12 are CALL classes.
English 4 is a required subject for all the freshmen who belong to Faculties of Economics and Business
Administration and is combined with information literacy education because most of them lack the basics. Keyword vocabulary and reading materials in English 1 (reading class) are provided as the vocabulary drills and speed
reading program. In addition, students are required to search for information on research topics based on thecontent of English 1 using search engines, write 5-7 reports for the 14-week semester, and submit them using e-mailto their instructors. The students are also required to do computer projects from the text Internet English (OUP) in
2000.
English 8 is only for students who seek the12-credit-hour language requirement to receive an undergraduate
degree. There are three programs (Academic Career Program, Business Career Program, and Liberal Arts Program) available at present. The students are again required to search information on given topics that are related toEnglish 7 (listening) texts and submit the assignments as English 4. However, the summary should be transferred
into the web pages as a small group collaborative project and later group oral presentations using the created web
pages are done.
English 12 follows the basic style, but adopts a more individualized learning style with more online listening
exercises. Each student must choose a topic to research and create both web pages and a PowerPoint file for anindividual oral presentation.

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Throughout all the CALL classes the students spend a great amount of time to seek for appropriate information on their research topics on the Internet. As a result, both faster reading on the web databases and writing skills
using word processor and e-mail are essential to accomplish all the tasks.
According to the results of the questionnaires (1998-99), 63% of the freshmen responded positively regarding the contents for English 4 as a whole while 71-78% of them satisfied respectively. In addition, among learned
skills, 56.4% and 54.8% of them pointed out “collecting information via the Internet”; 35.7-38.1% for “fasterreading”; 42.7% and 27.8% for “typing/keyboarding”; 39.2% and 29.4% for “e-mailing in English.”
Similarly 67% of the freshmen responded positively regarding the contents for English 8 (1998) as a whole.
Furthermore, among learned skills, they pointed out “using the Internet” 61.7%; “creating Web pages” 39%; “collecting information & analysis” 26.2%; “writing”15.6%. 35.5% also felt “no extra burden” while 62.4% felt someburden because they were required to complete many assignments and there were time-consuming activities.
Similarly 58.8% of the sophomores satisfied and 66.6% of them felt interesting regarding the contents ofEnglish 12 (1999) as a whole. Moreover, among learned skills, they pointed out “using the Internet”28.9%; “creating Web pages”17.3%; “collecting information & analysis”11.6%; “writing”11%. With quite similar results forEnglish 8, 33.8% of them also felt “no extra burden” while 66.3% felt “some burden” because they were required
to complete many weekly assiganments.

Conclusion
Reading and writing through CALL with spirit of “read more efficiently, write more fluently” is an essential
part of the EFL program at Ritsumeikan University BKC and some other higher institutions in Japan. With learnercentered approach, students should actively be involved in a variety of extensive reading activities while producing“comprehensible-level” compositions to be read by others. There is still room for improvement in motivating
students to enjoy reading on the local server programs or huge amounts of resources on the Internet and write tosummarize the research data in a time-efficient manner while enhancing communication in the CALL classes in a
non-threatening atmosphere. I believe that motivation of the students is the key for successful CALL that create
enjoyable and active learning environments that are not easy to find in the traditional classrooms.

References
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Ngeow, K. Yeok-Hwa. (1999). Classroom practice: Enhancing and extending learning styles through computers.
In J. Egbert & E. Hanson-Smith (eds.), CALL environments: Research, practice and critical issues (pp. 302314). Alexandria, VA: TESOL, Inc.
Nozawa, K. (1999). Integrating CALL into a new EFL program. Ritusmeikan Economic Rreview, 48(2), 32-42.
Phinney, M. (1996). Exploring the virtual world: Computers in the second language writing classroom. In M. C.
Pennington (ed.), The power of call (pp. 138-152). Athelstan Publications.
Phinney, Marianne. (1991). Computer assisted writing and writing apprehension in ESL students. In P. Dunkel(ed.), Research issues and studies on computer assisted language learning and testing (pp. 189-204). New
York: Newbury House/HarperCollins.
Phinney, M. & Mathis, S. (1990). ESL student responses to writing with computers. TESOL newsletter, 24(2), 3031.
Freiermuth, M. R. (2000). Combating classroom anxiety online, in Paul Lewis (ed.) CALLING ASIA - Theproceedings of the 4th annual JALT CALL SIG conference, Kyoto, Japan, May 1999 (pp. 51-54). Nagoya
JALT & CALL SIG.
Sakui, K. & Gaies, S. J. (1999). Investigating Japanese learners’ beliefs about language learning, System, 27, 473492.
Schwartz, H. J. (1984). Teaching writing with computer aids. College English, 46, 239-247.
Shen, J. (1999). Learner anxiety & computer-assisted writing, CALL-EJ, 3(2), http://www.clec.ritsumei.ac.jp/
english/callejonline/3-2/shen.html
Singhal, M. (1999). Reading and computer assisted instruction: Applications and implications. CALL-EJ, 3(2),http://www.clec.ritsumei.ac.jp/english/callejonline/3-2/singhal.html
Soo, Keng-Soon. (1999). Theory and research: Learning styles, motivation, and the CALL classroom. In J. Egbert& E. Hanson-Smith (eds.), CALL environments: Research, practice and critical issues (pp. 289-301). Alexandria, VA: TESOL, Inc.
Spratt, M. (1999). How good are we at knowing what learners like? System, 27, 141-155.

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Warschauer, M. & Kern, R. (eds.) (2000). Network-based language teaching: Concepts and practice, Cambridge
University Press.
Warschauer, M. (1996). Motivational aspects of using computers for writing and communication. In Mark
Warschauer (Ed.), Telecollaboration in foreign language learning: Proceedings of the Hawaii Symposium.
(Technical Report #12, 29-46. Honolulu, Hawai’i: University of Hawai’i, Second Language Teaching &Curriculum Center, Retrieved January 25, 2000 from the World Wide Web: http://www.lll.hawaii.edu/nflrc/
NetWorks/NW1/

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The Parser Program as a Tool for Learning Verb Complements
Toshiko Sakurai
Kobe Shoin Women’s University, Japan

Robert S. Hart
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U. S. A.
Abstract
The part of a clause following the verb phrase depends on the verb for its basic structure. Each English
verb has its complement configuration. Japanese college students are supposed to learn the complements ofmajor verbs, but many of them seem uncertain about this area. Their lack of confidence tends to be a barrier tocommunicating in English. Given the considerable concentration and practice needed to understand the complement configuration, repeated correction of such complement errors by the instructor is unavoidable. To makethe correction process more effective, one of us (Sakurai) is utilizing a parser, which shows students how asentence is constructed and tells them whether their input is syntactically acceptable or not.

The Problem
The part of a clause following the verb phrase depends on the verb for its basic structure (Leech & Svartvik,
1994). Many students of English at the language institute where Sakurai was then teaching had difficulty withsentences such as “Ken asked Bill to put a stamp on an envelop” or “They watched children playing in the park”.
When students were asked to repeat this type of sentences, they could not go beyond the object of a verb, “Bill” or“children.” The teacher’s repetition of these sentences rarely facilitated students to complete the sentences. This
problem motivated Sakurai to provide a tool for presenting English structures as well as for testing students’
hypothesis about them.
Though in principle grammatical explanation was designed to be minimized at the institute, the following
sentence combining techniques were written on board.
Ken asked Bill.
||<-Insert “to” to combine these two.
Bill put a stamp on an envelop.
They watched children...
||<-Add “ing” to the verb in the sentence below||
to combine these two.
Children played in the park.
This way of presenting verb complements helped students a great deal. They were able to repeat the sentences and start using the structures in other contexts. Simple sentences such as “Ken asked Bill” and “Bill put astamp on an envelop”, which were within students’ “i” range (using Krashen’s “i+1” terminology), could be processed without difficulty. Combining two such simple sentences with “to” or “-ing” seemed not to exceed their
combinatorial capabilities either. Of course, it is ideal for learners to discover these techniques (i.e., rules) in acommunicative way, but a grammatical explanation can sometimes help learners overcome problematic areas quickly

Parser Program as a Tool for Learning [Software Demonstration]

492

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while reducing their anxiety, thereby saving time and energy for both learners and teachers. Smith supports theconsciousness-raising method as follows:
It may be even rewarding to discover formal regularities in a more or less conscious manner on one’s
own, without the aid of the teacher or textbook, but, again, what time is needed to accomplish this in
more than just a piecemeal manner? […] By revealing some pattern or system in the target language,
the teacher holds out the promise of a short cut as far as learning is concerned (via practice, of course).
(Smith, 1981)
Later, Sakurai noticed that many college students were uncertain about verb complements which shouldhave learned in high school. Even though all the high school English textbooks for second or third year students
contain a list of verb complements, the lists appear not to be used effectively due to a lack of time. Therefore, it
seems important to review this area.
Though errors are said to be unavoidable and need not be corrected in a teaching methodology, it is tremendously annoying and embarrassing to make these errors at an advanced level. Sakurai wants to prevent her students
from having the sorts of unpleasant experiences that she has sometimes had. One day, a native speaker of English
kindly said, “You need to put an object after “need” as it is a verb transitive.” Another day, another colleague said,“Don’t put ‘on’ after ‘discuss’; it’s a verb transitive.” And recently, she was told that she used “infer” erroneously.
We should correct our students early on to minimize the chances that they will be embarrassed when they havereached the advanced level.
Given the desirability of presenting precise grammatical information and error correction on verb complements, the question was, how to present that information.

The Parser Program
We decided to use a computer tool: a parsing program that shows structures of the English sentences in thesame form that they were presented in class. A parser has the advantage of being completely accurate, very fast,patient, impersonal, and of representing information in a visually memorable way. It also puts students in control:a student simply types in a sentence at the interface (See Figure 1) and a grammatical analysis appears instantly inthe form of a tree
For this work, we used a generalized LR syntactic parser (Tomita, 1986) previously programmed by Hart asa stand-alone application for the Macintosh using Macintosh Common LISP 4.3. As is usual with modern parsers,
the control program is separated from the linguistic data, which include a lexicon, a set of grammar rules, and a setof morphology rules. This allows the same parser to utilize many different lexicons and grammars. It also permits
the linguist to concentrate on linguistic content and ignore the complexities of program operation.
As with all unification approaches, both words in the dictionary and phrase structure nodes built up by thegrammar rules are tagged with lists attribute/value pairs know as AV matrices. For instance, the dictionary entry for
the word “I” appears as(I ((:cat pn)(:person 1)(:number sng)(:case nom)))
Here the first attribute “:cat” is used to indicate part of speech, and its value is pronoun (pn). The second
attribute is “:person” and its value “1” indicates that the word is first person. Additional attribute/value pairs
specify the word as singular number and nominative case. Verbs contain pairs such (:trans trans1) which define thecomplement type of the verb to be simply transitive — that is, a single complement in the objective case.
The parser can interface with a KIMMO general morphology analyzer (Antwort, 1990) but for English
grammar it utilizes instead a special-purpose analyzer which efficiently handles the simple concatenative morphol-

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ogy of English. Since the analysis of English morphology is largely uncontroversial, it is unlikely that an instructor
would ever need to modify this component of the parser’s linguistic data.

Figure 1. The user interface
The syntax for specifying grammar rules is a variation of PATR notation (Gazdar and Mellish, 1989) inwhich a conventional phrase structure rule serves as the “backbone” of each PATR rule, supplemented by any
number of unification equations. These equations have two functions: first, they put conditions on the applicationof rules. For instance, the English rule (s -> np vp), which constructs a sentence (s) from a noun phrase and verb
phrase, should apply only if the subject (np) and the verb (vp) agree in person and number. This is stipulated byadding suitable equations to the basic phrase structure rule(s -> np vp((x1 :per) == (x2 :per))((x1 :num) == (x2 :num))((x1 :case) == nom))((x0 :per) == (x2 :per))((x0 :num) == (x2 :num)))
where x0 refers to the left-hand constituent (in this case s) and x1 and x2 refer to the various right-hand constituents(here, np and vp, respectively). The first two equations provide number and person agreement. The third equation
expressed the requirement that the sentential subject be in nominative case. Of course, actual English grammar
rules are generally more complicated than this simple example would suggest.
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When a rule is able to construct a new constituent node, some equations may serve to construct a description
for that node in the form of an appropriate AV matrix. Thus, the fourth and fifth equations above build a simple A/
V matrix for the s constituent, through which the sentence inherits the person and number of its verb phrase.
The AV and equation syntax support disjunctive notation in almost every position, which greatly simplify
writing the dictionary and grammar; as for example the dictionary entry for the word “you”:(you ((:cat n)(:per 2)(:num (or* sing pl)))where the disjunctive “or*” collapses two dictionary entries, for singular and plural “you”, into a single entry.
In general, syntactic ambiguity will dictate that a sentence has more than one valid parse. As with mostgeneralized LR parsers, our parser derives all possible parses in parallel. The parser can output information about
each parse in the form of either an indented list or a labeled tree. Since the emphasis in this experiment is to focus
on grammar structure, we show students the parse trees (See Figure 2). The vivid visual representation of verb
complement structure in a tree helps students retain the complement information.
sd
np

vp1

pn

vp
vv3

3‑inf
np
pn

vp‑inf
infto

vp
np

vt1

i

want

him

to

read

art

n

a

book

Figure 2. Parse tree for “I want him to read a book.”
The parser can also do error-tolerant parsing. Each equation of each rule can be tagged with a “cost”. If theequation is violated, indicating some kind of grammar error, the rule would normally fail to build its phrase structure. In error-tolerant mode, the parser will go ahead to construct the incorrect constituent, but tag it with a “cost”.
Summing all of the costs which occurred during construction of a complete parse indicate how “errorful” that parse
is. The best parse out of a set of possibilities can then be found by locating the parse with least error cost. Because
writing a good set of error-tolerant grammar rules is a long-term undertaking, we did not use the error-tolerant
feature in this work. If a student types in a grammatically incorrect sentence, she simply receives the message “noparse”. Since this is less interesting than a phrase structure tree, it does motivate students to produce correctsentences. But it may be true that students would prefer (and would profit from) some more specific error feedback.
For a technical description of this parser, see Hart (to appear).2

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Grammar Coverage
Sakurai’s grammar, still under development, currently covers a good subset of the English grammar used by
beginning students. To avoid confusing students, the grammar must be written so that the structures of the English
sentences appear in the same form that they are presented in her classes. Thus, the goal of the grammar is rather
different from those typically built in linguistics; it is not intended to capture high-level theoretical generalities
about English, but to be instructionally useful.
The verb “want” can serve as an example. From the instructional viewpoint, the object noun phrase of“want” can be a noun or an infinitival phrase, as in “He wants a book” and “He wants to read a book”. The former
sentence is parsed as “vp -> vt1 np” and the latter as “vp -> vt3 infin” (the “vt” of “vt1” and “vt3” indicates a verb
and “1” and “3” tell what form of object the verb takes: “v1” takes a noun and “v3” takes “an infinitival phrase”).
“Want” as used in “I want him to read a book” is coded as “vv3”, which takes a noun as an object followed by an
infinitival phrase which has an object of a main verb “want” as a subject. When the last example is parsed, the tree
diagram shows that “him to read a book” is a subordinate clause related to the sentence “he reads a book” and thisclause is combined with the main clause via a “to-infinitive”. This is understandable to students and consonantwith the sentence combining presented in class.

Using the Parser in the Classroom
In class, while the parser program is running, the class discusses how to use a dictionary. After parsing
sentences such as “I put your book there” and “I put your book”, students are asked to look up “put” in a dictionary.
We use the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1995) which describes “put” as a transitive verb always
requiring an adverbial phrase or a prepositional phrase complement. In this way, students learn how to use a
dictionary and they eventually produce sentences with the aid of a dictionary without help from teachers.
When their input sentences are not accepted, students consult their peers or ask questions to find what is
causing problems. Since it is the machine not a teacher that rejects their input, they are not embarrassed in public.
Students interact with their peers and a teacher without any inhibition.

Extension and Future Directions
The core verb-compliment rules for declaratives and yes-no interrogatives have been written in the grammar.
However, there is still considerable grammar to add — wh-questions need to be expanded, to cite just one area.
Sakurai is currently working to incorporate the full English tense system into her rules. Many infrequent constructions are not yet incorporated and for now idiomatic expressions have no systematic coverage. Though we have noplans to produce a full-scale dictionary, the lexicon also requires expansion.
A “journal” mechanism for collecting student input will be created. A corpus of student input will be very
helpful in studying the types of errors that students make, with a view to improving parser performance. And wehope to design a complete set of error-tolerant rules so that students can receive more precise error feedback.
In the more distant future, we would like to convert the parser into a Web CGI so that it could be easilyinterface with Web pages. Eventually, we expect to distribute the entire system as freeware, so that other instructors can access this useful tool.

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Notes
1

“vv4” indicates a verb which takes an object and an infinitive verb. “V4” is a code used by the first editionof the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1978). To show that the verb after “him” is the objectof “ask” and the subject of “read”, both “him” and “read” are placed under the same node, “s-inf”, that is, thesubordinate clause combined with to-infinitive.

2

The parser program (without the English grammar) is available as a stand-alone application. Direct requests
to Hart (rsh@uiuc.edu).

References
Antwort, E. (1990). PC-KIMMO: A Two-Level Processor for Morphological Analysis. Dallas TX: Occassional
Publications in Academic Computing 16, Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Dictionary of Contemporary English (1st ed.). (1978). London: Longman.
Dictionary of Contemporary English (3rd ed.). (1995). London: Longman.
Gardar, G, and Mellish, C. (1989). Natural Language Processing in LISP, pp 239-44. Reading MA: AddisonWesley.
Hart, R. (to appear). An error-tolerant syntax parser. LLL Technical Report Number LLL-00-. Urbana IL: University of Illinois Language Learning Laboratory.
Krashen, S. (1980). The theoretical and practical relevance of simple codes in second language acquisition. In S.
Krashen, and R. Scarcella (eds.), Research in Second Language Acquisition, pp. 7-18. Boston MA: Newbury
House.
Leech, G. and Svartvik. J. (1994). A Communicative Grammar of English (2nd Ed.), p. 8. London: Longman.
Smith, M. (1981). Consciousness-Raising and the Second Language Learner. Applied Linguistics 11(2), 159-168.
Tomita, M. (1986). Efficient Parsing for Natural Language. Boson MA: Kluwer Acadeemic Publishers.

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The Parser Program as a Tool for Learning Verb Complements
Toshiko Sakurai
Kobe Shoin Women’s University, Japan

Robert S. Hart
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U. S. A.
Abstract
The part of a clause following the verb phrase depends on the verb for its basic structure. Each English
verb has its complement configuration. Japanese college students are supposed to learn the complements ofmajor verbs, but many of them seem uncertain about this area. Their lack of confidence tends to be a barrier tocommunicating in English. Given the considerable concentration and practice needed to understand the complement configuration, repeated correction of such complement errors by the instructor is unavoidable. To makethe correction process more effective, one of us (Sakurai) is utilizing a parser, which shows students how asentence is constructed and tells them whether their input is syntactically acceptable or not.

The Problem
The part of a clause following the verb phrase depends on the verb for its basic structure (Leech & Svartvik,
1994). Many students of English at the language institute where Sakurai was then teaching had difficulty withsentences such as “Ken asked Bill to put a stamp on an envelop” or “They watched children playing in the park”.
When students were asked to repeat this type of sentences, they could not go beyond the object of a verb, “Bill” or“children.” The teacher’s repetition of these sentences rarely facilitated students to complete the sentences. This
problem motivated Sakurai to provide a tool for presenting English structures as well as for testing students’
hypothesis about them.
Though in principle grammatical explanation was designed to be minimized at the institute, the following
sentence combining techniques were written on board.
Ken asked Bill.
||<-Insert “to” to combine these two.
Bill put a stamp on an envelop.
They watched children...
||<-Add “ing” to the verb in the sentence below||
to combine these two.
Children played in the park.
This way of presenting verb complements helped students a great deal. They were able to repeat the sentences and start using the structures in other contexts. Simple sentences such as “Ken asked Bill” and “Bill put astamp on an envelop”, which were within students’ “i” range (using Krashen’s “i+1” terminology), could be processed without difficulty. Combining two such simple sentences with “to” or “-ing” seemed not to exceed their
combinatorial capabilities either. Of course, it is ideal for learners to discover these techniques (i.e., rules) in acommunicative way, but a grammatical explanation can sometimes help learners overcome problematic areas quickly

Parser Program as a Tool for Learning [Software Demonstration]

492

Previous paper

Proceedings of the FLEAT IV Conference

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To contents

while reducing their anxiety, thereby saving time and energy for both learners and teachers. Smith supports theconsciousness-raising method as follows:
It may be even rewarding to discover formal regularities in a more or less conscious manner on one’s
own, without the aid of the teacher or textbook, but, again, what time is needed to accomplish this in
more than just a piecemeal manner? […] By revealing some pattern or system in the target language,
the teacher holds out the promise of a short cut as far as learning is concerned (via practice, of course).
(Smith, 1981)
Later, Sakurai noticed that many college students were uncertain about verb complements which shouldhave learned in high school. Even though all the high school English textbooks for second or third year students
contain a list of verb complements, the lists appear not to be used effectively due to a lack of time. Therefore, it
seems important to review this area.
Though errors are said to be unavoidable and need not be corrected in a teaching methodology, it is tremendously annoying and embarrassing to make these errors at an advanced level. Sakurai wants to prevent her students
from having the sorts of unpleasant experiences that she has sometimes had. One day, a native speaker of English
kindly said, “You need to put an object after “need” as it is a verb transitive.” Another day, another colleague said,“Don’t put ‘on’ after ‘discuss’; it’s a verb transitive.” And recently, she was told that she used “infer” erroneously.
We should correct our students early on to minimize the chances that they will be embarrassed when they havereached the advanced level.
Given the desirability of presenting precise grammatical information and error correction on verb complements, the question was, how to present that information.

The Parser Program
We decided to use a computer tool: a parsing program that shows structures of the English sentences in thesame form that they were presented in class. A parser has the advantage of being completely accurate, very fast,patient, impersonal, and of representing information in a visually memorable way. It also puts students in control:a student simply types in a sentence at the interface (See Figure 1) and a grammatical analysis appears instantly inthe form of a tree
For this work, we used a generalized LR syntactic parser (Tomita, 1986) previously programmed by Hart asa stand-alone application for the Macintosh using Macintosh Common LISP 4.3. As is usual with modern parsers,
the control program is separated from the linguistic data, which include a lexicon, a set of grammar rules, and a setof morphology rules. This allows the same parser to utilize many different lexicons and grammars. It also permits
the linguist to concentrate on linguistic content and ignore the complexities of program operation.
As with all unification approaches, both words in the dictionary and phrase structure nodes built up by thegrammar rules are tagged with lists attribute/value pairs know as AV matrices. For instance, the dictionary entry for
the word “I” appears as(I ((:cat pn)(:person 1)(:number sng)(:case nom)))
Here the first attribute “:cat” is used to indicate part of speech, and its value is pronoun (pn). The second
attribute is “:person” and its value “1” indicates that the word is first person. Additional attribute/value pairs
specify the word as singular number and nominative case. Verbs contain pairs such (:trans trans1) which define thecomplement type of the verb to be simply transitive — that is, a single complement in the objective case.
The parser can interface with a KIMMO general morphology analyzer (Antwort, 1990) but for English
grammar it utilizes instead a special-purpose analyzer which efficiently handles the simple concatenative morphol-

Parser Program as a Tool for Learning [Software Demonstration]493

Proceedings of the FLEAT IV Conference

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To contents

ogy of English. Since the analysis of English morphology is largely uncontroversial, it is unlikely that an instructor
would ever need to modify this component of the parser’s linguistic data.

Figure 1. The user interface
The syntax for specifying grammar rules is a variation of PATR notation (Gazdar and Mellish, 1989) inwhich a conventional phrase structure rule serves as the “backbone” of each PATR rule, supplemented by any
number of unification equations. These equations have two functions: first, they put conditions on the applicationof rules. For instance, the English rule (s -> np vp), which constructs a sentence (s) from a noun phrase and verb
phrase, should apply only if the subject (np) and the verb (vp) agree in person and number. This is stipulated byadding suitable equations to the basic phrase structure rule(s -> np vp((x1 :per) == (x2 :per))((x1 :num) == (x2 :num))((x1 :case) == nom))((x0 :per) == (x2 :per))((x0 :num) == (x2 :num)))
where x0 refers to the left-hand constituent (in this case s) and x1 and x2 refer to the various right-hand constituents(here, np and vp, respectively). The first two equations provide number and person agreement. The third equation
expressed the requirement that the sentential subject be in nominative case. Of course, actual English grammar
rules are generally more complicated than this simple example would suggest.
Parser Program as a Tool for Learning [Software Demonstration]

494

Previous paper

Proceedings of the FLEAT IV Conference

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To contents

When a rule is able to construct a new constituent node, some equations may serve to construct a description
for that node in the form of an appropriate AV matrix. Thus, the fourth and fifth equations above build a simple A/
V matrix for the s constituent, through which the sentence inherits the person and number of its verb phrase.
The AV and equation syntax support disjunctive notation in almost every position, which greatly simplify
writing the dictionary and grammar; as for example the dictionary entry for the word “you”:(you ((:cat n)(:per 2)(:num (or* sing pl)))where the disjunctive “or*” collapses two dictionary entries, for singular and plural “you”, into a single entry.
In general, syntactic ambiguity will dictate that a sentence has more than one valid parse. As with mostgeneralized LR parsers, our parser derives all possible parses in parallel. The parser can output information about
each parse in the form of either an indented list or a labeled tree. Since the emphasis in this experiment is to focus
on grammar structure, we show students the parse trees (See Figure 2). The vivid visual representation of verb
complement structure in a tree helps students retain the complement information.
sd
np

vp1

pn

vp
vv3

3‑inf
np
pn

vp‑inf
infto

vp
np

vt1

i

want

him

to

read

art

n

a

book

Figure 2. Parse tree for “I want him to read a book.”
The parser can also do error-tolerant parsing. Each equation of each rule can be tagged with a “cost”. If theequation is violated, indicating some kind of grammar error, the rule would normally fail to build its phrase structure. In error-tolerant mode, the parser will go ahead to construct the incorrect constituent, but tag it with a “cost”.
Summing all of the costs which occurred during construction of a complete parse indicate how “errorful” that parse
is. The best parse out of a set of possibilities can then be found by locating the parse with least error cost. Because
writing a good set of error-tolerant grammar rules is a long-term undertaking, we did not use the error-tolerant
feature in this work. If a student types in a grammatically incorrect sentence, she simply receives the message “noparse”. Since this is less interesting than a phrase structure tree, it does motivate students to produce correctsentences. But it may be true that students would prefer (and would profit from) some more specific error feedback.
For a technical description of this parser, see Hart (to appear).2

Parser Program as a Tool for Learning [Software Demonstration]495

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To contents

Grammar Coverage
Sakurai’s grammar, still under development, currently covers a good subset of the English grammar used by
beginning students. To avoid confusing students, the grammar must be written so that the structures of the English
sentences appear in the same form that they are presented in her classes. Thus, the goal of the grammar is rather
different from those typically built in linguistics; it is not intended to capture high-level theoretical generalities
about English, but to be instructionally useful.
The verb “want” can serve as an example. From the instructional viewpoint, the object noun phrase of“want” can be a noun or an infinitival phrase, as in “He wants a book” and “He wants to read a book”. The former
sentence is parsed as “vp -> vt1 np” and the latter as “vp -> vt3 infin” (the “vt” of “vt1” and “vt3” indicates a verb
and “1” and “3” tell what form of object the verb takes: “v1” takes a noun and “v3” takes “an infinitival phrase”).
“Want” as used in “I want him to read a book” is coded as “vv3”, which takes a noun as an object followed by an
infinitival phrase which has an object of a main verb “want” as a subject. When the last example is parsed, the tree
diagram shows that “him to read a book” is a subordinate clause related to the sentence “he reads a book” and thisclause is combined with the main clause via a “to-infinitive”. This is understandable to students and consonantwith the sentence combining presented in class.

Using the Parser in the Classroom
In class, while the parser program is running, the class discusses how to use a dictionary. After parsing
sentences such as “I put your book there” and “I put your book”, students are asked to look up “put” in a dictionary.
We use the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1995) which describes “put” as a transitive verb always
requiring an adverbial phrase or a prepositional phrase complement. In this way, students learn how to use a
dictionary and they eventually produce sentences with the aid of a dictionary without help from teachers.
When their input sentences are not accepted, students consult their peers or ask questions to find what is
causing problems. Since it is the machine not a teacher that rejects their input, they are not embarrassed in public.
Students interact with their peers and a teacher without any inhibition.

Extension and Future Directions
The core verb-compliment rules for declaratives and yes-no interrogatives have been written in the grammar.
However, there is still considerable grammar to add — wh-questions need to be expanded, to cite just one area.
Sakurai is currently working to incorporate the full English tense system into her rules. Many infrequent constructions are not yet incorporated and for now idiomatic expressions have no systematic coverage. Though we have noplans to produce a full-scale dictionary, the lexicon also requires expansion.
A “journal” mechanism for collecting student input will be created. A corpus of student input will be very
helpful in studying the types of errors that students make, with a view to improving parser performance. And wehope to design a complete set of error-tolerant rules so that students can receive more precise error feedback.
In the more distant future, we would like to convert the parser into a Web CGI so that it could be easilyinterface with Web pages. Eventually, we expect to distribute the entire system as freeware, so that other instructors can access this useful tool.

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Notes
1

“vv4” indicates a verb which takes an object and an infinitive verb. “V4” is a code used by the first editionof the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1978). To show that the verb after “him” is the objectof “ask” and the subject of “read”, both “him” and “read” are placed under the same node, “s-inf”, that is, thesubordinate clause combined with to-infinitive.

2

The parser program (without the English grammar) is available as a stand-alone application. Direct requests
to Hart (rsh@uiuc.edu).

References
Antwort, E. (1990). PC-KIMMO: A Two-Level Processor for Morphological Analysis. Dallas TX: Occassional
Publications in Academic Computing 16, Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Dictionary of Contemporary English (1st ed.). (1978). London: Longman.
Dictionary of Contemporary English (3rd ed.). (1995). London: Longman.
Gardar, G, and Mellish, C. (1989). Natural Language Processing in LISP, pp 239-44. Reading MA: AddisonWesley.
Hart, R. (to appear). An error-tolerant syntax parser. LLL Technical Report Number LLL-00-. Urbana IL: University of Illinois Language Learning Laboratory.
Krashen, S. (1980). The theoretical and practical relevance of simple codes in second language acquisition. In S.
Krashen, and R. Scarcella (eds.), Research in Second Language Acquisition, pp. 7-18. Boston MA: Newbury
House.
Leech, G. and Svartvik. J. (1994). A Communicative Grammar of English (2nd Ed.), p. 8. London: Longman.
Smith, M. (1981). Consciousness-Raising and the Second Language Learner. Applied Linguistics 11(2), 159-168.
Tomita, M. (1986). Efficient Parsing for Natural Language. Boson MA: Kluwer Acadeemic Publishers.

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Phoneme Acquisition Models
Kaoru Iseno
Osaka Gakuin University, Japan
Abstract
The interactive phoneme acquisition models, both in processing and production of Lt, of Japanese adultlearners of English in an EFL environment using the anticipated phoneme hypothesis will be presented. Anticipated phonemes are inter-lingual phoneme inventory in which the closest L1 phonemes are substituted with theL2 phonemes, and are often formulated in the early stage of language learning.
When first exposed to written English, Japanese learners will attempt to read it with the help of Romaji
syllabication and transfer Japanese phonemes that sound closest to its Katakana writing. If, at this stage, thelearner is not exposed to authentic L2 phonemes, as is often the case in formal learning, the phonemes they use
will form an anticipated phoneme inventory which will soon become fossilized, hindering further acquisition of
L2 phonemes. This will cause difficulty in speech processing and result in heavily-accented English in speech
production.

Phoneme Acquisition Models
In order to fully understand the models presented below, first the Japanese writing system will be explained.
Japanese use four different sets of letters in writing, namely, kanji or Chinese characters, hirakana or cursive
syllabary, katakana or square hirakana, and Romaji or roman letters. So for the Japanese words for dogs and cats“inu” and neko” are spelled in kanji and hirakana, as shown in Table 1. “Dog” and “cat” are also used as loan words
and these are written in katakana, although they are pronounced using typical Japanese CV syllables as /doggu/ and/kyatto/.
When children become 4th graders, they learn Romaji or romanized representation of Japanese in school.
Thus “dog” is spelled “doggu” according to its pronunciation and “cat” as “kyatto”. In other words, before they
start learning English in junior high school at the age of 13, they can read roman letters to some extent and this will
later cause formation of anticipated phoneme inventory when they start learning English

Table 1. Writing System of Japanese Language
Type

Origin or Usage

1.

Kanji (Chinese characters)

mostly imported from China

2.

Hirakana (cursive syllabary)

developed from Kanji characters

3.

Katakana (Chinese characters)

used mainly for loan words

4.

Romaji (Roman letters)

Romanized representation of sounds

Phoneme Acquisition Models [Poster Presentation]

Samples
dog

cat

doggu

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Figure 1 illustrates the formation process of anticipated phonemes. Anticipated phonemes are defined as “aset of interlingual phonemes that L1 Japanese learners of EFL have developed to use for lexical recognition by
substituting part of Lt phonemes with L1 phonemes and then stored in the long term memory.
1.

When a child sees a dog for the first time, s/he does not have phonological knowledge of how to
express what it is.

2.

Soon they learn mother tongue for a dog: ìinuî.

3.

They learn letters for ìdogî and acquire graphemic representation.

4.

When exposed to the English word ìdogî,5.

S/he tries to read it with the help of Romaji reading strategy.

6.

Thus the anticipated phonemes for ìdogî is formulated and stored in the long term memory.

7.

When s/he hears /dag/, s/he analyzed it as ìda: guî, which does not match any of the phonemic
representation in the anticipated phoneme inventory and thus comprehension is hampered.

It is also important to point out that in Japan, English is taught in Japanese by Japanese teachers of English,
who are quite often incapable of producing NS speech. Thus Ss do not receive authentic input when they learn
English and this further strengthen the anticipated phoneme inventory.
Table 2 lists a set of American English phonemes and their proximates in Japanese. This list is based onminimal pair listening comprehension tests I conducted to 184 secondary school and college students (Iseno, 1991).

Table 2. Comparison of American English Phonemes and Japanese Phonemes
American English Phonemes Substituted with Japanese Phonemes
American English Phonemes

Japanese Proximates

a æ 

a

i: i

i

u: u

u

ei  

e

ou 

o

f h

h

v b

b

r l



The four phone alterations in Table 3 cause the most errors in minimal pair listening comprehension tests.
Here the dissociated phonemes are defined as part of the anticipated phoneme inventory that impair speech processing.

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Figure 1. Formation process of anticipated phonemes

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Table 3. Samples of Dissociated Phonemes
1.

flapped /t/ /d/ and /r/ /l/ as in spilling and spitting
In this pair, flapped /t/ in “spitting” sounds close to Japanese /r/, which is also the anticipatedphoneme of “spilling.

2.

dark /l/ and /ƒÓ/ as in “rolled” and “rode”
In this pair, the anticipated phoneme of dark /l/ in “rolled” is /ru/. In articulating dark /l/, the mouthcavity is “back-low”, rather than “mid-high” as in /ru/. Thus both “rode” and “rolled” are perceived as /rood/.

3. glottal /t/ and /d/ before syllabic consonant /n/ as in “heartened” and “hardened”
In this pair, learners anticipate /t/ and /d/ to be aspirated, however, when glottalized, both areperceived as /ha:nd/.
4. laterally released /t/ and /d/ before syllabic consonant /l/ as in “metal” and “medal”
Laterally released /t/ and /d/ in “metal” and “medal” respectively are both perceived as /meruru/,
causing further confusion with /r/ or /l/, both of which are also perceived as /ru/.
I also conducted a dictation quiz to secondary school students and from the errors they made, the following
phone alterations on phonological sentence level that result in allophones are specified as causes of difficulty inlistening comprehension.

Table 4. Phone Alteration in Sentences
1.

Reduced forms of personal pronouns: e.g. This is her class. Does he have any money?

2.

Phonological syllabication: e.g. How old is his sister? We enjoyed it a lot.

3.

Reduction or contraction of other particles: e.g. I didn’t see you in class. He is going to come.

To sum up, in the anticipated phoneme inventory, contractions, reductions and other phone-altering factors
in lexical level, and assimilation, geminations, and phonetic syllabication in phonological sentence level are notincorporated. The learners therefore assume the pronunciation of each word from its spelling and anticipate sentences to be pronounced word by word in the strong form of pronunciation. When exposed to English sounds ofNSs, they will have much difficulty in speech processing, for few words are pronounced neither in strong forms nor
without any phone-alteration in unmonitored speech.
Kohno proposed a listening comprehension model based on the models of Pimsleur (1971) and AtkinsonShiffrin (1968). This model may explain L1 speech processing of native speakers. However, no crosslinguistic
influence (Kellerman & Shardwood-Smith, 1986) is incorporated to account for Lt listening comprehension by
non-native speakers. Figure 2 shows the phoneme acquisition model of L1 Japanese learners of English.
In this model, L1 proximate phoneme substitution is defined as “to substitute the target phonemes withsimilar or proximate L1 phonemes both in speech processing and production.” Romaji reading strategy refers to
the application of morphophonological rules of romanized representation of Japanese phonemes. Katakanalization
is used here to refer to the identification by “graphophomic images of the aural input.” ( James 1986)
As shown in this model, the learners employ anticipated phoneme inventory and katakanalization in order
to identify the graphophomic images of aural input, which are then translated into Japanese to comprehend. In
short, learners come to comprehension only after they have succeeded in reconstructing the visual images of thewords they hear and translating them into L1.
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Acquisition ThroughProcessing
L1 Proximate Phoneme Substitution
Romaji Reading Strategy

M
AnticipatedM

Visual Input

M
M

PhonemeInventory

M

M

Aural Input

M

M

Katakanalization

Long Term Memory(LTM)

Figure 2. Phoneme acquisition through processing

Acquisition throughSpeech Production
Phoneme

OutputNegotiation

M
LTM

N

o

Affective filter
Strategic skills

M

Acquisition

Internaction

Replanning

M

s
Ye

M M

Anticipated

MM M

OutputPlanning

M

Graphophomic

Communication
FailureFigure 3. Phoneme acquisition through speech production

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Conclusion
Phonemes are acquired not only by processing but by production as well. Unlike the phonic transfer discussed in James (1986), which refers to the transfer of L1 phonemes in the production of Lt, the anticipatedphonemes affect both productive and receptive behavior of learners. Anticipated phonemes differ individually due
to the past experience of each learner, and more Lt phonemes will be incorporated into one’s anticipated phonemes,
substituting L1 phonemes, as learning progresses. When given acoustic speech input, learners will try to analyze
the phonemes by identifying them with anticipated phonemes. If successful, or if the input phonemes and anticipated phonemes match, learners will be able to comprehend the meaning. And if not, listening comprehension will
be impaired. The same is true for production. Ironically, successful interaction will accelerate fossilization ofphoneme inventory, resulting in heavily-accented speech. Ringbom (1986) analyzed cross-linguistic influence inspeech processing of L1 Finnish learners of L2 English and concluded that Finnish learners at school store words
in graphemic, not their phonological form. The perceived language distance between Japanese and English is evengreater than that between Finnish and English. Consequently, Japanese learners must go through a further complicated processing of putting the graphemic form of L2 lexicon into Katakana. In short, the environment of L2
English acquisition for Japanese learners can be concluded the least optimum.

References
Bowen, J. D. (1975). Patterns of English pronunciation. NY: Newbury House.
Canale, M. and Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative language teaching and testing, Applied
Linguistics, I(1) I, 1-47.
Hatch, E. M. (ed.) (1980). Second language acquisition. A book of readings. Rowley, MA: Newbury House .
James, A. 1984. Phonic transfer: the structural bases of interlingual assessment. Proceedings of the 10th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Dordrecht: Foris.
Iseno, K. (1991). Formation of anticipated phonemes in L1 Japanese learners of English. Kiyo 25, Hiroshima
Institute of Technology
James, A. (1986) . Phonic transfer and phonological explanation. in E. Kellerman & M. Sharwood-Smith (eds.)
Cross-linguistic influence in second language acquisition. NY: Pergamon Press.
Kellerman, E. & Sharwood-Smith, M. (eds.) (1986). Cross-linguistic influence in second language acquisition.
NY: Pergamon Press.
Kohno, M. and Sawamura, F. (eds.) Listening and speaking. Yamaguchishoten.
Lado, L. and Fries, C. C. (1954). English pronunciation. The University of Michigan Press.
Linell, P. (1982). The concept of phonological form and the activities of speech production and perception.
Journal of Phonetics, 10, 37-72.
Ringbom, H. (1979). The English of Finns, Swedes, and Swedish Finns, in R. Palmberg (ed.), Perception andproduction of English: Papers on interlanguage. AFTIL 6, Abo: Abo Agademi.
Rivers, W. M. (1981). Teaching foreign language skills (2nd. ed.). The University of Chicago Press.
Rutherford, W. E. (1982). Markedness in second language acquisition. Language Learning, 32, 85-108.
Sajavaara, K. (1986). Transfer and second language speech processing, in E. Kellerman & M. Sharwood-Smith(eds.), Crosslingustic Influence in Second Language Acquisition. NY: Pergamon Press.
Wenk, B. (1979). Articulatory setting and defossilization. Interlanguage Studies Bulletin, 4(2), 202-20.

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Practical Advice on Administering Internet Servers
for Language Education
Shigeru Takeno
Miyazaki Municipal University, Japan
Abstract
This article focuses on technical issues for language teachers interested in using Internet servers inproviding language education on line. In order to put such classes into practice, you have to have some knowledge of server computers and the mechanisms and protocols required in setting up Internet or Intranet servers.
The author will explain the mechanical terms and necessary tools easy-to-understand language so thateven intermediate users of computers can administer servers. In addition, he will discuss potential and basic
troubleshooting of Internet/intranet servers.
Setting up and administering Internet servers —Unix, Linux, Windows-NT, or even Macintosh machines—is best accomplished in cooperation with the IT manager and staff in your university’s or school’s computer
center. However, successful use of Internet technologies demands both the understanding of Internet protocols,
and the ability to communicate your goals as accurately as possible with the IT staff. This article will provide themeanings of the necessary technical terms, devices and applications for using computers to deliver language
teaching services on line.

What is Brought to Language Teachers by IT?
The recent rapid progress of the Internet technology brings us, language teachers, various possibilities toteach languages on line. The infrastructure (including hardware) is important. However, managing information ismore important. It means what ideas you have and how you focus on and express them on the Web and so on.
Especially for the faculty members studying on Humanities, the contents are extremely important. If the environment of IT is well prepared and if you don’t have any information to give, technology is just technology and it
doesn’t give you any progress. But if you have a lot of ideas and information to present, Internet Technology brings
you a great help.
The author is not a tech-person but a language teacher. Therefore you might say that he does not have tomaster computer technology. When you do not have any appropriate persons at your university or school and you
would like to give services on networked server computers, you have to learn a lot about networking and computer
technologies. So the author would like to introduce his experience.

The Environment at the Author’s University
There are three faculty members on computer technology and two IT staff who manage the whole networked
computers (about 10 servers and 200 client computers) in the university, including machine maintenance. There areabout 800 students studying on Humanities who are not so interested in the mathematical knowledge of computer
technology and not so good at it, but who want to use computers for net-surfing and e-mailing. And students attend
at most 24 lectures a year on word-processing, tables and databases including networking. It is apparently not

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enough for students to well operate computers. If you give classes of languages using computers, you have to teachhow to operate computers even in language classes. This is the reality of our university. Moreover if you run an allin-one server for realizing your computerized language classes, you would like to reduce time for maintenance ofthe server and would like to take enough time to create class contents. Then you have to make policy on computerized language classes.

Policy: What You Really Want to do in Language Learning Classes Using Computers?
The author believes that the Web server is the most useful service for language learning. Using Web server,
you can provide a lot of contents of language learning: texts, databases, graphics, movies, audio sources and the
combinations of them all. And you can give various methods in class using those contents: for example, to let
students discuss on the articles on the Web or on the pictures or graphics on the Web, then let them give responses
back through Web pages using CGI program associated with databases. Students also read other students’ responses on the Web on the spot, then they reply to them as quickly as possible. This gives interactivity to language
classes.

Useful Devices to Realize the Interactivity in Computerized Language Learning
As for the Web technologies, you would better have the knowledge of HTML (HyperText Markup Language), CGI (Common Gateway Interface, including PHP which is a little different from but functions in the same
way as CGI), JAVA or JAVA script (Programming Language or script language on the web) and relational databases (such as Postgresql, Mysql and Oracle). To know about Streaming Video and Streaming Audio is much betterto realize the interactive language classes.

Table 1. Useful Web Technologies
Description

DetailsHTML

HyperText Markup Language

CGI

Common Gateway Interface

PHP

Preprocessor engine

Hypertext preprocessor

JAVA

Programming Language

Like C Language but more sophisticated

JAVA script

Script Language

Postgresql,
Mysql Oracle

Databases

Relational Database, SQL Databases

DarwinStreaming ServerStreaming Video and Streaming
Audio serverApple Inc. developed
Open Source program
QuickTime technology, MP3

Real ServerStreaming Video and Streaming
Audio server

RealNetworks inc. developed.
Commercial Edition (full functions)/Free Edition (limited functions), MP3

Streaming Video and Audio Services on the Web
As the streaming servers, two servers are available: Apple’s Streaming Server (QuickTime Streaming Server
or Darwin Streaming Server) and RealNetworks’ Real Server. Table 2 is a description of the requirements for
RealServer from the RealNetworks’ website.
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Table 2. Real Server 1
RealServer Basic 7.0 Requirements
The RealServer Basic 7.0 Server is an open standards-based software system that delivers choreographed multimedia
presentations — audio, video, images, slides, web pages, and text — over the Internet or corporate intranets to up to 25
simultaneous users.
RealServer Basic 7.0 includes Intel streaming Web Video Technology, Live SureStream, and customizable HTML-based
administrative interface.
Supporting Operating Systems and Hardware
Processor
Operating System
Intel Pentium
Windows NT 4.0 or 2000 Workstation or Server, Linux 2.2, glib c6, SCO 7.0.1, 7.1.0, 7.1.1,
FreeBSD 3.0 Sun SPARC Solaris 2.6, 2.7, 2.8 SGI IRIX
IRIX 6.2, 6.5
Memory Requirements
RealServer Basic and RealServer Plus require a minimum of 128 MB of RAM to run optimally.
For RealServer Professional, 256 MB of memory is recommended.
Adding more RAM to a RealServer may increase the number of clients the machine can serve simultaneously.
Sites that plan to serve 1000 or more simultaneous clients should consider using 512 MB of RAM or more.
Bandwidth Requirements
Bandwidth required for serving content can be calculated using the following equation: (“data rate of clip in kbps ‘X’
max number of simultaneous streams”).
Example Bandwidth Calculations:Stream Data Rate
Max Size of Audience
Bandwidth Required
Example Connection
20kbps60
1200kbps or 1.2Mbps
T1
60% 20kbps, 40% 80kbps
1004400kbps or 4.4Mbps
Fractional T3
80kbps100
8000kbps or 8Mbps
10Mbps fractional T3
20kbps2000
40000kbps or 40Mbps
T3
Storage Requirements
The RealServer 7.0 application requires about 8MB of storage plus storage for your media content.
Single rate media storage requirements can be calculated with the following equation:(“bit rate of clip in kbps ‘X’ length of clip in seconds”) divided by 8 = KB required disk space.
SureStream clips are more difficult to calculate as each clip has multiple embedded data rates. To figure out the storage requirements the above equation is used for every data rate in the file. The data rates in the file can be found at encode time in
RealProducer’s view statistics panel.
Example Bandwidth Calculations:
Data Rate of the Clip
Length in Seconds
Storage Required
20kbps (single rate)
180
450KB
20kbps (SureStream)
20kbps rate
12kbps rate
8kbps rate
180
900KB
Server Requirements
To make the best use of RealAudio and RealVideo, you must have a Web site and a registered domain. RealServer 7.0 iscompatible with any Web Server which supports configurable MIME types, and has been tested with the following Web
servers:
Apache 1.1.1
Netscape Netsite and Netscape Enterprise Server
NCSA HTTPD versions 1.3 or 1.4
O’Reilly Website NT
Spinner version 1.0b12 through 1.0b15
CERN HTTPD version 3.0, EMWC HTTPS version 0.96, HTTPD4
Webstar and Webstar PS
Mac, Mac HTTP, Microsoft Internet Information Server
NCSA HTTPD versions 1.3 or 1.4

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As is clarified by this description, the bandwidth of the network is the most important for service performance. It can also be said to Apple’s QuickTime Streaming Server. The author installed Darwin Streaming Server
onto a Linux Machine (Fujitsu Deskpower T16, RAM: 80Mb, Hard Disk Drive: 8Gb+3Gb, CPU: Pentium processor 166Mhz). He experienced rather good performance of it even in the 10 base-T based Intranet environment, but
the access from outside through ISDN line was not good. This experiment was limited to the only one access to theserver, so the result of multi-user accessing will be expected much lower. Perhaps the bandwidth of over 100 bps
even in the intranet will be needed. It is needless to say that the greater bandwidth is the better. However, if you
hope the smaller group (5 or 6 students) to access to the server from client computers, the not best but rather good
performance could be expected for limited use. The installing process of the Apple’s Streaming Server was veryeasy. It took only 5 minutes to install it. The configuration of the server is also easy. It is happy to get server
software for free. Apple calls two streaming video servers differently: QuickTime Streaming Server (QTSS) andDarwin Streaming Server (DSS). But these are basically the same. Apple calls the streaming server software for
MacOS X server QTSS and the one for other operating systems DSS, which is based on GPL free software license.

Creating Streaming Video Contents
Nowadays you can easily get a low-cost video editing environment. If you have a digital video camera with
IEEE1394 port (Apple calls “FireWire port” which is a kind of In/Out interfaces) and a recent high cost performance computer with IEEE1394 port or card, you do easily edit the video. Free-of-charge or low-cost video editing
software is also available. The matter is that more than 10 Gbyte hard disk drive and high speed CPU and memories
for the faster video rendering are necessary, but low-cost large hard disk drives, low-cost large memories and lowcost computers with high-speed CPUs have been now available. Therefore you don’t care for this issue.

Which Server Operating System (OS) to Choose
The trend of the computer operating systems is Unix-based OS, such as Windows NT, Windows2000, MacOS
X server, MacOS X (which will be released soon), Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD, and so forth. These Unix-based OS’s
are useful for networking and for server/client services, but they are difficult to operate if you are accustomed toGUI-based OS (Graphical User Interface based operating system), such as Windows95/98 and MacOS (earlier thanOS version 9). Because Unix-based operating systems are based on CUI (character-based User Interface). Whenyou operate Unix-based servers, you have to have the knowledge of the character-based computer operating commands which is based on the C language. If you are not a specialist of computer technology, it takes much time tolearn operating commands and functions of Unix.
Moreover the matters of Internet security are more complicated. When you are going to provide various
services on server computers, you must lower the security policy on the server computers. If you are much nervous
on security issues and you get the security policy much stricter, the client users are not satisfied with the services.
The security matters on server computers seem to be the double-edged swords. But if you would like to run a
networking server computer for yourselves, this cannot be avoidable and the responsibilities for the network security fall strictly and heavily on you. So you have to be fully aware of the reality.
The author believes that it is better to leave the server-management to trustworthy IT staff if it is possible.
The author introduces three ways to run a network server, according to security policy.
1.

Full Internet Server: providing full Internet services on your server (Figure 1)

2.

Intranet Server 1: providing full services limited to your institution, completely separated fromInternet. Users cannot go out of the Intranet to Internet. (Figure 2)

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Intranet Server 2: through proxy server or firewall, providing services limited to your institution. Users can go out of the Intranet to Internet. (Figure 3)

The order of network security is (2) > (3) > (1).
When there is nothing for it but to manage Unix-based servers by yourself, the author recommend that you
should begin with type (2), then go step by step from type (3) to type (1). It should be better for you to take goodtime to have enough experience of managing type (2) in cooperation with your IT staff. The cooperation of IT staff
is essential in managing server computers.

(1)

INTERNETYYour
ou r In
stitu tion
Institution
PC
PC

PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC

PC Server
S erver

IN T E R N E T WORLDW O R LDINTERNET

Figure 1. Internet server schematic

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PCPC(2) In tran et
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
P C server
PC
Server
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC
PC

Internet
Internet
Figure 2. Intranet Example 1

PC
PC

PPC
C
P C Server
serverPC

PPC
C
P C Server
PC
PPC
C

PC
P CServer

FirewallFirewall(3) In tran etInternet
Internet
Figure 2. Intranet Example 2

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Conclusion – Cooperative work is the keyword of the Internet World
There is no royal road to managing Unix-based servers. You have to read innumerable reference books on
computer technology and to get information in the Internet that is a treasure house of the most updated Internet
Technology. And the beneficial information is available from many kinds of mailing lists.
The author believes that the most essential thing is to communicate on what you really want to provide in thelanguage classes using network server and PCs with your IT staff or IT-related faculty members and to establish thegood relationship, or good human network, with them before operating computer network.
Most of the computer specialists especially managing network security are said to be exclusive in Japan. Do
not give up negotiating with them, and take time to explain your ideas on applying computer technology to language education. They are sure to understand your ideas. The author has been making effort to do that for many
years and fortunately he has established a good connection to faculty members of computer technology, IT staff andthe administrative officers who take charge of the budget. The keyword of the progress of the Internet is cooperation. Everyone believes that the success of the Internet is founded on the cooperative work of the Internet users.

Websites
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/servers/
http://www.linux.org/
http://www.mysql.com/
http://www.php.net/
http://www.pgsql.com/
http://www.realnetworks.com/
http://www.turbolinux.com/

References
Danesh, A. (1996). Teach Yourself JavaScript in a Week. Tokyo: Prentice Hall Japan.
Garfinkel, S. & Spafford, G. (1991). Practical UNIX Security. California, USA: O’Reilly & Associates, Inc.
Gundavaram, S. (1995). CGI Programming on the World Wide Web. California, USA: O’Reilly & Associates, Inc.
Holden, G and Keller, M. (1999). Apache Server for Windows. Little Black Book. Scottsdale, Arizona, USA: The
Coriolis Group LLC.
Hotta, M., et al. (1999). PHP Tettei Kouryaku. Tokyo: SOFT BANK Publishing.
Kumagai, S. (1999). Internet Security no Shikumi. Tokyo: Nikkei BP sha.
Laurie, B. & Laurie, P. (1997). Apache The Definitive Guide. California, USA: O’Reilly & Associates, Inc.
Lemay, L. (1995). Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML in a Week. Tokyo: Prentice Hall Japan.
Lemay, L. (1995). Teach Yourself More Web Publishing with HTML in a Week. Tokyo: Prentice Hall Japan.
Nishigaki, T. (1996). Internet no 5 nen go wo yomu. Tokyo: Koubunsha.
Robertson, M. et al. (2000). Internet Streaming Book. Tokyo: Shoeisha.
Schwartz, A. (1998). Managing Mailing Lists. California, USA: O’Reilly & Associates, Inc.
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Shuwa System Editing Team. (2000). TurboLinux de Tsukuru Network Server Kouchiku Guide. Tokyo: Shuwa
System.
StarCluster Co., Ltd. (1999). Linux Network Nyumon. Tokyo: Natsume-sha.
Takahashi, K. (1999). Security Nyumon for Linux. Tokyo: Locus Co.

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Practical Report on Written English Communication Training:
Using the BBS on the Internet.
Yoko Kobayashi
Aichi Shukutoku University Graduate School, Japan

Yoshikazu Yanagi
Nagoya Gakuin University, Japan
Abstract
For this project “Let’s write in English”, the students were requested to write essays on the BBSs. The
project emphasized practicing communication and increasing self-expression ability rather than grammaticalaccuracy. The students were first given topics and then wrote essays of more than 100 words once a month on the
BBSs. They also read other students’ essays, and then, they voted for the most impressive essay in their class,and wrote the reasons for their choice. The results of the voting were announced in the class.
The results of this project showed that the students were able to evaluate other essays fairly well. Whenthey evaluated the other students’ essays they focused not only on the grammatical structure but also on thecontent of the essays. In addition, a questionnaire at the conclusion of the project indicated that the students
have rather positive views of this project.

Purpose of “Let’s Write in English”
What does the Internet Provide for Japanese University Students?
The internet provides students who have not often used English in communicative situations with great
opportunities for easily communicating with people from other countries in English. For example, they can express
their opinions and know someone else’s ways of thinking when they write and read essays written in English on the
BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems). Making use of the Internet is an effective method of language practice for English
education aimed at communication in English and intercultural communication.

The Purpose of this Project
We planned a project that we called, “Let’s write in English”, in which the students were requested to write
essays on the BBSs. The purposes of this project are as follows:1.

To emphasize practicing communication and increasing self-expression ability, and to not emphasize grammatical accuracy.

2.

To provide the students with experience on how to use the BBSs on the Internet.

3.

To provide the students with opportunities for reading and evaluating other students’ essays.

As for 1., we put greatest emphasis on practicing communication and increasing self-expression ability,
because we have noticed for a long time that our students lack those abilities In this sense, therefore, these classes
can be classified as that of communicative language learning. On the other hand, as indicated in the second objective, the students were trained to use BBS on the Internet in this project. The classes which the students in thisproject took part in were English classes in the CAL LAB (Computer Assisted Learning LABoratory), and thePractical Report on Written English Communication Training [Poster Presentation]

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objective of those English classes was mainly to increase listening proficiency, but in addition to the main objective, we also expected the students to get accustomed to using computers in this class. The third objective wasrelated with the characteristics of language learning on the Internet. When we use internet, we usually use written
language, so we can expect our students to increase their reading and writing proficiency as well as their listening
ability.

MethodSubjects and Other Factors
The subjects of this project were 90 freshmen in three classes of the English Department at Nagoya Gakuin
University. This project was carried out from October 1999 to January 2000.
For this project, a BBS system for each of these three classes was prepared. The BBSs were speciallydesigned for each class. They were protected by the passwords so that only the students and the teachers in theclasses could access the BBSs.

The Procedure for the Project
The procedures for the project were as follows:1.

To learn “netiquette” and how to use a BBS.

2.

To practice using a BBS in Japanese.

3.

To once a month write essays of more than 100 words in English dealing with certain topics on
the BBSs.

4.

To read the essays written by the other students on the BBSs in the first two weeks of the month.

5.

To vote for the most impressive essays in each class, and write in English the reasons for the
choices in more than 50 words.

6.

The results of the voting were announced in the classes.

As for 1. and 2., these steps can be called “preparation periods”. For almost all of the students in this project,
this is the first time that they used the Internet, including e-mail and a BBS, so intensively. Therefore, some preparations were essential for them to use the tools smoothly in this project.
Procedures 3. to 6. were “the main part” in this research projects. First of all, in 3., the students were given
topics and wrote essays of more than 100 words once a month. They could write the essays on the BBS directly or
they could write them with word processor software, including MS-WORD, or a text editor, including Hidemaru,
and copy and paste the essays on BBS. Of course, they could write their essays at home with their own computers,save it on a floppy disk and bring it to school.
The students could read other students’ essays as they wrote their own. In 4., they almost automatically had
opportunities for reading the other students’ essays and this enabled them to see what expressions the other students used in their essays and to get ideas about how to organize their essays.
In 5., they voted for the most impressive essay in their class and wrote the reasons for their choice. In otherwords, they evaluated the other students’ essays and ranked them. Their votes were counted and, in 6., the resultsof the voting were announced in the class.
The results showed that the students were able to evaluate the essays fairly well, in that they chose well
written essays. Moreover, the students sometimes chose essays which included an interesting story. This indicates
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that when they evaluated the other students’ essays they paid attention not only to the grammatical structure but
also to the content of the essays.

Responses by the Teacher to the Essays Written by the Students
We gave brief comments for some of the essays on the BBSs, but we did not strictly correct grammaticalmistakes in the essays.
As explained in the 1 and 2 above, the purpose of this project was not to emphasize grammatical correctness
but mainly to focus on communication. We did not give them any negative evaluations as long as we could
understand what they wanted to write.

An Example of the Voting Results.
The following is an example of the voting results announced to the class. These results were given to thestudents in the class every month, both in print and on a home page.
The voting results of * class in November.
********’s essay got 6 points:
I like English so I’d like to study English more. For example, I like American pronunciation I wantto speak fluently like a native speaker. It is difficult for me to pronounce correctly. I often try topronounce but I cannot say well. Next, I’d also like to understand what he or she is saying. For
example, when I got on the bus, a man or a woman were talking in English. I tried to understand theirtalk. But I could understand only one sentence. “I know wa-ha-ha-ha.” They spoke very fast. If I canspeak fluently and I can understand English, I can enjoy in the conversation.
His supporter’s opinions:
I chose Mr. ******’s statement. The reason is that I can’t understand what he or she said who looks
like an American. I was trying to understand, but I couldn’t. And when I speak with native speaker, hesaid that my pronounce was different. So I am agree with Mr. ******’s opinion, and I chose hisstatement.

Student Evaluations
Questionnaire (1)We administered a questionnaire concerning this project at the end of the academic year. We asked thestudents what they learned through their essay writing experience on the BBSs.
From the items 1. - 9. below, the students could choose more than one answer, except when they choseanswer 1. The number in parenthesis shows the number of the students who chose each item.
1.

I did not learn anything through the project. (n = 9)2.

I practiced writing English compositions. (n = 26)

3.

I learned how to express myself in English. (n = 21)

4.

I learned English grammar. (n = 3)

5.

I practiced reading English essays. (n = 9)

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6.

I learned how to use BBSs. (n = 31)

7.

I learned how to use the word processing software. (n = 10)

8.

I learned how to communicate in written English. (n = 4)

9.

Others. (n = 2)

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Questionnaire (2)We also asked them how they felt about the project. They described it as follows:•

I was able to know other students’ opinions by reading their essays on the BBSs.

•

The project helped us learn how to write English compositions.

•

I got used to writing essays in English.

•

The project was tough, so I worked very hard.

From what whey answered the questionnaire, they seem to have rather positive views of this project. Although they mainly wrote about this project from a writing -skill point of view, this project has other aspects: theaffective aspect and the technical aspect. That is, first of all, through writing what they thought, they could express
themselves to the other students in, and moreover, they had opportunities for reading other students’ essays andevaluating them. Secondly, for the technical aspect, they became accustomed to using the computer and the BBS
system through this project.

Development of the Students’ Essays.
The Development of the Average Number of Words the Students Used in Their Essays
The figure below shows the development of the average number of words the students used in their essay
from October to November 1999.

the numbers of words

114
113
112
111
110
109
OctoberNovember

DecemberFigure 1. Development of the average number of words the students used in their essays

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The figure shows that the average number of words the students used during the three months did not show
a difference.

Transition of the Variance of the Number of the Words Used among the Students
The figure below shows a transition of the variance of the numbers of the words used among students. The
figures on the y-axis shows √ variance.
The variance of the number of the words used among the students in December became larger.

17
16.5
16
15.5
15
14.5
14
13.5

OctoberNovember December

Figure 2. Transition of the variance of the number of the words used among the students
Transition of the Levels of the Words Students Used in their Essays
We also analyzed the levels of the words that students used in their essays and their development from
October to December 1999. For this analysis, we used the program named I4an (web edition; http://www.ngu.ac.jp/~m8205/pls/exe.html).
Figure 3 shows that fewer words in level 1 and more words in level 2 appeared in December. The words inthe other levels did not show a difference. This could indicate that some students began to use more complicatedwords through this project, though the difference was rather small.

Summary of the Transition of the Students’ Essays
From what is shown in the three figures above, the development during this project was rather small.
Some reasons for this can be suggested. First of all, the project last only three months in 1999. This is too
short to affect the English proficiency of the students. Therefore, we should look at the effects for a longer period.
Secondly, we should look at this project from other points of view. As shown in the questionnaire administeredafter the project, the students responded positively to the essay-writing assignment. They seemed to enjoy writing
their own essays and reading other students’ essays, and this alone should make this type of class worthwhile.

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80
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8
7
6
5
4
3
2

level 1level 3level 4level 5over 5level 2

1
October
December
October November
NovemberDecember

0

Figure 3. Transitions of the levels of the words Stuents used in their essays

The Project in 2000
We are continuing this project with 58 freshmen in 2000. Before starting, we revised some parts in the
project so that we could facilitate communication between students and expression of their own ideas.
1.

Remove restrictions on the number of words used.

2.

Allow the exchange of opinions between the students in different classes.

3.

Make the topics of the essays more general.

4.

Give examples of possible essays before the students begin to write.

As for 2., the students have to write messages on the essays written by pre-selected students in another class.
This should give the students chances for reading someone else’s essay more intensively and, moreover, to facilitate communication among the students. As for 3., the topics that we used in the project in 1999 were mainly about
English learning. However, it seems that the students did not have so much to write about those topics. We, therefore, change the topics of the essays into more general ones so that the students could write more in their essays.

Problems
How to Evaluate the Students’ Essays
At present, we check whether each student submits essays and responses or not, but, we have not evaluatedthe quality of their essays yet. We realize that as long as we continue this project as a part of an assignment in class,
we must consider how to evaluate the quality of their essays.

How to Allow the Students to Communicate More Spontaneously
In the project in 2000, the students have to respond to pre-selected students in another class. This should givethem chances to communicate in English. However, our final goal is spontaneous communication, and we shouldtake additional steps to achieve this goal.

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Whether We Should Ask Native Speakers to Join this ProjectAt the present, this BBSs system is restricted to the students and teacher, who are all Japanese native
speakers. If we include native speakers of English in this project, they can provide models for writing essays. On
the other hand, the essays of the native speakers of English could easily dominate this project, and this could cause
another problem, that is to say, the students might follow the native-speaker model too closely and may be reluctant
to write their essays in their own style. Therefore, at least at the present, we have a rather negative opinion about
asking native speakers to join the project.

Notes
A special thanks for Mr. Satoru Yamauchi’s technical support of the BBSs.

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Proposal of a Writing-Support Tool for Preparation of
Research Journal Papers in English
Judy Noguchi
Mukogawa Women’s University, Japan
Abstract
A writing-support framework is proposed to help nonnative English speakers prepare papers for publication in research journals based on corpus linguistics and genre analysis concepts. Such writers need aid at
three levels, grammatical, lexical and rhetorical, in order to express their intentions in academic papers. Corpus linguistics can offer the means with which to identify word and phrase patterns frequently used in professional discourse communities, and genre analysis can help reveal the grammatical and rhetorical patterns via
move analysis. The framework proposed is being used with graduate school students in science and engineering
departments. Student work and responses to such a course are introduced.

Introduction
The importance of English to the scientist today is obvious, and publishing research papers in English for theinternational scientific community is essential in most fields. The need to write on a professional level raises many
issues for nonnative English speakers (NNS) at grammatical, lexical, and rhetorical levels. Difficulties arise because these features have characteristics which have been determined by the people who use them, the professionals composing the community of, for example, biologists, chemists, engineers or lawyers. An interesting study by
Okamura and Shaw (2000) was conducted to examine appropriateness of language usage at these various levels.
They analyzed the writing of a genre text (a transactional letter) by both native English speakers (NS) and NNS in
two groups, academic professionals and nonprofessionals. Their findings showed that even NS nonprofessionals
had difficulty with genre rhetorical concerns and that NNS professionals had difficulty with the lexical phrases
common to the genre.
Studies on professional discourse such as the above indicate the need for help at several levels in the case ofnovice writers—grammatical, lexical and rhetorical. Here I would like to suggest a way to synthesize tools available from corpus linguistics and genre analysis. Corpus linguistics offers the means for identifying the words,
phrases and patterns to best express what is to be said in the milieu of their field of specialty (Johns, 1991a,b;
Hadley, 1998). Genre analysis can help reveal the moves, or lexical, grammatical and rhetorical patterns, used toexpress authors’ intentions in an academic paper (Swales, 1990; Bhatia, 1993). Swales (1981, 1985, 1990) [asdescribed in Bhatia 1993, p. 13], states that genre “is a recognizable communicative event characterized by a set ofcommunicative purpose(s) identified and mutually understood by the members of the professional or academic
community in which it regularly occurs. Most often it is highly structured and conventionalized with constraints onallowable contributions in terms of their intent, positioning, form and functional value. These constraints, however, are often exploited by the expert members of the discourse community to achieve private intentions within theframework of socially recognized purpose(s).” In other words, a professional must have a certain level of expertisein using language in order to actively participate in a discourse community.
This paper proposes a procedure for guiding NNS scientists, in particular novices, in the preparation of ajournal paper. It consists of a framework for approaching the writing process, a rhetorical framework showing the
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information expected in different sections of the text, and ideas for building a bank of lexical items frequently used
for each section in the writer’s field of study.

Class procedure and student work
The procedure introduced has been used at several graduate school departments with students majoring invarious engineering and bioscience fields. The classes have been offered as intensive courses covering a period ofas short as two days to as long as one week and also as a year-long class. The number of students have ranged fromabout 10 to 15 in the year-long class to about 20 to 40 in the intensive classes. At the beginning of the course, anintroductory lecture is given on the corpus linguistics and genre analysis techniques used in order to enable thestudents to understand the procedures and use them as tools. The course itself is conducted in an interactive styleusing consciousness-raising activities such as suggested by Willis and Willis (1996). Rather than the instructor
prescribing forms and features of language usage, the students are encouraged to observe and analyze the language
they need to use, classify its features, hypothesize about its usage, and use corpus tools and other reference materials.
As a specific example of the lesson plans for the actual writing of the paper, the procedure for the abstract
section will be described in detail here. This section is very important for several reasons: it is required for almost
all research papers, an English abstract is often required even if the paper is written in Japanese, and the abstract
can appear separate from the paper itself via abstracting services. This means that the abstract must clearly andaccurately present the most important information concerning the study described in the paper.
To begin work on the abstract section, the students are asked to bring examples of abstracts from the papers
they are presently reading for their research. They are asked to analyze these abstracts by trying to identify what
the author wishes to express in the different sentences. This usually results in the abstract being divided into
several sections with different purposes, as shown below.

Table 1. Identifying Sections in an Abstract
Section
Abstract

Features
Usually about 100 to 250 words

Backgroundabs1

One to two sentences; often with present tense verb; often omitted in engineering
papersAim of study/paper

abs2

One to two sentences; with present tense or past tense verb

Study procedure

abs3

Materials and methods used; usually with past tense verb

Resultsabs4

Main results, findings; often with past tense verb

Conclusion

abs5

Conclusion resulting from study; often with present tense verb

The students are asked to send the instructor via e-mail examples of sentences for each section so that theexamples can be shared with other students in the class. Table 2 is an example of a table prepared to identify moves
for the first sentence of the abstract. Bold and italic fonts highlight phrases which might be useful for the students.

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Table 2. Moves for the First Sentence of an Abstract
Student

Verb

Example

A

abs1

M

The adhesion behavior that governs many technologically and biologically relevant
polymer properties can be investigated by ZZZ measurements with varied electrolyte
concentration or pH.

B

abs1

M

Polymer particles with controlled morphologies and having diameters from about 1-20
ƒÊ can be prepared using a new SSS procedure.

C

abs2

Past A new fermentation system with continus separation of inhibitory metabolites by crossflow filtration was employed for high-concentration cultivation of homo-ftermentative
latic acid bacteria in order to improve the productivity of cell-mass.

D

abs2

Pres In this work, we present the results from direct numberical simulations of the....

E

abs2

Pres In this paper, the impact toiughness properties of XXX composities is presented anddiscussed.

F

abs2

Pres The influence of the incorporation of a functional monomer on core-shell polymers of
SSS and on their mechanical properties is investigated.

G

abs2

Past AAA copolymer (ASR), was used as a polymeric emulsifier in the emulsion
polymerization of styrene and methyl methacrylate.

H

abs4

Past Micron-sized PPCC particles were produced as follows:As can be seen from the above table, four of the eight samples express aim in the first sentence, with thepresent tense verb being used in three of the examples. Two of the examples start with general backgroundinformation. This ratio differs among different science fields; e.g., in the biosciences, the first sentence is often abackground statement in the present tense, such as the following:
PPP is a single-protein enzyme and uses a simple substance as an energy donor.
Vacuolar CCC antiporter contributes to the CCC accumulation into vacuoles together withAAA.
TTT, a well-known protein phosphatase inhibitor, exists in two forms.
Next, the students are asked to analyze their own abstracts which they are writing and send them to the
instructor via e-mail.

Table 3. Samples of Self-Analysis of Abstracts
Student

Verb

ExampleStA

abs1

Pres Fatty acid methyl esters which are produced by methanolysis of plant oils (triblycerides)
are expected as biodiesel fuel which can be used instead of petro diesel fuel.

StB

abs1

Past We noticed he cloud point of nonionic emulsifier and produced original PPP particles by
emulsion copolymerizations at above and below the could point.

StC

abs2

Past We researched a selective hydrogenation of acetophenone by Zr supported catalyst.

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Table 3. Samples of Self-Analysis of Abstracts (Cont’d)Student
StD

Verb

Exampleabs2,3 Past Micron-sized, monodispersed, polystyrene (PS)/poly(n-butyl methacrylate) (PBMA)
composite particles, in which PS domain(s) dispersed in PBMA continous phase, were
produced by seeded polymerization for the dispersions of n-butyl methacrylate (BMA)swollen PS particles (PS/BMA = 1/150, w/w) using various amounts of benzoyl peroxide(BPO) as an indicator.

StE abs5, 3 Past Micron-sized monodispersed polymer particles having a rugby ball like-shape were
produced effectively at the completion of seeded polymerization for the sipersion of PPP
particles prepared in an ethanol/water medium by utilizing the dynamic swelling method
under optimum ratios of divinylbenzene/ vinylviphenyl/xylene.
As can be seen, there are many errors at not only the lexical and grammatical level but also at the rhetoricallevel. Next, the students are asked to compare their abstract sentences with those from the reference papers.
Student StE had only one sentence in his abstract and had tried to include all the information in it. The suggestion
was made to separate the information into at least two sentences. Here are some examples of how the students
revised their sentences. Problems still remain at the lexical level, but there has been improvement at the grammatical and rhetorical levels. For example, StB’s statement is now more suitable for the research paper register and StD
has reduced the amount of information in his sentence.

Table 4. Examples of Revised Sentences
Student

Verb

ExampleStA

abs1

Pres Fatty acid methyl esters which are produced by methanolysis of plant oils (triblycerides)
are used as biodiesel fuel which can be used instead of diesel fuel.

StB

abs1

M

StC

abs2

Past We studied a selective hydrogenation of acetophenone by Zr supported catalyst.

StD

abs5

Past Micron-sized, monodispersed, polystyrene (PS)/poly(n-butyl methacrylate) (PBMA)
composite particiles, in which PS domain(s) dispersed in PBMA continous phase, were
produced by seeded polymerization for the dispersions of n-butyl methacrylate (BMA)swollen PS particles (PS/BMA = 1/150, w/w).

The cloud point of onionic emulsifier is important in emulsion polymerization because
usually emulsion polymerization can not carry out at above the cloud point.

The next step would be to present commonly used phrases and expressions for the various sections of theabstract and have the students find expressions that they might want to use for their paper.
Here are examples of how some students revised their papers. Below is the first version submitted by one
student. It was composed of the following two sentences.

Table 5. Example of Student A’s Abstract—Before Revision1

abs1

This paper reports the highly cross-linked polymers in supercriticalCO2 was demonstrated that
under certain specific conditions, relativey uniform, nonporous poly(divinylbipheny)(PDVBP)
microspheres(ca. 100 nm diameter) can be generated in the absence of stabilizers.

2

abs2

The effect of cross-linedratio was investigated.

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After the student turned in the following revised version, parts of the text were underlined to suggest how the
text might be revised further.

Table 6. Example of Student A’s Abstract—After Revision1

abs2

This paper reports the highly cross-linked polymers in supercriticalCO2 was demonstrated that
under certain specific conditions, relativey uniform, nonporous poly(divinylbiphenyl)(PDVBP)
microspheres(ca. 100 nm diameter) can be generated in the absence of stabilizers.

2

abs2

The effect of cross-linkedratio [sic.] was investigated.

3

abs4

It was shown that the particle size and particle size distribution were strongly dependent on the
cross-linker ratio.

4

abs5

Finally this method were extended to the synthesis of functional cross-linked microspheres.

This is the next revision which is almost ready for submission for publication.

Table 7. Example of Student A’s Abstract—Almost Publication Ready1

abs1

This paper reports the synthesis of highly cross-linked polymers in supercritical CO2.

2

abs5

It was demonstrated that under certain specific conditions, relatively unifrom, nonporouspoly(divinylbiphenyl) (PDVBP) microspheres(ca. 100 nm diameter) can be generated in the absenceof added stabilizers.

3

abs2

The effect of cross-linker ratio was investigated.

4

abs3

It was shown that the particle size and particle size distribution were strongly dependent on the
cross-linker ratio.

5

abs5

Finally, this method was estended to the synthesis of functional cross-linked microspheres.

Student StE who had only one long sentence for the first draft of his abstract, submitted the following
revision after examining the reference paper corpus. Although further work is needed, the following abstract ismuch easier to read and understand than the first version.

Table 8. Example of Student B’s Abstract—After One Revision1

abs1,3 Recently, the authors report that micron-sized, monodispersed, anomalous polymer particles having
a red blood corpuscle-shape were effectively produced by seeded polymerization for the dispersionof (toluene/divinylbenzene/vinyltoluene)-swollen PS particles prepared by utilizing the dynamic
swelling method. .

2

abs2

In order to produce more anomalous polymer particles and to contorol chaging [sic.] the shape, thecomposition of monomers was chaged [sic.] in above method.

3

abs4

To chage the composition of monomers, the micron-sized, monodispersed, more anolmalous polymer
particles having a rugby ball like-shape were effectiely produced in above mthod.

This procedure of collection of target language samples, analysis of their features, followed by student

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production of their own writing then doing guided rewriting is repeated until all sections of the research paper havebeen covered and the students have completed their paper.

Student Questionnaire Responses
The course described above is still in session and therefore the student responses presented below are fromthose enrolled in a week-long intensive course held earlier. The students were asked to respond to a free-answer
questionnaire on the interactive workshop-style course and the course materials. Here are some responses. The
first question asked whether or not the students found the course useful, and all responses obtained (25/26) werepositive with 19 (73%) specifically stating that learning about the structure of the research paper was useful, twostating that this information would even be useful for reading journal papers, and four giving positive comments
about the classroom activities. The second question on the interactive workshop style, which has not been common
in Japanese classes, was also very positively received with 18 (69%) students stating that they thought it was
effective and enjoyable to work with others and share information. Other comments included wanting more English to be used in the class and more time between classes. For the third question on the course materials, 15
students (58%) responded positively, with one mentioning that they would even be useful for the writing of Japanese papers. One student found the exercises too difficult and another said there was nothing from his field of
research, while still another acknowledged the fact that it would not be possible to offer examples from all fields.
Overall, the students received the course very well and several expressed the wish to take the course again (several
students have done this).

Conclusion
This paper has described a writing-support framework for nonnative English speaker writing research papers
for journal publication. (The entire framework is presented in a book to be published in fall 2000.) The student
work examples show that activities to raise student consciousness about language and encouraging them to interact
with others and their own materials can be very effective for the teaching of writing. This is supported by the
positive responses from the students. This approach of having students observe, analyze, and hypothesize about
the language that they need, then work with writing and revising their own material is recommended for the training of scientists who must publish in English to have their work recognized.

References
Bhatia, V. K. (1993). Analysing genre: Language use in professional settings. New York: Longman.
Hadley, G. (1998, Feburary- March). Using corpora with Japanese beginners. IATEFL Newsletter, 141, 12.
Johns, T. (1991a). Should you be persuaded: Two examples of data-driven learning. In T. Johns and P. King (Eds.),
Classroom concordancing, (pp. 1-16). Birmingham, UK: Centre for English Language Studies, The University of Birmingham.
Johns, T. (1991b). From printout to handout: Grammar and vocabulary teaching in the context of data-driven
learning. In T. Johns and P. King (eds.), Classroom concordancing (pp. 27-46). Birmingham, UK: Centre forEnglish Language Studies, The University of Birmingham.
Okamura, A. & Shaw, P. (1999). Lexical phrases, culture, and subculture in transactional letter writing. English for
specific purposes 19, 1-15.
Swales, J. (1981). Aspects of article introductions. Aston ESP research reports No. 1. Birmingham: The Language
Studies Unit, The University of Aston in Birmingham.

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Swales, J. (1985). Episodes in ESP. Oxford: Pergamon Institute of English.
Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Willis, Dave & Willis, Jane. (1996). Consciousness-raising activities in the language classroom. In D. Willis and
J. Willis (eds.), Challenge and change in language teaching, (pp. 63-75). Oxford: Heinemann.

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A Proposal to Integrate Computers in Language Instruction
Miho Fujieda
Hiroko Suzuki
Tokai University, Japan
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a lesson plan focusing on how and where we can use andintegrate the use of computers in language instruction. Computers are used at different stages of language
instruction both in and outside of the classroom. Adapting a commercially available university-level English
reading textbook, the authors developed digital slides for classroom discussion and a CALL program with extra
language activities for self-study. While making the best use of already existing teaching materials, computerized activities can add new dimensions to conventional language teaching and make the teaching material morecomprehensible. A sample unit is discussed in detail.

Introduction
As increasing numbers of computers have been installed in Japanese universities, educators and practitioners are vigorously searching for effective ways to use the new technology in education. Needless to say, language
teachers are also struggling to find the most appropriate use of computers in their instruction, and software development has been explored at all levels. With this in mind, the purposes of this study are (a) to describe how classes
will change by using computers as an educational aid and (b) to demonstrate a sample lesson with the digitalmaterials we have produced integrated in a whole lesson plan.

The Educational Design
The Flow of a Lesson
A lesson plan was made to complete a chapter of the target reading textbook, with the idea of utilizing
computers in and outside the class. As shown in Figure 1, the plan was to cover the whole chapter in three classsessions.
The first session is an introduction to the main topics of the lesson, with multimedia materials as visual andaudio aids. The second session is a self-learning lesson, with a student using a CALL program, in which they canprocess and practice linguistic information related to the text, such as pronunciation, meanings of words andsentences, cultural information relevant to the contents, and comprehension quizzes. The third session consists ofregular classroom activities, on which the plan puts the most emphasis. The lesson plan is especially designed topromote the students’ active participation during communicative classroom activities following the CALL lesson.

From Teacher-Centered to Student-Centered
During our two years of research, we developed a hypothesis which states that when the goal of the class is
to improve students’ communication abilities with the help of a teacher, who is not a lecturer but a facilitator, thegoal will be realized if computers successfully meet the following two requirements (Suzuki & Fujieda, 1999). The
first requirement is that the computer activities are designed to supplement and enrich already existing teaching
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materials. The second requirement is that computers compensate for a lack of more varied and individualized
learning experiences. Using the CALL program, students are able to work at their own speeds and chose the orderof subjects or exercises they are working on according to their individual preferences.

Lesson PlanClass

Introduction, Pre-reading Activities

Self-Study

CALL, Network Activites

Class

Discussion, Oral Activities

Figure 1. The flow of the lesson
In order to describe the effective use of computers in class which this study demonstrates, the process ofusing media in the class is reviewed (see Figure 2). Previously in the traditional classes teachers used written
textbooks and a blackboard on which they wrote some key words or phrases. Such lecture-style classes forced
students to sit for a long time and passively listen to what teachers were saying. The most important role of theteachers was to deliver linguistic knowledge to the students. Then in the next age of language education, teachers
were able to use tapes and videos. Such educational aids helped students to receive more visual and audio information, which promoted their comprehension of the lectures. Furthermore, the tapes and videos gave the students achance to perform oral exercises, such as practicing pronunciation, listening and speaking. However, since cassettetapes and video materials presented information in a fixed, linear form, they tended to limit students’ learning
strategies and processes.

Figure 2. The development of instruction media
Now is the age of computers in language education. In our view, computers may be most effectively used as(a) visual and audio aids relevant to the contents of lectures, which use the capabilities of multimedia in combining
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images, sounds, and timing, thereby increasing listening comprehension among students, (b) a computer-based
multimedia self-learning program (CALL), which presents material in a more attractive and interactive way, andgives students substantially more flexibility in employing learning strategies and (c) as a communication tool,
when e-mail or video conferencing systems are available, whereby students acquire experience in sharing information, problems or feelings. These three computer roles optimize students’ exposure to English, which most effectively leads to improved student performance in communicative activities following CALL.

A Sample Unit
The Material
An experimental sample unit of computer-based multimedia materials was produced according to this lesson
plan. The unit is based on a chapter of a university-level ESL reading textbook. A passage in the chosen chapter
depicts in chronological order the history of rock ‘n’ roll in the U.S. from the days of slavery to the present.

Contents of the Unit
Introduction of the Chapter: In the first session, pre-reading activities can be conducted to introduce thechapter using a digital slide show made with Microsoft PowerPoint. For example, showing pictures of the famous
singers and playing songs mentioned in the text can create a small discussion on each singer (see Figure 3). New
words and phrases are also introduced on the screen along with pictures, when available (see Figure 4). A simple
task such as completing a table of rock ‘n’ roll history is given to the class to scan key points of the story (see Figure
5).

Figure 3

Figure 4

The advantages of using computers are that the materials can be prepared and saved in a file beforehand,correct answers, comments or key words necessary for tasks and discussions can be typed and immediately shown
on a big screen, which serves as an electronic blackboard, and each object can be presented attractively with colors
and animations as well as sounds. If a classroom is equipped only with a small LCD projector and a screen, ateacher can walk in with a laptop computer and start such a digital presentation.

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Figure 5
The CALL Program: The CALL material was developed to support students’ self-study and help them
prepare for the next classroom session. As shown in Figure 6, the main menu has four main sections: reading,listening, quizzes and culture. Other items are supplementary sections which are used for network-based activities
incorporated into the program.

Figure 6. The structure of the CALL programFirst, the reading section is a comprehensible database of the text. By default, the pop-up vocabulary help
items appear when the cursor rolls over a word. Since the goal of reading instruction is to help students become
independent readers, this minimal help encourages students to keep on reading without stopping. Where possible,
the help information is given in simple English in order to help the students think in English.
The functions of the buttons on the left are: Button E for English sound, Button J for Japanese sound, andButton V for further vocabulary explanation and pronunciation. While the pop-up balloon provides minimal help,
the vocabulary help provided by pressing Button V is more extensive, including Japanese explanation about usage.
Each help item is linked to a target sentence, so that the student can focus on that particular sentence and get various
types of help for it. Button G visually presents sentence structure with animation for some of the longer sentenceswith complicated structure. The intention of the material developers here is to show the sentence structure in sucha way to help students understand it without formal linguistic explanation.
The listening section (Figure 8) corresponds to the reading section. Here, however, only images are shownwith English sound. Pressing Button K allows the students to see keywords from the text while listening.
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Figure 7. Reading screen

Figure 8. Listening screen

Figure 9. Word puzzle

Figure 10. Timeline

The “quizzes” section has two kinds of tests: Word Puzzle and Timeline. Word Puzzle (Figure 9) is designed
to encourage students to use newly learned vocabulary and reinforce spelling. It asks the students to rearrange
letters to form a word that fits in a blank in a sentence. The Timeline section (Figure 10) is a reading comprehension quiz which asks students to fill in blanks with keywords and rearrange sentences in chronological order. The
purpose of this quiz is to review the story by picking up key words and summarizing the paragraphs.
The CALL program has several extended features. “Glossary” is one of them, where the vocabulary items
shown in the main passage are stored in alphabetical order and a word can be looked up by letter or by inputting theword in a search box (see Figure 11). It is possible to search for words in the glossary from every section of the
program, so that students can receive information for words that are necessary for doing the quizzes or expressing
their own ideas. The “assignments” section provides class handouts and worksheets that students are supposed tocomplete at home. The handouts and worksheets can be printed out so that the students bring their homework toclass. Figure 12 is a sample of a worksheet which requires students to access a web page about a legendary country
blues singer. The web page is specified in a section called “and more…”(see Figure 13). “Chat room” (Figure 14)
is a bulletin board system where students post their questions and opinions about the topic raised. Students type in
their names, e-mail address, the subject and their opinions. In this section, they can share and exchange theirproblems, ideas and suggestions.

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Figure 11. Glossary

Figure 12. Assignments

Figure 13. And more

Figure 14. Chat rooms

To contents

Post-CALL Oral Activities: After self-learning in the CALL lesson and working on the worksheet in theassignment section, students are ready to participate in oral activities in the regular class. In this chapter, students
investigate information about the musicians, exchange their information in class in small groups and discuss ingroups to make decisions on the task given to them, which is referred to as a “mission”.
[Mission]
You are a music producer.
Your project team is going to remake a song.
Choose a song in the 90s. Your plan is to remake that song with a singer from the 60s.
Decide a song and a singer and describe how you remake that song according to the image of thesinger.
Explain why you choose the song, the singer and the music style.

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Here are some things to keep in mind when you carry out the project.
1.

Points to consider

2.

Music genre

3.

Arrangement of the song

4.

Target audience5.

Costume

References
Chapell, C. A. (1998). Multimedia CALL: Lessons to be learned from research on instructed SLA. Language
Learning & Technology 2, 1, 22-34.
Jones, M. G. and J. R. Okey. (1999). User interface design guidelines for computer-based learning environments.
Journal of Visual Literacy 19, 1, 65-84.
Kost, C. R. and J. J. Lenzini, Jr. (1999). Textual and pictorial glosses: Effectiveness on incidental vocabulary
growth when reading in a foreign language. Foreign Language Annals, 32, 1, 89-113.
Skehan, P. and P. Faster. (1999). The influence of task structure and processing conditions on narrative retellings.
Language Learning 49, 1, 93-120.
Suzuki, H and M. Fujieda. (1999). Human-computer interaction and the effect of CALL: A case study. Kanagawa
University Studies in Language 21, 29-62.

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Prosodic Variables as a Cue for Japanese EFL Learners’
Listening Comprehension
Kaoru Tomita
Yamagata University, Japan
Abstract
The research described here is concerned with the effect of the prosodic variables on Japanese EFL
learners’ listening comprehension. To observe the learners listening skill without presenting any kinds of written
choices and to keep the differences of their backgroud knowledge effect as small as possible, the word-association test was chosen in this study. With this test, the listeners listen to English passages whose meaning suggest
one English word.
Experiment 1 and 2 were administered to examine to what extent the prosodic cues were meaningful toJapanese EFL learners, especially when they listened to slowly-read passages and fast-read passages. The
results show that prosodic variables do not have special effects on EFL learners’ listening comprehension when
the speech is spoken slowly, but when the speech is spoken fast, prosodic variables can be a cue for learners toprocess the incoming sequence of words.

Introduction
Speakers make some effort to let the listeners understand what they say. When the speakers find that thelisteners show some difficulty in understanding what they say, they can change the difficult words into simple ones
and rephrase what they said. They can also try to make it easier without changing the words or phrases. They can
put longer and more pauses and divide their speech into prosodic phrases, marking the ending clearly with lengthening, attaching the prominence of information focus a little emphatically, making the pitch move up and down insome non-random way, and pronouncing segments or syllables with high quality sound. They can also slow down
their speech to make it more intelligible.
It is usually admitted that the slow speech is for beginners and fast speech is for advanced learners in foreign
language learning. The tempo itself, however, does not always improve the comprehension of sentences. Slower
speech gives the listeners more time to process the incoming sentences than the fast speech, which is sometimes
rattled off like a machine gun. In this case, besides the amount of the time for processing the speech, the pauses,
especially the grammatical speech pauses that are usually put more often in slower speech than faster speech help
the listeners comprehend the speech. The frequency of pauses in speech goes along with speaking rate as is
described by Nooteboom (1997):
Actual speakers assume considerable freedom in choosing whether phrase boundaries are or
are not realized by speech pauses. They are more liable to make speech pauses in slow and careful
speech than in rapid and less careful speech. Whenever they make a melodically marked speech pause,
however, it is likely to be made at a predictable phrase boundary (p. 672).
He also points out that the grammatical speech pauses can be helpful to maintain intelligibility under unfavorable listening conditions or speech quality.

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High quality speech without grammatical speech pauses within sentences can be highly intelligible and acceptable. But as soon as speech quality is less than normal, or speech is listened to in noisy
conditions, the introduction of grammatical speech pauses can help to maintain intelligibility. In general, it can be observed that the contributions of prosody to speech perception become more importantwhen the segmental quality of speech or the listening conditions become less favorable (p. 672-3)..
The contribution of prosody to speech comprehension for EFL learners who try to understand the speech
under unfavorable conditions and also sometimes with the insufficient language skills is also great. Fujimura andErickson (1997, p.112) says that prosodic cues seem primarily important for very early phases of language acquisition, and also for second language learning.
The pauses and also other prosodic variables, such as final-lengthening, accent, and pitch movement help
the speech to be intelligible for listeners, and these prosodic variables, not always but sometimes, go along with thechange of speaking rate (Tomita, 1995b; 1997). The acoustic phonological studies have shown the effect of theseprosodic variables on listening comprehension, such as pauses (Suzuki, 1998, Tomita, 1995a), length of the pausebounded unit (Baum, et al., 1997; Lamberts, 1998; Sanderman, 1997) and prefinal lengthening (Swerts, 1993).
Fujimura and Erickson (1997) point out that the importance of these prosodic variables for parsing and comprehending speech utterances.
Temporal modulation such as phrase final elongation, a gradual declination of articulatory excursions as well as voice intensity over a phrasal unit, and various f0 changes near the end of a phrase
provide important perceptual and spectrographic cues for parsing and comprehending speech utterances.... It should be emphasized that perceptually clear phrase boundaries are not necessarily marked
phonetically as silent periods. Phonetic phrase boundaries are not consistently used according to thephonological phrase structures. The strength of each phonetic phrase boundary is continuously, rather
than categorically controlled (p. 112).
The research described here is concerned with the effect of the prosodic variables, such as final-lengthening,
accent, and pitch movement on Japanese EFL learners’ listening comprehension. The pauses are removed from theexperimental stimuli of this study, for the focus is on the effect of the prosodic variables. When the speakers speakwith a different speaking rate, the frequency and length of pauses and the degree of final-lengthening, pitch movement, intensity and segmental quality of speech change interactively. When we observe the effect of speaking rateon EFL learners’ listening comprehension as one factor, we do not make it clear whether they may benefit frompauses, prosodic variables or segmental quality in comprehending English passages. Of course they may benefit
from all of them, and especially from the pauses, as the previous studies show. The research here uses the fast andslow speech whose segmental quality is the same and also whose pauses are all eliminated to investigate the role ofthe prosodic variables on the comprehension of the passages.
We introduce the word-association listening test as an objective way to observe the EFL learners’ comprehension skills of English passage in Section 2. The listening experiment explored whether prosodic cues havelistening comprehension import with the slowly-read passages in Section 3 and the fast-read passages in Section 4.
General discussion for future study is presented in Section 5.

Word Association Listening Test
This study uses the word association test to measure the Japanese EFL learners’ listening comprehension
skills. There are various methods that have been used to measure the passage-level listening comprehension but
there are none whose validity, reliability and practicality are generally acknowledged. The development of computer technology has heightened the practicality of question and answer with multiple choices, but there are still
problems with reliability and validity. The presentation of the different types of choices (written sentence, spoken
sentence or picture), affects the results. The content of the passage also affects the result of the listening compreProsodic Variables as a Cue for Japanese EFL Learners’ [Poster Presentation]534

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hension test. Any kind of the passage needs background knowledge to comprehend its content. In observing theresults of the listening test, we do not know whether the amount of the background knowledge affected the results
or not.
To observe the learners listening skill without presenting any kinds of written choices and to keep the difference of their background knowledge effect as least as possible, if possible, on independent grounds (i.e. independent of background knowledge), the word-association test was chosen in this study. With this test, the listeners
listen to English passage whose meaning suggests one English word. We can choose basic words to associate withand make the plain explanation passage to test the beginners. For advanced learners, we choose difficult words toassociate with and make a high-level explanation passage. This way has the potential of creating many kinds of
explanation passages.
In this study, experiments were carried out with the passages chosen from MELIS1, which has ten volumes
with eight lessons each. In all, it has around 1,600 questions, from which 42 fairly easy questions were selected, as
the standard level of the questions in MELIS was relatively high for the subjects who participated the experiment.
The 12 key passages used in the experiment are shown in Appendix 1. The words which are associated with these
12 questions are, “left”, “blue”, “sky”, “bat”, “red”, “nine”, “please”, “guest”, “film”, “cold”, “teacher” and “blue”.
They are all very basic words and do not cause any difficulty to associate once the listeners can comprehend thequestions sufficiently.

Experiment 1
PurposeThe experiment was administered to examine to what extent the prosodic cues were meaningful to Japanese EFL learners, especially when they listened to slow-readings.

MethodSubjects. Thirty-three Japanese EFL learners participated in the Experiment 1. Their major was humanities.
Material. Forty-two passages, 12 for key passages, four for examples and 26 for distractors (refer to Appendix 2), were selected for the experiment. All the passages were recorded with normal falling vs. rising pitches andat a slow speaking rate (stimulus SP), that was around 140 wpm. The 12 key passages were also recorded withmonotonous intonation (stimulus SM). All the pauses in key passages were removed using MultiSpeech (Ver. 3.),
which made the articulation rate of the passages from 171 wpm to 232 wpm. To make the articulation rate of paired
passages (passages with many prosodic cues and monotonous ones with fewer prosodic cues) same, the length ofpaired passages was compared and a minute adjustment was made by means of TSM (Time-scale modification)(Ver. 2.5) developed by Matsushita Electric Co. Ltd. The length of the each passage and rate of the time-scale
modification are shown in Table 1.
The 24 stimuli (12 passages x 2 prosodic styles) were divided into two tests. Each test had 12 stimuli (stimuli
1 x 12) and the order of presentation was from stimuli 1 to 12. The two prosodic styles of stimuli were mixed (sixSPs and six SMs) and they were put between the stimuli of distructors (D1 x D26) to avert the learning effect of
two tests. The order of the presentation of the passages in the two tests is shown in Table 2.

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Table 1. TSM Rate for SP and SMSPSMPassage

Length [ms]TSM Rate

Length [ms]TSM Rate

1

5768

0.82

5023

0.95

2

8143

0.90

7751

0.95

3

10447

0.94

10348

0.95

4

11835

0.94

11752

0.95

5

9717

0.95

1009

0.91

6

11392

0.88

1056

0.95

7

12715

0.86

1163

0.95

8

8937

0.94

8934

0.95

9

8875

0.89

8378

0.95

10

11270

0.89

10650

0.95

11

10680

0.90

10230

0.95

12

13452

0.87

12439

0.95

Table 2. Order of Presentation of the Passages
Test 1: D1 • SP1 • D2 • SM2 • D3 • SM3 • D4 • SP4 • D5 • SP5 • D6 • SM6 • D7 S • M7 • D8 • SP8 • D9 •SP9 • D10 • SM10 • D11 • SM11 • D12 • SP12 • D13
Test 2: D14 • SM1 • D15 • SP2 • D16 • SP3 • D17 • SM4 • D18 • SM5 • D19 •SP6 • D20 • SP 7 • D21 • SM8• D22 • SM 9 • D23 • SP10 • D24 • SP11 • D25 • SM12 • D26
Ten second pauses were inserted between each stimulus for response (thinking and writing the answer).
Procedure. The experiment was carried out for each subject in a quiet room. The subject sat in front of DAT
player (PIONEER: Digital Audio Tape Recorder, D-C 88) and put on the earphone. The experimenter, sitting on the
opposite side, asked him/her to listen to each stimulus and to associate its meaning with one English word. After
four examples, they listened to 25 stimuli and wrote down responses. Test 2 was carried out with the same style.
Test 1 and test 2 were carried out with the interval of at least one week to avoid both the learning effect and exhausteffect. The total time for one test for one subject was approximately 40 minutes.
Scoring. One point was given to each correct response. The number of the subjects in each test was 33 andthe number of stimuli in each prosodic style was 12, the maximum score for SP and SM were 396, respectively.

Results
Table 3 displays the mean score and standard deviation for the two different prosodic styles of listening
word association tests.

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Table 3. Mean and SD for Two Different Prosodic Styles of Listening Word Association Test
Listening Word Association Test Scores
M
SD
SP

7.3

2.5

SM

6.9

2.8

N = 33 Maximum score: 12
The total score of SP was 243 and that of SM was 229. The result did not show the significant difference
between the scores of SP and those of SM (F(1, 64) = 0.40, p < .05).

Experiment 2
PurposeThe experiment was administered to examine to what extent the prosodic cues was meaningful to Japanese
EFL learners, especially when they listened to fast-read passages.

MethodSubjects Thirty-three Japanese EFL learners participated in the Experiment 2. Their major was humanities.
Material The set of the passages used in Experiment 1 was used. The articulation rate of the twelve key
passages was speeded up by means of TSM, which made the articulation rate of the passages from 278 wpm to 350
wpm. The rate of the time-scale modification was mainly 0.6. To make the speaking rate of paired passages (stimulus FP and stimulus FM) same, the length of paired passages was compared and a minute adjustment was made.
The length of the each passage and rate of the time-scale modification are shown in Table 4.

Table 4. TSM rate for FP and FMFPFMPassage

Length[ms]TSM Rate

Length [ms]TSM Rate

1

5768

0.52

5023

0.60

2

8143

0.57

7751

0.60

3

10447

0.59

10348

0.60

4

11835

0.59

11752

0.60

5

9717

0.60

1009

0.57

6

11392

0.55

1056

0.60

7

12715

0.54

1163

0.60

8

8937

0.59

8934

0.60

9

8875

0.56

8378

0.60

10

11270

0.56

10650

0.60

11

10680

0.57

10230

0.60

12

13452

0.55

12439

0.60

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The 24 stimuli (12 passages x 2 prosodic styles) were divided into two tests. Each test had 12 stimuli (stimuli
1 x 12) and the order of presentation was from stimuli 1 to 12. The two prosodic styles of stimuli were mixed (sixFPs and six FMs), and they were put between the stimuli of distructors (D1 x D26) to avoid the learning effect of
two tests. The order of the presentation of the passages in the two tests is shown in Table 5.

Table 5. Order of Presentation of the Passages
Test 1: D1 · FP1 · D2 · FM2 · D3 · FM3 · D4 · FP4 · D5 · FP5 · D6 · FP6 · D7 · FM7 · D8 · FP8 · D9 · FP9 · D10· FM10 · D11 · FM11 · D12 · FP12 · D13
Test 2: D14 · FM1 · D15 · FP2 · D16 · FP3 · D17 · FM4 · D18 · FM5 · D19 · FP6 · D20 · FP 7 · D21 · FM8 · D22· FM9 · D23 · FP10 · D24 · FP11 · D25 · FM12 · D26
Procedure. Tests were carried out with the same style of Experiment 1. To avoid the learning effect of theprevious experiment, the tests were carried out after six months from Experiment 1. The two tests were carried out
with the interval of at least one week to avoid both the learning effect and exhaust effect. The total time for the one
test for one subject was approximately 40 minutes.
Scoring. One point was given to each correct response. The number of the subjects in each test was 33 andthe number of stimuli in each prosodic styles was 12, the maximum score for FP and FM were 396, respectively.
Results. Table 6 displays the mean score and standard deviation for the two different prosodic styles oflistening word association tests.

Table 6. Mean and SD for Two Different Prosodic Styles of Listening Word Association Test
Listening Word Association Test Scores
MS
SD
FP

5.5

2.4

FM

4.0

2.3

N = 33 Maximum score: 12
The total score of FP was 182 and that of FM was 133. The total scores of correct answers were significantly
frequent in FP (F(1, 64) =6.3, p<.05).
Prosodic cues had some effect on listening comprehension in a foreign language. Especially when the learners listened to very fast reading, the prosodic cues played an important role, and when they listened to monotonous
reading, the speaking rate had a great effect on their comprehension.

General Discussion
The results of the experiment 1 did not show a significant difference between the scores of the listening
test of the readings with many prosodic variables and those of ones with fewer prosodic variables. The results ofthe experiment 2 showed a significant difference between the scores of the listening test of the readings with many
prosodic variables and those of ones with less prosodic variables. These results tell that Japanese EFL learners canbenefit from the prosodic variables to comprehend the meaning of the fast readings. Prosodic variables do not havespecial effect on EFL learners’ listening comprehension when the speech is spoken slowly, but when the speech is
spoken fast, prosodic variables can be a cue for learners to process the incoming sequence of words. The prosodic
cues may help the learners to find the boundary of the phrases especially when they listen to a very fast speech. The
present study showed the effectiveness of the prosodic variables on the comprehension of the fast speech. Then themechanism by which they help the EFL learners to comprehend the fast speech must be clarified in future studies.
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Notes
1. MELIS is English cassette tape for advanced learners. It has around 1,600 questions. Fairly easy 45
questions were selected on the basis of the data in English lessons.

References
Baum, S., Pell, M., Leonard, C., Gordon, J. (1997). The ability of right-and left-hemisphere-damaged individuals
to produce and interpret prosodic cues marking phrasal boundaries. Language and Speech 40(4), 313-330.
Fujimura, O., Erickson, D. (1997). Acoustic phonetics. The handbook of phonetic sciences, 65-115.
Lamberts, G.D., Houston, D. (1998). Faster orientation latencies toward native language in two-month-old infants, Language and Speech 41(1), 21-43.
Nooteboom, S.G. (1997). The prosody of speech: Melody and rhythm. The handbook of phonetic sciences, 641673.
Sanderman, A., Collier, R. (1997). Prosodic phrasing and comprehension. Language and speech, 40(4), 391-409.
Swerts, M., Geluykens, R. (1993). The prosody of information units in spontaneous monologue. Phonetica 50,
189-196.
Suzuki, T. (1998). The effect of pauses in listening material on reading speed. Language psychology and learning, (pp. 311-326). Tokyo: Kinseido.
Tomita, K. (1995a). The effect of articulation rate and spoken unit on listening comprehension. Unpublishedresearch report. Research Project Grant-in Aid for Scientific Research, 67-83.
Tomita, K. (1995b). The relation between speaking rate and spoken unit: Analyses of prosodic features in oral
reading and dialogue. Journal of Humanities 16, 33-46.
Tomita, K. (1997). Speech rate and tone unit of English native speakers’ oral reading. Unpublished research
report. Research Project Grant-in Aid for Scientific Research: 45-71.

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The Prospects and Issues in Integrating a CALL Methodology into
the English Curriculum of Korean Elementary Schools
In-Seok Kim
Dongduk Women’s University, Korea
Abstract
Since the Korean Ministry of Education introduced the teaching of English to the elementary school’s
curriculum in 1997, we have been witnessing a rather dramatic change in the ways foreign languages aretaught in grade school classrooms. The Korean Government has set their plan to equip every classroom with aset of multimedia facilities through which teachers can teach English and other subjects. Every school will not
only be equipped with one or two 40 seat self-access labs, but also be electronically wired with the Government
managed educational website for self-accessing web-based materials nationwide and with the other schools forsharing CALL materials developed by teachers across the nation. This hardware provision and the constructionof self-access labs in every school are expected to be completed by the end of year 2000. The Korean government
has subsequently developed a series of CD-ROM titles for a regular curriculum of elementary school English(3rd – 6th grade), which will be used in class, starting from March of 2001. This paper briefly sketches the overallplan for multimedia-assisted English teaching/learning in a Korean context as to its infrastructure and CDROM title development as an integral part of the national elementary English curriculum. The paper will show
the flow chart of 4th grade’s CD-ROM titles for teacher’s and students’ use and discuss design and learningfeatures in each. The paper concludes that MALL-based English education is very promising, but does require
the integrated MALL curriculum for effective delivery of instruction.

Introduction
During the closing years of the 20th century we saw the appearance of a digital revolution that is transforming the way in which the world socializes and does business (Gates, 1997, Hanson-Smith, 1999). This is a so-called
digital revolution which will change everything we do in our daily lives—home, business, and education. Digital
revolution has transformed the multimedia elements such as text, sound, video, animation, graphics, and otherelements into the single digits of 0 and 1. Thus, we can send the information packed with these multimedia
elements to the person at the other end of the globe at the speed of the light. Gates predicted that digital revolution
would have its greatest impact on education in the 21st century. It is then possible to adduce that foreign language
education can be best improved by using the new computer medium which lies at the heart of the emerging information technology.
Computer-assisted language learning has dramatically changed, following the footsteps of theory and practice of language learning and teaching. In the 50s people had access to the mainframe computer at the university or
institutions, which was rather bulky and expensive. During this period language teaching was tied with the theoretical underpinnings of structural linguists. This trend led to the now bygone methods such as grammar translation
method, audio-lingual method. In the 80s technology enabled people to own a personal computer at an affordable
price. During this period communicative competence became the buzzword of the language teaching profession. In
the 90s people began to network the computers, which developed into a new CALL methodology (Warschauer,
2000).

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Multimedia-Assisted English Instruction under the
7th National Curriculum in Korean Elementary Schools
Master plan for building up an infrastructure
The Korean government (Blueprint for MALL Education, 1999) has flexed its muscle to build up an infrastructure for technology-assisted instruction in all elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools throughout Korea. Their plan consists of five provisions. First, they will build up one or two computer LAB(s) in over
10,000 schools, consisting of 40 computer hardware and its peripherals. Second, they will equip all classrooms of
all schools (around 200,000) with a set of computer facilities consisting of a teacher’s console, a TV monitor (32inches or 43 inches), and networking between these two and to the backbone of the school’s network to WWW.
Third, they will give one PC set to all teachers (around 330,000). Fourth, they will provide computer training withteachers and develop multimedia contents for instruction in classrooms. Fifth, they have begun to integrate a CALL
methodology into a national elementary English curriculum where they developed a series of CD-ROM titles
which accompany regular textbooks published by the Ministry of Education (hereafter abbreviated as MOE).

Publication of English textbooks and its integration to a CALL methodology
The Korean government published two kinds of English materials for elementary schools’ English education: textbooks and CD-ROM Titles
Publication of English textbooks by the Ministry of Education. MOE published a textbook for students
and a teacher guidebook for teachers. The following table shows the number of weekly class hours and a textbook
and teacher’s guidebook per grade.

Table 1. Weekly Hours and Textbook Development
Grade Weekly Hours

Textbook

Teacher's Guide

3

2(1)*

8 lessons

250 pages

42(1)8 lessons

250 pages

52(2)16 lessons

250 pages

62(2)16 lessons

250 pages* Parentheses indicates the number of hours for English
instruction in the elementary schools, effective in thecalendar year of 2001 and onward.
Korean elementary textbooks have three features. First, 80 ~ 120 words (base words) are used for 3rd grade
textbooks, 80~120 words for 4th grade textbooks, whereas 90 ~130 words were used for 5th and 6th grade textbooks each. And yet the total number of words should not run over 450. Second, 130 target language expressions inaccordance with notional/functional syllabus and situational syllabus combined are used throughout the textbooks.
Third, no English letters appear on the textbooks themselves. Students can only look at the pictures on the textbook
and listen to the sounds of words and sentences which correspond with pictures they see on the textbook.
Publication of CD-ROM titles accompanying the textbook. MOE published CD-ROM titles for students
and the teacher. The following table shows the number of weekly class hours and CD-ROM titles for students andteachers per grade.

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Table 2. Weekly Hours and CD-ROM Publication
Grade Weekly Hours

Textbook andTeacher’s Guide

Student Use

Teacher Use

3

2(1)*

8 lessons650 MB 1

650 MB 1

42(1)8 lessons650 MB 1

650 MB 1

52(2)16 lessons

650 MB 1

650 MB 2

62(2)16 lessons

650 MB 1

650 MB 2* Parentheses indicates the number of hours for English
instruction in the elementary schools, effective in thecalendar year of 2001 and onward.
CD-ROM titles have several features. First, no English letters appear on the CD-ROM title. Thus, students
can only listen to the sounds, looking at the pictures or scenes. They contain video clips, animated scenes, songs,
chants, and storytelling of fairy tales.
Korean Government's Infrastructure Provision for Internet Access by Schools. The electronic networking to every Korean school will be established by the end of 2000. Free internet access (1,462,000 won
monthly fee at the speed of 256 Kbps) will be provided by the Korean government to 10,1165 schools nationwide,
whereas schools who use the speed of 512 Kbps (2,002,300 monthly fee) or of 2 Mbps (4,698,000 won monthlyfee) will be given a special discount rate (2-8%) on a monthly charge. Moreover, starting from 2001, the Internet
access at the speed of 512 Kbps will also be given for free. The Korean Government will also provide 50,000
students of low income families with free Internet access for the next 5 years. By the end of April of 2000 thenumber of internet users in Korea has reached just over 14 million people. The number of IP domain users will be
about some 300 thousand by the end of 2000.

A Content Analysis of the 4th Grade CD-ROM Titles
Elementary CD-ROM titles consist of two versions: one for the teacher’s use, and another for students’ use.

Flow chart of a 4th grade teacher’s CD-ROM title
The CD-ROM titles for 4th grade teachers is schematized in the flow chart shown in Figure 1, consisting ofMain Menu and Lesson Menu.
Design Features of the Main Menu. The Main Menu consists of Lesson Title, Hourly Lesson Unit, Preparatory Lesson, and Dictionary, as shown in [Fig. 3]. Teachers can click the Lesson Title (number 1-8) and choose
the lesson they wish to study. The number 1-4 which appear horizontally under each lesson chosen indicates theorder of hourly lesson unit (1-4). Preparatory Lesson is a readiness program which 4th grade students are recommended to study before taking the main lesson. Students can point to, touch, and draw the objects by the commands
which they get by clicking the object presented on the screen. Dictionary menu lists 450 words in picture, which areused throughout the entire lessons. Teachers can listen to the pronunciation of the words, looking at the picture ofthem.
Functions of Buttons. There are 5 function buttons: Blackout, Silent, Pause, Before and After. The Blackout Button is used to listen to the sound without video. One can enter anywhere he/she wants to study by clicking
the mouse on the dark scene. The Silent Button is used to show the scene without sounds. One can listen to thesound by clicking the mouse once. The Pause Button is used to pause the CD-ROM title where nothing is heard or

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shown. The Before Button is used to go back to the previous lesson. The After Button is used to go forward to thenext lesson.
Learning Features of Lesson Menu. Each Lesson consists of four hourly units, each of which is broken
down into 2 or 3 teaching plans, as shown in [Diagram 3]. The first hourly unit consists of Look/Listen, the second
hourly unit’s Look/Listen, Listen/Repeat, and Chants, the third hourly unit;s Sing-Along, Read, and Activities, thefourth hourly unit of Role-play, Review 1 (listening), and Review 2 (speaking).
Look and Listen:: A teacher can play three pairs of conversational rejoinders out of two animated dialogues
or full dialogues and ask students a couple of questions as a prelistening activity. The dialogues in the second
hourly unit are a little more complex than those in the second hourly unit.
Start

U
Main Menu

U U
Picture Dictionary
By Alphabet
By lessons
Print Word Cards

U

U
Preparatory
LessonLearning theAlphabet

U

U
LessonTitlesHelpline
Hist for eachactivity

Finish
Yes
No

U

U

U

U

1st Hour

2nd Hour

3rd Hour

4th Hour

Look/Listen
Animated
Dialogues
Prelistening
1, 2, 3

Look/Listen
Animated
Dialogues
Prelistening
1, 2, 3

Sing‑Along
Picture Cuts
(4 Cuts)
Print Pictures

Role‑Play
Storytelling of
Fairy Tales
Animantion

Listen/Repeat
Video
Presentation
Dialogue 1, 2, 3

Listen/Repeat
Video
Presentation
Dialogue 1, 2, 3

Read
Alphabet
Words

Review 1
LC Items
Answers

ChantsPicture Cuts
(4 Cuts)
Print Pictures

Activities
Word Games

Review 2
Picture Cuts
(4 Cuts)
Speaking

Figure 1. Flow chart of CD-ROM Titles for 4th grade students
The site map shows the layouts of all lessons and links with the lesson which the learner can choose to study.
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Figure 2. Site map of 4th grade teachers’ CD-ROM title

Figure 3. Main menu of 4th grade teachers’ CD-ROM title
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Listen and Repeat: The teacher can play two video scenes containing the major expressions of each lesson. Students can repeat the voice of the speaker they select on the screen menu. The dialogues in the second hourly
unit are a little more complex than those in the second hourly unit.
Chants: Chants are presented in animation with three picture cuts. Each picture cut gets animated at the tuneof the melody.
Songs: Songs which recycle the major expressions of each lesson are presented in animation with four
picture cuts. Each picture cut gets animated at the tune of the song.
Read: The teacher teach the alphabet and words to students through playing various games. The CD-ROM
title for 3rd grade does not have this learning feature, since the learning of the alphabet and words begin only in 4th
grade in the elementary English curriculum.
Activities: Students can listen to the expression and match its corresponding picture with what they listen to.
Role-play: The teacher can play the animated storytelling of the Korean traditional fairly tales and havestudents record their voice and replay it.
Review 1 (listening): The teacher can test how well students do with listening items which they have studied
during the lesson.
Review 2 (speaking): The teacher can ask students to make up a dialogue looking at the pictures given. He/
She can play full or partial dialogues for students’ checking the answer.

Flow chart of CD-ROM for 4th grade student’s use
The CD-ROM titles for 4th grade students’ use are schematized in the following flow chart, consisting ofMain Menu and Lesson Menu.
Design Features of Main Menu. The Main Menu, as shown in [Fig. 4], consists of Lesson Selection(1 through 8 hidden), Dice Game, Music Box, Dictionary, Helpline, and Finish. Students can find the number(1 through 8) hidden on the background by moving the curser to the object displayed and enter the lesson which
they want to study by clicking it. In Dice Game, students can play games learning words or sentences. In Music Box
students can store up to five songs or chants from the lesson menu and replay them as they wish. The Dictionary
lists the same picture words as the ones shown on the CD-ROM for Teacher’s use. Helpline includes tips for all
activities.
Each lesson consists of the following six learning features:
Look and Listen: Students can listen to two scenes of animated dialogues. Students can listen to the teacher’s
Korean explanations on the dialogue by clicking the Teacher Icon. The dialogues in the second hourly unit are alittle more complex than those in the second hourly unit.
Role-play: Students can record their voice and replay it, while listening to the animated storytelling of
Korean traditional fairly tales.
Chants: Chants are presented in animation with three picture cuts. Each picture cut gets animated at the tuneof the melody.
Songs: Songs which recycle the major expressions of each lesson are presented in animation with four
picture cuts. Each picture cut gets animated at the tune of the song.
Activities: Students can listen to the expression and match its corresponding picture with what they listen to.

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Start

Main Menu

UU

U

U

U

U

U

U

Lesson Se‑
lection 1‑8(Hidden)Dice Game
Review
Games

Music Box
Five Songs
Chants

Dictionary
Topic Lesson
Word Cards

Helpline
Tips for all
Activities

Finish
Yes
No

U

U

U

U

U

U

Look/Listen
Animated
Dialogues
1, 2Role‑Play
Storytellingof Fairy
Tales
Record/Play

ChantsPicture Cuts
(4 Cuts)

Songs
Picture Cuts
(4 Cuts)

Activities
Review(Listening)

Read
Alphabet
Words

Figure 4. Flow chart for 4th grade students’ CD-ROM titles

Figure 5. Main menu of 4th grade students’ CD-ROM title
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Read: Students can learn alphabetsand words through playing various games. The CD-ROM title for 3rd
grades does not have this learning feature, since learning of alphabet and words begin only in 4th grade in theelementary English curriculum.

Conclusion
This paper briefly sketched the overall plan for multimedia-assisted English teaching/learning in a Korean
context as to its infrastructure and CD-ROM title development as an integral part of the national elementary English curriculum. Despite all these preparations which have drawn much attention among countries where English
is taught as a foreign language, Korean classrooms in grade school still face several potential problems. First,
MALL-based English education can be successful only with teacher’s basic knowledge of CALL/MALL methodology and hands-on-experience teaching English through a computer medium. However, a MALL training program for Korean teachers is not fully developed yet, due to its being a relatively new discipline which is beginning
to reshape the theoretical underpinnings of modern foreign language education. Second, MALL methodology
should be fully integrated to the elementary English curriculum to the extent that teachers can combine theirclassroom teaching with students’ self-training of English either at the school’s multimedia lab or at home.
Although each school is being equipped with 40 seat computer labs (one or two), it is not likely that students can begiven enough space to self-train English at their school’s multimedia LAB since this lab will primarily serve thepurpose of general computer training in the beginning.
In conclusion, multimedia-based English education affords us much promise, but whether we can have thispromise materialize or not depends on whether we can make our classroom environments ready for this type of new
medium of instruction (Kim, 2000).

References
Gates, B. (1997). The Road Ahead. Middlesex: Penguin Group
Hanson-Smith, E. (1999). Technology in the classroom. http://www.tesol.edu/profpapers/techclass.html
Kim, I. (2000). The proposal of the new theory for multimedia-assisted language learning: an integral model,
Applied Linguistics Association of Korea, Vol 16(2): 45-69.
Ministry of Education of Korea. (1999). Blueprint of Information and Education.
Warschauer, M. (2000). Theory and Practice of Network-based language teaching. In M. Warschauer & R. Kern
(eds.), Network-based Language Teaching: Concepts and Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press,
p. 1-29.
CD-ROM Titles for 3rd, 4th Grade Students and Teachers
Elementary Textbooks for 3rd, 4th Grade Students and Teachers

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The Prospects of Computer-Assisted English Teachingin Japanese Elementary Schools
Yuri Kuno
Bunka Woman’s University, Japan

Introduction
Eight years have passed since the experiments toward the implementation of English teaching in the elementary school curriculum started in 1992 in Osaka under the auspices of the Ministry of Education. The experiments
were favorably accepted and conducted nation-wide, and by the end of the spring of 2000, 61 public and twonational elementary schools with one junior high school have taken part in this educational adventure.
In due course, the Guideline of Course of Studies was published in 1998, in which the “general studies”, theso-called “Sougoutekina gakushuu-no-jikan” is introduced as a new school subject. And in this subject, four themes
such as environmental studies, computer education, health and welfare, and international understanding are suggested to be taught from the 3rd graders up to the 6th graders. Three school periods are allowed per week, and eachschool can decide to choose any theme or its teaching style according to the circumstances of the school.
Within the theme of international understanding, elementary schools can give opportunities to include activities in English. This does not mean, however, to teach English as a target, but just to give children a chanceof enjoyable experiences to use the language, singing songs in English, playing games, and taking part in various
fun activities. This guideline is going to be implemented in 2002, and many schools are trying to get ready to start
this new subject, ”general studies” classes.
Although various experiments toward the implementation of English teaching in the public elementary school
curriculum have been conducted all over Japan, the goal of this English instruction and the methodologies to be
applied are not clear, and many teachers are trying hard to find ways to solve this problem.

What Children will Learn in the “General Studies” Class
It has become evident that children, especially the younger children of 1st to 4th graders, enjoy the activities
in English and learn the language. Even though we say that we are not going to teach the language, they learn to use
it as a tool of communication and actually try quite hard to use the English they have acquired when they meetforeign visitors at schools, in the streets or elsewhere.
They enjoy singing, and eagerly take part in games in English. They also like to listen to stories in English,
and sometimes they try to perform a simple plays or skits in English. Children before they become 10 years old arequite willing to imitate English sounds, and show the high ability of reproduce the language.
As to the vocabulary they have, there are a huge amount of borrowed words from English that are used inJapanese, and using these foreign words in the conversation in question and answer activities, children can manage
to communicate with teachers and their piers. They have proved to have their high ability to learn the language.
According to the research I made on the children’s vocabulary, at the age of 9, they are able to understandmore than 1,000 words found in their daily lives, and thus try to use them as much as possible.
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Through short and easy conversational interaction or games and songs, they are familiarized with English
sound system such as rhythm and intonation. When they try to answer in English, their expression becomes very
natural, though it is inevitable for them to make some errors in their English.

Who is to Teach in Elementary Schools
Though English is about to be introduced into nearly 24,000 schools in Japan, we have a serious problem ofrecruiting enough teachers of English to manage the classes. The pilot schools have started their English lessons
with ALT’s/ AET’s, (assistant language teachers/ assistant English teachers) and JET’s (Japanese teachers of English) and HT (homeroom teachers). Therefore, three teachers in a class of about 30 students enabled the English
teaching quite successful, and the students had good chances to try the expressions they are learning on thoseteachers.
But most of the schools that are trying to introduce activities in English in their curriculum are facing thedifficulty of getting teachers of the target language regularly except once a month of even a term. So the homeroom
teachers with very little training of teaching English are now trying hard to get the teaching techniques to handle
the class as well as to obtain teaching materials.
Especially it is not so simple to find a methodology that works for all six grades of the elementary level. The
teaching techniques and the primary curriculum for junior high schools are only for three years, and since thelearners are much older, their attitudes and mentality are quite different. Consequently we cannot adopt the same
methodology used in junior high schools, but have to find a new one that suits to elementary school children.
To train and prepare the homeroom teachers to obtain these skills is the urgent task. Local education boards
and some private sectors are planning training courses to offer them opportunities to brush up their skills in English
and learn teaching techniques. From 2001 on, more local education boards and training centers as well as Ministryof Education will provide workshops and seminars for teachers.

Computer-Mediated Instruction
Among the four themes of the “general studies”, or the so-called “Sougoutekina gakushuu-no-jikan”, education on information technology will be much emphasized in elementary education. The Japanese Government has
made a plan to set up 42 computers with access to the Internet in each elementary school by the year 2001. And all
the teachers are supposed to take part in training courses on information technology.
There are possibilities for computer-mediated instruction to play an important role in teaching English tochildren as well as pre and in-service teacher training. The children who have already had the opportunity of using
this modern tool for learning have shown a great interest in it and have been observed to learn a great deal from thismodern technological system.
More teaching materials such as CD-ROM’s for computer-assisted instruction have been developed, andchildren are learning English with much fun through this media. They also have chances to exchange mails withchildren abroad on the machine, which enables them to make friends in foreign countries and become aware ofwhat is happening in the world. This is a good start for international understanding.
In April, 2000, the National Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) has started an educational TV program for
English teaching aimed for elementary school aged children, which accompanies a website. This 15-minute program, titled “Eigorian”, has been developed as a series of 20 units for the year 2000, and it is broadcast in themorning of the weekdays, so teachers can use it in their English lesson at school. This is quite a new experimentand so far has very eagerly been accepted by schools.

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Most of the scenes are comical and laughable, and the language used in them are easy enough for children tounderstand. The main target of the program is to encourage children to listen to natural English and enjoy watchingwhat is going on the TV screen. Children are not expected to repeat or to memorize the language they hear.
The website is consisted of two parts, one is for children and the other for teachers and parents. The children
can access to the site and watch the replay of the program, and also they can enjoy playing games, while they listen
to English and review the expressions they have learned. The pages for teachers give them ideas for lesson plans
and some advice of how to conduct their lesson.
We expect a good result from this undertaking and also hope this will provide positive influence on theimplementation of English teaching in the early stages of learning. NHK is planning to continue the program forthe year 2001 in a similar concept to encourage elementary school teachers to give a good start for their English
teaching.
Distance learning, or a lesson using TV system, is another thing introduced in the field of English teaching.
The system is not yet good enough to send a clear picture or sound of good quality, so it is not very easy for teachers
to give lessons in this way. But, as I experienced in a rural area in Kansai district, the children, who were waitingin the school some kilometers away from where I was, got so excited to play games in English and sing songs in
English. After the lesson, the teachers reported to me that the children had become motivated to learn English andto use computers to play with CD-ROMs.

Closing
It is obvious that the world has been enclosured with a net of modern technology, and our children need tohave a skill to communicate with children who use a language different form Japanese. And children themselves
know that English will be a tool to assist them for the purpose and are quite eager to learn the language. Of course,
teaching English to children is not an easy task, but a rewarding one for sure.
Making good use of modern technology of electronics, we can change the situation of our educational environment, and enrich the content of English teaching, so that children, when they become in their 30’s and 40’s, will
become good communicators of the global community.

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Raising Students’ Textual/Pragmatic Awareness
Using Online Resources
Eiichi Yamamoto
Kansai University, Japan
Abstract
This paper is an attempt to show some ways in which to utilize online resources to enhance Japanese
students’ awareness of textual and pragmatic features of the English language. Actually those properties are
something that the students have virtually little or no opportunities to be made aware of in EFL classrooms inJapan, partly because of a deeply-rooted tradition of doggedly pursuing the grammar-translation method thatstill holds powerful sway across the country. It will be shown that online exercises using network resources canserve as an effective as well as convenient way to make learners aware of the different ways in which English
texts are formed on the one hand, and to let them get used to guessing at conversational implicatures that lie
behind given messages on the other.

Aim
The aim of this paper is to offer a range of strategies by which teachers may attempt to improve theirstudents’ awareness of, on the one hand, the textual features peculiar to English prose, and, on the other, of thepragmatic processes that are necessary for understanding how meaning is actually conveyed in another tongue, i.e.
English in this case. I intend to argue that:
1.

These two aspects are something we have long neglected in EFL in Japan, and2.

These abilities may be best nurtured by using online resources in the form of after-school (oreven around-the-clock) activities.

In spite of the recent trend in EFL education in Japan towards more communicative approaches to language
teaching1, a deeply-rooted tradition of doggedly pursuing the grammar-translation method still holds powerfulsway. As a result, in their eagerness to arrive at item-by-item exact translation, students try to establish (evenagainst the obvious dictates of reason) a simple, one-to-one equivalence between English lexical items and their
Japanese counterparts. And what is the result?
Our students are left with no notion of looking to make out whatever a given text may imply, by applying
appropriate strategies in order to derive from that text whatever inferences it may offer. Moreover, our students’practice of simply matching individual English vocabulary item with the nearest they can identify within the lexicon of their own language, a practice in which they have, alas, been thoroughly trained, appears to lead them toentertain a second misconception: that Japanese and English texts must be constructed in identical ways. And thisis a preconception that, for instance, impedes students’ capacity to correctly identify the referents for many of the
pronouns, and again, hyponyms, that they encounter in English discourse.
What further exacerbates this pedagogical problem is the fact that students now themselves largely identify
language-acquisition as solely a matter of development of conversational skills. By pointing out this apparent fact,
I by no means intend to belittle those pedagogical approaches that further, through classroom activities, our students’ aural-oral proficiency. To the contrary, I firmly believe that is something we should all prioritze in our
language-teaching curricula.
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But let us pause here, to ask whether speaking is the only aspect, of their involvement with their targetlanguage that deserves serious attention. And if we can agree that students need to be able to read, quite as muchas to be able to talk, then, whichever is our pedagogic target, we have to be wary of their so firmly inculcated bias
towards word-for-word translation. For that approach to second-language acquisition must be least likely to leadour students towards any appreciation of the influence of context upon the interpretation of any given vocabulary
item. In that they themselves have unfortunately acquired these items without any appreciation of how they may be
used in different contexts, how can we hope that they may engage with them communicatively successfully, whether
they use them, read them, or hear them?
Here we also have to take into account a trivial yet nagging economic problem: for university students are
extremely unwilling to purchase those more expensive textbooks that might make such a difference to their target
language – affording them rich self-study activities, if only they would consent to invest in such resources, andthem use them. And it is my conviction that cost-free resources must therefore be found.

The Teaching of Reading
My principal subject here is the teaching of reading. And when we speak of a reader’s textual competence,in the case of Japanese learners of English, this must refer to our students’ awareness of the rhetorical differences
between texts written in Japanese and those written in English; and especially in terms of the differences in how
cohesion operates in these two languages.2
Obviously, any text written in English is generated according to one particular set of grammatical rules,
which differ entirely from the rules by which the foundation of any text written in Japanese is governed. An
instance of this may be found in the way that, while English rules require, in dealing with nominalized concepts thathave to be restated, both careful pronominalizations and elegant substitutions, the rules for Japanese allow both
repetition of the same item and also zero-form. This is a difference in rhetorical practice that students must be
gently aware of; because, as long as they are left unaware of this, they will apply the assumptions suggested by thepractices of their native languages, to not only their interpretation of their target language, but also their productionof the same.
Much interested by these issues, I devised a limited experiment, by which it might be determined to just what
extent different rhetorical patterns controlled the respondents’ responses to texts in English (Yamamoto 1994).
This experiment involved approximately 200 Japanese student subjects. Half of these were given oral presentationof texts written according to accepted Anglophone rhetoric: i.e. using as much elegant substitutions and as many
pronominal forms as was feasible. The other half had to deal with texts written using both the repetitions and thezero-forms common in Japanese. And both groups were required to identify the referents of certain noun-phrases.3(For details of the test and its result, see the Appendix.)
0According to the data derived from this experiment, Japanese students appeared to find it more difficult to
identify correctly the referents in English-style texts, than they did in the Japanese equivalents of these. This
indicates that we have to devise some means of helping students to pay more attention to, or become more sensitive
to, the ways in which English texts are formed.

Pragmatic Competence
Now, when we turn our attention to students’ pragmatic competence in English, it is no exaggeration to saythat little, or virtually no, effort has been made, by teachers and therefore their students, to develop in those students this quite essential interpretive skill. This is partly because, for so long, too much emphasis has traditionallybeen placed on the teaching of lexical and/or grammatical aspects of the language, with the deplorable result ofstudents being effectually misled into supposing that word-for-word translation is the ultimate goal of language
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learning. This misguided belief has, in turn, lead to the underestimation of, and consequent and dire lack of training
in either reading between the lines of a text, or assessing its implicit meaning.4
Thus the time has come for us to shift our attention, from the mere word-by-word translation of the objecttext, to an inference-drawing practice –- one that is ultimately indispensable to any reasonably competent understanding of a given instance of language use.

Using Online Resouces
As one means by which to enhance both students’ textual and pragmatic competence — and hopefully bothat the same time — I am going to advocate the use of online resources. But first, let us review the advantages thatonline resources can offer:1.

Students can get access to relevant and authentic materials virtually twenty-four hours a day;2.

Since the input that students obtain from the Internet is authentic, it means they are being
exposed to real English, or, to be more precise, real varieties of English, familiarity with which
is surely, in this highly globalized age, indisputably indispensable to them;3.

Online resources are practically free of charge, so long as the students are connected to theInternet in one way or another — thus providing their teachers with a happy solution to theannoying problem, mentioned before, of learners not being willing to pay for learning hardware
such as expensive textbooks, or audio tapes.

Meanwhile, we should not overlook the difficulties we have to face, in utilizing online resources. And themost serious of these is the problem of copyright restrictions. Fortunately, we have untrammeled access to quite anumber of free archives, in both English and Japanese, of literary works the copyright for which clearance has
already been obtained. (See Online Platform (1)-a below.) Further, we can direct our students to access a numberof sites, each offering very useful material, which may bring students to grasp, through detailed comparison of theversions in two languages, the textual differences of which they so need to be aware.
Also interestingly challenging are the technical problems involved in building a homepage through which topresent such materials. Firstly, if the presentation platform is too complicated for students to manipulate, they will
easily be discouraged from any further investigation — and therefore any further learning. Again, we need also to
be cautious about the ways in which we direct students’ attention to the intended message(s) of the object-texts wehave them encounter. If appropriate care is not taken, their interest will certainly diminish, or even evaporate
entirely, halfway through their investigation of the offered text — with minimal or even zero learning achieved.

A Pilot Study
In a pilot study involving 20 students with access to the Internet, the subjects engaged in online exercises
such as those described above. Both before and after the series of online feedback sessions, very informal written
tests were administered, in order to be able to compare the students’ pre-scores with their post-scores. Although I
have to admit that the number of participant subjects is far too small, and, in their present format, the examinations
too unsophisticated, to yield really firm conclusions, these slight results would nevertheless appear to record significant changes in the ways in which those subjects looked through particular discourse fragments, in search ofboth correct referents and also implicit meaning. And it perhaps seems not exceedingly self-congratulatory toconclude that the participant subjects at least started to1.

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attempt to guess at conversational implicatures, on the basis of what information the text explicitly provided, aided by accompanying visual clues. (See Online Platform (2) below.)

And yet both practices had, in fact, previously been virtually unknown to those learners.5

Notes
1.

Obviously, the introduction of Assistant English Teachers (AETs) or communication courses
into the secondary education system is one of the typical examples of this trend.

2.

See Halliday and Hasan (1976) for the ways in which lexical cohesion is achieved in text.

3.

For the purpose at hand, oral presentation seemed more appropriate than visual, given that thelatter would have given respondents too much time in which to deliberate upon their responses,
thus undermining the basic purpose of the experiment.

4.

I have in mind such implicit meanings as conversational implicatures that have been extensively discussed in pragmatic literatures. See Grice (1975), Levinson (1983), Sperber andWilson (1986) and Blakemore (1992).

5.

The subjects were students studying Education Technology in a teacher-training course.

References
Blakemore, D. (1992). Understanding utterances—An introduction to pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell.
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In Cole, P. and J. Morgan (eds.) Syntax and semantics, vol. 3, 41-58.
New York: Academic Press
Halliday, M. A. K. and Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English, London: Longman.
Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sperber, D. and Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance. Oxford: Blackwell.
Yamamoto, E. (1994). Information structure of text and learners’ listening ability. In Grant, P. (ed.) Kinki
University Language Institute Journal, vol. 3, no. 1, 106-113.

Appendix A
Sample Texts
English-Style Text
Manuel Elkin Patarrollo told reporters he’s giving the World Health Organization all legal rights to themaralia vaccine he developed. The Columbian scientist says he declined to give the legal rights to a drug company,
even though he would become rich if he had done that. Hundreds of millions of people suffer from malaria every
year; about three million of them, mainly children in developing countries, die from the mosquito-borne parasitic
disease. The doctor says field trials of his malaria vaccine in Latin America show it protected 77 percent of thechildren involved. Tests of the vaccine are now planned in Asia and Africa. A World Health Organization malaria
expert says the vaccine may not be effective outside Latin America, because there are different malaria strains indifferent regions….

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Japanese-Style Text
A Columbian scientist Manuel Elkin Patarrollo told reporters he’s giving the World Health Organization alllegal rights to the malaria vaccine he developed. Patarrollo says he declined to give the legal rights to a drug
company, even though he would become rich if he had done that. Every year hundreds of millions of people sufferfrom malaria, which is a mosquito-borne parasitic disease: about three million of them, many children in developing countries, die from malaria. Patarrollo says field trials of his malaria vaccine in Latin America show it protected 77 percent of the children involved. Tests of the vaccine are now planned in Asia and Africa. A World
Health Organization malaria expert says the vaccine may not be effective outside Latin America, because there aredifferent malaria strains in different regions....

Patters of Reference
English-Style:
Patarrollo → he → The Columbian scientist → The doctor
malaria → (malaria) → the mosqito-borne parasitic disease
Japanese-style:

Patarrollo (a scientist) → Patarrollo → Patarrollo

malaria → malaria (a mosquito-borne parasitic disease

Identifying Referents
Sample Questions
1.

2.

Manuel Elkin Patarollo is aa.

a Columbian scientistb.

a WHO malaria expertc.

a drug company.

Malaria is one of the parasitic diseases.

a.

carried by mosquitoesb.

wide-spread mainly in Latin Americac.

which has few strains.

Table A1. Rates of correct Answers
English-Style Text

Japanese-Style Text

Class I, III

51.2%

59.4%

Class II, IV

43.2%

57.6%

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Appendix B
On-Live Platform

Raising Textual

Awareness*Note that the Japanese site is totally link-free. As for the English text, thestudents are instructed to access archives at Alex Catalogue of E-texts;

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Ready, Set, Go
An Update on Using Web Technology for Successful Study Abroad
Judith M. Gallian
Miyazaki International College, Japan
Abstract
In Japan, whether it is in a major manufacturing company or a small, but aggressive start-up, businesstrends are toward product research, development and marketing that rely on creative use of information technology by computer literate personnel. With regard to English Language study, the impact of information
technology on business trends is also reflected in the growing numbers of students now opting to study language
and business in universities in English-speaking countries. However, the choice to study abroad for a college
degree has implications with regard to job search that often makes an integrated study abroad program within
a Japanese institution a wiser career choice than matriculating at even a prestigious foreign university. In thispaper I will discuss how integrating information technology (IT) and Web technology can mediate a balanced
solution: a solution whereby students gain the cultural readiness of attending a Japanese university combinedwith the English language proficiency and computer skills necessary for a bright future in a global workplace.

A Web-Integrated Model for Study Abroad
At Miyazaki International College, students have the opportunity of studying abroad in the fall semester of
their second year at one of 16 universities in five English-speaking countries. Agreements in the form of Memorandum of Understanding (as outlined by Monbusho guidelines) between MIC and the host universities delineate
the terms and conditions to be met by both institutions in support of students’ preparation of the portfolio. The
parties agree to communicate regularly and mentor the students’ progress throughout the semester. Host universities are selected on the merits of the following:•

Accreditation as a four year college, university or university foundation program offering courses
compatible with a four year liberal arts degree at MIC; Flexibility in programming with academic opportunities meeting that meet the linguistic needs and personal study interests of MIC
students;•

Willingness to enter into a provost or presidential level Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)
outlining mutual goals and responsibilities;•

Programs that offer opportunities for cultural exchange within the English-speaking countries
of Great Britain, Canada, United States of America, Australia or New Zealand;•

Accessibility of computers, Internet access and trained professionals in Information Technology (IT).

Students are required to sign an agreement with MIC outlining a full semester of study toward their liberalarts degree and to complete a portfolio documenting their studies abroad. Students receive credits toward theirdegree at MIC by taking courses abroad, completing an independent study project and creating a portfolio that
documents academic progress and growth in linguistic fluency. Although the compilation of the portfolio is considered the students’ own responsibility and is not a part of a course at the host university, support is provided by
the host university in a mentoring process, which is discussed later in this paper.
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Responding to the Information Age
Japan’s Ministry of Education recognizing the importance of computer literacy, issued the following statement in its comprehensive report on educational reform. At the tertiary level, Monbusho’s programs now support...
...the improvement of information processing equipment and network environments; support for the
student to find employment using Internet; the improvement and expansion of the University of the
air’s broadcast range to provide nationwide coverage and provision of assistance to private universities and special training colleges. (Responding to the Information Age; Monbusho Report, 1998)
As with its Study Abroad Program, the use of computers and information technology is integrated throughout the liberal arts curriculum at Miyazaki International College. During four years of study, students develop
skills in•

Preparing word-processed documents;•

Corresponding via email;•Creating graphic presentation materials;•

Designing personal homepages and group websites;•

Researching current issues on the Internet;•

Participating in intranet discussion forums;•

Creating an electronic resume;•

Online job search;•

Corresponding via email.

Readiness Through IT
The complexity of the collaboration necessary for such a program requires on-going communication andnegotiation both prior to and during the semester abroad. For this reason, IT with its many options for communication via The Web is utilized to facilitate an academically and culturally successful experience abroad. Readinessfor a successful term abroad to a large extent depends on the individual’s knowledge and familiarity with the hostregion. That is, the more one knows beforehand the less the risk of culture shock. A full discussion of culture
shock may be found at (http://www.miyazaki-mic.ac.jp/faculty/jgallian/readysetgo/culture.htm). At MIC, the students’ skills in web technology are also a major component of the selection and application process and integrated
into composition courses and appropriate content courses. Active learning on the Web before departure builds•

Personal confidence in linguistic ability;•

An awareness of the unique opportunities offered at the host university;•

Cultural familiarity of the region;•

Realistic expectations for the semester abroad;•Individualized academic goals;•

Effective strategies for coping with culture shock.

Specific classroom activities include designing group websites containing information on a broad range of
specific topics such as idioms and slang, local customs and holidays, business and economy, transportation tohistorical sites, sports events of the region, etc. These websites are routinely used for group oral presentations that
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further oral fluency in English. Because the research is of personal interest and is of immediate benefit, thesestrategies generate personal motivation in English language study and promote academic pursuits for the time
abroad. Other assignments might be to correspond through email about daily life with students who have previously studied at the prospective university to clarify concerns not covered in college catalogues or program brochures. Students also participate in web forums by posting their questions and sharing their research with classmates (See discussion of WebBoardTM below). Since a growing number of host families are also now using personal computers in their homes, students are encouraged to introduce themselves and exchange digital photographswith their prospective host family whenever possible.

Online Examples of Students Using IT
In 1999, students developed group web projects as a part of their English composition course assignments
prior to going abroad. In these projects they were directed to design a site, which summarized their Internet
research on idioms and slang, culture, and travel opportunities in the area. Links to sample projects may be foundat (http://www. miyazaki-mic.ac.jp/).
In Spring 2000, students expanded this concept to include two issues of an online newsletter containing
several types of articles relevant to their upcoming semester abroad. As they were the previous year, they havebeen given the option to extend the work on these projects through the semester abroad and to fulfill their portfolio
requirements by creating new webprojects or expanding their existing websites at MIC. Students at three host
universities: California State University, Chico, Arizona State University and University of Newcastle have expressed an interest in publishing “special editions” from their host sites and will be added to the Go Go Study
Abroad Website during Fall, 2000.

The Benefits of a Portfolio Model for Study Abroad
All students must complete a portfolio that includes a minimum of 40 pages of written work documenting
their progress in courses taken abroad and an independent study project of personal choice. Students are given
guidelines suggesting appropriate formats, minimum requirements and supporting images, printed documents andmemorabilia to be included. Traditionally, the completed portfolios range from 30-50 pages of written assignmentsfrom coursework along with 10-20 pages of an independent study written in collaboration with a university site
mentor and a distance mentor at MIC in addition to images and supplemental materials. In the past three years,
several options such as electronic or video formats have been added. The interactive and visual capabilities of a
website is a natural format for a multi-modal presentation of the students experiences abroad and several students
are now choosing this option. The popularity and affordability of digital cameras is also making video formats
increasingly viable. A word of caution: The intensive use of IT required to complete both traditional, digital orelectronic versions of the portfolio in this model for study abroad necessitates careful evaluation with regard to theaccessibility of computers and IT staff at potential host university prior to the selection or enrollment process.
Links to student pre-departure projects and electronic portfolios may be found online at (http://www.miyazakimic.ac.jp/Faculty/Jgallian/JALT98/Medium_Hot.html).
WebBoardTM was piloted as an interactive tool for web forums on by the MIC Study Abroad Program during
Spring 2000 and has resulted in discussions on topics such as homestay, travel plans, airline tickets, regional slang
and dialect, food, and safety issues as well as for maintaining a current student email directory. Because this was
the initial use of web forums, general information on study abroad was also distributed through the traditional
methods such as email, meetings and bulletin boards. However, since the initial response and participation was
positive, web forums will be increasingly useful in cutting time needed for the selection and application processes,
for group meetings and for answering individual questions faster in succeeding years. The chat features ofthis program will be “turned on” once the students reach their destinations. In this way, teachers and Study Abroad

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staff members hope to maintain not only asynchronous but also “realtime” communication. Access to MIC
WebBoardTM forums is restricted and can only be accessed by students and teachers participating in MIC Study
Abroad 2000.

Future Considerations
The relationship between study abroad, IT and the workplace has now been recognized by educators at many
universities in Japan as well as by the Ministry of Education (Responding to the Information Age, Monbusho,
1998). In its recent mandates, the Ministry promotes and supports upgrading of technical facilities to include
student Internet access at all levels of education in Japan by the year 2001. The Minitry’s white paper further
suggests that given the prevalence of English on Internet and the need for global communication, studying in an
English-speaking country gives students the leading edge in securing a satisfying career after college graduation.
The Ministry reported that the number of Japanese students studying abroad has increased dramatically during thenineties. Figures taken from the UNESCO Statistical Yearbook (1996 issue) showed the number of Japanese who
enrolled in educational institutions abroad was about 59,000, doubling the number of those studying abroad just 5
years before. Further, that according to surveys and economic indicators, the most appealing job opportunities in
number of openings and salary range for the future are in Internet-related jobs. The report cautions, however, thatto compete for these high paying positions, students need entry-level proficiency in Internet research using information technology and in applications for designing multi-media documents and communicating via Intranets andthe World Wide Web; Information and communication that is often only communicated in English. For this reason it also concludes that “even after several years of EFL study in Japan students may benefit from a semester or
year-long course of study at a foreign university that provides certification or transferable credits to the Japanese
University.” It further concludes that the trend should continue as “mass communication” and multi media delivery
systems are utilized throughout the global marketplace.
For many educators, the support for and emphasis on IT and study abroad is a welcome trend. Yet, curricular
integration of IT and accountability issues in study abroad are, for the most part, left un-addressed by the Ministry.
Furthermore, even though phrases such as “active learning” and “computer literacy” are evident, little specificdirection is given regarding methods to ensure a successful study abroad experience. Thus, it remains up to educators in the field to investigate and integrate innovations in technology and curricular possibilities; to prepare
students linguistically and culturally to thrive in a new environment.

References and Relevant URLs
Japan Almanac, (2000). Asahi Shimbun.
Jones, B. (1997). Computer literacy: 1996. [Online] http://communication.ucsd.edu/bjones/comp_lit_paper.html, updated February 5, 1997.
Levy, M. (1997). Computer-assisted Language Learning: Context and Conceptualization. Oxford: Clarendon
Press
MIC Study Abroad Website. [Online] http://www.miyazaki-mic.ac.jp/Departments/study_abroad/information/index.html
Monbusho Report on Educational Reform: Responsing to the Information Age, (1998) [Online] http://
www.monbu.go.jp/aramashi/1998eng/e242.html
Go Go Study Abroad: [Online newsletter]: http://www.miyazaki-mic.ac.jp/faculty/jgallian/readysetgo/gogo/head/
head.html
Gallian, J. & Greenfield, J. Benchmarks for Computer Literacy: an intersection of information science and liberal

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arts, (July, 1998). WORLDCALL 98, University of Melbourne, Australia. [Online] http://www.miyazakimic.ac.jp/faculty/jgallian/WCALL_Paper.html
Gallian, J. & Maggard, J. Student Centered frameworks for teaching IT (Nov, 1999). IT Melt ‘99, Hong Kong
Polytechnic University. [Online] http://www.miyazaki-mic.ac.jp/faculty/jgallian/itmelt\index.htm
Gallian, J. Medium Hot: Active Learning through Web Technology (Oct.1998) JALT98 - Omiya, Japan; [Online]
http://www.miyazaki-mic.ac.jp/Faculty/Jgallian/JALT98/Medium_Hot.html
MIC Study Abroad Website: http://www.miyazaki-mic.ac.jp/Departments/study_abroad/information/index.html
Ready, Set, Go: An update on using Web technology for successful study abroad: http://www.miyazaki-mic.ac.jp/
faculty/jgallian/readysetgo/update.htm

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A Reappraisal of the Effectiveness of Pausing
on the Development of Students’ Listening Comprehension Ability
and Reading Speed
Juichi Suzuki
Kyoto University of Education, Japan
Abstract
This paper is a sequel to Suzuki (1991, 1998, 1999), which demonstrated the effectiveness of pausing on
the development of students’ listening comprehension ability and reading speed: presenting recorded materials
with artificial pauses between phrases or clauses works more effectively in developing their listening comprehension ability and reading speed than presenting recorded materials without any artificial pauses. A further
experiment was conducted for one year to find out whether the effectiveness of pausing will still remain evenwhen EFL classes are conducted in English. The result was that the effectiveness of pausing found in the pastexperiments seemed to have disappeared. In this paper, reasons for its seeming disappearance are discussed,
based on the results of a computer analysis of all the utterances spoken by the author and an ALT in class. The
analysis focussed on the average length of pauses at every chunk boundary and the average number of syllablesof each chunk.

Introduction
Japanese learners of English are generally said to be inefficient in comprehending spoken English. They arealso said to read and understand written texts very slowly. Many efforts have been made to improve their listening
comprehension ability and reading speed. However, not all of the efforts have worked effectively.
In order to improve the situation, I have given false beginners listening and reading practices with the technique of artificially placing pauses phrase by phrase or clause by clause in the listening materials. The effectiveness of this technique has already been demonstrated in my previous studies over the past ten years.
The purpose of this paper is to reappraise the effectiveness of pausing on the development of students’listening comprehension ability and reading speed. A brief review of my previous studies follows.

Previous Studies
Kohno (1981) investigated the effects of pausing on listening comprehension, using hundreds of Japaneselearners of English as subjects, and he found that the average score in listening comprehension tests is the highest
when pauses are set at the end of every phrase. However, this does not necessarily mean the improvement ofstudents’ listening comprehension ability. Can students’ listening comprehension ability be developed if they aretrained with the use of listening materials with pauses between phrases or clauses?
The answer to the question above has already been provided in Suzuki (1991, 1998, 1999). It has been
demonstrated that students who are trained with listening materials containing artificial pauses between phrases orclauses make greater progress in listening comprehension ability and reading speed than those who are trained with

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listening materials without any artificial pauses between phrases or clauses. A brief summary of the results of myprevious experiments is shown in Table 1. “Pause Groups” are the groups of students who were trained withlistening materials containing artificial pauses between phrases or clauses, and “No-pause Groups” are the groupsof students who were trained with listening materials without any artificial pauses.

Table 1. Effectiveness of Pausing on Students’ Listening Comprehension ability & Reading
Speed (WPM & RE*) in Previous Studies ( Suzuki, 1991, 1998, 1999)
Number of Times of Practice
Ability Group

Small (less than 45 times)

Large (more than 100 times)

High

Pause Groups ＞ No-pause Groups

Pause Groups ＞ No-pause Groups

MiddlePause Groups ≧ No-pause Groups

Pause Groups ＞ No-pause Groups

Low

Pause Groups ≧ No-pause Groups

Pause Groups ＞ No-pause Groups*RE (Reading Efficiency) = WPM ÷ the number of questions × the number of correct answers
It was found that the Pause Groups, as a whole, develop higher listening comprehension ability than the Nopause Groups. But when the number of times of practice is small, pausing is effective only for the high ability
groups. In the case of the middle and low ability groups, there are no significant differences in the listening testscores between the Pause Groups and the No-pause Groups. However, when the number of times of practice isincreased, by using this techniques in every possible part of each class, then the Pause Groups get significantly
higher scores than the No-pause Groups not only in the high ability groups but also in the middle and low ability
groups (Suzuki, 1991). Furthermore, the students in the Pause Groups trained in listening with this techniquedevelop not only higher listening comprehension ability but also faster reading speed than the students in the Nopause Groups trained with listening materials without any artificial pauses (Suzuki, 1998, 1999).
There are several possible reasons for this effectiveness. One of the reasons is that presenting recordedmaterials with pauses at the end of each phrase or clause means presenting the appropriate number of syllables
which listeners can process holistically. Kohno (1993) demonstrates through his experiments that the number ofsyllables processed holistically is 1 through 7, plus or minus 2.
As for the listening materials for the Pause Groups, the average number of syllables in each chunk is lessthan 9, while, as for the materials for the No-pause Groups, the average number of syllables in each chunk is morethan 9, more precisely 10.5 syllables, as is seen in Table 2 below. At the beginning stage, about 90 % of all the
chunks given to the Pause Groups in my past experiments, and about 60% after 18 months were within the appropriate number of syllables. This fact seems to have a close relationship to the effectiveness of pausing.

Table 2. Average Number of Syllables of Each Chunk in the Listening Materials
At theBeginning

1 YearLater

1 Year & a
Half Later

Pause Group

6.0

7.4

8.7

No-pause Group

9.9

9.4

10.5

The second reason is that pauses placed between phrases or clauses allow listeners to have time to analyzeeach sense unit by synthesis. According to Kohno (1994), for analysis by synthesis, pauses must be longer than
450ms.

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The third reason is that pausing between phrases or clauses means showing students grammatical sense units
clearly, which helps them analyze by synthesis and also helps them to understand auditory stimuli. Pauses artificially set at the end of each phrase or clause can not only help students understand auditory stimuli but also develop
their listening comprehension ability itself. In other words, the information processing ability, which is necessary
at the primary information analysis stage in the process of listening comprehension can be improved smoothly by
their receiving and understanding auditory stimuli phrase by phrase or clause by clause.
The fourth reason, according to Kadota (1987), is that a positive transfer to reading comprehension ability
can be provided by listening training and silent reading training while listening to the passage being read aloud by
native speakers of English. Kadota says that the transfer occurs because the process of listening comprehension
and that of reading comprehension are psycholinguistically similar to each other, and because listening comprehension is incorporated into the cognitive mechanism of silent reading as an integral part of the latter through phonological coding to which readers listen.
Phonological Coding is said to have several stages. In the first stage, each syllable is articulated. In thesecond stage, the muscular movements of lips and vocal organs can be seen from outside. In the third stage, theycannot usually be recognized by readers but can be detected by the use of EMG (electromyography). In the fourthstage, in spite of the complete absence of speech-motor activities, phonological coding occurs in the form of aseries of auditory images. And then finally comes the last stage of reduced phonological coding, where the speech
recoding is incomplete in such a way that only the important part of printed stimuli require an elaborate phonetic
representation during silent reading (Kadota, 1987).
As for the level of phonological coding of the subjects at the start of the experiments, their phonologicalcoding was probably very primitive. In other words, almost all syllables of printed stimuli were articulated. It canbe assumed from the following facts that the subjects read a passage aloud in a very halting way at the beginning of
the experiments and their reading speed was very slow. The cause of this was probably that they had been exposed
mainly to printed texts, but not exposed very much to spoken English. Consequently, words and their pronunciations (or sounds) had not been connected with each other. But after the nearly one-year training period mentioned
above, their reading speed was improved and their oral reading made remarkable progress. This implies that theirphonological coding progressed from a lower to a higher stage.

The Experiment
PurposeThrough my previous studies, it has been demonstrated that, for accelerating students’ listening comprehension ability and reading speed, presenting recorded materials with pauses artificially placed between phrases orclauses is more effective than presenting recorded materials without any artificial pauses phrase by phrase orclause by clause. The purpose of the following experiment is to investigate whether or not the effectiveness of
pausing will still remain even if EFL classes are conducted in English.

Subjects
The experiment was started with 161 second-year students (11th graders) from four of the eleven classes at
a senior high school in the Kansai region of Japan. They were divided into the following two groups: a Pause
Group and a No-pause Group. The Pause Group consisted of 80 students in the two of the four classes, while the
No-Pause Group consisted of 81 students in the other two classes. See Table 3 below. In order to form the two
homogeneous groups, 54 students from each group were chosen, in pairs, as subjects, based on the results of the
pre-tests mentioned below. The number of subjects in each of the four classes is shown in the parentheses in Table 3.

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Table 3. Groups, Classes and the Number of Subjects

Pause GroupClass 1

Class 240 (28)40 (26)No-pause GroupClass 3

Class 4Total
80 (54)40 (25)41(29)

81 (54)

MethodIn the middle of April, a cloze test was given to all the students in the four classes in order to measure theirgeneral ability in English. A listening comprehension test and a reading comprehension test were also administered to measure their listening comprehension ability and their reading speed, that is, WPM and reading speed per
minute with comprehension, or reading efficiency (henceforth, RE). The raw scores of each of these tests wereconverted into Z scores. The subjects with almost the same Z scores (plus or minus 2) in each test were paired.
There were 54 pairs when the experiment was started in April, divided into three ability groups: a high ability
group, a middle ability group and a low ability group. The subjects in the high ability group had scored over 55,
and those in the middle ability group between 45 and 54, and those in the low ability group lower than 45.
In the middle of February, the subjects were given the same listening comprehension test as the pre-test andanother reading comprehension test which had the same level of the readability as the pre-test. The average scoresin the listening comprehension test and the number of words per minute read with comprehension were compared
between the Pause Group and the No-pause Group.
Before the data were analyzed, 12 pairs were eliminated. 6 of the 12 pairs were eliminated because one
person of each pair was absent from class 8 times or more, that is, about 10% of the whole number of classes of thatyear. The other 6 pairs were eliminated because of the results of the questionnaire provided in the last class of theschool year to all the students in the four classes. More concretely, if one person of each pair was a member of the
English Speaking Society, or practiced listening and speaking at home, using radio or TV English programs and soon, the pair was eliminated from the subjects. So the number of subjects became 44 in each group, as is shown in
Table 4.

Table 4. Groups, Ability Groups and Subjects
Ability GroupHigh

MiddleLow

Total

Pause Group

11

21

12

44

No-pause Group

11

21

12

44

Treatments
The class met three times a week. Each class was 50 minutes long and was conducted in English for most of
the time except for the translation or explanation of sentences which were difficult for students to understand. The
time spent for translation was less than 10 minutes. Each group listened not only to utterances recorded on tape but
also utterances spoken by their teachers (the ALT and me) when they practiced listening and reading or theylistened to an oral introduction, true or false statements, questions, explanations including paraphrasing and instructions given by their teachers. The amount of time the two groups spent in listening to those utterances wasalmost equal. The only difference in the instruction given to the Pause Group and the No-pause Group was that thestudents in the Pause Group listened to artificially-pause-inserted utterances recorded on tape in the four kinds oflistening and reading practices, while the students in the No-pause Group listened to normal utterances recorded ontape. The difference is shown in Table 5.

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Table 5. Treatments
Group

Pause GroupNo-pause Group

15-minute Listening Practice(LP1)○ 25 times● 25 times

2 to 4 minute Listening Practice
before Q&A(LP2)○ 68 times● 68 times

15-minute Silent Reading Practicewhile Listening to the Passages
Read Aloud(RP1)○ 24 times● 24 times

2 to 4 minute Silent Reading Practicewhile Listening to the Passages
Read Aloud before Checking
Understanding of the New Text

(RP2)

○ 69 times● 69 times○＝ pauses●＝ no pauses

From April to February, the practice shown in Table 5 were experienced by both groups, with the use ofrecorded tapes; (a) a roughly 15-minute listening practice (henceforth, LP1) was given 25 times, (b) 1 or 2-minutelistening practice before questions and answers in English on the text studied in the previous class (henceforth,LP2) was given 68 times, (c) a roughly 15-minute silent reading practice while listening to the passage being read
aloud by native speakers of English, (henceforth, RP1) was given 24 times, and (d) 2 to 4-minute silent reading
practice before checking of understanding of the new text to be studied (henceforth, RP2) was given 69 times.
Table 6 shows a typical teaching procedure for the two groups.

Table 6. Teaching Procedure1.

Warm-up
Listening Practice (Once a week) or Reading Practice (Once a week)2.

Review(1) Listening practice(2) Parallel reading(3) Shadowing(4) Question and Answers with textbooks closed

3.

Oral introduction / interaction

4.

Listening and Reading Comprehension
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)

5.

Questions on the text (and hints) for the 1st listening and reading
1st listening and reading (Silent reading while listening to the text read aloud)Questions on the text and hints for the 2nd listening and reading
2nd listening and reading (Silent reading while listening to the text read aloud)Check of understanding
Questions on the text and hints for the 3rd listening and reading
3rd listening and reading (Silent reading while listening to the text read aloud)Explanation
Paraphrasing (and dictation), Translation (of difficult sentences),
Questions and answers (on the details of the text)

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Table 6. Teaching Procedure (Cont’d)6.

Oral Practice(1) Listening(2) Reading aloud practice(3) Listen and repeat(4) Parallel reading(5) Shadowing

Results
Table 7 shows the descriptive statistics of the results of the pre-tests and the post-tests of the three ability
groups of each experimental group.

Table 7. Results of the Statistical Analyses of the Pre-tests and the Post-tests by Proficiency Level
Listening
Tests

High Ability Group
GroupsMean

Middle Ability Group

Low Ability Group

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Pre-test

Pause
18.7
No-pause
18.5
Difference0.2
pn.s. (0.578)

1.62
1.81

14.0
14.4
-0.4
n.s. (0.461)

2.24
2.04

10.4
10.0
0.4
n.s. (0.259)

1.16
1.35

Post-test

Pause
26.5
No-pause
24.8
Difference
1.7
pn.s. (0.221)

1.92
2.99

20.8
19.7
1.1
n.s. (0.212)

2.02
2.80

16.3
15.0
1.3
n.s. (0.203)

2.19
2.37

WPM
Tests

GroupsHigh Ability Group

Middle Ability Group

Low Ability Group

Mean

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

SD

Pre-test

Pause
139.6
11.70
No-pause
136.0
10.68
Difference
3.6
pn.s. (0.339)

115.3
118.6
-3.3
n.s. (0.537)

14.5
11.5

95.3
98.1
-2.8
n.s. (0.523)

12.32
10.34

Post-test

Pause
187.1
16.52
No-pause
176.3
17.60
Difference
10.8
pn.s. (0.248)

157.8
149.2
8.6
n.s. (0.071)

12.2
17.0

132.1
124.9
7.2
n.s. (0.298)

15.19
15.31

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Table 7. Results of the Statistical Analyses of the Pre-tests and the Post-tests by Proficiency Level(Cont’d)RE
Tests

GroupsHigh Ability Group

Middle Ability Group

Low Ability Group

Mean

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

SD

Pre-test

Pause
122.5
20.17
No-pause
125.3
17.68
Difference-3.8
pn.s. (0.847)

92.1
95.8
-3.7
n.s. (0.473)

16.6
16.5

64.5
67.0
-2.5
n.s. (0.619)

14.58
13.91

Post-test

Pause
179.1
21.65
No-pause
170.3
18.07
Difference
8.8
pn.s. (0.488)

137.5
129.1
8.4
n.s. (0.227)

21.28
26.9

105.4
96.2
9.2
n.s. (0.339)

20.79
24.12

The data obtained from the pre-tests and the post-tests were analyzed statistically using SPSS Exact Test,
which can calculate the exact probability even when the number of subjects are small. For this analysis, the MannWhitney U test was applied, because the number of subjects was rather small and the normal distribution could not
be expected.
The results of the statistical analyses of the pre-tests shows that there were no statistically significant differences in each ability group between the Pause Group and the No-pause Group in the scores of the listening comprehension test, WPM and RE of the reading comprehension test (See Table 8). In other words, in April the twogroups were statistically equal in listening comprehension ability, WPM and RE.
After a year of instruction, it was also found that in the post-tests, there were no significant differences ineach ability group between the Pause Group and the No-pause Group in listening comprehension ability, WPM andRE, though all three ability groups of the Pause Group are seemingly superior to those of the No-pause Group in thelistening scores, WPM and RE. See Table 7.

Discussion
Though pauses played important parts in developing students’ listening comprehension ability and reading
speed in my past experiments, the superiority of the Pause Groups to the No-pause Groups seems to have disappeared, according to the results of the post-tests shown in Table 7. When the EFL classes are conducted mainly inEnglish, will the effectiveness of pausing really disappear?
With a view to finding the answer to the question above, I made analyses of the auditory stimuli that the
subjects are exposed to. I randomly chose four of the recorded passages used for the training in listening andreading comprehension, and put them into a computer and analyzed all the utterances in them with the use of acomputer software called Cool Edit. I measured the average number of syllables of each chunk presented at a time,
the average length of pauses at every chunk boundary and the average length of pauses between sentences. The
results are shown in Table 8. Second, I analyzed the utterances spoken in English by the ALT and me in class. I had
recorded some of my classes on audio tape. I chose two of them. Each of the classes was 50 minutes long. I put
them into a computer and analyzed all the utterances in three classes with the use of Cool Edit. I measured theaverage number of syllables of each chunk presented at a time, the average length of pauses at every chunk boundary and the average length of pauses between sentences. The results are also shown in Table 8.

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Table 8. Descriptive Statistics on Auditory Stimuli
Average Number of Syllables per Chunk
Instructor Tape (with pause)
Mean
SD

8.4
4.5

8.6
4.3

Tape (without pause)
10.9
5.2

Average Length of Pauses between Phrases/Clause
Instructor Tape (with pause)
Mean
SD

767 ms2661084 ms
386

Tape (without pause)
581 ms179

Average Length of Pauses between Sentences
Instructor Tape (with pause)
Mean
SD

1272 ms
393

1924 ms
471

Tape (without pause)
964 ms288

Kohno (1993) demonstrates through his experiments that in the work of listening comprehension there exist
two kinds of processing: holistic and analytic. The former is the process in which listeners perceive a certain senseunit holistically, and the latter is the process in which listeners analyze some perceptual sense units by synthesis.
Table 8 shows that the average number of syllables of each phrase or clause in the utterances by the instructors is 8.4. According to Kohno (1993), the appropriate number of syllables which listeners can process holistically is 1 through 7, plus or minus 2 (mentioned above in Previous Studies). Thus 8.4, the average number ofsyllables per chunk, is within the range. It can thus be said that the ALT and I presented our students with anappropriate number of syllables for holistic information processing. Table 8 also shows that the average length ofpauses at every chunk boundary is 767ms. This is longer than the length of pauses appropriate for analyticalinformation processing in listening. According to Kohno (1993), the length of pauses necessary for spoken language processing is longer than 450ms. This suggests that 767ms is long enough for analytical spoken language
processing.
These two factors contained in utterances by the ALT and me, that is, the average number of syllables per
chunk and the average length of pauses between phrases or clauses, will probably be the reasons for the seeming
disappearance of the effectiveness of pausing, because they helped the students in the No-pause Group improvetheir listening comprehension ability and reading speed as much as the students in the Pause Group, just as, in myprevious studies, the students trained with listening materials with artificial pauses at the end of each phrase orclause showed greater progress in listening comprehension ability and their reading speed than students who weretrained with materials without any artificial pauses.

Conclusion
The findings from this empirical study are: (a) The effectiveness of pausing on the development of Japanese
students’ listening comprehension ability and their reading speed still remains when EFL classes are conducted
mainly in English. (b) Instructors’ utterances usually contain the appropriate number of syllables in each chunkand adequately long pauses between chunks for students to improve their ability in holistic information processing
and analytic information processing both of which are indispensable for understanding the meaning of utterances.
It is therefore very important to conduct EFL classes mainly in English, at least from the viewpoint of developing
students’ listening comprehension ability and reading speed which are essential in oral and written communication.
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There still remain many unsolved problems regarding the effectiveness of pausing. One of them is whether
there will really be no necessity for recorded listening materials with pauses placed phrase by phrase or clause byclause. Table 7 shows that the differences in the post-tests between the Pause Group and the No-pause Group tend
to be greater than those in the pre-tests, though there are no statistically significant differences in the post-tests
between the two groups. Another is whether the results will be different if the instructors’ level of proficiency inspeaking English is higher or lower. There are many more. Further empirical studies are necessary to solve them.

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Michael Carroll at Kyoto University of Education and my ex-colleague Mr. David
Watts for reading the manuscript and making a number of helpful suggestions. My special thanks are due toRussell Gregg McNabb at Ritsumeikan University. Not only did he read the draft and make a number of helpful
suggestions and comments, but he gave some hints for further studies.

References
Kadota, S. (1987). The role of prosody in silent reading. Language Sciences, 9(2), 185-206, The East-West Sign
Language Association.
Kohno, M. (1981). The effects of pausing on listening comprehension. T. Konishi (Ed.) Studies in Grammar andLanguage, Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 396-405.
Kohno, M. (1993). Perceptual sense unit and echoic memory. International Journal of Psycholinguistics, 9(1), 1331, Center for Academic Societies Japan.
Kohno, M. (1994). Hanashi kotoba no ninshiki to seisei ni okeru rhythm no yakuwari. Monbushou Juuten Ryouiki
Kenkyu Seika Houkokusho.
Suzuki, J. (1991). An empirical study on a remedial approach to the development of listening fluency• Fthe
effectiveness of pausing on students’ listening comprehension ability. Language Laboratory, 28, 16-31,
Language Laboratory Association of Japan.
Suzuki, J. (1998). Onsei kyouzai chu no pause ga reading speed ni oyobosu eikyou. Kotoba no Kagaku Kenkyuukai.
Kotoba no Shinri to Gakushuu, 311-326, Tokyo: Kinseido.
Suzuki, J. (1999). An effective method for developing students’ listening comprehension ability and their reading
speed: An empirical study on the effectiveness of pauses in the listening materials. In Jungheim, N. O. &Robinson, P. (Eds.) Pragmatics and Pedagogy: Proceedings of the 3rd Pacific Second Language Research
Forum, 2, 277-290, PacSLRF.

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Reflecting on L2 Learning Process
The Benefits of Self-Evaluation and Grading with Progressive Rate
Ching-Min Sun
Jin-Wen Institute of Business and Technology, Taipei
Abstract
The focus of this paper is in the effort of integrating the self-evaluation with the progressive rate grading
which yield a significantly different interpretation of typical students’ test result in comparison to the traditional
grading system. Under this framework, students were invited to be “researchers” of their own study to gain selfawareness and monitor self changes in their developments. Another aspect of this paper lies in the fact that theassessment is no longer the sole responsibility of the teachers themselves but becomes participatory and students gain partial control. Last but not the least, teacher can use furtive source of information collected from theself-evaluation and progressive rate grading, so that students’ specialty and creativity is emphasized which inreturn enhances student-teacher interaction.

Introduction
When we talk about the efficiency of teaching, an important factor must be considered, that is how students
think about themselves. A classroom teacher usually recognizes that students vary in learning purpose and in theirability to learn. Conventional teaching processes in most schools today are up to down direction, i.e. teachers
conduct the whole teaching process. Dunkin and Biddle (1974) proposed a presage-process-product model fromthe context of classroom teaching to that of student learning. Biggs (1993) suggests to add a linear progression
from presage to process to product, each component interacts with all other components, thus the model becomesa kind of integrated teaching process.
Self-evaluation is a process whereby teachers collect the idea on their own teaching effectiveness and analyse
the information to consider improvement to that teaching. Of the various concerns in the teaching of second
language, issue regarding students’ self-evaluation has been little discussed. Taylor (1994) suggests that classroom
tests have considerable potential for improving classroom learning, yet there is little evidence that the tests canreflect an efficient teaching process itself.
In this paper I would like to discuss the importance of the self-evaluation and grading with progressive rate
in an integrated teaching process. I begin by examining the recurrent information for communication process for
improving teaching processes. It is hoped that presentation of the research at this stage will stimulate discussion
about the applicability of self-evaluation and progressive rate in research and practice.

The Role of Self-Evaluation in a Holistic Teaching Process
During the past decade, increasing emphasis has made certain change to learning strategies and to help
students gain control over the strategies they used. Researchers have attempted to operationalize the notion ofeffective teaching by describing it as teaching that produces higher-than-predicted gain on standardized achievement evaluation. Much of research time is spent in the designing teaching program, developing course, classroom

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administering, and grading students test (Stiggins, 1987). However, little attention has been paid to the strategies
and the evaluation of reflecting teaching.
Every teacher aims to lead an effective teaching program. The concept of an effective teaching program is asomewhat elusive one. For example, in the form of correction of written or spoken production. The classic
example is that of the correction sheet is often painstaking crafted to give feedback on the learner’s essay. The
following quotation is typical; see Holmes and Ramos (1991):
The (foreign language) teacher indicates mistakes such as grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, spellingand so on. The learning is then supposed to reflect the pattern of errors and take steps accordingly:
Brush up sentences, use the dictionary more often, simplify the language to be within his own capacity
for expression, and so on.
In real life, this type of diagnosis and feedback has a dubious effectiveness, and too often the most importantfeature of the correction process is always the teacher’s grade. After noting the grade the student seldom glances atthe essay again.
In other words, the key to use self-evaluation to maximize teaching benefit is knowing how and what thestudents want and when to provide feedback. That is, one important feature is to know the students’ attitudes about
the case of language learning and the characteristics of their social background. Another important feature of thelearning context is that of time. In the designing of a language course or syllabus the question of how many hours
are available for teaching and studying will obviously do much to determine what level of attainment can bereached. If the expected studying hours are beyond the learners’’ control, the teacher must adjust his objectives towhat can reasonably be achieved in the time available.
These two factors interact from a self-evaluation survey through the recurrent teaching process: e.g. teacher’s
perceptions of students’ motives or abilities influence their teaching process, while students’ self-evaluation directly affect their predisposition’s and their immediate decisions for action. Successful learning is viewed as
dependent on the teacher’s control and management of what takes place in the classroom. However what theteacher does is only half of the picture. The other half concerns about what the students do to achieve successful
learning. Prompted by the self-awareness that students may succeed despite the teacher’s methods and techniques
rather than because of them. Hence the shift from traditional assessment to a more detailed examination of itself is
encouraged and viewed as an important aspect of learning process.

The Role of Self-Evaluation in a Holistic Teaching Process
First, let me give a brief description about the use of students’ self-evaluation and grading with the progressive rate in a holistic teaching process. Figures 1 and 2 illustrate the conventional and our proposed teachingprocess respectively.
The main difference between the conventional teaching process with the one we suggested in Figure 2 lies in
the fact that the previous one is quite straight forward and mechanical which certainly cannot interpret the behaviorof teaching or learning; while the later one, with the addition of pre-teaching/self-evaluation which differs itself
from the proficiency test, gives teachers a chances to glimpse the other side of the coin, and prohibits teachers as
the sole controller to decide what’s good for students. The other strength for the diagram is the use of progressive
rate, which is introduced first in this article, makes grading for teachers no longer a painstaking but personalized
and highly revealing technique.
Reflective teaching is an important process in diagnosing and improving the problem of students’ learning
for an efficient teaching process. Just as the average patient is unable, without training, to identify the causes of thesymptoms that are felt, so the learner cannot spontaneously name the causes of his language-learning problem. We
believe that in order to help students keep up with the teaching program, it is necessary for teacher’s become
familiar with various background or potential ability.
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There is much information that the teachers can get from the students self-evaluation form through therecurrent teaching process:1.

Providing teachers with clear descriptive and contestable material in preparing the teaching
program.

2.

Demonstrating to the teacher the different pattern among students, and that not all of the students’ goals for studying are the same. And how much time does the student want to spend instudying this course.

3.

Showing the teacher ways to adapt existing curriculum materials to new situations.

Grading with the Progressive Rate
The measurement of students’ achievement is important in a holistic teaching process. At present, the mostcommonly used methods for evaluating progress in teaching programs have some drawbacks:
1.

Treating final grade as empirically obtained indications of month-by-month process. In reality,
final grades are extrapolated from one grade level to another.

2.

Interpretation of test scores on the assumption that the tests used provide reliable and valid
measures of the most important aspects of learning.

3.

Spurious scores obtained from the use of a single test over wide educational levels.

4.

Errors in interpretation because of use of inappropriate measurement.

5.

Failure to select a really comparable control group due to the individual learning difference interms of background and pace.
Goal of Teaching

Teaching Process

Evaluation with GPA

Figure 1. A conventional teaching process
Two interesting questions that people often ask are: (1.) In this test, is the student’s grade better than he didlast time? (2.) How does the teacher evaluate the students’ background, studying hours and studying motivation
etc..
Brookhart (1994) suggests that a good measuring model for students’ achievement should not be merely
measured by sectional or final tests. It should include the measurement about how much progress they had made.
Hence, a good evaluation scheme for students’ achievement performance should be measured not only by what
they have learned but also how much the students make progress. In this section, we will suggest an appropriate
model for evaluating students’ achievement. We hope this concept will better suit the real situation than conventional ones.

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Example. The following situation often occurs in a L2 class. Suppose we are teaching a beginning L2 classwith 8 students: three of them are Japanese (age:17, 18, 21), two of them are Koreans (age: 25, 50), two Chinese(age: 15, 22) and one Vietnamese (age: 43). They come from different backgrounds in the culture, age and occupation. Under the teaching process, it is not appropriate to give their sectional grade (and final grade) merely on the
grounds of their performance test. Since as a L2 teacher, with the goal of efficiency of teaching and learnerscentered in mind, it is necessary to deliberate upon students’ former educational background, thus the rate ofprogress must play a crucial role such that students will feel confident about their learning behavior and leave theclassroom saying they have learned a lot.
Goal of Teaching

Introduction and
Self-Evaluation

Strategic Planning of
Teaching Process

Execute Teaching Activities

Teaching processsatisfied?

Evaulation with
Progressive Rate

Figure 2. An ideal holistic teaching process
In traditional assessment, students’ final grades are evaluated on some sort of so-called “objective” test. The
result of student learning process is not taken into consideration. It also creates a situation that classifies and ranks
students by those who “know” from those who “do not know” that is those who did not memorize the knowledge
dispensed by the instructor. The attention of traditional assessment is mainly on cognitive ability where students’achievements are underestimated.
There are many ways of estimating the true amount of learner improvement (c.f. Brookhard, 1993; andChang & Sun, 1993). These range from crude to sophisticated estimates. Choice among them is determined by thedata available and by the use to be made of the data. In Model (4.1), I propose the rate of progressive methods.

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An Empirical Example
The genre of this paper is neither a simple description of practice nor does this fit the quantitative researchparadigm, rather it is an attempt to report on both the process of integrating research with pedagogy and the resultsof this process. There were three levels of research involved in the work reported here. First the process andfindings of self-evaluation. Second, an analyzing of the data yielded by this investigation both by teachers and thestudents. Third, by weaving together the voices of the participants – the teachers and the students with the progressive rate grading, it is attempted and hypothesized that the individual difference in potentiality as well as ability ishighlighted and focused, unlike the conventional grading which is obscure and generalized in comparison to theone we suggested in this paper.
In this section, a practical application of self-evaluation to holistic teaching process is demonstrated by anexperimental study. In conducting the research, we randomly choose a class with 42 students, 25 females and 17
male, from 1000 freshmen in Jin-Wen Institute of Business and Technology, Taiwan. The Jin-Wen Institute is atypical vocational college. Most students are 19-20 years old and have been taking the English courses for six
years.
A self-evaluation form conducted the sampling survey, see Appendix I. In the surveys, we let 1 as the lowest
and 5 as the highest measure index for the items: motivation, self-evaluation and sectional-test.
General findings from the students’ self-evaluation. An initial Statistical analysis exhibits some characteristic tendency for the students studying goal and motivation:
1.

Students’ study motivation is not high, with mean = 2.2 (lowest index is 1, highest is 5). 76%
of students’ answer that if English course is not required they will not take it.

2.

Most students think reading is their strongest point in the English preference. The order of selfevaluation grades for five categories of leaning is: reading, writing, speaking, listening andgrammar.
The students do think that grammar is their weakest point. Most Taiwanese students seem tohave the same feeling, though they have spent most time in studying English grammar comparing to other categories.

3.

Students think the order of importance in studying in English is: Speaking > Listening > Reading> Writing,> Grammar
Obviously, the student’s studying goal is speaking (and listening) oriented.

4.

As for efficient teaching methods, 62% of students think homework and 58% of students thinkexaminations are the least efficient.

The above finding mirrors students’ learning preference and attitude. The overwhelming impression is thatstudents are afraid of English and reluctant in taking the course and they could never win the struggle with it. The
findings also suggest one contradictory fact, to wit: what is considered to be the most important in this case “speaking”
is also the most neglected part of learning.

Correlation Investigations
Table 1 illustrates the correlations among study motivation, self-evaluation, sectional test and studying hours
between male and female students.

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Table 1. Mutual Correlation
Motivation
Motivation
Self-Evaluation
Sectional-Test
Studying Hours

Self-Evaluation

Sectional-Test

Studying Hours

0.57

0.81
0.45

0.33
-0.36
-0.22

From the above table, we find:1.

Motivation and sectional-test are highly correlated.

2.

Motivations with self-evaluation and studying hours are somewhat correlated.

3.

Self-evaluation and studying hours after class are dramatically negative correlated; i.e., thehigher the self-evaluation score gets, the shorter the studying hour spends.

4.

Sectional-test and studying hours are not positive correlated.

This fact may be explained as: their English background in high school influences students’ grade of sectional test. Those students with weak English background, though they spend much more time in studying English
after class, only little progress in grade do they make within a short time.

Feedback for the Teacher
The information we get from the statistical survey is that the students are compelled to take English course.
They have low sense of achievement due to the fact that although they spend most time in studying grammar yet it
is categorized as their weakest point. This survey again uncovers the controversial issue of speaking as the one thatreceives the least attention in four skills.
Though it is difficult to give a detailed quantitative analysis of the way in which students’ strategies change
during the course, we could use progressive rate measurement in perceiving changes in the strategies during thelearning process. Thus, about the choice of materials we can also obtain insights for future course design. Since
certain text types seem to adjust certain patterns of processing.

Feedback for the Students
One striking fact is that the more time students use in studying, the lower the self-evaluation grades they givethemselves. It coincides with the correlations between sectional test and studying hours. This calls for the urgent
necessity for student strategic learning: Learners do not spontaneously analyze their learning strategies in depth.
They need explicit help to name the strategies they are using and compare them with possible alternatives.
Progressive rate grading does contribute greatly to examine themselves and others. Hence provide insights
for the student into what is working and what is not working during the learning process. Furthermore, by reconsidering the learning goals, the students develop an awareness of their own learning and evaluating. Learners canbecome the best judges of how they learn most effectively, both in and out of class.

Grading with Progressive Rate Measurement
Let Gt be the grading at time t, Gt-1 be the grading at time t-1, and Ω = {g1, g2,....gn} be the total state ofevaluation ranks, for example Ω = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4}. For a continuous range of evaluation, the Ω becomes an interval,
i.e. Ω = [g1, gn]. We define the progress rate at time t, P , based on the evaluation range as:
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Pt =Next paper

Gt - Gt-1
gn - g 1

To contents(4.1)

If the range of gn - g1 is too wide, we can revise the interval for practical application. Therefore the grading(at time t) PGPAt based on the progressive rate can be written as the following formula:
PGPAt =

Gt + Gt-1 + ... + G1
+ Pt
t

(4.2)

Example 4.1 Suppose we have three sequential tests for three students: X, Y and Z . And suppose each has
the equal weight. The grading scheme is based on the 5-rank scale, Ω = {g1 = 0, g2 = 1, g3 = 2, g4 = 3, g5 = 4} if their
testing results are as follows:

Table 2. Comparison of Tradtional and Progressive Rate Rankings
First Test Second Test Third Test
Student X

0

2

4

Student Y2

2

2

Student Z

42

0

It is easy to see that under the traditional grading scheme, these three students have the same GPA 2 points(for the three times). On the other hand, according to formula (4.1) and (4.2), the GPA with the progressive rate willbe, for student X:
PSAP3 (after third test) =G1 + G2 + G3
4+2+0 4‑2 2‑0+ P3 + P2 =
+
+
=3
3
3
4‑0 4‑0

Similarly, we can calculate students Y and Z. From Table 3, it is seen that all three students got a GPA with
2 points for the whole teaching process with the traditional grading scheme. While they will get the different GPA(here is GP as in the formula (4.2)), if we take the progress rate into account. That is, the student X who makes mostprogress in the teaching process get GPAP=3; the student Y who makes neither progress nor worse the same scoreof test in the teaching process get GPAP=2; while the student X who makes worse and worse score in the teachingprocess get GPAP=1.

Table 3. Students Get the Same GPA but Their GPAP’s are Different
Grading Comparison

Student X

Student Y

Student Z

GPA (Traditional method)

2

2

2

GPt (Progressive rate consieration)

3

2

1

From Table 3, it is seen that all three students got a GPA of 2 points for the whole teaching processwith the traditional grading scheme. While they will get the different GPA (here is GP as in the formula (4.2)), if wetake the progress rate into account. That is, the student X who makes most progress in the teaching process get a
GPAP = 3; the student Y who makes neither progress nor worse the same score of test in the teaching process get a
GPAP = 2; while the student X who makes worse and worse score in the teaching process get a GPAP = 1.

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Conclusion
As professional L2 teachers, we must continuously monitor the effectiveness of our teaching. The use selfevaluation and progressive rate in a holistic teaching process may increase the efficiency of teaching. Since with
the PGPA we hope the numerical values will render more meaningful variances for learners as well as the teachers.
By emphasizing the PGPA each student is distinguished by his potentiality and individuality
Clearly, this instrument seems to reflect the ways students think about their learning goal as well as provide
a way of voicing what students feel implicitly – that the teacher may have gone unnoticed. The primary focus ofself-evaluation is reflection of teaching. The L2 teacher must reflect on the effectiveness of his teaching to gather
the information. Reconsideration is then undertaken when analyzing the information collected.
Finally, progressive rate grading can stimulate the students’ studying motivation, and help teachers to arrive
at a more realistic policy in the students’ achievement evaluation.

References
Biggs, J. (1993). What do inventories of students’ learning processes really measure? A theoretical review andclarification. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 63, 3-19.
Blum, R. E. (1984). Effective Schooling Practices: A Research Synthesis. Portland, OR: Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory.
Brookhart, S. M. (1993). Teachers’ Grading practices: Meaning and values. Journal of Educational Measurement.
30(2), 123-142.
Brookhart, S. M. (1994). Teachers’ Grading: practices and theory. Applied Measurement in Education, 7(4), 279301.
Chang, D. & Sun, C. (1993). Fuzzy analysis in student achievement evaluation. The National Chengchi University
Journal. 67(1), 57-73.
Holmes, J. & Ramos, R. (1991). Talking about learning: establish a framework for discussing and changing learning processes. In C. James & P. Garrett (Eds.), Language awareness in the classroom, New York: Longman
Inc.
Stiggins, R. J. (1987). Revitalizing classroom assessment: The highest instructional priority. Phi Delta Kappan, 69,
363-368.
Taylor, L. (1994). Reflecting on teaching: the benefits of self-evaluation. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher
Education, 19, 109-122.

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Relation Between Improvements of Perception and Production
Ability During a University English Speech Training Course
Mayumi Hamada
Teruaki Tsushima
Ryutsu-Kagaku University, Japan
Abstract
The present study examined the relation between perception and production ability during perception
and production training on English contrasts, /s-T/, /z-D/, /b-v/, /l-r/, /gl-gr/, /œ-e/, and /a-Ø/, among Japanese
university students. A 3-week perception training period followed by a 6-week production training period was
conducted at two linguistic levels (syllable and word level). The subjects were tested on their perception andproduction ability before and after each training. The results showed that the overall production ability significantly improved during the perception training, but not vice versa. It was suggested that the improvements inthe perception ability may generally transfer to those of production ability, but that the reverse may not hold trueat least after the subjects attained some basic level of perception ability. It was also found that the relation
between the production and perception improvements significantly differed not only among the target contrasts,
but also among the linguistic levels.

Introduction
The present study attempted to examine the relation between improvements of perception and production
ability during perception and production training conducted in an English course at Ryutsu-Kagaku university.
Previous research has suggested that there is a close, yet complex, relationship between production and perception
ability among adult L2 learners (e.g., Bohn & Flege, 1997; Flege, Bohn, & Jang, 1997). Some evidence indicatesthat improvements in perception training generalize to those of production ability (e.g., Neufeld, 1977; Rochet,
1995; Yamada & Tohkura, 1997), while other evidence indicates that improvements in perception ability do notnecessarily lead to those of production ability (e.g., Hemphill, 1999). There is little data available on the effect of
production training alone on perception training, although the finding that a combination of production and perception training improves perception ability more than perception training alone suggests some facilitating effects ofproduction training on perception ability (e.g., Yamada & McDermott, 1999). In sum, it remains inconclusive how
speech perception and production ability affect each other during the course of L2 learning. Specifically, it is notclear whether and how the relation may differ depending on the target contrast. In addition, few studies haveprovided empirical data on the relation obtained in the actual classroom setting.
The present study was aimed at providing data on the relation between improvements of perception
and production ability in seven English contrasts, /s-T/, /z-D/, /b-v/, /l-r/, /gl-gr/, /œ-e/, /a-Ø/, in an intensive perception and production training course at a university level. The study attempted to examine the following questions; (a) “Did the perception ability significantly improve through the perception and production training?” (b)“Did the production ability significantly improve through the perception and production training?” (c) “How did
the improvements of perception and production ability relate to each other during the course of the training?”

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Methodology
The subjects were 40 Japanese university students at Ryutsu Kagaku University in Kobe, Japan. Of thosesubjects, 14 students were assigned to the regular group, 11 to the extra group and 15 to the control group. All of
the subjects were tested on their perception and production ability three times during the 13-week course (pretest,
post-perception-training, post-production-training test). All the perception tests had the same format; seven minimal pairs, /s-T/, /z-D/ , /b-v/, /l-r/, /gl-gr/, /œ-e/, and /a-Ø/, were tested at two linguistic levels (syllable and word).
Sixteen two-alternative forced-choice identification questions were given at each linguistic level.
The same production test was conducted three times at the same time with the perception test. The test was
designed to evaluate the subjects’ productions of the seven target contrasts at the two linguistic levels. The subjects recorded 10 productions per contrast at the two linguistic levels. Five adult native English speakers who wereblind to the intended target contrast evaluated the subjects’ productions. A scale of 6 was used for evaluation, from“definitely” in one category, to “definitely” in the other category. The reliability of the evaluation was high bothfor within-evaluators and for between-evaluators.
Following the pretest, the perception training was conducted over a period of 3 weeks. The regular group
received a total of 270 minutes of training. The extra group received additional 150 minutes of training on
additional three separate days.
The two groups were also given perception training done at home in the form of homework, totaling 420
minutes for the regular group, and 800 minutes for the extra group during the same period. Following the perception training and the post-perception-training test, the production training was held for the regular and extra groups
over a period of 6 weeks. The same stimuli from the perception training were used. The regular group received a
total of 540 minutes of training while the extra group received additional 300 minutes of training. The subjects
were also given production training done at home, totaling 800 minutes for the regular group, and 1200 minutes forthe extra group. The control group did not receive either perception or production training.
All the speech stimuli used in the perception test, and perception and production training consisted of tokens
produced by four adult native English speakers. Tokens produced by different speakers were used in the tests andthe training.

Results
The first analyses examined whether the perception ability significantly improved through the perception
and production training, averaged over the target contrasts and linguistic levels. As the statistical analyses showedno significant differences between the regular and extra group in the degree of the improvements across the tests(i.e., pretest, post-perception test, and post-production test), the data of the two groups were combined for thefollowing analyses. The results showed that the perception scores significantly improved between the pretest andpost-perception test, F(1, 23)=107.01; p=.000, but not between the post-perception test and post-production test,
F(1, 23)=1.48; p=.236. The control group showed no significant increase in their perception scores either between
the former two tests, F(1, 14)=2.92; p=.109, or the latter two tests, F(1, 14)=.67487; p=.425. The results indicatedthat, averaged over the target contrasts and the linguistic levels, the subjects were able to significantly improvetheir perception ability through the perception training, but not through the production training.
The analyses also showed that the changes in the perception scores across the tests differed among the target
contrasts and linguistic levels. The target contrasts which did not follow the generalization above were the following; 1) the perception scores did NOT significantly improve through the perception training in /l-r/ at the syllable
level and /a-Ø/ at the word level; 2) the perception scores DID improve through the production training in /gl-gr/ at
the word level and /s-T/ at the syllable level.

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The next analyses examined whether the production ability significantly improved through the perception
and production training, averaged over the target contrasts and linguistic levels. The dependent variable was “theproduction difference score”, which represented the difference between the rating of the paired sounds (e.g., if a
rating was 2 for one sound and 5 for the paired sound, the score was 3). The statistical analyses showed significant
differences in the production difference scores between the pretest and post-perception test, F(1, 23) =2 4.44; p =.000, as well as between the post-perception test and the post-production test, F(1, 23) = 48.11; p = .000. The
control group showed no significant difference between the pretest and post-production test, F(2, 28) = .52 ; p =.584. The results indicated that the subjects improved their production ability through the perception as well as
production training, averaged over the target contrasts and linguistic levels.
The analyses also showed that the changes in the production scores differed among the target contrasts andlinguistic levels. The target contrasts which deviated from the generalization above were the following. First ofall, the production ability significantly improved through the perception training, but did not do so through the
production training in /s-T/ & /z-D/ at the word level. Second, the production ability did not significantly improvethrough the perception training, but did so through the production training in /gl-gr/ at both levels and /œ-e/ at thesyllable level. Finally, the production ability did not significantly improve across the tests in /œ-e/ and /a-Ø/ at theword level (but did so at the syllable level).
The next analyses examined the relation between the perception and production improvement combining thedata on the perception and production scores. The results showed that, in general, both perception and production
ability improved through the perception training, but only production training did do so through the production
training. The results, however, showed different patterns of the relation between the perception and production
improvements in a number of contrasts at different linguistic levels.

Discussion
It was found that the perception ability significantly improved through the perception training, but not throughthe production training, averaged over the contrasts and linguistic levels. This finding suggested that the improvements in production ability may not generally transfer to those of perception ability at least after the subjects
attained some basic perception ability through perception training. It may be the case that, in the production
training, the subjects’ attention shifted from attending to subtle acoustic/phonetic differences to monitoring theirarticulation. The shift in attention may have prevented the subjects from further refining their perception ability. It
may also be possible that listening to their incorrect productions interfered with further improvements in theirperception ability.
It was found that the production ability significantly improved through the perception training as well as the
production training, averaged over the contrasts and linguistic levels. This finding generally supported the conclusion that improvements in perception training generalize to those of production ability (Neufeld, 1977; Rochet,
1995; Yamada & Tohkura, 1997). Yet, the present results also found that the transfer may not readily occur for thesounds which require relatively refined control of articulation (such as ,/gl-gr/). It seems, therefore, that while thetransfer of perception to production ability may generally occur, it may also depend on the level of articulationdifficulty for a particular sound.
The present findings provided some pedagogical implications for L2 production and perception training in aclassroom. First, perception training should be integrated more into a pronunciation course because perception
training has positive effects on improving production ability. Perception training is also easy to administer andrequires less individual guidance. Furthermore, perception training may be encouraging because students can see
their improvement more clearly. As to when perception training is conducted, it seems desirable to provide thetraining before production training. Second, even if production ability is expected to improve during perception
training, production training is still necessary and effective in order to achieve more refined production ability,

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especially for difficult-to-produce sounds such as /gl-gr/ and /b-v/. Third, it is preferable to design different
production training programs depending on how the perception and production ability interact for the particular
contrast. For example, changing the proportion of perception and production training with different target contrasts may be effective.
Another study is under way which examines whether the pattern of improvements in perception andproduction ability may change when the order of the training is reversed. It is hoped to provide further data on therelation between perception and production ability in the near future.

References
Bohn, O.-S., & Flege, J. E. (1997). Perception and production of a new vowel category by adult second language
learners. In A. James & J. Leather (Eds.), Second-language speech: Structure and process, pp. 53-75. New
York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter.
Flege, J. E., Bohn, O.-S., & Jang, S. (1997). Effects of experience on non-native speaker's production and perception of English vowels. Journal of Phonetics 25, 437-470.
Hemphill, R. (1999). Evidence for the independence of speech categories in perception and production. Paper
presented at the 138th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Columbus, Ohio.
Neufeld, G. G. (1977). Language learning ability in adults: A study on the acquisition of prosodic and articulatory
features. Working Papers in Bilingualism 12, 45-60.
Rochet, B., L. (1995). Perception and production of second-language speech sounds by adults. In W. Strange(ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language speech research. Timonium:
York Press.
Yamada, R. A., & McDermott, E. (1999). Effect of computer-assisted training on production of English /r/ and /l/by Japanese. Paper presented at the 138th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Columbus, Ohio.
Yamada, R. A., & Tohkura, Y. (1997). Training Japanese listeners to identify English /r/ and /l/, IV: Some effectsof perceptual learning on speech production. Acoustical Society of America 101(4), 2299-2310.

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Repeated Presentations of Material:
Is It Effective for EFL Students’ Listening?
Maiko Ikeda
Setsunan University, Japan

Osamu Takeuchi
Kansai University, Japan
Abstract
Thanks to the advances in digital audio technology, it becomes much easier for language teachers topresent any two given points of listening material repeatedly to their students without losing sound quality.
However, the effectiveness of repeated material presentations has not yet been proven satisfactorily. An empirical study therefore was conduced to test the following two hypotheses; (1) repeated presentations of material are
effective for EFL learners’ listening, and (2) the effectiveness of repeated presentations is influenced by i) the
length of the sentence, ii) the grammatical complexity of the sentence, and iii) the proficiency level of the learner.
The subjects were 148 Japanese college students learning EFL. The results indicated that repeated presentations are indeed effective, although the degree of effectiveness varies with learners’ proficiency as well as material length and difficulty. Along with full descriptions of the findings, some pedagogical implications are alsomentioned.

Introduction
Thanks to the advances in digital audio devices (MD and MP3 players, for example) it has become mucheasier for language teachers to select any two given points of listening material and to present the selected part totheir students repeatedly without losing sound quality. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of this kind of repeatedmaterial presentations has been examined only by a few studies. At the phonetic-level, for example, Locke (1970)
gave 100 American children German phonemes for a sound imitation task. He had a result that scores improved
sporadically rather than incrementally, casting doubt upon effectiveness of repeated presentations. At levels higher
than phonemes, to the best of our knowledge, only two studies investigated the effectiveness of repeated presentations. In Suenobu et al. (1986), a total of 100 Japanese university EFL students were presented a 167-word text
several times and asked to report in their native language what they comprehended after each presentation. The
results indicated positive effect of repeated material presentations. Takahashi, Shina and Takefuta (1988), on theother hand, gave 22 Japanese advanced students of EFL a dictation task of various sentence lengths, and reported
that the repeated presentations might not be effective for more accurate listening of material. As this literature
review shows, not enough research has been conducted to determine the effectiveness of repeated presentations ofmaterial on EFL listening. An empirical study therefore was conducted (a) to determine its effectiveness, specifically at the sentence level, and (b) to explore its relationships with the possible variables (i.e., sentence length,
grammatical complexity, and learners’ proficiency).

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Hypotheses
The purpose of this study is thus to test the following hypotheses:
1)

Repeated presentations of material are effective for EFL listening.

2)

The effectiveness of repeated presentations in listening is influenced byi)the length of the sentence,ii)

the grammatical complexity of the sentence, andiii)

the proficiency level of the learner.

In this study, listening was defined as integrative skills measured by a dictation task.

MethodSubjects
The subjects were 148 Japanese university students learning EFL as a required course. They were divided
into two groups by their English proficiency. The difference of their English proficiency was confirmed by a 50item cloze test (t = 10.50, df = 76.57, p = .00). A total of 56 subjects were in the “Higher Proficiency Group” (HG),
while 92 were in the “Lower Proficiency Group” (LG).

Task
For the listening task, a dictation of 40 sentences was given to the subjects. To examine the influence ofsentence length, 40 sentences of four different lengths were included. They were grouped into the sets of ten
sentences according to the number of words of which a sentence consisted (i.e., 5, 10, 15, and 20 words). Eachgroup of ten sentences then was categorized into two levels of grammatical complexity, “Easy Sentences” (ES) and“Difficult Sentences” (DS). For example, a group of 10 five-word sentences was constituted of five ES and five
DS. The grammatical complexity of the ES and the DS was confirmed to be different on several readability andgrammatical complexity scales. The difference was also confirmed by the judgement of two experienced EFL
instructors. The sentences were recorded at a natural speed by two American native speakers of English.

Procedures
The presentation of sentences was arranged in such a way that the presentation order did not affect theresults. The task was given during their class time. All the subjects were requested to listen to 40 English sentences
five times each. After each presentation, they were asked to transcribe or modify the text. For scoring purpose, thestudents were also instructed to write down what they heard using different colored ink for each listening, (e.g.,
first time in black, second time in blue). After each listening, the subjects were given enough time to write.

Scoring and Analyses
Each word transcribed was scored for the individual reading of each sentence, based on criteria prepared by
the researchers. The scoring criteria were made to reflect appropriately the subjects’ acoustic processing. Theinter-rater reliability between two raters was satisfactorily high at .97. Both total scores and point gains of eachpresentation were analyzed by using the statistical test of ANOVA with repeated measures in STATISTICA Ver.
5.0J.1 When a significant difference was found in ANOVA, LSD was administered as a post-hoc test.

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Results
Overview
The HG and the LG were first looked at separately in terms of the effect of frequency of presentation,
sentence length, and grammatical complexity. Then, each of those results was compared between the two proficiency groups. Tables 1, 2 and 3 and Figure 1 illustrate the change in scores after each presentation and the resultsof the statistical tests.

Table 1. Scores for Each Presentation and Results of ANOVA: HG
DifficultyES1(n = 56)

DS
2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5 words (score range: 0-50)
M
31.45 36.80 38.89
SD
7.38
7.02
6.75

40.02
6.11

40.41
6.06

20.09
5.44

28.14
5.27

30.84
4.80

32.34
4.53

32.75
403.49 0.00
4.31

10 words (score range: 0-100)
M
32.21 49.45 57.64
SD
13.29 14.72 13.87

62.63
13.15

64.77
13.17

25.41
9.72

37.25
13.14

44.20
14.19

47.82
14.76

50.21
561.10 0.00
14.67

15 words (score range: 0-150)
M
38.52 56.79 68.70
SD
13.72 18.18 20.59

75.57
20.31

80.63
21.66

18.07
11.00

42.86
14.14

52.11
15.77

58.20
16.86

62.50
677.82 0.00
17.14

20 words (score range: 0-200)
M
37.07 59.48 74.50
SD
12.27 16.07 18.44

85.64
20.39

93.18
20.39

33.59
7.14

50.45
12.16

62.16
14.45

69.12
16.11

74.36
820.67 0.00
16.99

Table 2. Scores for Each Presentation and Results of ANOVA: LG
Difficulty

ES
1

5

F

p

(n = 92)

DS
2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5 words (score range: 0-50)
M
22.48 29.11 31.37
SD
7.26
7.82
7.33

32.71
7.29

33.54
6.80

14.52
5.35

23.50
6.34

26.70
5.98

28.32
5.76

29.33
681.785.93.000

10 words (score range: 0-100)
M
19.09 32.21 40.18
SD
8.88 11.49 12.93

44.97
13.45

48.03
13.62

16.11
6.87

25.70
9.61

31.78
10.48

35.64
11.33

39.55
946.5412.172.000

15 words (score range: 0-150)
M
26.22 36.93 42.38
SD
7.26
7.82
7.33

47.05
7.29

50.33
6.80

17.16
5.35

27.07
6.34

33.27
5.98

39.40
5.76

42.02
623.775.93.000

20 words (score range: 0-200)
M
22.25 38.64 49.66
SD
9.49 12.28 16.20

57.82
19.32

63.90
20.45

20.87
7.31

32.02
10.12

39.62
13.06

45.35
14.55

49.72
595.6715.98.000

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As seen in Figure 1, the scores of both proficiency groups increased significantly in proportion to the numberof repetitions. This was true of all lengths of sentences and both levels of grammatical complexity. The only
exception found was the HG’s scores between the fourth and the fifth presentations of five-word sentences (in boththe ES and the DS), which did not have statistically significant improvement (see Table 3). In most cases, wetherefore can say that the scores of both the HG and the LG improved significantly when the material was repeatedly presented.
The exception observed might be because the subjects in the HG wrote down every word they could (although 40 out of possible 50) by the fifth presentation. This would account for the HG’s not improving their scoresat the fifth presentation.
Sc o r e s

H G - 5 WO RD S

Sc o r e s

100

H G - 10 W O RD S

Sc o r e s

H G - 15 W O R D S

100

100

100

90

90

90

80

80

80

70

70

70

70

60

60

60

60

50

50

50

50

40

40

40

40

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30

30

20

20

20

20

10

10

10

10

0

0

0

90

ES

80

DS

1
2
3
4
T im e o f P res en t at ion
Sco r es5

LG - 5 W O R D S

0
1
2
3
4
5
T im e o f P res en t at io n

1
2
3
4
5
T im e o f P res en t at io n
Sco r es

LG - 1 0 W O R D S

Sc o r e s

LG - 15 W O R D S

1
2
3
4
5
T im e o f P res en t at ion
Sc o r e s

100

100

100

100

90

90

90

90

80

80

80

80

70

70

70

70

60

60

60

60

50

50

50

50

40

40

40

40

30

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30

20

20

20

20

10

10

10

10

0

0

0

1
2
3
4
5
T ime o f Pre s en tatio n

1
2
3
4
5
T ime o f Pres en tatio n

H G - 20 W O RD S

Sco r es

LG - 20 W O R D S

0
1
2
3
4
5
T im e o f P res en t at io n

1

2
3
4
5
T im e o f P res en t at io n

Figure 1. Changes in scores
Table 3. Combinations which did not Reach a Significant Value in LSD

Presentation comparedHG

5 words

ESDS

4 vs. 5

4 vs. 5

.359

.338

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Repeated presentations are thus proved effective no matter how the three variables change. Our next question then is whether repeated presentations have the same degree of effectiveness in the different proficiency
groups as well as in the changes of the sentence length and of the grammatical complexity. For this purpose, thedata was analyzed in terms of point gains. Tables 4, 5, and 6 and Figure 2 illustrate the change in point gains after
each presentation.

Table 4. Point Gains at Each Presentation and Results of ANOVA: HG (n = 56)
Difficulty
Presentationcompared

ES

DS

1-2

2-3

3-4

4-5

1-2

2-3

3-4

4-5

F

p

5 Words
M
SD

5.36
3.30

2.09
2.61

1.13
1.78

0.39
1.04

8.05
3.48

2.70
2.70

1.50
1.92

0.41
1.14

136.16.000

10 Words
M
SD

17.23
7.00

8.20
4.26

4.98
4.40

2.14
3.00

11.84
6.97

6.95
4.46

3.63
3.27

2.39
2.51

134.08.000

15 Words
M
SD

18.27
7.14

11.91
6.19

6.88
7.18

5.05
4.56

14.79
6.74

9.25
4.73

6.09
3.64

4.30
3.05

93.76

.000

20 Words
M
SD

22.41
6.93

15.02
5.60

11.14
4.71

7.54
6.23

16.86
7.27

11.71
5.47

6.86
4.22

5.34
3.58

127.78.000

Table 5. Point Gains at Each Presentation and Results of ANOVA: LG (n = 92)
Difficulty
Presentationcompared

ES

DS

1-2

2-3

3-4

4-5

1-2

2-3

3-4

4-5

F

p

5 Words
M
SD

6.63
4.52

2.26
2.48

1.34
1.93

0.84
1.81

8.98
4.61

3.20
2.54

1.60
2.33

1.01
1.59

180.19.000

10 Words
M
SD

13.12
5.42

7.97
4.63

4.79
3.31

3.07
2.69

9.80
1.90

5.87
3.46

3.86
2.69

3.91
5.03

140.43.000

15 Words
M
SD

9.72
7.46

6.45
3.97

4.67
3.56

3.61
2.99

9.90
6.34

6.21
3.31

5.13
3.66

3.61
3.12

84.04

.000

20 Words
M

16.40

11.02

8.15

6.09

11.15

7.60

5.76

4.34

SD

7.21

6.46

5.07

4.98

5.44

5.04

3.78

4.16

111.09.000

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Table 6. Combinations which did not Reach a Significant Value in
LSD
ESPresentation compared
HG

LG

Gain

DS

3-4 vs. 4-5

2-3 vs. 3-4

3-4 vs. 4.5

5 words

.112

.001

.019

10 words

.000

.000

.128

15 words

.081

.003

.088

20 words

.000

.000

.130

5 words

.263

.000

.173

10 words

.004

.001

.928

15 words

.096

.093

.018

20 words

.002

.006

.032

HG - 5 W ORDS

Gain
25

25

HG - 10 W ORDSGain

HG - 15 W ORDS

Gain

25

25

20

20

20

15

15

15

15

10

10

10

10

5

5

5

5

HG - 20 W ORDS

ES
DS

20

0

0

Gain

LG - 5 WORDS

Gain

0

0
1-2
2-3
3-4
4-5
Frequency of P resent at ion

1-2
2-3
3-4
4-5
Frequency of P resent at ion

L G- 10 WORDS

1-2
2-3
3-4
4-5
Frequency of P resent at ion

1-2
2-3
3-4
4-5
Frequency of P resent at ion

Gain

LG - 15 WORDS

Gain

25

25

25

25

20

20

20

20

15

15

15

15

10

10

10

10

5

5

5

5

0

0
1-2
2-3
3-4
4-5
Frequency of Presentation

0

0
1-2
2-3
3-4
4-5
Frequency of Presentation

LG - 20 WORDS

1-2
2-3
3-4
4-5
Frequency of Presentation

1-2
2-3
3-4
4-5
Frequency of Presentation

Figure 2. Changes in point gains
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The Influence of the Sentence Length
To examine the influence of the sentence length, point gains were examined in terms of the maximum
frequency of effective presentation. Maximum frequency of effective presentation is the final presentation in which
the students scored at least a three-point gain. The threshold of three points was set based on the scoring criteria. As
is seen in Table 5, the maximum frequency of effective presentation increased with the length of the sentences.
Although the same degree of maximum frequency (i.e., five times) was listed in some cases, the point gains of
longer sentences at fifth presentation were confirmed to be greater (see Tables 4 and 5). This implies that, if thelonger sentences were presented more than five times, the maximum frequency of effective presentation might
have increased. In addition, no ceiling effect was found in shorter sentences (see scores of five-word sentences inTables 1 and 2). Based on these results, repeated presentations could have more effect with longer sentences. Thisfinding applies to both levels of grammatical complexity and both groups of the subjects.

Table 7. Maximum Frequency of Effective Presentation
Group

HG

LG

Difficulty

ES

DS

ES

DS

5 words

2

2

2

3

10 words

4

4

5

5

15 words

5

5

5

5

20 words

5

5

5

5

The Influence of the Grammatical Complexity
As for the influence of the grammatical complexity, neither the HG nor the LG scores indicated any difference between the ES and the DS in the maximum frequency of effective presentation in Table 7, except the LG’s
five-word sentences. However, a closer analysis of the ES and the DS point gain differences revealed that the fiveword sentences were unique compared with the other lengths. In the case of the five-word sentences, point gains of
the DS tended to be more than those of the ES. On the other hand, in the case of sentences longer than five words,
point gains in the ES were higher than those in the DS for each presentation. It should be noted here that the scoresat each presentation in the ES were always higher than those in the DS (see Fig. 1). Thus, when the material was
five words in length, the score differences between the ES and the DS narrowed as a result of repeated presentations. For the same reason, when the material was longer than five words, the gap in scores between the ES and theDS widened in proportion to the number of presentations. These findings show that grammatical complexity may
influence the effectiveness of repeated material presentations. In five-word sentences, the effectiveness of repeatedpresentations may be greater with the DS than the ES, while, in longer sentences, the effectiveness may be greaterwith the ES.

The Influence of the Students’ Proficiency Level
Another observation revealed the students’ proficiency level also influenced the effectiveness of repeatedpresentations. In Figure 2 above, the LG marked higher point gains than the HG for every presentation of five-word
sentences, whereas the LG indicated lower point gains than the HG for each presentation of 15- and 20-word
sentences. Until the third or fourth presentation of the ten-word sentences, the HG was higher than the LG in point
gains. After the fourth or fifth listening, the LG’s point gains exceeded the HG’s. In other words, with the shorter
sentence material, the LG tended to take more advantage of repeated presentations than the HG, while the opposite
seems to be true with the longer sentence material.
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The students’ proficiency level influenced not only the differences in point gains between the shorter and thelonger material, but also those in scores between the ES and the DS. As was mentioned before, the difference inscore for each presentation between the ES and the DS became narrower with the five-word sentences, whereas it
became wider with the longer sentences. Although both subject groups shared this tendency, the score differences
for the HG were always greater than those for the LG under the same condition. The t-test results in Table 8
confirmed that those difference were statistically significant. This observation indicates that the HG is more sensitive to sentence difficulty in repeated presentations than the LG. Together with the findings on the sentence length
reported in the preceding paragraph, the learners’ proficiency may influence the effectiveness of repeated presentations.

Table 8. Differences in the Scores by the 5th Presentation between ES and DS: HG vs. LG
Words in sentences

Diff. between ES and DS

t

df

p<

HG

LG

5

7.66

4.22

3.42

147

.001

10

14.55

8.48

3.31

147

.001

15

18.13

8.65

4.56

147

.000

20

18.82

14.18

2.35

147

.002

The findings of the present study appear to be inconsistent with those by Takahashi et al. (1988), who reportthat repeated presentations are ineffective. A reason for this inconsistency might also be accounted for by the
influence of learner’s proficiency. Takahashi et al.’s subjects seemed to have much higher English proficiency level
than those of this study. They tested their hypotheses with postgraduates majoring in TESOL as the HG andundergraduates specializing in English as the LG. The higher proficiency of these subjects may have produced theresults different from our study.

Conclusions
Before concluding, a limitation of the present study should be pointed out. In this study, the data of the HG
and the LG were analyzed separately. The separation might have blurred the influence of learners’ proficiency on
the effectiveness of repeated presentations. Further studies thus need to examine the three variables at the sametime to better clarify the relationships among them. With this limitation in mind, the following conclusions can be
drawn:
1.

Repeated presentations of material are effective for EFL listening.

2.

The effectiveness of repeated presentations varies witha.

the length of the sentence,b.

the grammatical complexity of the sentence, andc.

the proficiency level of the learner.

Lastly, pedagogical implications are in order. First, the results of this study indicate that repeated materialpresentations by using such digital devices as MD and MP3 players are effective in language teaching. Second, thefindings support the contention made by several researchers (e.g., Oller, 1979), in which at least three presentationsof material is advisable for dictation tasks. Furthermore, our study adds two insights on the desirable number ofpresentations: First, when the presented material is easy and short such as the five-word ES, less than three time of
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presentation may be enough for learners (in this context, Japanese intermediate EFL students). Second, when thematerial is longer, more than three repetitions should improve learners’ understanding. The last implication is thatteachers should adjust the length and the difficulty of material to the proficiency level of their students. If thematerial is too difficult, students are unable to efficiently utilize the bottom-up grammatical processing, and theeffectiveness of repeated presentations can be limited.2 At the same time, even though the grammatical complexity
is properly adjusted, with too short sentences such as the five-word sentences in this study, there is little redundancy on which learners can rely to understand the sentences. In this situation, learners have limited access to the
top-down processing. This might also result in the decreased effectiveness of repeated presentations.

Notes
1.

“Point gain” in this context means the difference between the total scores of the latest and the previous
presentations. For example, the point gain for the third presentation is the remainder of the total score after
subtracting the total score of the second presentation from the third.

2.

By top-down processing, learners make use of the knowledge they possess, such as background knowledge
upon the topic, to understand the input. By bottom-up processing, learners construct the meanings fromsmall units, such as phonemes, words and phrases, and understand the whole information (see e.g., Takeuchi,
2000).

References
Locke, J. L. (1970). The value of repetition in articulation learning. International Review of Applied Linguistics 8(2). p. 147-154.
Oller, J. W. Jr. (1979). Language tests at school: A pragmatic approach. London: Longman.
Suenobu, M., et al. (1986). Listening comprehension and the process of information acquisition by non-native
speakers of English. International Review of Applied Linguistics 24(3). p. 239-248.
Takahashi, H., K. Shina, & Y. Takefuta. (1988). Hearing no riron to shido ni kansuru kisoteki kenkyu. (An evaluation of various initial presentations of English material and their effect on listening comprehension) Language Laboratory 25. p. 3-13.
Takeuchi, O. (ed.) (2000). Ninchiteki approach ni yoru gaikokugo kyouiku. (A cognitive approach to foreign language teaching). Tokyo: Shohakusya.

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SaMOOrai: A Virtual Japan
for Language Learning and Cross-Cultural Exchange
Hideto D. Harashima
Maebashi Institute of Technology, Japan

Yoshimasa Awaji
Takushoku University, Japan

Shuji Ozeki
Chubu University, Japan
Abstract
SaMOOrai is a MOO (Multi-user dimension Object Oriented) specially designed to meet the demands
for a functional online language-learning tool in Japanese educational environments. SaMOOrai, unlike othereducational MOOs in the world, allows a relatively large-sized class to login simultaneously, and let them enjoy
chatting with each other, traveling around Japan on virtual trains, as well as doing various language learning
activities without much network stress or troubles. This paper will describe how this MOO has been developed,
and discuss how real-time online communication and learning take place in this virtual Japan.

Introduction
Having nothing to do with its association to popular bovine creatures, MOO has been drawing attention froma growing number of language teachers in CALL field. MOO is an Object-Oriented MUD, and MUD stands forMulti-User Dimension or Dungeon. MUD has gained its popularity as online dungeon games, where multiple users
login and take on an adventure as they go digging into the dungeon, fighting against monsters, solving mysteries,
and finding treasures.
With its adventure motif mostly taken off from MUD, MOO has been developed as a more “civilized” arenafor online communication activities. In 1994, Julie Falsetti conceived an idea of using MOO technology for language learning purposes and in no time she established “schMOOze University” with her colleague Eric Schweitzer.
It has been known as one of the best-administered and most popular language-learning MOOs in the world today.
(Awaji, n.a.)What MOO can Do
MOO is a text-based virtual reality (TBVR) utilizing the telnet protocol. It enables a variety of collaborative
activities among users through synchronous and asynchronous communication. If a MOO is designed for the purpose of language learning, nothing learners do in this virtual environment can be achieved without the use of thetarget language. Thus, MOO offers an environment where students of a foreign language have a chance, withoutleaving their homes, to put themselves in a “foreign” community in which the foreign language use is vital to get by.
Learners connecting to a MOO will stroll around from one room to another, meeting people from different
cultures and countries. As they run into each other, they exchange greetings, introducing themselves, and get to
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know each other through online chatting. One of the features of MOO is this chatting, or synchronous computermediated communication (SCMC). The people on the same chat channel can “talk” as if they were seeing eachother in person without feeling a time lag, a nuisance often found in many other chat sites.
If the learners find themselves in the same congenial mood, they can play some language games which areprovided in a MOO, go on a trip, take lessons, and build up a room, a house and a town together. They can do almost
any kind of social interactions virtually if they are imaginative enough, and unlike just a fantasy, everything theycreate in a MOO (these are called “objects”) do not vanish when they come back to the real world; they remain toexist there. Here is another feature of MOO: unlike a bare chat channel, it provides an “environment,” an environment which we can build, share, and interact with. It provides a virtual community where people from all different
background learn to live together in harmony.

Development of SaMOOrai and its Features
SaMOOrai is a MOO for learning English and brainchild of Awaji, built in a server at Chubu University inJapan. It was created out of his strong desire to build a MOO specially designed for English learners in Japan, andthrough his ample experience of administering schMOOze University as one of the programmers. It was aimed to
be a pioneering educational MOO in Japan.
Some of the features of saMOOrai include following points:•

It adopts a motif of “mock Japan” – the content of this MOO reflects a pseudo-country of Japan.
It is so designed that visitors to this MOO might feel as if they visited the real country of Japan.
People will find similar landscape, social infrastructure, and public places here to what theywould find in the real Japan. This setup is aimed to give a chance for Japanese learners tocreate, describe, and add Japan-related elements to this base country and introduce them toforeign visitors, as well as for foreign users to learn more about Japan.

•

It provides smoother and more stable connection for users in Japan than the cases where they
try to connect to other MOOs in other countries.

•

It is designed to cope with the typical language class situation in Japan, i.e. large class size.
Some excogitations are implemented to dodge a system crash when 40 to 50 people accessed
saMOOrai simultaneously.

•

It adopts a fully-automated mock train system for the main means of transportation. A web ofrailroads are running through saMOOrai and learners can enjoy taking a ride to wherever theywish to go, just like the way they take trains in the real Japan. Foreign visitors will be also able
to simulate getting around by trains in the real Japan.

Connecting to SaMOOrai
SaMOOrai can be accessed through a bare telnet software application. However, it is much more comfortable for learners to use a MOO/MUD client software program, such as Pueblo for Windows and MUDDweller for
Macintosh. These programs are freely available via the Internet. SaMOOrai can be reached from any computersconnected to the Internet unless in cases they are placed behind a proxy server, or a firewall. A detailed technicalguidance can be found in the saMOOrai official web site.
Once a learner establishes a connection, he/she will see the login screen shown in Figure 2.

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Figure 1. The Official SaMOOrai Web Page

Figure 2. SaMOOrai Login Screen
The login procedure is simple and easy; learners are asked to input their player names and passwords, or justa word “guest” if they are not registered as regular players. Then, they are asked if they are Japanese or not. They
are also asked to describe themselves briefly. At this point, if the learners are new to saMOOrai, they are guided tothe area for a ten-step-walk-through training course of the MOO basics. Here, they can learn some of the very basic
MOO commands to navigate themselves through saMOOrai. They include:
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Previous paper•@who: find out who is logged in at the moment•say: speak to other people•

page: speak to other people in different rooms•

emote: show your actions•

look: examine an object or the surrounding environment•@quit: leave the MOO

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After learning the basics, the learners find themselves at an arrival gate, just like tourists to the real Japan
would, at New Tokyo International Airport shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. The Map of New Tokyo International Airport
The symbol =X= on the map denotes the current location of a player, and this symbol moves in accordancewith his/her moves in saMOOrai space, though maps are not available at all locations in saMOOrai at the moment.
Having finished the immigration procedure, learners proceed to the Narita station and adventure into different parts of Japan by using a number of different train services, which are almost precise copies of those found in
the real Japan.

SaMOOrai Communication
In saMOOrai, learners can be engaged in synchronous and asynchronous online communication with others
by using those commands listed above. They can also interact with each other and with the surrounding environment as they use a lot of other commands or verbs. For example, they can “eat” food, “write” notes, “read” notes,“take” objects, “send” messages, “lookup” a word in a dictionary, “get on” trains, “give” something to others, an soon. In sum, they can experience most of ordinary social interactions within this virtual community of saMOOrai. It
is expected that through such social interactions they brush up their communicative competence in the target
language, namely English, and that they foster cross-cultural exchanges at the same time.
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Application to English Education
SaMOOrai has a good potential for being utilized in English classes in various ways. It should readily be
used for reading, writing, or communication classes. At Chubu University, as part of English for Network Communication course, students login to saMOOrai and are elaborating on their campus, taking lessons, and exchanging
discussions. One of the recent activities requires the students to visit saMOOrai and to report what they haveexperienced there to the class BBS for review and discussion. (Ozeki, 2000)
At Takasaki City University of Economics, as part of English and the Internet course, students are instructed
to login to saMOOrai for an online orienteering activity. Each student is given a task to achieve in saMOOrai,
which is usually made up with reaching to one place, finding out about something, getting information from otherpeople, and making a required action. The students are evaluated on how fast and precisely they achieved the goalas well as how properly they behaved in social interactions. The details of this activity are reported in Harashima,
2000.
There may be scores of other ways to exploit saMOOrai for English instruction. SaMOOrai stays open for
any ambitious and creative instructors of English to use it in any functional ways.

Summary
In these days, a number of virtual reality sites using fancy graphical interface are often talked about among
educators. Compared with those, saMOOrai might look a little old-fashioned: it is a world of simple texts. However, the good side of it is that it is a world constructed purely linguistically; it may be an optimal environment for
linguistic activities. The difference between the two types of virtual reality might interestingly be compared to thedifference between comic books and novels. Comic books are fun, in many cases self-explanatory and easy tofollow, and relaxing. On the other hand, novels are all written in texts with minimal graphics, which is often lessappealing to some fun-loving people as boring or unapproachable.
However, some questions must be posed here. Which inspires us more with imagination? Which moves us
deeper? Which prompts our linguistic association more? Which challenges our intelligence more? Which leaves us
with stronger impact? Which rouses within us a motive for creative activities more? The authors believe novels do.
Likewise, saMOOrai would be able to serve better in a way than other graphically-oriented virtual reality services
as a more meaningful, impressive, and functional medium for improving learners’ linguistic competence, though it
may be just a world of simple texts.

Notes
saMOOrai host: telnet://samoorai.hyper.chubu.ac.jp:8888
saMOOrai web page: http://samoorai.hyper.chubu.ac.jp:8080

References
Awaji, Y. n.a. What is MOO? [On-line]. Available: http://members.tripod.co.jp/schmooze/ENG/index.html
Harashima, H. D. (2000). Virtual Orienteering on a MOO. In K. Ryan (ed.), Recipes for wired teachers, pp. 92-93.
JALT CALL Sig.
Ozeki, S. (2000). [On-line]. Available: www.intl.chubu.ac.jp/gaikokugo/ johoEigo2000/treeBBS/trees.cgi

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Solutions for Limited Resources in Language Labs
Monika K. Szirmai
Hiroshima International University, Japan
Abstract
The aim of this paper, on the basis of the author’s personal experience, is to make teachers aware of the
problems they may have to face when trying to use modern technology in their classroom and to show what
teachers can do with a “traditional” language lab (without multimedia capacities) that lacks any speciallydesigned language lab materials.
In this paper, the process, the advantages and the difficulties of making student recordings are described
together with the possible uses. Requiring students to make recordings on a regular basis had a positive effect on
their speaking skills and provided a fairly large resource for listening activities for the same class and for otherclasses as well.

Background
After a conference, most participants go back to their schools with high hopes of using new methods
and technology they have seen in order to be more efficient as teachers. Very soon it turns out that enthusiasm is notenough and they go back to “normal”.
There may be several reasons for the often experienced problem, the mismatch between the technical andhuman resources. For example with limited financial resources, a school cannot buy suitable equipment, in whichcase there is not much the teachers can do as the “hardware” is completely missing. In less apparent but more
frustrating cases, the school has all the equipment installed, and well presented in the school’s promotional material, but lacks the necessary materials to be used with the equipment, or the human resources and maybe thetechnical support as well. Training sessions for the users–teachers and students–are also needed, but often notprovided. In some cases, the classes are so badly scheduled that most language classes are to be held at the sametime–letting only one or two teachers benefit from the existence of the LL–while most of the time the LL is not used
at all. Furthermore, prospective users may not be consulted before the equipment is purchased. A brand newcomputer lab full of computers but without sound boards or microphones is not really a joyful sight for the language teacher.
All schools are in a different situation but, in many cases, teachers have access to a “traditional” language labrather than one with multimedia capacities for each individual. In others, university officials are content withsetting up the lab but are not prepared to spend money on language lab materials; it is supposed to be the teacher’stask to provide appropriate teaching materials. In this situation, many teachers “underexploit” or misuse their lab
by seeing it as one tape player–the teacher’s–with many headphones. All this means is that the students can hear
everything a little better than without the lab. Alternatively, they may break the copyright laws by making a copy
for each student so that they can listen to the passage at their own pace. However, this lack can be turned round sothat it is even an advantage. For reasons not discussed here, but familiar to many teachers, students in Japan areoften not willing to take active part in oral discussion even in small groups, even in an unthreatening situation. One
way to address the two problems of inadequate resources and students’ unwillingness to speak together is to require
students to make regular recordings in English. By doing this, their motivation for oral communication is raised andas a consequence their fluency, their ability to communicate, and their listening comprehension will also improve.
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Although there is some pressure on the students since they know that the teacher will check their recordings, they
make the recordings themselves in a completely unthreatening way and can re-record them any number of times
without students’ losing face if there are mistakes. This activity can also foster recognition of the need for peer
cooperation and peer evaluation.

Making Student Recordings
Procedures
1.

Start with a traditional conversation activity about a given topic in pairs or in small groups.
Comments: This interactive activity will help students formulate their own ideas about the
topic, as they hear and consider other students’ ideas.

2.

Ask the students to prepare a speech.
Comments: Students may need some time to look up words in the dictionary, to put ideas together in a coherent, easy-to-follow way, and generally feel more confident if they have enoughtime for preparation.

3.

Students practice their speech in small groups, moving from group to group. Other students ask
questions and make comments at the end of the speech.
Comments: Whenever students prepare speeches, they tend to simply read it aloud. In order tomake it a bit more natural and also to memorize “chunks” from the speech -which they will beable to use in other, more natural situations -, the speech should be delivered without reading it.
As the activity is done in a small group, students are less worried about mistakes. On the basisof the other students’ questions and comments, the students can change and improve their speech.

4.

Ask the students to record their speech.
Comments: Give a time limit for making the recording. Ask the students not to read the speech
if possible.

5.

Students swap tapes and listen to each other‘s recordings.
Comments: Besides being a good listening activity, students can get new ideas about the topic,
and can also compare other students’ performance with their own.

6.

Students give feedback to each other.
Comments: It is recommended for the teacher to prepare a feedback sheet for each student if
they are not experienced in such activities.

7.

Students make changes and re-record their speech.

8.

Ask the students to give their recording a title and to note how long the recording is.
Comments: Length is an important indicator both for the teacher and the student.

9.

Ask your students to let you use the tapes in other classes as well.
Comments: It is commonly accepted that students check, see and hear other people’s performance within the same class. However, it is not usual to let students in other classes do thesame. If students do not feel comfortable with the idea of other schoolmates listening to theirperformance, you can ask them to let you use their recordings after they leave school.

If your students are really motivated and like this kind of activity:

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You can ask them to include pictures or other materials with the recording.
Comments: Pictures can help with the listening task or raise interest.

11.

You can ask them to make a worksheet for the listeners.
Comments: Preparing a worksheet is an appropriate activity, in which students can improveseveral skills: asking questions, focussing on important information, etc.

Now you have a different recording to give each person in your other classes.

Listening Activities
Prepare a worksheet or worksheets for the students. You can make students focus on the following things:
1.

listening for main ideas

2.

listening for details

3.

taking down mistakes in(1)

pronunciation(2)

intonation(3)

grammar(4)

vocabulary

4.

writing questions asking for details or clarification

5.

transcribing the whole speech or parts of it.

TopicsAny topic could be used for these activites. Topics I have asked my students to talk about are as follows:1.

Self introduction

9.

My hometown

2.

The School Festival

10.

Travelling

3.

Describing a Japanese festival·

The place I like the best

4.

The winter holidays·

The place I would like to visit in the future5.

My school experience11.

How to …(do something, or use an equipment)

6.

My favourite writer

12.

My eating habits

7.

My favourite book

13.

My life ten years from now

8.

Reading habits

Advantages of Making Student Recordings
1.

Students talk to other students about topics they are interested in.

2.

They use simple English that other students can easily understand.

3.

They learn to give and listen to peer feedback, which helps creativity and communication in
general.

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4.

Creating short speeches prepares students for more difficult tasks like presentations.

5.

A few weeks produces hundreds of recordings.

6.

In a few weeks you can have recordings about a great variety of topics.

7.

In some cases, you may even have the worksheets or pictures to go with the recordings.

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Problems
1.

Recordings might take a lot of time.

2.

Students need to be taught to use the equipment.

3.

Quality and usability of the recordings may vary considerably.

4.

Students may focus only on making the recordings and neglect pair and small group activities.

I think that the advantages outnumber the problems. Once the teacher gets used to the procedure in general,fine tuning can be done later, improving the methodology year by year. Some teachers, especially non-native
teachers, may question the usefulness of having students listen to other non-native students’ performance in English. They argue that students cannot learn much from other students’ bad English. In my opinion, motivation is
far more important in the process of learning than listening exclusively to native speakers of a language. As listening to native speakers means listening to tapes most of the time, where the students do not have any control over the
topic discussed, let alone asking the speakers questions for clarification, there is little or no involvement on thestudents’ part in the activity or not much. What is more, students might get the false idea that being a listener is acompletely passive activity. In real life, nobody would talk to somebody who does not show any reaction to what
the other is saying. In my experience, students became more involved, they really listen in order to understand what
has been said if they are motivated by the topic, by the task or simply by the other speaker. Another very importantreason for the validity of listening to non-speakers is that according to statistics, most of the time non-native
speakers of English use English to communicate with other non-native speakers rather than native speakers ofEnglish. If we are to prepare our students for real life communication then, we should consider using more material
created by non-native speakers.

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Some Characteristics of Prosody in Japanese Speakers’ Reading ofJapanese and English Passages
Kazuo Kanzaki
Osaka Electro-Communication University, Japan
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate how and in what respect Japanese speakers show differences inprosody such as speech rate, pause and intonation when they read a Japanese passage and an English one. An
experiment was conducted to this end, using five Japanese learners of English as subjects. The speech samples
taken from their readings of Japanese and English passages were acoustically analyzed on the computer. The
results showed (a) the subjects could not control the speed at their will as they did in the Japanese passage
reading, (b) they could not read the English passage as smoothly and rhythmically as they read the Japanese
one, and (c) they read the English passage rather monotonously in terms of intonation. These results imply thatJapanese learners of English tend not to be so expressive in the English passage reading as in the Japanesepassage reading.

Background of the Study
Prosody plays a crucial role in the human communication. O’Connor, J. D. (1973) states that the speaker’s
attitude is reflected in prosody such as pitch ranges, tempo, loudness, and voice quality. Lieberman, Philip (1967)
also points out that one’s emotion is realized as changes of Fo.
In the area of EFL/ESL this aspect of human speech is important and should be dealt with accordingly in theteaching/learning situation. Ohyama, Suzuki and Kiritani (1989) conducted a series of perception tests using the
PARCOR analysis and synthesis technique to find out that prosody plays a more important role than the pronunciation of vowels and consonants, and that fundamental frequency is more important role than duration and intensity
in the judgment of English-like speech.
In order to see how the Japanese Learners of English use Fo when they speak English, Kanzaki (1996)
conducted an experiment using one American and three Japanese as subjects, and found out that the Japanese
speakers showed clear differences in the pitch ranges from the native speaker when they read an English passage.
The pitch ranges they used in their Japanese passage reading were also different from those they used in the English
passage reading. The results are shown below.

Table 1. Pitch Ranges for English Passage Reading
Native Speaker

Japanese A

Japanese B

Japanese C

High (Hz)

217

139

190

163

Low (Hz)

77

87

93

100

Range (Hz)

140

52

97

63

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Table 2. Pitch Ranges for Japanese Passage Reading
Japanese A

Japanese B

Japanese C

High (Hz)

156

219

173

Low (Hz)

94

92

102

Range (Hz)

62

127

71

Takefuta (1982) has already pointed out that the pitch rage becomes narrower when Japanese speak English
than they speak Japanese. His conclusion coincides with the above results.

The Purpose of the Experimental Study
The purpose is to investigate how and in what respect Japanese speakers show differences in prosody such as
speech rate, pause and intonation when they read a Japanese passage and an English one.

MethodFive Japanese university students were asked to read a Japanese short story after reading it silently for one
minute. Then they were asked to read the English version of the same story in the same way (see Appendix for the
speech material).
Their readings were simultaneously saved as wave files (16 bits, 22kHz) onto the computer hard disc. These
speech samples were acoustically analyzed on the computer using a software program, Multi-Speech Model 3700
(Kay Elemetrics Corp.).

Results and Discussion
Speech Rates (Figure 1)
The subjects read the Japanese passage at a different speech rate from each other. This seems to indicate thatthey could read it at their own pace; in other words, it reflects their individuality or expressiveness in the Japanesepassage reading. However, they didn’t show such individuality in the process of the English passage reading: as isseen in Figure 1, three lines for the English reading (A, B, C) almost overlap. This implies that they could notcontrol the speed at their will as they did in the Japanese passage reading, resulting in lack of individuality or
expressiveness.
A better reader can usually control the rate of speech when he/she reads in his/her own mother tongue.
Pedagogically speaking, a learner of English should be trained so that he/she can control the speech rate of thetarget language properly in his/her reading.

Pauses (Table 3)
There were more pauses included in the English passage reading than the Japanese one. The English passage reading had a longer pause length on average than the Japanese one for two of the subjects, while the standard
deviation was larger in the English passage reading for all three subjects. These results show that they could notread the English passage as smoothly and rhythmically as they read the Japanese one.

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12
10
8
6
4
2
0

A日
B日
C日
A英
B英
C英

9

7

5

3

A (J a p )1

Syllables/sec

S pe e c h R ate C h an ge s in th e J apan e sean d En glish P assage R e adin g

S e n te n c e s

Figure 1. Speech rate changes in Japanese and English passage reading
Table 1. Number of Pauses/Pause Length/SD for Pause Length in the Japanese and English
Passage Reading
A Japanese English

B Japanese English

C Japanese English

Pause (No.)

14

17

17

30

15

23

M (ms)

240

372

369

270

491

609

SD (ms)

129

245

209

211

285

325

Pause plays a very important role not only in daily speech but also in reading. Whether a speaker can control
pause length and frequency or not affects expressiveness or persuasiveness of his/her talk. This aspect of speech is
crucial in the reading of a target language, and should be taught accordingly.

Pitch Ranges (Figure 2)
The average pitch range was wider in the Japanese passage reading than the English one for four of thesubjects. This means that these four subjects read the English passage rather monotonously in terms of intonation.
Accordingly, we could suggest that the subjects in general were not so expressive in the English passage reading as
in the Japanese passage reading
Using Taiwanese learners of English and American English speakers as subjects of her research, Tseng(1996) found out that Taiwanese have a narrower pitch range in comparison with American English speakers. She
also states, “Both advanced (84Hz) and beginning learners (58Hz) of English show a significant narrower Fo range
than that of Americans’ (112Hz), and the difference is greater between the beginning learners’ group and native
American English speakers.
The results obtained in the present research coincides with Tseng’s, and strongly suggest that a language
learner in general tends to narrow the pitch range as he/she reads or speaks a target language.

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Comparison of Pitch Ranges
100

Ｈｚ

80
60

Japanese
English

40
20
0
A

B

C

X

Y

Subjects

Figure 2. Comparison of pitch ranges

Concluding Remarks
The findings of this study imply that a language learner’ attitude is reflected in prosody such as speech rates,
pauses and pitch ranges when he/she reads a target language. I hope they will be useful for language teachers andresearchers in teaching pronunciation of English, especially prosody and expressiveness.

References
Kanzaki, K. (1996). Some prosodic features observed in the passage reading by Japanese learners of English.
Proceedings, The First Seoul International Conference on Phonetic Sciences, pp. 37-42.
Lieberman, P. (1967). Intonation, perception, and language. M. I. T. Research Monograph No. 38.
O’Connor, J. D. (1973). Phonetics. New York: Penguin Books.
Ohyama,G., S., et. al. (1989). A study on the prosody of the English spoken by Japanese speakers. Onsei gengo
III.
Sugito, M. (1996). Nihonjin no Eigo. Tokyo: Izumi Shoin.
Takefuta, Y. (1982). Nihonjin Eigo no Kagaku. Tokyo: Kenkyusha.
Tseng, C. C. (1996). Intonation of Taiwanese: A comparison of the intonation patterns in L1, IL, and L2. Proceedings, The First Seoul International Conference on Phonetic Sciences, pp. 574-575.

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Appendix: Speech Material
English Passage
One day, Akiko and her mother were on their way downtown to see a movie. While they were waiting for abus, they saw a foreigner. When the bus came, he asked the bus driver something in English. But the driver
couldn’t understand him. Her mother told Akiko to speak to the foreigner in English. He understood her English.
Then Akiko discovered that he was going to see the same movie. She told him that she would guide him to themovie theater. He was very glad to hear that. She was also very happy to speak English with the foreigner.

Japanese Passage
ある日、明子とお母さんは、映画を見に町へ行く途中でした。バスを待っている間に、外国人を見かけました。バスが来た時、彼は運転手に何か英語で尋ねていました。しかし、その運転手は彼の言うことがわからないようでした。お母さんは彼女にその外国人に英語で話しかけるようにと言いました。彼は彼女の英語が理解できました。その時明子は、彼が自分達と同じ映画を見ようとしていると知りました。彼女は映画館に案内しますと、彼に言いました。彼はそれを聞いてとても喜びました。彼女もまた外国人と英語で話ができ、とてもうれしかったのです。

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Some Keys to Moving from Bottom-Up to Top-Down Reading
Shian-jung Chen
National Yunlin University of
Science and Technology, Taiwan
Abstract
Most inexperienced readers know only bottom-up strategies while reading. Such strategies confine themto limited resources such as the text, their grammar skills, and dictionaries accessible to them. This study shows
how to implement ideas from Meaning Triangle, Case Grammar, Meaning Representation, Discourse Analysis,
etc. to reading instruction so that students are more ready to adopt top-down strategies.

Bottom-Up Reading
Most beginning readers work toward the goals of finding the right sense of every word in a text, figuring out
the sentential meaning by identifying sentence structure and putting word senses together accordingly, and finding
the relationships between sentences with the help of transitions. By doing so, they stick to bottom-up models,according to which reading is mainly a process of “breaking the written code and… controlled by textual input andthe reader plays a relatively passive role in the process.” (Harris & Sipay 1985) Readers adhering to bottom-up
models always go from word level to phrases and then to sentence level. Their understanding of a sentence depends
mainly on their understanding of all constituents. They tend to trust dictionaries for word senses. Once encountering a new word or cannot find the right sense, they give up and the comprehension process breaks down. According
to Harris and Sipay (1985), bottom-up reading is essentially “a process of translating graphic symbols into speechduring oral reading or into inner speech during silent reading.” They suggest that passive readers often do not do
active syntactic or semantic processing. They apply listening comprehension skills after oral or silent reading andtheir reading often stops there. However, this is not the case with native speakers. Non-native readers are more
inclined to adopt bottom-up models. The difference is that they depend on translation skills, not listening comprehension skills. They translate each sentence into their native language before any cognitive process can go on. Thatis, translation reading is essentially bottom-up.

Top-Down Reading
The success of bottom-up reading depends heavily on the number of new words and whether a reader’sdictionary skills and grammatical knowledge are good enough. A reader with limited dictionary skills and poor
grammar is doomed to fail if he is reading a text with many new words and complicated sentence structures.
Bottom-up reading confines readers to limited resources. However, if they know how to guess meaning out ofcontext, find the main idea, and apply world knowledge, writing and communication skills to reading, they wouldfind plenty of resources that might be overlooked before. In other words, they need to adopt top-down strategies.
According to Harris and Sipay (1985), “in top-down models, a reader’s prior knowledge and cognitive and linguistic competence play key roles in the construction of meaning.”
It is noted that top-down reading enables readers to get access to more resources than bottom-up reading.
However, if we assume that students understand this and they are willing to adopt the new strategies, there are still
three problems for advocates of top-down strategies: how to change a reader’s old habits, how to help them adopt

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the new ones, and how to help them to make sure that the meaning they construct is the right one. That’s why werecommend that the training of top-down reading start from changing old habits and setting up criteria for selfevaluation.

The Problem of Understanding
For both native and non-native readers, the key problem in reading is that they don’t know whether theirunderstanding is correct or not. After tedious work of sense disambiguation and meaning construction, how do theyknow that they make the right choices and their interpretation of the text makes sense or it is exactly what the author
intends to say? They need some criteria to tell them right from wrong. And this should be the core of reading
training.
The following example shows that a non-native reader in Taiwan misunderstands a passage and his misunderstanding is detected when he is asked to translate the passage. We’ll point out where he makes errors. The
problem is how the student is able to find out himself.
The text: So this lady walks into a grocery store and buys a package of chicken. She takes the chicken
home. When it comes time to cook the chicken, she unwraps the package only to discover thisisn’t just any split breast/drumstick combo. Included in this package of chicken is…a chicken
head.
Romanized Chinese: You3 yi1 wei4 nu3shi4 zou3jin4 yi1 jia1 shang1dian4, mai3 le5 yi1 dai4
zhuang1 de5 ji1rou4, bing4qie3 dai4 le5 hui3jia1. Dao4 le5 zhu3fan4 de5 shi2jian1 ta1 ba3
dai4zi5 da3kai1, ……
Back translation: “There was once a lady went into a store, bought a package of chicken, andbrought it home. When it’s time to cook, she unwrapped the package only to discover what was
included in the package was neither chicken breast nor chicken drumstick. The package inwhich chicken combo was supposed to be packed should contain only a chicken head.”
The major deviation of the student’s interpretation is mistaking ‘an average chicken package that unexpectedly contains a chicken head’ by translating it into ‘a package containing nothing other than a chicken head.’
The student must have missed the specificational meaning (see below) of any in this isn’t just any. It’s common fora student to miss the specificational meaning. We are curious about why the student should be satisfied with sucha translation.
It is understandable that a non-native reader includes translation procession in his understanding process.
It seems that for many non-native readers the understanding process is not completed until the text is translated,silently or not, into his native language. If a non-native speaker needs to translate a sentence into his native language before he is able to understand, we are curious about what happens in a native speaker’s brain while he isreading.
In this study, some guidelines will be given to inexperienced readers in the hope that they can benefit fromplenty of otherwise-neglected resources by adopting top-down strategies in their reading, that they can go beyond
surface-level symbols to get hold of the meaning in concrete terms, and that they can form some criteria for evaluating their understanding.

Meaning Triangle
As Aristotle first observed, “Spoken words are the symbols of spoken words and written words are thesymbols of spoken words.” (On Interpretation). Ogden and Richards (1923) codified the relationships amongwords, objects and concepts as the meaning triangle (Fig. 1).

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CONCEPTsymbolizes

SYMBOLrefers tostands for

REFERENT

Figure 1. Relationship among words, objects and concepts
The left corner of the triangle is the symbol or word, which is the basic unit of language; the peak is theconcept, intension, idea, or sense, which is the element of thinking; and the right corner is the referent, object, or
extension, which is the element of the world.
When we read a sentence, the words in it are just symbols and we need to find out what those words stand forso that we can really get hold of the meaning. Dictionary definitions and their combinations provide us withintensional meaning or not-so-specific possible worlds only. In order to really understand, we need to be able tofind their extensional meaning in the real world or from our imagination so that we will be able to perceive. This is
the central idea on which criteria for the evaluation of understanding should be based.

Meaning Representation
It is commonly believed that meaning is too abstract to be put into words. Since words are only symbols, noutterance of words will be regarded as the real meaning, or the meaning without disguise. Paradoxically, if the
combination of words will never be the real meaning of something, how can we express meaning in words?
Chen (1996) followed the AI tradition to propose a system of language-independent meaning representationthat can be used in the interlingua proposed for an MT system from Chinese to English. In his study, three components are proposed for meaning representation: referential, relational, and specificational.
referential meaning: objects, events, time, place referred to by content words
relational meaning: relationships among referents
specificational meaning: number, definite/indefinite state, tense, aspect, etc.
Take the previous passage for example, the representation is outlined as follows:

Table 1. Represenations from Passage
Referentially

RelationallySpecificationally

Event 1:walking (Lady F :: Store S)

present for past

Object 1:

Lady Fa particular

Place 1:

Store Sany grocery store

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Table 1. Represenations from Passage (Cont’d)Referentially

RelationallySpecificationally

Event 2:buying (F :: Chicken P)

present for past

Object 1:

Lady F

Object 2:

Chicken P

Event 3:

a combo package
taking (F :: P :: Home H)

Object 1:

Lady F

mentioned before

Object 2:

Chicken P

mentioned before

Place 2:Home HF’s home

Chen’s system of meaning representation makes a distinction between intensional meaning and extensional
meaning by pointing out the specifications of referents. It’s an effort to overcome the semantic barrier inherited inlinguistic symbol systems. To define the case relation between an event predicate and its participant roles, Chenborrows ideas from Case Grammar.

Case Grammar
Since its introduction by Fillmore (1968), Case Grammar has been used to represent who do what to whom
expressed in sentences. With the help of specificational and relational markers, the intensions of a predicate and its
participants clearly refer to objects and events in the real or imaginative world. In other words, Case Grammar, in
combination with Chen’s system of meaning representation, can be a useful tool to help bridge the gap between
linguistic symbols and meaning. Teachers can benefit from this because they and their students can start to talkabout meaning in a more concrete sense and this will make reading more goal-oriented.

Writing Techniques
Most inexperienced readers adopt bottom-up strategies and their main concern in reading is to find the rightsense of each word in the physical or mental dictionary. On the word level, they have only dictionaries as theirresources. If any difficulty is encountered on the word level, the ambiguity certainly makes everything on higher
levels more indeterminate. However, almost all words have multiple senses and we often need a context big enoughto help disambiguate. A bigger context means a larger text unit, maybe a clause, a sentence or even larger. The
question here is how a larger unit, say a sentence, whose meaning is still unknown can be a context clue for an
unknown word in it. The solution is: we can always find other helpful resources.
Knowledge in writing is also useful for reading. We know that variety is an important element in goodwriting and a trained writer always sticks to unity, coherence, and development in writing a paragraph. In a structured paragraph, the topic sentence and its supporting sentences repeat the same idea. These are useful resources
for reading comprehension. The same idea in the topic sentence may have a different realization from its repetitionin the supporting sentences. Among the different expressions for the same ideas, we might not know some of them,but it is less likely that they should all new to us, if the text is not too difficult. In other words, such different
expressions are sometimes very reliable context clues.

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Cooperative Principle for Writing
Grice (1975) proposes a general principle, labeled “the cooperative principle”, which conversation participants will be expected to observe. This principle consists of four more specific maxims: quantity, quality, relation,and manner. We believe that writers are also expected to observe a general principle, such as the maxims of relevance, clarity, logical, quality, quantity, consistence, existence etc.
relevance: We expect all details to be relevant to the theme of the text.
clarity: A text should be clearly presented.
logical: If any two parts of the text is in conflict, there must be an explanation, or there must be
something wrong with understanding.
quality: We expect an author well-trained and that he has good writing techniques and achieves goodrhetoric effects.
quantity: Too many repeated words without good reasons is bad. Therefore, a variety of words orphrases expressing a same idea is expected.
consistency: The style or usage should be consistent.
existence: All referents should exist in the real world or at least imaginable.

World Knowledge and Communication Theory
A good writer always has an intended audience in mind. That means he is well aware of his intended reader’sknowledge and he makes use of his old knowledge to convey something new. We call these different frames ofknowledge schemata. A good reader should be able to outline all schemata presented by the author. He always asks
himself what the writer is trying to sell and what specific pieces of knowledge are used by him to make his point.
With this in mind, the reader will go back to the text from time to time to check if he really understands the writer.

An Example of Goal-oriented Top-Down Reading
Bottom-up reading is basically linear or sequential: from words through phrases and clauses to sentences.
Although backtracking occurs in bottom-up reading, it is comparatively rare. Similarly, context clues used by thisapproach are usually expected to be restricted to a local context rather than a global one. However, the maindifference between bottom-up and top-down reading is that the former fails to activate many resources. The reader
notices that some referents repeatedly mentioned, though in different words or phrases, that the writer tries to makehis point out of familiar things (old knowledge), that there is a sequence of events logically connected, and that agood writer is expected to achieve clarity, variety, and consistency in his writing, etc. An example of goal-oriented
top-down reading is given as follows to show how different resources are used to reconstruct meaning:“So this lady walks into a grocery store[lady] <walk> [store]“and buys a package of chicken.

[lady] <buy> [chicken]“She takes the chicken home.

[lady] <take> [chicken] [home]“When it comes time to cook the chicken,[lady] <cook> [chicken]“she unwraps the package[lady] <unwrap> [chicken]“only to discover[lady] <discover> [some event]“this isn’t just any split breast/drumstick combo.

[chicken] <NOT> [chicken comb]“Included in this package of chicken is… a chicken head.”[pack] <include> [head]

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If we read from the top, the maxims of repetition, relevance, consistency, etc. will help us find out thatdifferent expressions are used to represent the same referent and some expressions are closely related. Propositions
reveal not only event referents but also case relations. To specify specificational meaning, we can appeal to grammatical markers, the maxims of logical, quantity, quality, and existence, and other modifiers of content words. The
following listings show how the context and the maxims are able to help a reader to do sense disambiguation forunknown or ambiguous words and achieve the goal of finding extensions for textual expressions:same referents:

lady L <this lady, she, the lady, her>chicken<a package of chicken, the chicken, the package, split breast/drum
stick combo, this freak of meatpacking history>

related referents: <package, combo, meatpacking><chicken, split breast, split drumstick, head><foul, shock, explosion of emotion, freak, nauseated, faints>
If a reader gets these clues and resources, a few unknown or ambiguous words should not keep him fromunderstanding the text. The events are logical and clearly expressed — one lady buys a product, finds it defective,
and has an accident. However, the reader needs to know something about chicken packing and that Americans do
not eat chicken heads and American stores do not sell chicken heads. The point is, if a reader wants to fully
understand a passage and appreciate the humor, he should do top-down reading. Then, he’ll find plenty of resources, ready at hand to help him.

A Contrast
In this section, the back translation of a student’s translation of the same passage shown in the previous
section will be analyzed in terms of where he makes errors and we’ll point out that they are related to bottom-up
reading. The underlined words or phrases indicate errors in reading. And the explanations of the errors follow.

Back Translation of a Student’s Chinese Translation of the Same Passage“There was once a lady went into a store, bought a package of chicken, and brought it home.
When it’s time to cook, she unwrapped the package only to discover what was included in the package
was neither chicken breast nor chicken drumstick. The package in which chicken combo was supposed to be packed should contain only a chicken head.”“Let’s talk about a foul smell, then you can imagine the degree to which it was shocking. You
can also imagine all the emotions that exploded to a full scale at this moment. This lady took a look at
the strange-looking package and she had inside her a feeling of nausea. Then she claimed that her head
hit the kitchen table and then she fainted. At last she was brought to life by a chiropractor.”

Why the errors are made:1.

what was included in the package was neither
chicken breast nor chicken drumstick…should contain only a chicken head

A chicken package containing onlya single head is so unimaginable.
But the student fails to find out.

2.

the strange-looking package

Nothing wrong about strange-looking.

3.

she claimed that her head hit the kitchen
table and then she fainted[terrible sceneàfaintedàbonked thetable] is more likely.

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The chiropractor is not expected tobe there to help.

We find that the reader has difficulty finding the right sense for some words. And he is not aware someevents in his translation are not possible or illogical.

Guidelines for Reading
In this last section, a few guidelines are given as part of the conclusion. They should be helpful for teachers
to help their students move from bottom-up to top-down reading. They also useful guidelines for readers to set up
criteria for self-checking and enhancing their reading ability.
1.

First reading or skimming is needed to get a general idea about a passage.

2.

Unknown words and ambiguity are expected. Context is more reliable than dictionary definitions. Top-down reading gives context a broader sense.

3.

Finding the right sense for each word is important, but it should not be the ultimate goal ofreading.

4.

A passage is expected to be about possible happenings and a writer’s narration, exposition, or
argumentation is expected to be logical and reasonable.

5.

Indeterminacy is normal in reading and we need more resources to resolve it.

6.

Use top-down strategies to explore all available resources. Reading is the implementation of areader’s common world knowledge, linguistic knowledge, communicative competence, reasoning, writing knowledge and so on.

In conclusion, we believe that reading is a parallel cognitive process. Only top-down reading will enable areader to solve problems inherent to parallel processing. To help the students improve their reading, a teacher
should make the reading training more goal-oriented, for example, working toward the goal of finding extensional
meaning so that a more concrete or imaginable world will be visualized for the reader to judge whether it is possible
or not. Furthermore, some criteria are needed to help students acquire the ability to do self-evaluation.

References
Aristotle, n. d. On interpretation.
Chen, S.J. (1996). Analysis of Chinese for English-Chinese Machine Translation. Doctoral dissertation,
Georgetown University, Washington D. C.
Fillmore, C.J. (1968). “The Case for case” in E. Bach & R. Harms (eds.), Universals in linguistic theory (pp. 188). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Einston.
Grice, H.P. (1975). “Logic and Conversation” in P. Cole & J. Morgan (eds.) Speech acts (Syntax & semantics,
Vol.3) (pp. 113-128). New York: Academic Press.
Harris, A.J. & Sipay, E. R. (1985). How to uncrease reading ability, NY: Longman
Ogden, C.K. & Richards, I. A. (1923). The meaning of meaning, NY: Harcourt, Brace and World

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Speech Technologies and Pronunciation Teaching
Veronika Makarova
Meikai University, Japan
Abstract
This paper addresses the problems of pronunciation teaching in Japan, such as native language interference, large classes, lack of specialists and methodological flaws. The presenter sees the solution of these problems in introducing electronic visual feedback, computer corpora and electronic dictionaries with sound files
into a pronunciation class. The author explores how recent innovations in speech technologies allow students toovercome their former limitations. Computerization of Japanese education along with the rapid progress ofspeech technologies provide foundations for the new electronic era in pronunciation teaching.

Introduction
The rapid development of speech technologies, computing power and communications networking provide
fantastic opportunities for computer-assisted teaching of foreign language pronunciation. These opportunities are
becoming more and more intensively used for the teaching of both segmental and suprasegmental aspects of English pronunciation world-wide (Bagshaw, Hiller & Jack, 1993; Hiller & Rooney, 1994; Hiller, Rooney, Vaughan,
Eckert, Laver & Jack, 1994). Teachers in many countries favour electronic aids in pronunciation teaching because
multimedia personal computers are making it possible to present interesting material in a useful interactive way,
they provide higher selectivity in material preparation than other educational means and they ensure valuable
practice, feedback and communication with peers from other parts of the world (Roach, 1995).
Although computer assisted pronunciation teaching has been shown to improve the English pronunciation ofJapanese learners of English (Anderson-Hsieh, 1996; Lambacher, 1996; Akahane-Yamada, Dermott, Adachi,
Kawahara & Pruitt, 1998), in Japan the method still remains a rare research subject rather than a common teachingpractice. The author sees the gross underdevelopment of computer-aided pronunciation teaching in Japan as aconsequence of general problems with pronunciation teaching in this country.

Problems with Pronunciation Teaching in Japan
Japanese English language teachers frequently complain of the difficulties in improving the English pronunciation of Japanese learners. Their pronunciation performance is described as “in the best scenario placing unnecessary strain on the listeners and in the worst critically impeding communication” (Futatsuya & Chick, 1996: 15).
Typically, first-language interference is held responsible for this situation (ibid). It is claimed that since manysounds and sound combinations of English are not found in Japanese, Japanese learners of English have difficulties
in pronouncing them (Kenworthy, 1987). Yet, English has some sounds which are not commonly found in otherlanguages, e.g. /ð, 3:/, and their acquisition is difficult for speakers of ANY other language. Since native language
interference is an obstacle to English pronunciation acquisition for speakers of all other world languages, thesources of poor English pronunciation performance of Japanese learners are to be found not in the Japanese language, but in Japanese English language teaching.
It has been often observed that traditional English language teaching in Japan tends to give preference to thereading, writing and translation skills development over spoken language skills training (Wadden, 1993). The
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aspect which has suffered most from the grammar-translation tilt in Japanese ELT is pronunciation. It is not taught
in high school, and only very few private universities exceptionally offer a course in pronunciation teaching and/or
English phonetics and phonology for English language majors. No institutions in Japan provide pronunciation
training courses or MA degrees in pronunciation for teachers.
There are some other more specific problems with pronunciation teaching in Japan, for example, large
numbers of students in a group, which makes a direct interaction between a teacher and students impossible. Not
enough attention is given to fighting the effects of katakana transcription of foreign loan words, although withproper tuition these effects can be minimized (Makarova, 2000a).
Another major problem lies in the lack of original methodologies and the teachers’ relying on the ‘general
recipes’ made in the ‘center’ (in Philipson’s sense of this word, Philipson, 1996). These ‘universal truths’ firstly
take no account of the specific culturally-based learning needs and orientations of Japanese learners of English,
and secondly, they frequently contain misrepresentations of the linguistic aspects of Japanese-English sound systems interference. For example, Accent and Physical methods ((Messum, 1998; Underhill, 1998) can hardly beapplied to adult learners in Japan where students are known to be very shy ((Doydon, 2000). Some mistaken
assumptions about the Japanese sound system and the difficulties Japanese students encounter while learning
English can be found in Kenworthy, 1998, i.e. a claim that the sound /f/ is not found in Japanese.
The popularity of the communicative method often applied in Japan in its ‘no drills, no separate pronunciation teaching’ paradigm has also been shown to be harmful for pronunciation teaching (Makarova, 2000c)
Since pronunciation teaching is an unpopular area with very few specialists, it is not so surprising thatcomputer-assistant language teaching does not develop adequately in a country with world vanguard speech technologies. The traditional segregation of science (+ engineering) and humanities (+ language teaching) in Japan
contributes to the striking gap between high tech devices available in laboratories and the lack of their applicationsin pronunciation teaching.

What Speech Technologies Offer to Pronunciation TeachingThis section outlines the major directions for applying current advances in speech technologies to pronunciation teaching.

Electronic Visual Feedback, Automatic Scoring, Error Detection and Fluency Assessment
Electronic visual feedback (EVF) provides means of visualizing the acoustic features of the model patternprovided by the native speaker of English, stored in the digital form and retrieved at the moment of practice as well
as of the pattern produced by the learner and their comparison. The model practiced can be either a certain soundin varied context or a syllable, a word (and lexical stress), a word combination (and a phrasal stress), rhythmical
units, intonation units and chunks of spoken texts. By comparing the audio sound and visualized acoustical parameters of his/her speech token with the model ones, the student can attempt to make the closest approximation to themodel pattern. For example, a spectrogram can clearly indicate whether a learner aspirates English /p, t, k/, or not(Lambacher, 1996).
A certain limitation of EVF systems is that the estimation of the proximity of the imitation to the model until
recently has been done either by the teacher or by the student relying more on intuition than on any objective
criteria. The mere existence of the difference in acoustical parameters between the model and its imitation does notnecessarily indicate that the imitation is bad. Due to strong variability of speech acoustics including inter-speakervariability, one native speaker cannot produce two repetitions of the same speech item without a difference in theiracoustic parameters, and no two native speakers can ever produce acoustically identical speech samples. This
makes testing of pronunciation improvement very difficult as well.
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Recent innovations in speech technologies allow to overcome this shortcoming by providing automatic
assessment of pronunciation quality, speech fluency and automatic error detection (Makarova, 2000b) whereby theassessment is based on speech recognition algorithms. Some new speech software products are truly interactive:
they report to the learner not only the location and kind of mistake made, but also give recommendations for its
correction (e.g., CALL products produced within the framework of the Interactive Spoken Language Education,
http://nats-www.informatik.uni… errron/ISLE/public/D14/D14. html.
Including electronic visual feedback into a pronunciation class requires the employment of some speechprocessing packages. About a decade ago, they mostly existed for UNIX operation systems or as very expensive
hard- and software devices (like Kay elemetrics’ Visipitch, or CSL), which made their applications hard. Nowadays, a number of speechprocessing software is available for free on the web. A few examples are given below.
Wavesurfer: http://www.speech.kth.se/wavesurfer
CSLU Speech Toolkit: http://cslu.cse.ogi.edu/tools.htm
Praat: http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat
Electronic visual feedback and automatic scoring allow the teacher to conduct intensive pronunciation practice with an unlimited number of students, which is very important in the Japanese learning environment. Pronunciation teaching sessions can be designed not for “theoretical” students of English but geared specifically towards
the difficulties Japanese students experience with English pronunciation (including katakana transcription, consonant clusters, etc.).

Computer Corpora and Elecronic Dictionaries with Sound Files
Computer corpora are widely used in ELT mostly for studying vocabulary and grammar (Leech, 2000).
Their usage for pronunciation teaching has been less popular simply because most computer corpora dealt withwritten texts, but not with sounds. Nowadays more and more phonetic databases are becoming available. For
example, Japanese Maptask corpus will be released in a few years, and the release of the International Corpus ofEnglish (ICE) is expected this year. ICE is developed by teams of researchers from many countries and it includes
spoken samples from all the English speaking countries, such as Australia, Canada, East Africa, Great Britain,
Hong Kong, India, Ireland, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka and the United States.
More information about the corpus can be found at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/english-usage/ice-gb/index.htm
The release of easily available corpora and databases of sound files will have important consequences for the
ELT not only in Japan, but world-wide.
1.

Pronunciation learning becomes more customized regarding the individual difficulties eachindividual learner is experiencing with foreign language pronunciation. Parsed structures ofcorpora allow the user to perform a search for a particular item, downloade and save files withthis item enabling the user to hear and practice the item he/she is interested in. Weak and strong
forms of English ‘grammar words’, for example, can be searched for and practiced in different
contexts.

2.

Pronunciation learning becomes more customized regarding the accents of English taught tonon-native speakers. Availability of a large amount of speech samples coming from different
regions of the world can re-focus the energy of pronunciation teachers from pointless discussions of which pronunciation model is better, whether British or American Englsih should betaught, whether RP is dead or not, whether it should be called RP, BBC English or snobs’
English into training the learners’ ears to the rainbow of accents of the world Englishes.

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Learners would be able to select, listen to and practice English pronunciation of the region they have special
interest in (for example, a country where they are planning to go on a study-abroad programme. CD-ROM English
dictionaries with sound files will make it possible for foreign learners to listen to the correct pronunciation of a newword, which will help to memorize it and make students less dependent on phonetic transcription.

Communication on the Net
Language teaching exchange programmes between students from different countries have been earlier limited to written texts or video records exchanges. Since international telephone rates are too high, it seldom happened that the voice of the correspondent could be heard ‘live.’ E-mail and web allow nowadays almost instant andcheep ways of passing over relatively large amounts of spoken speech to oversees English language exchange
partners. Some private schools in Korea and the Philippines have already engaged in exchange programmes withlive video and sound transmission of peers’ conversations via Internet. This task tests the phonetic comprehensibility of a learner’s speech and encourages him/her to improve pronunciation.

Online Pronunciation Courses
Although so far too many technical problems prevent online pronunciation teaching courses, they will probably become a reality in the near future since models for such courses outlines have already been developed(Donahue, 1999).

Prerequisites for the Development of Computer-Assisted Pronunciation Teachingin JapanA number of the following recent developments in Japanese education appear to be favourable for the development of computer-assisted pronunciation teaching.

Introduction of English in Elementary Schools
An early exposure to English pronunciation before the critical age will allow less painful and more efficientacquisition of native-like English pronunciation by young Japanese learners.

Computerization of Japanese Education
Japanese ministry of education has allotted a considerable budget for introducing computers into schools for
multiple purposes including English language teaching. It would therefore become possible to have the material
basis for the computer-assisted pronunciation teaching.

More Freedom is Given to Schools
More freedom provided to Japanese schools by the Ministry of Education which used to strictly control
curriculum can allow teachers to include pronunciation teaching into curricula.

Formation of Professional Structures
Although the Japanese Association of Language Teachers does not have a pronunciation teaching special
interest group, these functions are partly performed by the recently formed English Phonetic Association of Japanand Pronunciation and Transcription Association of Japan. Both structures provide opportunities for the professional development and exchange of ideas between pronunciation teachers and put the emphasis on the value ofcomputer-assisted pronunciation teaching.
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Integration of Asian Efforts
Computer-assisted phonetics and pronunciation teaching in Europe have been coordinated over many years
within the framework of ERASMUS and SOCRATES programmes as well as to a lesser degree by IATEFFL
Pronsig (which has its sessions exclusively in the ELT ‘centre’ making it hard for teachers from other parts of theworld to participate). Asian pronunciation teachers had been therefore in isolation until a recent exchange ofphonetic and pronunciation teaching ideas between Japanese and Korean researchers was started by the English
Phonetic Association of Japan and the Phonetic Society of Korea. It is possible to expect that this exchange would
lead to co-operation in computer-assisted pronunciation teaching as well since it is one of the central issues in theconferences held by researchers and teachers from the two countries.
Privatization of Speech Laboratories
Beginning with 2001-2002, a number of Japanese National Research Institutes are undergoing re-structuring
and privatization accompanied by the elimination of the Agency for Integration of Science and Technology. Taking
an optimistic look at the prospects it is possible to expect that in searches for funding, speech laboratories canbecome more attentive to the needs of education, including language teaching in general and pronunciation teaching in particular.

Cultural Factors
Cultural orientations in Japan are favourable to pronunciation teaching since Japanese are known to lovecomputers, playing on the web and TV games. Teachers who have employed EVF in their pronunciation classes
invariably report positive reaction from their students (Lambacher, 1996; Anderson-Hsieh, 1996). Designing pronunciation training exercises as games (as was done by Kay elemetrics for the CSL aimed at teaching pronunciation to hearing-impaired children) can make the subject very popular with Japanese learners.

Implications of Computer-Assisted Pronunciation Learning for Japanese ELT
Wide applications of computer-assisted pronunciation learning can possibly affect Japanese ELT in a few
ways.

The Place of Pronunciation in Japanese ELTThe ability to use computers in a pronunciation class and the tangible improvements in pronunciation with
EVF, computer corpora and databases will make pronunciation classes more popular with students and will consequently raise the prestige of the subject in the Japanese ELT.

The Role of Non-Native Teachers
The role of non-native teachers of English is currently a very widely discussed subject in ELT. Although
non-native teachers are by far in majority, they are frequently looked down upon by students despite the existenceof ELT areas where non-native teachers are superior to native teachers (Lee, 2000; Takada, 2000). Non-native
teachers often have to suffer from derogatory attitudes because of the traces of native language accent remaining intheir pronunciation (ibid). Computer-assisted pronunciation teaching enables non-native teachers to get rid of theinferiority complexes since their role changes from the provider of a pronunciation model (a role they can be
uncomfortable with) to the organizer of the learning process. By giving instruction on the use of the computer
software in the students’ native language and leaving them to practice with the native models a non-native teacher
can get better results than a native teacher.

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The Role of Language Learners and the Choice of Teaching Methods
Computer-assisted pronunciation learning enables and requires a student to take the responsibility for his/her pronunciation progress into his/her own hands. The amount of training, the search for practice materials, thechoice of the variant of English and of the skill to practice can be regulated by the learner depending on theindividual abilities, orientations and preferences. In this way, computer-assisted pronunciation training encourages
active learning methods.

Conclusion
Pronunciation teaching not only in Japan, but world-wide is now in the state of transition, whereby the oldmethods are felt to be inadequate, and the new ones have not been found. Many teachers are feeling the necessityof ‘bridging the gap’ between ‘getting the sounds correct’ and ‘getting the message correct,’ in other words oftransferring pronunciation accuracy into everyday communication (Grant, 1999). Computer-assisted pronunciation teaching is one of the strongest supports in the construction of this bridge.
In Japan, cultural orientations of the learners as well as many other social factors are favourable for the
introduction of computer-assisted pronunciation teaching. Its wide application can help to solve a range of problems with pronunciation teaching as well as improve currently poor English pronunciation performance of Japanese learners of English.

References
Anderson-Hsieh, J. (1996). Teaching suprasegmentals to Japanese learners of English through electronic visualfeedback. JALT Journal, 18(2), 315-325.
Akahane-Yamada,R., McDermott, E., Adachi, T., Kawahara, H. & Pruitt, J. (1998). Computer-based second language production training by using spectrographic representations and HMM-based speech recognition scores.
Proceedings of ICSLP 1998.
Bagshaw, P.C. Hiller, S.M. & Jack, M.A. (1993). Enhanced pitch tracking and the processing of F0 contours forcomputer aided intonation teaching”, Proc. European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (Eurospeech 93), pp. 1003-1006.
Donahue, S. (1999). Teaching pronunciation online. http://fs.broward.cc.fl.us/~sdonahue/teaching-online.html.
Grant, L. (1999). Form to Meaning: Bridges in Pronunciation Teaching. TESOL Matters. http://www.tesol.edu/
isafffil/intsec/columns/199912-sp.html.
Futatsuya K. & Chick, J. (1996). Developing and implementing your own pronunciation assessment program. The
Language Teacher, 20 (8), 15-20.
Hiller, S.M. and Rooney, E.J. 1994. Teaching pronunciation with computer aids, in Asher, R. E. and Simpson, J. M.
Y. (eds), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Pergamon Press, Oxford, (pp. 4528-4535).
Hiller, S.M., Rooney, E.J., Vaughan, R., Eckert, M., Laver, J. and Jack, M.A. (1994). An Automated System for
Computer-Aided Pronunciation, Computer Assisted Language Learning, 7(1), 51-63.
Kenworthy, J. (1987). Teaching English pronunciation. London: Longman.
Lambacher, S. G. (1996). Using electronic visual feedback to teach English segmentals. The Language Teacher,20(8), 22-28.
Messum, P. (1998). The accent method. Speak out! 22, 31-33.

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Lee, I. (2000). Can a nonnative English speaker be a good English teacher? TESOL Matters 10 (1). http://
www.tesol.org/pubs/articles/tm0002-07.html.
Makarova, V. (2000a) . (in press). English pronunciation teaching in Japan. Tsukuba University Foreign Language
Center Research Papers.
Makarova, V. (2000b). Computer and internet resources for pronunciation and phonetics teaching. The Second
Seoul International Conference of Phonetic Sciences, Seoul, July 27-29, 2000. Conference Proceedings, pp.
338-349.
Makarova, V. (2000c). Pronunciation teaching in the 20th century: lessons from the past and perspectives for the
future. English Phonetics (Journal of the English Phonetic Association of Japan), 3, 189-205.
Philipson, R. (1996). Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Roach, P. (1995). Working on the model pronunciation. Language and Communication Review. A STETS publication, 1, ISSN 02118-2688 MITA (P) No 116/07/95.
Takada, T. (2000). Sociopolitical concerns: The social status of L1 Japanese EFL teachers. http://www.tesol.org/
pubs/articles/tm0008-04.html.
Underhill, A. (1998). Sound foundations: Making pronunciation physical. Speak out 22, 27-30.
Wadden, P. A. (1993). Handbook for teaching English at Japanese colleges and universities. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

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Strategic Effect of Shadowing on Listening Ability
Ken Tamai
Kobe Shoin Women’s College, Japan
Abstract
This paper is part of the study that tries to clarify the effect of shadowing as a training method to improve
the EFL learner’s listening comprehension. The aim is to examine the hypothesis that shadowing tends to work
more strongly for the lower level of learners. The data from Tamai (1992)’s longitudinal experiment, in whichshadowing and dictation were compared, was used for the analysis. Both experiment and control groups weresplit into three levels according to the initial listening proficiency. MANOVA was conducted on the results of pre& post listening tests. Interaction was confirmed among the results of shadowing groups; (F(1,84) = 50.55, p <.01). Further analysis confirmed the largest improvement in the lower group, a meaningful improvement in the
middle group and a moderate level of improvement in the higher group. Meanwhile, no such tendency was seenin the dictation groups. Thus shadowing’s bias effect toward the lower group was confirmed.

Introduction
When language teachers discuss listening, instructional focus is usually on understanding the meaning.
Thereby, the methodologies used in teaching listening tend to be designed based on the question of “how much or
how accurately students understand the meaning of the given messages.”
The process of listening comprehension, however, constitutes a variety of processes where different cognitive systems function interactively. Processes here mean temporal storage of the incoming sound, prosodic patternmatching with the phonological database, syntactical analysis and semantic analysis. Some are knowledge-based,some are skill-based, and others are strategy-based. This means listening instruction should be possible tapping
different aspects of the multi-dimensional listening processes. There are many doors to enter, and teachers need toknow which door they are opening for students. This research examines the importance of tapping the strategic
aspect of listening.

Two Different Types of Instructions: Dictation and Shadowing
Dictation is a form of listening task in which students hear the speech, memorize it and then write it down
after a short interval. As Ur (1984) points out, it is useful for teachers because they can check accurate perception
and comprehension as well as spelling. In this sense, dictation is rather meaning-based.
Shadowing, on the other hand is defined as follows: the act or task of listening in which the learner tracks theheard speech and vocalizes it as exactly as possible while listening attentively to the incoming information (Tamai:
1997). The focus is on the accurate reproduction of the sounds, therefore it can be considered as more skill based,or strategy-oriented. Efficacy of shadowing as a tool of teaching listening has been introduced and discussed by
Yashima (1988), Tamai (1992) and Murphy (1995). Tamai confirmed its effect after a longitudinal experiment inwhich two of the above methods were compared. Later, a possible presence of interaction in between the results of
the learners of different listening proficiency was suggested by Yanagihara (1995) and Tamai (1997), but neither
has confirmed it on the data.

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Purposes and Research Questions
The purpose of the research is to examine if there is any difference between the effects of shadowing anddictation. Particularly, the focal point is whether shadowing has a bias effect toward the learners in the lower group.
The possible difference with the effect could underlie the presence of the strategic effect on the ground that theeffect on knowledge would work rather equally onto all the groups.
Hypotheses are as follows.
1.

There are different tendencies within the effects of dictation and shadowing.

2.

There is a tendency for shadowing to work more effectively for learners of lower proficiency
than for those of higher proficiency.

The Study
Procedures
Tamai’s (1992) data was used in this analysis.
Subjects: Ninty high school students (2 classes of 45 students). Although original participants were 94, thedata of the highest students and the lowest students in each respective group were dropped to secure proper balance
between the two groups. ANOVA was conducted on the scores of the pre-test and no significant difference wasobserved; (F(1,84) = 0.027).
Treatment: Shadowing was used as the primary listening exercise to the experimental group and Dictation
was instructed to the control group. Both groups received instruction once a week for 50 minutes. Same listening
materials were used for both groups and the time given to listening was controlled. SLEP (Secondary Level
English Proficiency Test) listening test form 1 was used for both pre & post test to measure the change of thelistening proficiency.

Research Design
For the purpose of examining effects on the learners of different proficiency levels, each group was split into
three levels: upper, middle, lower, according to the results of the pre-test. Three way multivariate analysis ofvariance (MANOVA) was conducted on the data; Method (2) x Grouping (3) x Testing time (2) with repeatedmeasures on the testing time. Scores of SLEP listening test given before and after the treatment are dependent
variables.

The Results
The results of three and one-half months of treatment involving listening are shown in Table 1.

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Table 1. Manes and SD of Pre and Post Tests
Methods

Shadowing

Dictation

LevelsUpper

Middle

Lower

Upper

Middle

Lower

n

11

17

17

17

17

11

Pre-test

49.1

42.1

35.4

47.6

41.9

37.2

SD

(3.6)

(1.3)

(3.2)

(2.9)

(1.3)

(2.4)

Post-test

50.7

47.0

44.7

49.4

42.7

38.2

SD

(2.3)

(5.9)

(5.9)

(4.6)

(4.7)

(6.2)

Graphically, the above results are:Figure 1. Results of the Two Types of Instruction

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Table 2. Multivariate Analysis of Variance
Factors

df

SS

MS

F

1(Method)1

170.468

21.143

8.063**

2(Ss’ level)21438.12521.14368.020***3(Pre/Post)1

451.199

12.03537.489

***

1x2

2

3.498

21.143

.1655

ns

1x3

1

186.100

12.03515.463

***

2x3

2

42.72412.035

3.550

*

1x2x3

2

59.22212.0354.921**

ns * p < 0.05 ** p < 0.01 ***p < 0.001
The result of MANOVA confirmed the presence of interaction, (F(2,84) = 4.92, p < . 01). Figure 1 indicatesthe possible existence of interaction in the shadowing group, while three lines in the dictation group look almost
parallel with each other. As the second step, further ANOVA was conducted on the results of each group. Whileno interaction was observed with the dictation group with (F(1,84) = 2.40, > .10), the results of the shadowing
group presented interaction with (F(1.84) = 50.55, < .01). Thus, the presence of interaction with the effect of
shadowing was confirmed. Now, in order to specify at which level shadowing has a bias effect, examination ateach proficiency level was carried out one by one. Graphics were redrawn for the convenience of the examination.

指導法
Shadowing
指導法
Dictation

Figures 2. Changes in Average Scores

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For the upper level, no interaction was seen with (F(1,84) = 0.0013, > .10). Simple main effect of pre/post
tests showed a meaningful tendency with (F(2.84) = 3.100,0,1 < p < 0.05), indicating a moderate improvement
regardless of the method.
For the middle level, an interaction was seen with (F(1.84) = 6.159, < 0.05). Further examination on the
results of pre/post tests of each group was carried out. While no significant difference was found with the dictationgroup, shadowing group presented a meaningful difference with (F(1.84) = 17.243, < 0.001).
For the lower level, a clear interaction was observed with (F(1.84) 19.358, < .001). Although no significant
difference was seen with the results of the dictation group, a meaningful difference was confirmed with the resultsof the shadowing group:(F(1.84) = 61.78, < 0.001).

Discussion
The presence of interaction between the results of shadowing was confirmed, while no such tendency wasseen in the dictation group. This means that the two methods have different effects tapping different aspects of thelistening ability. Further analyses on the discovered interaction show that shadowing worked more strongly toward
the learners of the lower level than to those in the higher level, while no such tendency was observed in the
dictation .
Hypothesizing acquisition of a strategy or a skill that the learners of the lower level didn’t possess while
those of higher level did before the instruction may account for this phenomenon. Since shadowing is simultaneous reproduction of the incoming sound, the possible acquired skill should be something that improves
subvocalization: the phonological coding skill. The practice of repetition facilitates phonological coding on thearticulatory loop, and the increase of available phonological information leads to better comprehension.
Thus, shadowing is distinctive from other knowledge-based methods in that it taps the strategic aspect of thewhole listening act as phonological coding skill. This explains the emergence of quicker improvement comparedwith other methods. In this sense the continuous training of shadowing has a crucial importance in the development of listening skill.
At this stage, it is not yet possible to specify the characteristics of this particular strategic effect in detail.
Further research that examines the change in various aspects of listening skill is waited.
The author concludes that the results and analysis suggest the following tendencies.
1.

Shadowing and dictation work on different aspects of listening abilities.

2.

Shadowing presents a bias effect towards the lower level of EFL learners.

3.

It is considered that learners at lower levels have acquired some new listening skill which thoseof the higher levels already have.

4.

It is considered that shadowing works strongly on the strategic aspect of listening.

References
Baddeley, A. (1986). Working memory. New York:: Oxford University Press.
Baddeley, A. (1990). Human memory-theory and practice. Cambridge: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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Futatsuya, K. (1994). Sagyokioku to chokikioku tono renkei purei niyoru daini gengoshori, gakushu, shutokukatei
nitsuite. Paper presented at the meeting of the JELES.
Futatsuya, K. (1999). Oshiekata ga kawaru, wakaru-ninchi shinrigaku no doukoukara. Gakugei Tosho.
Hulme, C. & Mackenzie, S. (1992). Working memory and severe learning difficulties, East Sussex: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.
Lambert, S. (1988). A human information processing and cognitive approach to the training of simultaneousinterpreters. In Hammond, Deanna L. (ed.) (pp. 379-388).
Murphy, T. (1995). Conversational shadowing for rapport and international language acquisition. Paper presented at the 6th International University of Japan Conference on SLR in Japan.
Osaka, N. (1997). Noh to ishiki. Asakura-shoten.
Osaka, N. (1998). Yomi, noh to kokoro no johoshori. Asakura-shoten.
Rost, M. (1991). Listening in action. Hertfordshire: Prentice Hall.
Saito, S. (1997) Oninteki sadokioku ni kansuru kenkyu. Kazama.
Schweickert, R. & Boruff, B. (1986). Short-term memory capacity: Magic number or magic spell? Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 12(3), 419-425.
Tanaka, S. (1995). Supi-chi no gengo shinrigakuteki moderu. Kazama-shobo.
Tamai, K. (1992) The effect of follow-up on listening comprehension. STEP Bulletin, 4, STEP.
Tamai, K. (1997). Shadowing no koka to chokai process niokeru ichizuke. Current English Studies, 36, Nihon Jiji
Eigo Gakkai.
Ur, P. (1984). Teaching listening comprehension. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yanagihara Y. (1995). Eigo choukairyoku no shidohouni kansuru jisshoteki kenkyu. Language Laboratory, 32.
Yashima, T. (1988). Tsuuyaku kunrenno eigokyouiku heno ouyou i-shadowing. Eigaku. Heian Jogakuin University.

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Streaming Audio And Video—The End of the Traditional Language Lab—
Otmar Foelsche
Dartmouth College, U. S. A.
Abstract
Digital Services will replace traditional services in language resource centers within the next decade.
The conversion of analog audio and video materials and the distribution of the resulting digital data via servers
and networks to LANs and WANs has been started in many institutions. The “streaming” and “file-shared”
delivery of audio and video makes the simulation of the traditional language resource center on the network
possible. The speaker will present Dartmouth’s approach to the new technology and provide details about thecomplete digital lab.

Discussion
The “traditional” language lab has been with us for more than two generations. Its basic functions, playbackof a master track, recording of a student's voice, and successive playback of master and student for comparison
purposes have been found useful in the acquisition of second languages even with the many changes in methodologies of instruction that took place during the last fifty years.
“Traditional” language labs have also become enhanced and more effective over the years through the exploration and refinement of the technology. The last ten years have seen more changes and refinements than the periodof the preceding 40 years. Vendors have attempted a combination of mechanical and digital design to provide
functionalities that had been asked for by instructors and learners for many years. Among them repeated andprecise access to specific points on an audio tape, simplified user interfaces, better interaction between consoles
and groups of users, improved monitoring capabilities and more.
“Traditional” language labs also used to be the liberal arts college's claim to “high tech” instructional facilities—often prominently printed in college brochures showing smiling instructors and students learning languages
in a breeze by assimilating and digesting in laboratory environments. Nowadays computer labs decorate the pagesof glossy college brochures for similar “pr” purposes. We need to remind ourselves that language learning andteaching can be assisted by technologies of all kinds. This assistance can be successful, if its function is clearly
understood and implemented. Listening, speaking, reading, and writing are the four areas of highest concern toinstructors and learners and the “traditional” language lab's role in these areas was—I believe—never explained ina satisfactory manner.
I have a suspicion that very few instructors understood the role of the language lab clearly and never madeany real attempts to integrate the lab in their courses in ways that were meaningful and useful to their students. We
have seen many language labs with enormous amounts of materials operating completely independent of classroom
instruction—with learners simply picking materials or asking for materials to check their usefulness. This way,learners used the language lab very efficiently—especially when working indiividually.
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Success of a language lab, we can assume, depends very much on the types of activity, on its pace, and on its
relevance to classroom or individual instruction. At Dartmouth College we have had some islands of computerassisted language instruction—obviously text-based—since about 1979. Its usefulness was never demonstrated
through scientific investigation. But the fact that students (without being asked) are still doing some of the exercises of what is often called the “drill and kill” type is indicative that students believe in their usefulness. With theadvent of a campus-wide network in 1983 and the introduction of the Macintosh computer for every student andevery instructor, the first possibilities for providing sound and moving images via the network was first discussed
in 1987 but it remained a dream until opportunities for first implementations arrived in the early nineties. We saw
QuickTime videos in stampsized windows for the first time in 1989. We were obviously taken by these technologies and their potential for improving and enhancing language instruction. In 1990 we wrote our first big proposal
and, only ten years later, in the year 2000 we are running what we call “parallel technologies” with a complete“real” analog lab as well as a “virtual” lab providing streaming services and file services for instructors and learners.
Our traditional technologies include audio cassettes, video cassettes, and laserdiscs. The new technologies
have brought computers, CD-ROMs, compact audio disks, and DVD disks into our facilities. Most of the these
media “containers” can be replaced by streaming media, if we understand clearly what streaming media can do andwhat they cannot do.
Those of you who have had some experience with streaming media already know that it takes a little while toconnect from a client to the server and receive a stable stream. This connect time can range from 5 seconds to about
12 seconds. In other words, if you click on the button, it will take that time to deliver stable sound or video. This is
not a problem when streaming audio or video replaces delivery from an audio cassette, or a video cassette orsimilar sources. This turns into a great problem in interactive applications where the user expectation is different
and assumes instant delivery of media upon touching a button on the screen.
Keeping this fact in mind, streaming audio and streaming video will not kill the traditional language lab but
augment it very nicely in areas that require delivery of video as well as audio in larger segments that do not require
instant interactivity.
But not so fast, not all streaming services are the same, and some streaming services are not necessarily
better or worse than others, but some streaming services are more flexible than others.
We gambled on Apple's QuickTime technology, assuming that this technology was so good that it would
definitely survive the predicted downfall of the company. Well, the company did not fade away and QuickTime isvery much alive and very much in use. The QuickTime technology makes it possible to put one file on the serverand serve it as streaming media while simultaneously using the same file for those clients who need instant access
via file sharing. Serving files via file sharing does increases bandwidth, but in a good 10BaseT environment, this is
not a problem.
In other words, we are talking about a replacement of traditional analog services with digital services delivered to a lab as well as to classrooms, laboratories, and dormitory rooms. In our implementation of these services
we were guided by a number of expectations and requirements that would establish not only similar but improved
services at a lower the cost. Among these were:1.

The promise of access around the clock to most audio and video materials—circumventing thelimited opening times of the language resource center.

2.

The promise of high reliability of digital services through server redundancy and archiving.

3.

The promise of equal if not superior audio quality. Our users had been complaining for years
about generational deterioration. Digital services would allow us to consistently maintain at

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least the quality of the tape masters provided by publishers or of our own digital audio recordings.
4.

The promise of precise access to sections of the tape. Language tapes are often 30 minutes longand precise acces to certain sections—despite mechanical or electronic “bookmarking” on certain lab machines—is at least inconsistent. Editing these tapes into separate audio files permits
students to access exercises in accordance with their workbooks precisely and consistently.

5.

The promise of multi-platform delivery. Our network serves PCs and Macintoshes at a ratio of
about 50/50. A solution had to be found that allowed us to serve both typs of clients without
adjustments to their machines or adjustments to our files on our servers.

6.

The promise of future compatibility. Digitizing existing analog materials takes time and costs
money. This is an investment that can’t be repeated every other year for a change in file formats.
We had to be very careful in selecting file formats that promised conversion possibilities for
future formats. This is somewhat of a gamble, because even today we can’t be absolutely certain that our files will always be compatible, upgradeable, and convertible. (We learned thislesson at the beginning of our production when we had to redo close to 4000 files because of a
mistake in processing.) Industry standards of today are not necessarily the industry standards oftomorrow! We decided for Apple’s QuickTime container standard, primarily for reasons of cost
and technical promise. The server code (Darwin) is free and can be compiled for Linux, Unix,
Windows NT/2000, as well as for OSX. The minimal client (QuickTime Player) is also free for
PCs as well as for Macs. In addition, Microsoft’s MediaPlayer works equally well as a client.
The only drawback at the moment is the inability of the server to handle MPEG-encoded materials. (Rumor has it that Apple will release an update of the Darwin code in October of 2000.)

7.

The promise of distance education. My institution is not involved in distance education. But a
project of these dimensions should not be conducted outside the mainstream. We kept an eye on
network delivery not only locally but via the internet. We discovered early on that audio delivery is no big issue, since it does not require much bandwidth. We also experimented with video
delivery and decided that we should not lower the quality of our delivery for the internet. Instead, we would wait for better compression and delivery methods while continuing with highbandwidth LAN delivery at 150 to 180 kilobytes.

8.

No “but's” and no “if's” we committed ourselves to an implementation of services that would befully transparent to the users. When we first opened up the service, we provided the complete
selection of language tapes that were accessible via analog services in the languge resouce
center.

9.

The promise of complete elimination of analog services. The only issue that prevents us from
eliminating the analog services at this moment is one piece of missing software—the precise
simulation of the traditional lab cassette machine that allows simultaneous playback of masterand record track. This piece of software is in development.

10.

The promise of higher cost-effectiveness of digital services. This is a complex issue, sincedelivery is accomplished beyond the physical restraints of a language resource center. The
eventual phase-out of cassette machines and the phase-in of computers will reduce costs. Storage space can be dramatically reduced by using digital media for storage (CD-ROMs). Servers
do not represent a huge initial investment. Huge hard drives last about five years and can be
replaced within predictable schedules and budgets. Most of the cost is actually assumed by theend user through his/her investment in a personal computer. There is, of course, the cost of the
network and its maintenance—but that is part of the institution’s global infrastructure investment and the use of it by the clients of a language resource center is probably minimal whencompared to other disciplines.

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11.

The upgrading of personnel. The times of high speed cassette copying are over. The staff
of language resource centers needs to be able to handle all aspects of digitizing, server
maintenance and more. There is a need for retraining personnel or coming to terms with sharing personnel and resources across the campus. When we began our implementation of digital
services we made our needs known and collaborated and cooperated whenever and wherever
possible.

12.

The end of a language resource center as a space for languages only. More than 50% of themachines in our lab are computer workstations. These stations are general purpose stations thatcan be used for all kinds of activities in addition to language-learning activities. Early on wechanged our philosophy towards accepting all students and faculty into this lab. We do handle
some of the needs of film studies, art history, communications, and drama. We cooperate withother service providers on campus when it comes to availability or lack of server space.

13.

The promise of better space utilization. We realized early on that users of the language resource
center would have different demands on the center than our former beginning and intermediate
language students who just worked with audio tapes. Now we see the sophisticated user who
asks for specific materials, CD ROM packages, assistance with word processing in LCTLs etc.
We have gained space from eliminating audio cassette stations. But we have filled this spacewith computer workstations. We could theoretically get by with less space now, but this is
undesirable in our situation.

14.

The promise of a significant impact on teaching and learning. Students have become heavy
users of the network based materials. Attendance in the physical lab has dropped to about one
third of our former numbers. But we have not lost these students. When we check the server
logs we see students working or listening all the time including during the night as well as
during the day. Instructors who teach in electronic classrooms are catching on to the fact thatthey can bring up audio and video during their classes in an instant. This has changed many
instructors’ attitudes towards our materials to the effect that they 1) are beginning to realize theusefulness of them and 2) are beginning to hold students accountable for the work they do overthe network. We’ll probably have to wait a few years to gather real data.

The Production of Materials
Time does not permit to go into great detail about our production. We started using off-the-shelf software andstandard equipment from day one. For sound production we used a standard Macintosh with SoundEdit Software.
This type of software can record in various formats in stereo and in mono and allows easy editing of sound files.
Easy editing in this case means trimming off the blank noise up front and at the end of each file. SoundEdit also
allows us to normalize our files as to their db level. (Mass-produced publishers' audio cassette tapes are sometimes
very poor!) We recorded in compact audio disk quality. We saved files in QuickTime format and compressed with
Sound Converter using the IMA compression. That brings the file size down to 5k per second for mono and about
l0k for stereo. These files are playable on both platforms. Today the process is simplified. We still use SoundEdit,
save as QuickTime, and then “hint” and compress the file through the “Export” choice of QuickTime Pro. The
resulting file is fully compatible and can be mounted on all servers, including the QuickTime streaming server(Darwin).
The production of digital video is more complex. In this area the technology is still evolving and in 1997
there were not too many choices except for MPEG 1 video at reasonably quality and QuickTime video with Cinepac
producing results that were not acceptable for our purposes. Another complicating factor was (and still is) theinability of the QuickTime streaming server to handle MPEG files. We tried the Silicon Graphics Cosmos server—
but the promised client for the Macintosh was never delivered. So we gave up, opting instead for “file-served”

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MPEG video files for the time being. We tested and discovered that we could handle at least 15 simultaneousclients on both MediaPlayer and QuickTimePlayer on different platforms—and that was enough for our purposes.
Today's situation is different. Sorenson encoded video can be served as streaming video from the QuickTime
server to both platforms and allows lower bit rates than MPEG at very good quality and is better and easier to edit.
We capture video from all analog sources with a Sony Media Converter box connected via FireWire to a Macintosh
G4 machine running Final Cut Pro. The resulting huge file is compressed and processed with Media Cleaner Pro
and then moved to the QuickTime server. Production time is between 20 to 30 hours for one hour of video! Final bit
rates are around 150 - 180 kilobytes per second.

The Delivery of Materials
We did not want to invest into a proprietary systems at great cost. We began with off-the-shelf AppleShare,NT, and OSX servers, and added a Linux Server a little later. We upgraded our NT Server to Windows 2000. Allservers were configured by us. Servers are connected to the network via a switched 100BaseT into the backbone.
Today we are running three servers to provide 1) web delivery (OSX), 2) Mac/PC file sharing delivery (AppleShare
IP/6.3, and 3) Mac/PC file sharing delivery (Windows 2000). This gives us triple redundancy.

Backups of Materials
All our materials are on duplicate CDs that allow us to restore the server fairly quickly. We use two 8x speed
burners and purchase CD media in bulk. Only the system components are backed up on a regular schedule.

Monitoring
We have monitored up to 70 simultaneous clients on our two main servers. The usual server load is between
10 and 20. Peak Times are in the middle of the night and early in the morning. Users are equally divided between
in-lab users and outside (dormitory users.).

Management
Our servers contain fairly consistent directories for the individual languages with sub-directories for audio,
video, and “other” files. Uploading of data is accomplished via the network from production machines or via CDROM from the archive. Part of the web server (OSX) is visible as an AppleShare partition and also very easily
handled from any Macintosh or PC (AppleShare IP 6.3 is compatible). The directories (see Fig. 1 and 2) are rebuilt
automatically after entry of a very short line of code in the terminal window of the server machine.

Location And User Interface
For the last four years we have kept a consistent naming and location practice for our services on the network. (Dartmouth has more than a 100 zones in its network!) Freshman who buy their computers through theDartmouth store will find an alias (“shortcut” in PC-lingo) on their machines when they first start it up in their dormrooms. The alias will take them to a place on the server that has a list of all languages. After that they are on their

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own. The student assistants in the language resource center are also capable of sending this alias via email to users
who believe that they have problems. This alias will send students directly to what is visible in Figure 1 – filesharing services delivered via AppleShare. The Windows interface is similar.

Figure 1. List of available languages
Students who want to use the streaming services via a web interface are given an audio URL and a video
URL. The interfaces are provided in Figure 2—for audio and in Figure 3—for video.

Figure 2. Audio interface

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Figure 3. Video interface

Restricting Access
Copyright permissions sometimes require us to provide passwords and/or restrict the number of simultaneous users for certain types of materials—particularly video materials. We have not found the perfect solution for
this. The main reason for this is the multi-platform issue that makes it difficult to issue ID’s and passwords that are
totally transparent to users of Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000 and the Macintosh OS. Our present solution is cumbersome and requires students on PCs to log in with special IDs and passwords.

Summary
Our experience has demonstrated that the end of the traditional lab has not arrived yet—but we are very
close. Technology will probably solve the current delays in the delivery of streaming media, and technology will
also provide us with a perfect simulation of our audio cassette machine. At that point we can safely move on andkeep at least one of our old lab machines in a glass case next to a replica of the Rosetta Stone!

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A Student-Centered Multimedia Explorationof Code Choice in Indonesia *Paul Black
Northern Territory University, Australia

Zane Goebel
La Trobe Univeristy, Australia
Abstract
This paper presents a proposal for a multimedia approach to supporting the learning of how social andcultural meanings are conveyed through making appropriate choices in both colloquial varieties of Indonesianand Indonesian regional languages. Segments of Indonesian television programs can be selected as quasiauthentic materials to illustrate regional uses of Indonesian and local languages in a wide range of common
situations. The materials would be designed to enable learners to access and interact with the material in a
number of ways, ranging from simply viewing them with or without written transcriptions and sociocultural
explanations, to such tasks as selecting the appropriate response at pauses in the playing of these video clips.
The material would thus lend itself to learner-managed study, while also being substantial enough to provide aregular component of beginning, intermediate and advanced courses in Indonesian.

Introduction
Hey, gang, how ya doin’? Hey, look: I got somethin’ to tell ya today. For starters, this ain’t the way to start atalk at an international conference, hey.
Part of communicative competence in a language is being able to use registers appropriately, i.e. to choose
the right sort of language to suit the situation. We’re expected to talk in a relatively formal and academic register at
a conference, for example, but if we tried to talk this way to our friends, they’d probably find us distant and boring.
To be competent in Japanese one needs to master even more striking differences in speech levels and how they areused, including such intricacies as how taxi drivers and fish mongers tend to be less polite to their customers thanbank clerks and car salesmen (Mizutani & Mizutani 1987).
The situation is even more complicated in such multilingual countries as Indonesia, where many varieties oflanguage are used in everyday interaction (see e.g. Kartomihardjo, 1981; Wolff & Poedjosoedarmo, 1982; Anderson, 1983; Zurbachen, 1984; Sneddon, 1990). There is a national language, of course — Bahasa Indonesia, or
simply Indonesian — and of course it is widely taught and widely used. However, standard Bahasa Indonesia is notreally all one needs to communicate with people in Indonesia. For example, recent research by Goebel (in preparation) has found that Indonesians rarely use standard Indonesian for ordinary social interaction. For some purposes
they use non-standard, or colloquial, Indonesian, but to develop close relations with people from a particular area
it is also important to try to use the local regional language as far as possible. After showing you an example of how
This paper is a revised version of a project proposal for a national teaching development grant submitted by
the authors in 1999 to the Committee for University Teaching and Staff Development (CUTSD). The authors wish
to thank Dr Debra Hoven of the University of Queensland for her kind feedback and suggestions on this earlier
proposal.
*

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this works we’ll then go on to suggest how a computerised multimedia program might be developed to help bolster
the sociolinguistic competence of Indonesian learners in this area.

Code Choice in Indonesia
Most Indonesians are familiar with how regional languages play a significant role in everyday communication in Indonesia; it’s part of their communicative competence. This doesn’t necessarily mean they are fluent inmany regional languages themselves, but certainly they can appreciate the significance of their use. You can see
this by watching Indonesian television programs, for example, since these often involve the use of regional languages along with standard and non-standard Indonesian.
As a specific example, let’s consider an episode from the Indonesian television program None, roughly‘Missy’. This program is set in Bandung, in West Java, where the regional language is Sundanese. At the beginningof one episode, Cipoa or ‘Con Artist’, a woman seeking a house to lease responds to an advertisement in the paper
and arrives at the house in a taxi. When she tries to pay the driver she pretends to have only a very large denomination note, and the taxi driver can’t make change for it. Accordingly she goes to the front door of the house, and she
has the following exchange with the young woman who answers the door, who she thinks is a maid but who in fact
has just inherited the house from her grandmother:
visitor:Ada orangnya nggak sih di situ? Heh! Is anyone there or not? Heh!

owner:

Ya.

visitor:Ada orangnya nggak di situ?

owner:

Ada. Yes there is.

visitor:

Panggil, eh. Call [the house owner] eh.
Ada uang kecil nggak?

Have
you got any change?

owner:

Ha? Ada kamar kecil?
Ada tu di dalam,masuk aja.

What? Is there a bathroom?
Yeah there is one inside,
come inside.

Yeah.
Is anyone there or not?

This exchange is entirely in Indonesian, although not entirely in standard Indonesian: the words in italics are
non-standard or colloquial expressions. This is an appropriate choice of language considering that these two women
have just met. After the visitor has gone inside, however, the owner notices the taxi driver and realises that he is an
old friend of the family, and he also recognises her. They call out to each other, and with great excitement they havean exchange that includes quite a lot of Sundanese, as shown in bold face below:
driver:Neng Dewi?

Miss Dewi?

owner:

Mang? Heh! Mang?

Uncle? Huh! Uncle?

driver:Neng Dewi. Neng!

Miss Dewi. Miss!

owner:

Mang? Mang! Mang...

Uncle? Uncle! Uncle...

driver:Ini teh Neng Dewi téa?

You’re Miss Dewi aren’t you?

owner:Ya Mang.

Yes Uncle.

driver:Euluh euluh euluh mani sudah
besar begini ah;

Gee gee gee wow you’realready grown up;

masih inget ka Mang coba, he.

do [you] still remember Uncle, try[and remember].

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owner:

Ya masih atuh ini teh Mang Mangkéheula kéheula kéheula kéheula,Mang,... Mang Ucup

Yeah of course you [are] Uncle,
Uncle, hang on, hang on, hang on,
hang on, Uncle,... Uncle Ucup.

driver:Wah ketut damang Neng?

Yeah how are you Miss?

owner:

Saé Mang.

Very well, Uncle.

Notice the way Sundanese is being used here: aside from the address forms neng and mang, translated as‘Miss’ and ‘Uncle’ respectively, there are some interjections — the ‘gee gee gee wow’ part and kéheula ‘hang on’— and an ordinary greeting. It doesn’t really matter if the television audience fully understands the Sundanese —and indeed, the dialogue shifts back into Indonesian, with only the occasional Sundanese expression, as they needto understand it. What is important here is that the audience can appreciate how this shift into the local language
signals familiarity. This is also obvious from the action in this scene, with the owner of the house running down thesteps almost as if to embrace the taxi driver (she doesn’t, of course), but it would be incongruous for them to beusing standard Indonesian as she did this. It would be like effusively greeting a long lost friend with something as
stuffy as, ‘How very pleasant to renew our acquaintance!’

A Multimedia Approach to Code Choice
As important as sensitivity to code choice is to Indonesian learners, there are currently few resources forteaching it. For this purpose audio-visual materials are especially valuable, since neither print nor the individual
teacher can hope to provide adequate examples of the range of interactions learners might be exposed to. Even so,
few of the audio-visual materials available for Indonesian provide a good idea of how Indonesian is actually spoken
in conjunction with regional languages; see Goebel and Black (in preparation) for a survey.
As you saw earlier, however, Indonesian television is a ready source of examples of such interactions, and infact, Goebel (1996) has already drawn on such television programs for the teaching of Indonesian sociolinguistics.
Of course, Indonesian soap operas and situational comedies may not be fully authentic representations of how
Indonesians interact: they are acted out especially for the benefit of Indonesian speakers in the television audience.
Even so they go some ways towards approximating authentic texts that...require participants to respond with behaviors that are socially appropriate to the setting, thestatus of the interlocutors, the purpose, key, genre, and instrumentalities of the exchange, and thenorms of interaction agreed upon by native speakers. (Kramsch, 1993, p. 178)
At the same time they are, of course, authentic representations of what Indonesians see on television; they
are thus authentic materials in the sense of discourse “created to fulfil some social purpose in the language community in which it was produced” (Little & Singleton, 1988, p. 21) or in the sense of “any material which has not been
specifically produced for the purposes of language teaching” (Nunan, 1989, p. 54). Furthermore, the fact that they
are meant to be intelligible to Indonesian speakers certainly makes them more accessible to Indonesian learners
than if they depended more heavily on a knowledge of regional languages.
Such television programs could be put to use in various ways; for example, they could be shown and discussed in a classroom, or they could be kept in a video library for self study. However, their value can be greatly
enhanced by using information technology to allow them to be accessed and manipulated in a variety of ways. This
freedom in how the materials can be accessed is especially important if we agree with Lian and Lian (1997) that it’sreally up to learners to make sense of the materials, and thus control must be in their hands. We thus envisage
creating a multimedia database that follows principles explicated by Hoven (1997, section 1.3.1):...the learner using the package is allocated the major share of control, with the software package taking on more of the role of resource provider. In this context, the software provides the frameA Student-Centred Multimedia Exploration [Oral Presentation]

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work for this allocation of control by structuring and presenting the available language learning resources in a manner that is easy for the learner to navigate, while at the same time providing theinformation necessary for the learner to make informed decisions about her or his learning path.
An example of commercial software that tends to embody these principles, if with only limited multimedia
capabilities, is LanguageNow!, which includes a database engine that can be used to access language lesson material in a variety of languages as well as in a variety of ways (see Black, 2000, sect. 2). In addition to many choices
provided by the menus and buttons — perhaps too many choices to be easy to navigate at first — it also provides
extensive guidance screens that learners can call up if they want advice on different ways to approach the materials.
For practical reasons such extensive guidance screens are probably best in the learner’s first language. To promote
language learning, however, we would want menu choices to be in Indonesian, with an option that holding the
cursor over the text for a couple of seconds would produce the English translation.
As another matter of principle, it would of course be desirable for our database to include the whole of eachtelevision program, so that learners would have the option of viewing them as wholes as well as of accessing
particular scenes within them; see Oller (1983) for how a good story line can enhance language learning. However,to expose learners to a variety of situational contexts, we would want to draw examples from a wide range ofprograms, and currently it may not be feasible for the database to include many hours of complete programs. In any
case, simply to watch an entire program through in its normal sequence, at least, would not require the flexibility inaccess that a computerised database could provide.
As a final principle, we would want the material to be easily accessible to the largest audience possible, andthus we would want to rely on formats commonly used on the World Wide Web, which are accessible from mostcomputer platforms. For convenience, of course, the materials could be made available on CD-ROM and/or DVD,
whether or not through computer networks as well.

Program Design
We are thus thinking in terms of a database of video clips selected from Indonesian television programs toillustrate how Indonesian is used with regional languages in a variety of common situations. The opening menus
could first allow the video clips to be accessed by speech function, type of social relationship, region within
Indonesia, and/or level of difficulty. For example, the menu for speech functions could allow users such options as
the following, where the optional, pop-up English translation is shown in parentheses:•

Menyampaikan permintaan (Asking favours)•

Menyampaikan permintaan maaf (Apologizing)•

Menyampaikan terima kasih (Expressing gratitude)•

Menyampaikan pujian (Flattering)•

Menyampaikan perasaan (Showing feelings)•

Penyapaan (Greeting)•Penyelesaian percakapan (Ending a conversation)

Upon selecting a particular video clip the learner could be given such choices as the following (here we’ve
suppressed the Indonesian in favour of the English):1.

View the video clip with or without written transcription

2.

View the written transcription with or without English translation

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3.

Read an explanation in Indonesian or in English

4.

Interact with the video clip

5.

View a related video clip differing in (a) type of relationship, (b) region, or (c) level of difficulty.

The first three provide various ways for the learners to familiarise themselves with the video clip: they could
start by viewing it, and if they should need help they can call up a transcription, translation, and/or an explanationof the social factors behind the choices of language in the clip. As for option 5, it enables learners compare one clip
with others that differ in terms of the parameters indicated.
Option 4 can provide various ways of interacting with the videos. In order to cater for relative beginners
these could include such basic options as having the video clip pause to allow learners to identify what they havejust heard, e.g. by selecting the correct transcription, or perhaps by unscrambling a transcription that gives thecorrect forms in the wrong order. Such tasks help promote language acquisition because they call attention todetails of language form (see e.g. Long, 1991).
Such tasks as the above don’t focus explicitly on questions of code choice, although by helping students
master the language involved they should also help promote familiarity with the way language is being used.
However, other tasks could be devised to bring out aspects of code choice more explicitly. In particular, the video
could be paused while the learner is given a choice of what the next speaker is most likely to say. For example, todraw again on the first exchange we presented from the Indonesian program None, the video might pause after thevisitor says Ada orangnya nggak sih di situ? Heh! (i.e. Is anyone there or not? Heh!). The learner can then be asked
which of the following the other woman is likely to use in reply:
1.

Enya.

2.

Ya.

3.

Sumuhun.

4.

Inggih.

Perhaps even before making a choice the learner could also request an explanation of how the responses
differ; in the above case all the forms mean ‘yes’, but (a) is in low or familiar Sundanese, (b) is in Indonesian, (c)is in polite, respectful Sundanese, and (d) is in polite, respectful Javanese. The fourth choice is obviously wrong in
the Sundanese context, but should the woman reply in Indonesian or Sundanese, and if the latter, at what level ofpoliteness?
Although this task is presented in written form above, it could also be presented through a set of buttons thatwould play oral versions of the alternative responses. These would be spoken by a voice different from that actuallyused in the video clip — it wouldn’t be feasible to seek out the original actors — but that has the advantage of
exposing learners to alternative pronunciations of the same expressions. To ask learners to select among spoken
alternatives not only reinforces their oral language listening abilities, but in addition it allows occasional alternatives that differ only in prosody, such as intonation contour and stress, which would not be obvious from written
forms of the languages involved.

Conclusion
In conclusion, we hope we have convinced you of the importance of helping language learners become
familiar with code choice, whether simply what register to use in what situation, as is typically sufficient for
English, or even the significance of choosing among different languages, as is important in Indonesia. As for how
to familiarise learners with such things, we advocate putting them in control of a multimedia database that can be
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accessed and used in a variety of ways, according to their needs. The use of such materials should help them
become more independent learners as well as help them become more aware of appropriate ways to react to language use in a broad range of interactional contexts.

References
Anderson, E. E. (1983). The meaning of variation in Indonesian. NUSA, 15, 1-26.
Black, P. (2000). The rosetta stone and language now! — A review of some language learning software. [on-line]
Available: http://www.ntu.edu.au/education/csle/research/ls/ls0.html.
Goebel, Z. (in preparation) Communicative competence in Indonesian: Code choice in inter-ethnic interactions in
Semanang. Ph.D. thesis for the Faculty of Education, Northern Territory University, Darwin.
Goebel, Z. (1996). EAL521: Indonesian in context [distant education package]. Darwin: Faculty of Education,
Northern Territory University.
Goebel, Z. & Black, P. (in preparation). Language variation in Indonesia: A student-centred multimedia exploration of the functions of Indonesian vis-á-vis regional languages.
Hoven, D. (1997). Improving the management of flow of control in computer-assisted listening comprehension
tasks for second and foreign language learners. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Queensland.
(Also available: http:// jcs120. jcs. uq. edu. au/ ~dlh/ thesis/.)Kartomihardjo, S. (1981). Ethnography of communicative codes in East Java. (Pacific Linguistics, ser. D, no. 39).
Canberra: Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.
Kramsch, C. J. (1993). Context and culture in language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lian, A. & Lian, A. (1997). The Secret of the Shao-Lin monk: Contribution to an intellectual framework for
language-learning. ON-CALL May: 2-19. (Also available: http:// education. canberra. edu. au/ ~andrewl/
mlapl/ shaolin/ psupres2. htm.)
Little, D. G. & Singleton, D. M. (1988). Authentic materials and the role of fixed support in language teaching:
Towards a manual for language learners. Dublin: Trinity College Centre for Language and Communication
Studies.
Long, M. H. (1991). Focus on form: A design feature in language teaching. In K. de Bot, R. B. Ginsberg, & C.
Kramsch (Eds). Foreign language research in cross-cultural perspective, (pp. 39-52). Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Mizutani, O. & Mizutani, N. (1987). How to be polite in Japanese. Tokyo: Japan Times.
Nunan, D. (1989). Designing tasks for the communicative classroom, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Oller, J.W. (1983). Story writing principles and ESL teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 17, 39-53.
Sneddon, J. N. (1990). Directions in Indonesian language teaching: Formal, informal or both? Asian Studies Review 14(2), 94-100.
Wolff, J. U. & Poedjosoedarmo, S. 1982. Communicative codes in Central Java. Ithaca: Cornell University.
Zurbuchen, M. (1984). Contexts and choices: Spoken Indonesian in Bali. In A. Morgan & L. J. Sears (Eds), Aesthetic tradition and culture transition in Java and Bali, (pp. 247-266). Madison: University of Wisconsin.

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Student-Constructed Web Resources for Intercultural Understanding
S. Kathleen Kitao
Doshisha Women’s College, Japan

Kenji Kitao
Doshisha University, Japan
Introduction
Students in countries where English is a foreign language often do not have opportunities to use English forcommunication. The Internet is one resource that can allow students to communicate meaningfully in English.
With greater access to computers both at school and at home, this teaching tool has become more widely available
in recent years.
One way to combine the Internet with teaching English is to give students a group or individual assignment
to make their own web pages. Students can make pages about a subject that they are interested in, a subject related
to their major, hobby, or something they would like to learn about.
As students carry out these assignments, among the skills they can develop are searching resources on theInternet, gathering information, reading English, selecting information and classifying it, writing in English, organizing information, describing or explaining resources, presenting information in the way that readers can understand easily, audience analysis, communicating with other group members or readers using e-mail, and writing
HTML. It is possible to include many different kinds of communication in English, so a web page project cangenerate a great many language activities in English, and students will both use and be exposed to English in thecontext of working on a task of interest to them.
We have organized cultural web page making projects for English language students, and they have enjoyedthem as well as studying English by making web projects. In this paper, we will explain the advantages and disadvantages of such assignments. We will review some web projects that are already on the web and explain how thisassignment can be done.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Web Projects
Depending on the exact conditions of the assignment, web projects can have a variety of advantages anddisadvantages.

Advantages
Possibly the most important advantage of student-made web pages is that they make it possible for students
to use English as a form of communication. In EFL settings, students mainly use English in class for the teacher toevaluate. They generally do not read in English beyond what they are assigned to read for a course. They do notoften have an opportunity to read about subjects of their own choice or to use English as a form of communication.
A web page assignment can involve doing research both on and off the Internet, writing material for the web pages,
reading and answering responses to the web pages sent in by readers. These involve communicating in English inmeaningful ways.

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When making web pages that might be read by anyone, students need to be aware of their audience. They
need to analyze what their audience may or may not know about the subject. For example, in making a web page
explaining Japanese culture to non-Japanese, writers need to consider how to explain aspects of Japanese culture in
English to a general reader who may have little or no knowledge of Japanese culture in a way that is understandable.
If it involves research, a web page assignment exposes students to available resources on the Internet, giving
them an idea of what sorts of resources are available, and helps students learn how to use search engines and links
pages effectively. Students need to gather resources, read them, and select and organize information, all in English.
Student-made web pages can be done on a wide variety of subjects, depending on the interests of the students
and their level of proficiency. For English language students, subjects related to cultures of various countries and toenhancing international understanding are particularly appropriate. Students can do web pages with information
about English-speaking countries, which will also help them learn about the cultures of English-speaking countries. They can also do web pages about Japan, in order to learn to explain Japanese culture to English speakers.
Through this project, students can experience communication in English, and they can learn how to present
and organize information effectively. In the case of group projects, students can learn through the comments theirpiers make and cooperation with them.

Disadvantages
Students may vary in the amount of experience they have in the use of computers, e-mail, browsers, etc.
Some students will have had little experience and will need a great deal of help. In addition, most students will nothave had experience making HTML files. For some students, lack of these computer skills will make this project
difficult. In addition to giving students help with computer skills, one possible solution is to form project groups
with students who have both high and low computer skills.
Using search engines effectively is not easy, and students are likely to have difficulty finding useful web
resources. They may need guidance from the teacher on using search engines and finding useful links pages orother web resources, if these are necessary for the assignment.
Writing descriptions or explanations for links or essays for their web pages in English may also be difficult
for students. While it is probably not necessary for teachers to completely correct their students’ English, teachers
should try to choose topics that are within their students’ ability to express themselves.
Students may not have had the experience of working on a project in which they choose a topic; gather
resources; read about the topic; select, organize, and synthesize useful information; and present the final producteffectively. The process may be difficult for students, and they may need help from the teacher at various stages.
Since this project involves extensive use of English and a variety of types of tasks, it is not an easy assignment. However, all aspects of the project except making HTML files helps develop skills that are necessary foruniversity students. Making HTML files is useful for study and work, and making simple ones is not difficult if
proper instruction and good examples are given.

Review of Similar Projects
A number of teachers throughout the world have made use of web pages to display their students’ projects.
In this section, we will briefly discuss just a few of these. There are a variety of ways to evaluate such projects, buthere we have commented on such aspects as the usefulness of the project as a resource, its organization, andinterest for students doing the project and potential readers.

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Tom Robb’s student projects. Tom Robb of Kyoto Sangyo University has had his students do a number of
web projects based on explaining Japanese culture (http://www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/~trobb/index. html). These are Famous Japanese Personages Project, Kyoto Restaurant Project, Japanese Recipes Project (in English and Japanese),
Kyoto Liquor Story (in English and Japanese), Tips for Using Nisuswriter (Project), and The Sounds of Japan.
Each of these have explanations of some aspect of Japan or Japanese culture, except for Tips for Using Nisuswriter(Project), which is related to a computer program. The Personages Project, the first and most extensive of the
projects, has brief biographies of famous modern Japanese people, divided into categories according to their field.
The Kyoto Restaurant Project has information about restaurants in Kyoto, with maps and illustrations. Each of the
projects is well organized and provides a useful resource to readers outside the course. Students’ e-mail addresses
posted on many of the pages allow readers to respond.
Dave Sperling’s student project. Dave Sperling of California State University of Northridge had students
interview each other and write brief biographies for a composition course (http://www.csun.edu/ ~hcesl004/
CSUN.html). While this allows students to see their work on the Internet, it is not a useful resource for otherreaders.
Seiko Oguri’s student projects. Seiko Oguri of Chubu University has a student project called “Writing about
Japan”, where students write about different aspects of Japanese culture in the categories of “School,” “Home,”“Society,” “Traditions,” “Food,” and “Seasons” (http://www-clc.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/ oguri/japan/write_jpn.html).
In addition, Prof. Oguri has another project where students write about their intercultural experiences (http://
langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/seiko/xculture94.html) in both English-speaking and Asian countries. Some of the essays are general, and some deal with specific issues such as inconveniences or surprises. The former is a potential
resource for foreigners wishing to learn about Japan or Japanese interested in how Japanese culture can be described in English; the latter is useful for its descriptions of cultural differences from the viewpoint of Japanese
students.
Kazunori Nozawa’s student projects. Kazunori Nozawa of Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto has had students do web pages on the city of Toyohashi (while teaching at Toyohashi University of Technology) and “Famous
Japanese Scientists and Engineers” and “Introduction to CALL” (http://www. ritsumei.ac.jp/ec/~nozawa/CALLclasse.html). These allowed students to work on subjects close to their interests while providing good resources.
Ruth Vilmi’s student projects. Ruth Vilmi of Helsinki University of Technology has a web page with students’ essays about a variety of aspects of Finnish culture (http://www.ruthvilmi.net/hut/Project/ Culture/). There
are also a few student web presentations which involved doing surveys of other classes. These are an interesting
resource for any readers interested in Finnish culture, but it might be more useful if the topics were categorized.
K. Harumi’s student projects. In terms of topic, the student web pages of K. Harumi of Nanzan University
in Nagoya are the most challenging (http://www.ic.nanzan-u.ac.jp/~kharumi/fl/classidx.htm). They deal with suchcomplex issues as abortion, nuclear testing, the rising sea level, and earthquakes. However, unfortunately, theessays are disorganized and difficult to follow, and the format is unclear.
Kazue Tanaka’s student projects. Students of Kazue Tanaka of Tokuyama Women’s College did a very
interesting project on cross-cultural topics (http://www.tokujo.ac.jp/Tanaka/Kazue/kazue.html) by interviewing
people in different cultures by e-mail and looking for Internet resources. While this project makes good use of theInternet and allows students to communicate with people of different cultures, unfortunately, the results, describedon students’ web pages, are only in Japanese. Having the students write in English would seem to be a betterconclusion for the project, both making students’ findings available to a wider audience and requiring the students
to use more English.
Lilliam Hurst’s student projects. One of the more unusual projects is by students of Lilliam Hurst of Collège
Claparède in Geneva (http://deil.lang.uiuc.edu/exchange/projects/geneva1.html). This project, for a literature course,
involved reading the play A Streetcar named Desire and writing letters. Students either wrote letters to the charac-

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ters in the play, offering sympathy for their situations, giving advice, etc., or wrote letters that the charactersthemselves might have written. As a project for a literature course, this seems to be a useful way to help students
understand the characters in a literary work. It is interesting to readers interested in that literary work to see thestudents’ points of view.

Procedures for the ProjectIn this section, we will discuss the specific assignment that one of us has used, with some suggestions foradaptations and for carrying out the assignment. This assignment may be adapted, depending on the level andinterests of the students and the purpose of the course.
Since this course was for students interested in going abroad for study, the topic of the assignment was study
abroad. Students chose a university and made a web page with at least 50 links (with descriptions, classified in
categories) to web pages that would be useful to a student at that university, including web pages related to theuniversity, accommodations, the city, the country, etc. This topic is appropriate for students who may work or study
abroad, or who are currently working or studying abroad. Students can also make web pages with information
related to their own university for foreign students studying there. Another possibility is for students can also makeweb pages related to a particular country that they are interested in, with information about customs of that country,
the history, the cities, etc. The content areas that students choose to work on depend on the students’ interests andthe topic of the course.
Since it is not easy to make HTML files, students are provided with a web page for instruction and samples.
After students study how to make a web page, they can use a sample to start making their project web page.
(Helpful URLs can be found in the section of this paper on web resources.) Students who wish to use advanced
techniques to make web pages may do so, but this should not be part of the evaluation if this is a project for an
English language class rather than a computer class.
While working on the project, students had to make progress each week, and some pages were reviewed ineach class. Students were assigned to give comments on other students’ web pages using e-mail in between classes,
and these comments could be used to improve the web pages. By the end of the project every student had reviewed
all other students’ web pages at some stage and had given comments.
In the final class, presentations were made of all web pages. Advanced students made presentations inEnglish, based on instructions students were given for oral presentation lessons. All student projects are kept online permanently, and students are satisfied to show their product world wide.

Useful Web Pages
For teachers interested in having students do such an assignment, there are a variety of web pages that are
helpful. These can be divided into three categories: help in writing web pages, search engines and search advice,and sites related to cultures. (Some pages fall into more than one category.) In addition, examples of pages made by
students can be seen on the Internet. In this section we will discuss a few web sites in each category.

Help with Writing Web Pages
There are a large number of web pages for those interested in learning how to write web pages. Although
there are programs with which one can write web pages without knowing how to write the source code of web
pages, it is often useful to know the basics. The following are links pages for pages on writing web pages or pages
themselves, with comments.

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1. Using the Internet – Writing Web Pages
http://ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/online/www/internet.htm#write
This page has links to a variety of helpful sites that are useful in writing web pages.
2. Making Simple HTM Files
http://ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/online/www/kitao/int-www.htm#adv
This page has explanations of how to write web pages and examples of features that you can use.
3. A Beginners Guide to HTMLhttp://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html
This is an excellent, clear explanation of HTML. It includes a general introduction of what HTML is,what tags are, and how to use tags. It also has links to other useful sites.
4. Learning English on the Net (LEON)
http://home.att.ne.jp/gold/db/leon.html
This page has links to information about the Web especially for English language students.
5. How to Make a Successful ESL/EFL Teacher’s Web Page
http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/Articles/Kelly-MakePage/
This page includes good advice about making web pages. Among its useful features are “templates”(samples of basic web pages that can be adapted), advice on good web page “style,” and advice about
what not to do.
6. Webcom HTML Guide
http://www.webcom.com/~webcom/html/tutor/
This is a page with information about writing web pages, templates, etc.
7. Yahoo! Geocities
http://geocities.yahoo.com/home/This is a page with help building a web page, where you can post your own page.
8. Cut and Paste JavaScript
http://www.infohiway.com/javascript/toc/
For those interested in adding more sophisticated features to their web page, this page has examples of codefor javascript. It allows students to add such features as guestbooks in which they can get feedback on their pages,
games, frames, and clocks.

Search Engines and Advice for Searching
Searching is a vital skill for users of the Internet—it is almost impossible to use the Internet without being
able to search, and effective searching skills can save users hours. The following are links to search engine links
pages and to advice about searching effectively.

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To contents. 1. Reference Materials for Students and Researchers – Search Engines
http://ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/online/www/referenc.htm#searchThis page has links to search engines and to advice about searching.
2. Net Search Pages
http://home.netscape.com/escapes/search/ntsrchrnd-1.html
This page has links to search engines, divided into categories according to type and purpose.
3. Search Engine Watch
http://searchenginewatch.com/
This page has links to search engines, reviews of search engines, etc. It is useful for learning about
different types of search engines, how they are different from one another, and so on.
4. Search Techniques Seminar
http://kevinryan.com/student/search/
This page is based on a seminar on searching the Internet, and has information about basic and advanced search techniques and links to resources.
5. Backflip
http://www.backflip.com/login.ihtml
This is a search engine that can be personalized and which includes “web tours” on different subjects.

Lists of Links to Sites Related to Cultures
As mentioned above, an appropriate topic for English students is culture and intercultural understanding.
There are many web sites where students can learn about other cultures or their own.
1. Information on the US
http://ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/online/www/us-info.htm
This page has links to a great many sites related to the US.
2. Useful Resources, Lesson Plans, and Teaching Materials for Teachers – Cultures
http://ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/online/www/teacher.htm#culture
This page has links to resources related to a variety of cultures.
3. American Studies Web
http://www.georgetown.edu/crossroads/asw/
The page has extensive links to information on the United States.
4. Culture Pages in English
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/8383/
This page is a class project with information related to a variety of cultures.

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Examples of Student-Made Web Pages
The following are examples of web pages made by Kenji Kitao’s students
1. Kyoto: Ancient Capital of Japan
http://ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/class/kyoto/(Other student projects can be found at: http://ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/class/material/project/and http://ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/class/.)
2. To Study at SOAS
http://ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/class/practicum/nishizawa.htm
3. Welcome to San Diego!!!
http://ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/class/meta/f/erika/
4. Amherst College
http://ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/class/practicum/kato.htm
5. Travel Cheap in Japan -Transportation and Lodging - (Student Project)
http://ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/class/meta00/odani.htm
The following are some other student web projects:
6. Tom Robb’s student projects (Kyoto Sangyo University)
http://www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/~trobb/index.html
7. Dave Sperling’s student project (California State University of Northridge)
http://www.csun.edu/~hcesl004/CSUN.html
8. Seiko Oguri’s student projects (Chubu University)
http://www-clc.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/oguri/japan/write_jpn.html
http://langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/seiko/xculture94.html
9. Kazunori Nozawa’s student projects (Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto)
http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/ec/~nozawa/CALLclass-e.html
10. Ruth Vilmi’s student projects (Helsinki University of Technology)
http://www.ruthvilmi.net/hut/Project/Culture/
11. K. Harumi’s student projects (Nanzan University in Nagoya)
http://www.ic.nanzan-u.ac.jp/~kharumi/fl/classidx.htm
12. Kazue Tanaka’s student projects (Tokuyama Women’s College)
http://www.tokujo.ac.jp/Tanaka/Kazue/kazue.html

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13. Lilliam Hurst’s student projects (Collège Claparède in Geneva)
http://deil.lang.uiuc.edu/exchange/projects/geneva1.html(The handout for the original poster session, with most of the above links, can be found at http://
ilc2.doshisha.ac.up/users/kkitao/library/handout/FLEATIV.htm.)

Note: This work was funded by Doshisha University’s Research Promotion Fund, 1998, and a Grant-in-Aid for
Exploratory Research, 1999-2001, from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

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Students’ Feelings About a Writing Class in a Junior High School
Computer Room
Hiroshi Oota
Tokyo Gakugei University AffiliatedSetagaya Junior High School, Japan
Abstract
The attitude toward a writing class using a computer was very positive among my students who hadtaken my class for two years. They thought the class fun or interesting. They also liked using some functions ofMicrosoft Word, such as spelling check, grammar check to improve their writings. Reading and answering theirfriends’ writing also motivated them, too.

Introduction
What do students think about computer-mediated class? Do they like it or not? Those are the objectives ofthis article.
In this article I’ll write about my own classes using a computer in junior high school. First I’ll explain theprocedure of my own classes using a computer, then I’ll introduce my students’ opinions and comments.

The Procedure for My Computer-Mediated Class
The whole unit consists of two classes, and in the 1st class the students write about their favorite topic on acomputer. The following is the procedure of the 2nd class.
The teaching procedure
1.

Greetings (1 min.)2.

Review (4 min.)a.

Talk about what they wrote.
The students read what they wrote in the previous period and then talk about it with theirfriends.

b.

Useful expressions
The students listen to teacher’s explanation and repeat the sentences on the worksheet.

3.

Rewrite (20 min.)The students read what they wrote and rewrite.

4.

Peer check (10 min.)a.

The students read what their partner wrote and give some advice.

b.

The students answer what their partner wrote.

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Consolidation (5 min.)a.

The students print out what they wrote.

b.

The students read what other friends wrote.

Students’ feelings
Last July I asked the students to answer the following three [sic.] questions.
Question 1. What do you think of a writing class using a computer?
Question 2. Do you have any advice or suggestions to improve this class?
I will summarize my students’ comments on each question.

The Students’ Comments to Question 1
1.

Fun/interesting
Most of the students responded that the class was fun or interesting. They like this class verymuch. At that time, half of my students didn’t have enough chances to use a computer at home,
so I guess using a computer itself motivated them.

2.

Useful functions of the computer software
Microsoft Word is installed on their computers, so they used some functions, such as spellingcheckers, grammar checkers, and word count. Some students commented that these functions
were useful.

3.

Peer correction

4.

Reading and answering friends’ writing

5.

Learning a lot from friends’ writing
In class the students had some chances to work with their friends, and they worked very hardwith their friends. Some students stated that peer correction was helpful.
One student wrote, “My friend tells me some mistakes I didn’t notice.”
Each of the classroom computers can send and receive information to others on the network, so
the students can read and answer their friends’ writings on their own computer easily.
About 15 % students like this activity. One girl read her favorite boys’ writing on her computerand she looked very happy.
They also learned a lot from their friends’ writing. Some students said they learned some new
expressions from their friends.

6.

Easiness of editing / rewriting
A computer has considerable advantages over a pencil and paper. For example, letters andwords can be entered, changed or deleted very easily. One girl I have already mentioned readher draft again and again during the 2nd period and this process encouraged her to write moreaccurately. One student wrote, “I wouldn’t have corrected or revised if I had written this in mynotebook.”

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The Students’ Comments to Question 2
1,

More time to read and answer friends’ writing
In class the students spent a lot of time writing or revising their own writing, so they didn’t haveenough time to read and answer friends’ writings. Reading and answering their friends’ writings on their own computer is one of the advantages of this class, so I should have allocatedmore time to do for these activities.

2.

More typing practice
About half of the students didn’t have a computer at home at that time, so they didn’t have any
chances to practice typing at home. In my class a few hours were allocated to typing practice,
but I’m afraid it wasn’t enough time for the students who weren’t used to typing.

Summary
Computer-mediated language instruction is only one part of my whole class. Integrating face-to-face instruction and computer-mediated classes must complement each other.
From my computer-mediated class, I can say the following things.
1.

From the students’ point of view, computer use in the classroom was highly motivating.

2.

The students’ attitude toward computer-mediated instruction was very positive.

I must mention one more thing. Now computer use in the classroom is becoming more common, so just using
word processor software won’t be interesting for students. My goal is to improve classroom activities using acomputer.

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Students’ Opinions of FL Teachers Across Cultures
Veronika Makarova
Meikai University, Japan

Stephen M. Ryan
Eichi University, Japan
Abstract
Learner-centred methodologies have increased the need for language teachers to see the classroom fromtheir students’ point of view. Teachers, however, are often unaware of the expectations that their students have ofthem. It has been reported that the situation can become particularly harmful when the teacher and the students
come from different cultures. Research into students’ demands of their teachers and their qualities is a helpful
tool to establish a closer link between the teacher and the student. We therefore believe that knowledge ofstudents’ expectations should be a part of teachers’ education. The paper reports the results of a cross-cultural
study of university students’ expectations of their foreign language teachers. Both culture-specific factors andfactors which transcend culture are investigated. Although quite a few studies have been devoted to the students’
expectations of their language teachers, the novelty of our study is in performing it across three countries, thecultures and education systems of which are known to be radically different: Scotland, Japan and Russia. The
study is conducted on the basis of two successive original questionnaires, which are subjected to content analysis revealing similarities and differences of students’ opinions across cultures.

Introduction
Recent trends in language teaching methods devote much more attention to the figure of the student than in
traditional teacher-centred practices (Nunan, 1988; Richardson, 1992; Dam, 1995). The teacher’s role is seen asthat of a facilitator of learning, who should be attentive to students’ demands and needs, and should try to meetthem (Harmer, 1995). A part of students’ demands is focussed on the teacher.
Students have an ideal of a language teacher, and they compare the performance of a real teacher against thisideal (Ryan, 1998). It has been shown that students’ expectations of their teachers are in part culturally-determined,
and that lack of awareness of students’ different cultural background can lead to “culture bumps”: misunderstandings and conflicts (Andersen, 1985; Archer, 1986).
There are a few available cross-cultural studies of students’ expectations of their teachers (Mar, 1980; Quereshi,
1980; Radford, 1980; Durham and Ryan, 1993; Makarova and Ryan, 1997). Although these studies revealed some
important differences in students’ perception of their teachers across cultures, the problem is that a comparison of
two cultures does not allow us to draw conclusions about features recurrent across cultures versus features which
are culture-specific. Furthermore, results obtained in different research projects cannot be compared, as they wereobtained with different research designs. The challenge of our study was to get comparable results from threedifferent countries: Britain, Japan and Russia.
Cross-cultural comparisons require a clear understanding of the notion of culture the researcher operates with. “Culture” is a complicated anthropological and sociological concept which can be seen from a culturalanthropological, interactional-sociolonguistic, pragmatic and many other perspectives (Sarangi, 1994). There isvery little agreement between various disciplines which study culture with regard to its exact nature and definition
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To contents(Sarangi, 1995).We define culture in the context of language learning as “student culture” - common practises,
expectations, behaviour, way of thinking peculiar to students in a given academic environment in a certain country.

Materials and Methods
The Questionnaire
The study is conducted in two stages by means of two successive questionnaires. This paper gives preliminary results obtained at the first stage after analysing responses to the first-round questionnaire. The aim of the firstquestionnaire was to collect a pool of items relevant for students in different cultures.
To ensure comparability of data the questionnaire was compiled in English and then translated into Japaneseand Russian using the Werner/Campbell back translation method (Werner & Campbell, 1970). The questionnaire
consisted of demographic questions as well as four research questions:
1.

What in your opinion makes a good teacher of a foreign language in a university?

2.

What, do you think, a foreign language teacher at a university ought to do in class?

3.

What, do you think, a foreign language teacher at a university should not do in class?

4.

What kind of attitude of a teacher to students do you prefer?

The questionnaire in students’ native language was distributed during university classes in each of the three
countries. Students had about 10-15 minutes to respond to the questions freely, in writing, in their native language.

The Analysis
All the responses were analysed by noting keywords from each response to each question, and then calculating the frequencies of key-words. Frequency scores for near-synonyms were combined.

The Sample
The sample was taken from language major students in one medium-to-high-ranking university in eachcountry. Please, refer to Table 1 for sample size and distribution by age and gender.

Results
While filling in the questionnaire, students did not always separate their characteristics of the language
teacher in full accordance with the questions of the questionnaire. To organise characteristics of the language
teacher we therefore divided all the recorded entries into the following semantic groups: teachers attitudes, teacher’s
personality, teacher’s skills, teacher’s knowledge, what the teacher should teach, teacher’s actions in class, andteacher’s experience.
We report below characteristics which were recurrently found in all the three cultures, and can therefore be considered to be possible teaching universals along with features which were found only in one culture, andcan therefore be considered culture-specific.

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Table 1. Sample Characteristics
BritishNationality of students
Japanese

Russian131
99 (75.5)
32 (24.5)

85
36 (42.4)
49 (57.6)

82
65 (79.3)
17 (20.7)

Year at the university
12
3
4

18 (13.7)
68 (51.9)
1 (1)12 (9)

number of students (%)
0
85 (100)000
43 (52.4)
20 (24.3)
19 (19)Mean age of students

20.3

19.8

18.5

Standard deviation by age

0.13

1.25

1.06

Total number
Female (frequency, %)Male (frequency, %)Teacher’s Attitides
Characteristics found across the three cultures. Be friendly.
Culture-specific characteristics.
British subjects: be encouraging, enthusiastic, helpful, sympathetic, positive, open, commited to class,
optomistic, close to students, listen to students opinions, not patronising, not critical, not embarrass students, notlook/get bored. not discourage students, not ridicule, not laugh at students’ mistakes.
Japanese subjects: create a stress-free environment, not teach without thinking of students.
Russian subjects: be respectful, be strict, be tactful, be good-willing/kindly, free/casual attitude, treat students as colleagues, not be too familiar, not scold.

Teacher’s Personality
Characteristics found across the three cultures. Be fun, be kind.
Culture-specific characteristics.
British subjects: open-minded, happy.
Japanese subjects: be gentle, not get angry easily.
Russian subjects: be calm, gain authority among students.

Teacher’s Skills
Characteristics found across the three cultures. Be good at explaining things, have good pronunciation in
the foreign language, be a good communicator.
Culture-specific characteristics.
British subjects:be knowledgeable, clarity, be able to explain and teach grammar well, be inspiring, be able
to make people relaxed while expressing their opinions, be completely fluent in both languages, give dynamic
lessons, make the class fun.
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Japanese subjects: be easy to understand, give enjoyable lessons, not be difficult to understand.
Russian subjects: be good at interesting students in the subject, make the lessons interesting, high professionalism, competent, not bore students.

Teacher’s Knowledge
Characteristics found across the three cultures. None.
Culture-specific characteristics.
British subjects: know foreign language grammar, be fluent in the students’ native language, be knowledgeable, understanding of the difficulties involved in foreign language learning.
Japanese subjects: none.
Russian subjects: erudite knowledge, knowledge of teaching methods, knowledge of psychology

What the Teacher Should TeachCharacteristics found across the three cultures. Foreign culture/about foreign countries, daily conversation.
Culture-specific characteristics.
British subjects: grammar, translation, not teach too much grammar.
Japanese subjects: real/living foreign language
Russian subjects: none.

Teacher’s Actions in Class
Characteristics found across the three cultures. Use only the foreign language, use the foreign language
as much as possible, communicate with students.
Culture-specific characteristics.
British subjects: make sure everyone participates, encourage students, stimulate discussions of different
topics in the foreign language, give interesting assignments, structure classes well, have lots of questions/answers,
inspire, have group work, not lecture impersonally, refuse to speak students’ native language, not speak quickly,
not correct every little mistake, not speak too much him/herself, not confuse students.
Japanese subjects: use students’ native language if necessary, teach at an appropriate level, not teach pointless lessons.
Russian subjects: novelty, check students’ progress, do many exercises, teach, transmit knowledge, use records/
tapes, use videos, explain with examples, come to class, not get distracted by personal matters, not get side-tracked,
not talk about personal life.

Teacher’s Experience
Characteristics found across cultures. None.
Culture-specific.
British subjects: both native and non-native teachers should teach, interest/understanding of foreign culture.
Japanese subjects: have experience living in the foreign language country.
Russian subjects: be interested in the subject, love the job.
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Discussion
Our study is consonant with the idea suggested by Oxford and Anderson (1995) of the existence of learning
universals along with culture-specific features.
The aspects of a foreign language teacher characteristics which attract most attention in each culture can beoutlined as follows. British students concentrate on the exact activities the teacher should perform in class, which
may reflect better awareness of teaching methods by British students. They also are strongly concerned for getting
equal opportunities to participate in class activities. Specific requirements of Japanese students reflect the academic situation (large classes, many foreign teachers who are hard for students to understand). Russian students’
responses claim technical means of education that students are missing (use records, tapes), their learning needs(check, repeat), striving for entertainment (novelty, not bore students), and a wish for better dicipline on behalf ofthe teachers (come to class).
The results of our research are preliminary, and should be treated with caution. A clearer picture of the crosscultural differences in students’ expectations of their teachers should imerge upon the copmpletion if the seconfd
round questionnaire.
Earlier studies of Japanese students’ expectations of their languagew teachers revealed that Japanese students may employ different scales to evaluate native and non-native teachers (Shimizu 1995; Hadley & Yoshioka
Hadley, 1996). The subject of different qualities or scales for foreign and native teacher did not arise in the entriesof our questionnaire, whereas the question of native/non-native teacher and the degree of knowledge of both thestudied language and the native language of the students was raised by the subjects. Although our present research
did not pursue such a goal, it is important to check if the same scale, or different scales are applied to native andnon-native teachers of foreign languages in countries other than Japan.

Conclusion
Our research indicates that some characteristics of a language teacher are found recurrently across different
cultures and may be considered “learning universals,” whereas some other characteristics are culture-specific.
Cultural differences after they are revealed pose a question “what we do with culture” formulated in anothercontext by Sarangi (1995, p. 445). Culture is not only a map (a description) OF behaviour; it is nowadays beginning to be seen as a map (a guideline) FOR behaviour (Peterson, 1979). In this sense studies of language classcultures can become an implicit suggestion for a change to bridge the gap. What kind of change should it be?
Should the teacher adapt his/her behaviour to match the needs of the students? Should he/she try to teach thestudents the ways of his/her different culture, the culture of the country where the language is spoken? Or should
the gap remain where it is if both parties are happy with their own cultures? Whatever decision the teacher makes,
he/she can only evaluate all the pros and cons if he/she is fully aware of the outlining cultural differences. Culturally based misunderstandings between teachers and students can not only lead to conflicts and frustration on bothsides, they can even force a teacher out of job in countries where students’ evaluation of teachers is a part of
employment contract (Ryan, 1998).
It is unrealistic to suggest that teacher training courses could inform teachers about culturally-based requirements of students in all cultures, but it is absolutely necessary to make future teachers aware of the existence of
culturally-based differences in students’ expectations of teachers’ performance and to suggest to them areas where
cultural differences are likely to be found. A bank of literature should be created which would arm teachers with aclear picture of what students in particular cultures want from them. The existing vacuum in the literature on crosscultural studies of students’ expectations of their language teachers outlined by Oxford and Anderson (1995) canonly be filled by further research into this field.
We hope that deeper understanding of students’ needs would help to create more friendly environment for
language teaching and learning.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to express our gratitude for an enriching discussion of the research results to Professor Martha
Pennington.

References
Andersen, J. F. (1985). Educational assumptions highlighted from a cross-cultural comparison. In: L.A. Samovar& R.E. Porter (Eds.), Intercultural communication: A reader. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, pp. 160-164..
Archer, C.M. (1986). Culture bump and beyond. In J. M. Valdes (Ed.), Culture bound: Bridging the culture gap
in language teaching, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 170-178.
Dam, L. (1995). Learner Autonomy 3: From theory to classroom practice. Dublin: Autentik.
Durham, M., & Ryan, S.M. (1992). What kind of teacher do students want? A cross-cultural comparison. SpeechCommunication Education, 5, 70-99.
Hadley, G., & Yoshioka Hadley, H. (1996). The culture of learning and the good teacher in Japan: An analysis of
student views. The Language teacher, 20(9), 53-55.
Harmer, J. (1995). Taming the big ‘I’: Teacher performance and student satisfaction. ELT Journal, 49 (4): 337-345.
Makarova, V., & Ryan, S. M. (1997). The language teacher through the students’ looking glass and what you see
there: Preliminary results. Speech Communication Education, 10, 127-154.
Mar, S. G. (1980). The perception of outstanding teacher characteristics by Japanese and Japanese-American
students. MA Thesis, Univ. of California, Los Angeles.
Nunan, D. (1988). The learner-centred curriculum: A study in second language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Oxford, R.L., & Anderson, N.J. (1995). A crosscultural view of learning styles. Language Teaching, 28(4), 201-215.
Peterson, R. (1979). Revitalising the culture concept. Annual Review of Sociology, 5, 137-166.
Quereshi, M.Y . (1980). Perceptions of traits that identify the best and the worst teachers in two cultures. Journalof Experimental Education, 49, 4-8.
Radfortd, A.E. (1980). Outstanding teacher characteristics as perceived by Saudi Arabian ESL students andAmerican college students. MA Thesis, Univ. of California, Los Angeles.
Richardson, V. (1992). Learner training. Modern English teacher, 1(1), 42-43.
Ryan, S. M. (1998). Student evaluation of teachers. The Language Teacher, 22(9), 9-11, 43.
Sarangi, S. (1994). Intercultural or not? Beyond celebration of cultural differences in miscommunication analysis.
Pragmatics, 4(3): 409-427.
Sarangi, S. (1995). Culture. In: J. Verschueren, J.-O. Ostman & J. Blommaert (Eds.). Handbook of Pragmatics,
pp 1-30, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Shimizu, K. (1995). Japanese college student attitudes towards English teachers: A survey. The Language
teacher, 19(10). 5-8.
Werner, O., & Campbell, D.T. (1970). Translating, working through interpreters and the problem of decentring. In
R. Naroll & R. Cohen (Eds.), A handbook of method in cultural anthropology, pp. 398-420. New York: The
Natural History Press.
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A Study of Foreground and Background Structures in English
Written Narratives by Teacher College Students in Taiwan*
Daniel Yu-ching ChanNational Taipei Teachers College, Taiwan
Abstract
This study from a more global, discourse-oriented perspective investigates the foreground and background structures of English written narratives by students from nine teachers colleges in Taiwan. 175 narrative
writings randomly selected from 1,396 ones on the topic “A Devastating Earthquake” by teachers college
students are analyzed and discussed in terms of manifestations. The results show that the students manifest
backgrounding and foregrounding information through different devices, especially syntactic structures andsemantic aspectual forms. Besides, some characteristics of manifestations are pointed out in the foregrounding
and backgrounding. Also, the data show that some of the students misunderstand what main events denote,
which results in a discrepancy between students’ perception of main events and their manifestations and which
implies the importance of applying the theory and practice of discourse grounding into English teaching withregard to narrative writing.

Motivation and Background of the Study
Information units in narrative discourse are broadly classified into two major types according to the function
they serve: those pushing forward the advancement of the main story line are generally referred to as “foregrounding”
and those providing supportive, descriptive information for the advancement of the story line, as “backgrounding”(Givon, 1979, p. 54). Some studies have been conducted to analyze the distinction between foreground and background information and the devices for manifesting information flows (Hopper 1979; Reinhart 1984; Caenepeel
1995; Fleischman 1995). In recent years, in the field of teaching English as a foreign language in Taiwan, several
studies have started to apply the concept of grounding into narrative writing (Chang 1997; Chan 1998; Chen 1999).
However, few attention has been paid to teachers college students’ English writing ability, not to mention theirability to write narratives. This study, from a more global, discourse-oriented perspective, tries to fit the theories of
discourse grounding into the teaching of narrative writing of teachers college students in Taiwan.

Review of Related Literature
In this section, we will review some of the most representative studies related to the structures of narratives,
grounding functions, and manifestations of grounding.

*This study financially sponsored by the National Science Council of the Republic of China was orally presented
at the Conference of the FLEAT IV. I was impressed with the audience attending the Conference for theirinterest in and discussion of discourse analysis of written narrative in terms of its usefulness to teachers.
Special thanks would go to Professor Marc Mallet, Professor Judy Noguchi, and Professor Chizuko Suzuki
for their invaluable comments of various issues in this article.
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Story, Discourse, and Structure of Narrative
A narrative can be regarded as “a linguistic production undertaking to tell of one or several events” (Genette
1980:30). It contains two main parts: a narrative story and a narrative discourse. The former is the content or chainof events as well as the existents, while the latter is the expression, the means by which the content is conveyed(Chatman 1978: 26). A narrative is “not simply a linear sequence of events, ordered chronologically, but a configuration of events that has ‘texture’ or ‘focus’, an institution in which all events are not created equal” (Fleischman
1985:854). In other words, narratives are not randomly organized. According to Labov (1972, p.363-364), fullyformed narratives contain six elements: a) abstract, b) orientation, c) complicating action, d) evaluation, d) resolution, and 6) coda. In narratives, the distinction of the foregrounding and backgrounding is based on the discourse
function which information units serve. Four criteria, which are compatible but not mutually exclusive, are advantageous for determining such a distinction. They are a) sequentiality, i.e. whether the situations are on the time lineof narratives, b) importance, i.e. whether the situations are more intrinsically important than others for humanbeings or of human interest, c) causality, or importance for plot development, i.e. whether the situations serve toadvance the plot of the narrative, and d) predictability or expectability, i.e. the degree to which an element isunpredictable or unexpected in a given context (Fleischman, 1985).

Studies on Grounding Manifestations
Since foregrounding and backgrounding reflect the language of actual story line and that of supportive
material, linguists and researchers have focused their studies on syntactic and semantic devices which manifest thetwo types of information units. Main vs. subordinate clauses are the most practical syntactic structures in manifesting grounding. In English, foregrounding tends to be manifested syntactically as main clauses, while backgrounding,as subordinate clauses (Givon, 1979). For example,(1)

While Peter was coming downstairs, Mary slipped out the front door, went around thehouse, and came in the back door.

Three story events are depicted in the man clause, including Mary’s slipping out the front door, going around thehouse, and coming in the back door. With the elaborating information in the subordinate clause introduced bywhile, the clause combination gives a vivid picture in which the three events happened under the circumstance andtemporal condition of Peter’s coming downstairs. In terms of discourse function, the while-clause provides background information against which Mary’s successive actions occur.
Another syntactic structure which has been pointed out as a powerful means for marking backgrounding of
narratives is embedding, which refers to clauses or structures embedded within another finite, independent clause(Reinhart, 1984; Matthiessen and Thompson, 1988; Chan, 1998). Materials manifested in embedding clauses are
not normally foregrounded, but provide background, supportive information for the main event to be foregroundedas shown in the following example (Chan, 1998).
(1)

The man who was in charge of the preschool told us its history. (A relative clause: Rc:
12080: 7: Bd)

Detached participles are syntactic structures which serve as a device that allows the speaker/writer topresent certain material as background against which certain other material can be put forth as “figure” in the
Gestalt sense (Reinhart, 1984). For example,(3)“Do you find it a tight squeeze, then” she said, turning to Aaron once more.

In (3), the detached participle turning to Aaron once more provides additional information that functions to amplify
and elaborate the co-occurrence of the woman’s talking and her another action. In this discourse, there is no explicit
connection, either temporal or logical, drawn between the background material manifested in the detached participle and the figure material manifested in the main clause.
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Initial participles are another device for manifesting grounding in narratives. From a discourse-oriented
perspective, initial participles serve to provide background information against which the main story line advances.
Look at the following example.
(4) Walking into the station, I was surprised by [the] crowded people.
According to Chan (1998), initial participles present certain background information, leaving the main story
to be expressed in the main clause. In (4), the foregrounded event is the narrator’s being surprised by crowded
people and his surprise occurs upon the narrator’s walking into the station. In other words, the initial participle here
provides temporal information (i.e. information which can be interpreted as connected by when or after) andspatial, setting information (i.e. the situation in the station), under which the main events are foregrounded and themain story line advances.
Aspect, as a functional category in narrative discourse, has been applied to the study of the relationshipbetween aspectual structures and grounding manifestations (Hopper, 1979; Andreasen, 1981; Fleischman, 1995;
Chan, 1996). In his analysis of the Prodigal Son, Chan (1996) points out that foregrounding is manifested throughperfective aspectual forms which denote telic, dynamic, and punctual characteristics of verbs, while backgroundingis mainly manifested through imperfective aspectual forms such as copulative verbs, imperfective progressives,
stative verbs, negators or modal auxiliaries, and mental processes.
Discussions above reveal that there are different syntactic and semantic devices for manifesting backgrounding
and foregrounding. Study of the structures in narratives helps understand how the main events and supportive
materials in narratives are manifested through different devices.

Methodology
Subjects
The subjects in this study are 1396 students from 41 classes of the nine teachers colleges in Taiwan. Most ofthem are freshmen and some of them take courses related to English teacher training program.

Data Collection
The 921 (September 21st) Chi-Chi earthquake in 1999 was a disaster for people in Taiwan. The strongest
earthquake in the past 100 years not only ruined many houses but also claimed the lives of many citizens. Thus, “A
Devastating Earthquake” was given as the topic of this narrative writing. Instructors who helped collect the data
were informed the necessary directions for students’ writing such as telling the students that there would be acomposition writing on the previous earthquake, giving a brainstorm in the beginning of the class, and controllingthe writing time span within two classes. 18 of these subjects were further required to write down the main eventsof their narratives so that the researcher can examine what the main events were and how they manifested these
events and other supportive materials through different devices.

Analysis of Manifestations
Backgrounding
All the writings in our data have more than one paragraph. Most of them begin with an introductory paragraph describing the background of the topic such as knowledge of earthquake or personal experience about earthquake as shown in (1), while some writings begin with an abstract as shown in (2) and (3).

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Taiwan is in a falling [sic] area. There are more than ten thousands of earthquakes in
Taiwan in one year. Some can be sensed, but others can’t. They are due to the expansion
and contraction of earth’s crust and continental drift. (891023)(2)

At 1:47 a.m. September 21st, 1999, Taiwan was hit by its most powerful earthquake in
100 years. Over 2000 people died and tens of thousands people lost their homes.
I still remember….. (893100)(3)

921 earthquake is a serious affection to Taiwan. We lose not only money but also many
lives. All people in Taiwan understand the power of this earthquake impressively. Many
Taiwanese are scared of their present circumstance. …(894233)

An abstract gives the reader what in a nutshell this story is about (Toolan, 1988, p.152). In (2), before the student
writer begins to tell his story in the second paragraph, he briefly describes in the first paragraph the devastating
earthquake along with the temporal material and the serious damage caused by the quake. Obviously, the abstract
provides a brief picture of the story, so it is not regarded as the foregrounding in terms of discourse function. With
respect to its manifestation, some verbs are like the verbs occurring in the proper telling of a narrative such as theverbs in boldface “…Taiwan was hit by its most powerful earthquake…Over 2000 people died and tens of thousands people lost their homes”, while some are states, static verbs, or verbs in the present tense such as is a serious
affection to Taiwan…, understand the power…, are scared of their present circumstance, etc.
Orientation, specifying the participants and circumstances, especially of place and time of the narrative,
is another component manifesting the backgrounding of a narrative (Toolan 1988, p. 154). It is typically composedof non-narrative clauses and serves to “identify in some way the time, place, persons and their activity or thesituation prior to the beginning of the complicating action” (Andreasen 1981, p. 13). In our data, the following
expressions in boldface are utilized to orient the related situation for the appearance of the upcoming event.
(4)

On September 21, the magnitude 7.6 tremor killed more than 2300 persons and damaged
82000 housing units, with its epicenter in central Nantou county, where ….(891003)(5)

On September 21, a devastating earthquake happened in Taiwan. It was almost two
o’clock in the morning, so many people were sleeping. This earthquake was so destructive that a lot of buildings and ….(8893293)

These expressions highlight the orientation of time, place, and situation, which presents information needed for thelistener to understand new information because what people who listen to or read a story want to know is not only
the main events, but also when and where the events happen. Orientation is mainly manifested through verbs
denoting states or through static verbs describing attributes, location, circumstance, etc.
In our data, the structures for manifesting the backgrounding in the body paragraphs appear in the different
constructions. The first construction is a subordinate clause followed by a main clause or a main clause followed bya subordinate clause. The subordinate clause denoting circumstantial relationship of time, reason, concession servesto present the grounding function as shown in the following examples.
(6)

I was lying on my bed when the earthquake hit…(898043)(7).…I was waken by a strong earthquake. When I woke up, I felt a strong tremor and thenoisy sounds of vibration…As I went back to the dorm, I listened to the news and readthe newspaper. (893087)

The main events advancing the story line are manifested by more dynamic verbs in the main clauses, while thebackgrounding providing supportive information of time and reason is manifested in subordinate clauses. For
example, in (6), there are two actions, i.e. the student’s lying on the bed and the hitting of the earthquake. The latter
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action introduced by the subordinate conjunction “when” referring to temporal orientation functions as a
backgrounding, which in turn highlights the corresponding main event.
The second type of construction contains an initial participle and a main clause.
(8)

When seeing the TV[sic] , we see [saw] many houses collapse and still many people
were covered by the building. As seeing this sight, I couldn’t resist burst into tears.(895013)(9)

Hearing my daughter’s screaming, I ran to her bed to pacify her. (891166)

The structure of initial participles is a powerful device for manifesting the backgrounding of narratives. However,this type of structure is not commonly used by the students. In (8), the foregrounded event is the student narrator’sseeing many houses collapse and many people’s being covered by the building. However, the student’s seeing
something happen occurs upon his watching TV. In other words, the information manifested in the initial participle
functions as the backgrounding for the main story event to be foregrounded.
The third type of construction used by students to manifest the backgrounding is detached participles. The
following are some of them.
(10) They worked day and night, dedicating themselves to the sacred but challenging job.
(891159)(11) I was in the dark, waiting for the lights to come back. (891166)
These examples appear in the body paragraph where the main story line advances. In these examples, themain events are “worked day and night”, and “was in the dark”. The backgrounded material manifested in the
detached participle and the foregrounded event realized in the main clause are concurrent. With this feature ofsimultaneity, the backgrounded information manifested in the detached participle describes, amplifies, or comments on the event in the story line manifested in the main clause. Although detached participles are a good device
for presenting the backgrounding, they are not widely used, which may be due to the students’ not being familiar
with this structure and its function in terms of grounding.
The fourth type of structures applied to manifest backgrounding is embedding, which is widely employed as
the following examples show.
(12) Hospitals and blood banks have been filled with people who were wishing to donate
Blood. Many people also volenteed [sic] to go to the damage area to offer help and tohelp the children who lost their loved ones during the quake to rebound from the tragedy.
(893085)(13) There were many foreign rescue works [sic]teams coming to Taiwan to help with rescue
efforts…(896043)
These sentences contain an independent clause with a relative clause or a participial phrase embedded. The
function of grounding is served in the main clause. The embedding serves to provide more information about its
antecedent in the main clause and functions as the backgrounding of the main event as shown in (12) and (13).
The material which supports or amplifies the main events may precede or follow them, while the material
which comments on or evaluate the events usually appears after them. Comments and evaluations occur either
after an event or in the concluding paragraph. In both cases, the material does not belong to the main story as
shown below.
(14) I think the most important thing is to have the reconstruction plan. We cannot predict
when the earthquake will happen; therefore, what we can do is to make preparations forit…(897013)

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To contents(15) …I even can’t tell where I should go. This place where I grew up was broken. However,
because of the earthquake, I rediscovered the bright side of people…I hope his kind ofdamage will never happen again, and disaster area can be rebuilt as soon as possible.
(896153)
Examples above reveal some characteristics. Frist, verbs in these structures like “hope”, “think”, etc. denotestates or mental process rather than dynamic actions. Second, the narrator’ personal involvement is conveyed. As
seen in our data, first person pronoun “I” and inclusive “we” are frequently utilized to express the narrator’sopinions. Third, a shift of time from the narrative past tense to the current present tense is common. This is due tothe fact that before the closing part, the narrator often exits “from the marked past narrative to present deicticmode” and “resume normal use of present deictics to designate relatedness to the present context of situation”(Labov 1972; Toolan 1988). Fourth, the students evaluate happenings directly or indirectly by “comparators” (e.g.
negation, modality and modulation, and futurity), all of which are encoded in the auxiliary verbal elements (Toolan
1988:160).

Foregrounding
In our data, the foregrounding is mainly manifested through simple sentences, compound sentences, or themain clauses of complex sentences as shown below.
(1)

The earthquake occurred about one o’clock in the morning on that day. Many people felt
surprised and scared, and they started to run out. (893283)(2)…After it stopped, I went down the floor…I finally found some little light in front ofme…I found grandmother in the living room, and she told me…About thirty minutes
later, I went to my bedroom and went to bed again…(893323)(3)

I was lying on my bed when the earthquake hit…I felt the shock going through the houseand felt it terrible. At the same time, many neighbors talked about this earthquake withus. They never suffered this devastating earthquake like that. “It was too terrible”, old
men said. (898043)(4)

When I was sleeping something happened to me…I fell in sleep again because I was
exhausted for playing video games. In that morning, I got up so early…I immediately
turned on the TV….(898093)

Some characteristics can be found in these manifestations. First, each sentence conveys a complete information unit. The main events are presented in simple sentences, compound sentences, or the main clauses of complex
sentences. Second, the main events in foreground structures are manifested through verbs or verbal phrases in thepast tense, for narratives require the narrators to retrieve and retell what happened in the past time. Third, most of
the verbs in boldface denote dynamic actions rather than states or static happenings. Foregrounding not onlyreflects the temporal ordered events but also carries what are regarded as important materials or the “backbone “ ofthe story (Thompson, 1987, p. 435-436).

Relationship among Narrative Structures, Syntactic Structures, and Grounding
Chen (1999, p. 137) points out that information structure are closely related to syntax, and the function of
the information conveyed by a given syntactic structure depends on its position in the hierarchy of syntax, as shown
below:
sentence -> main clause->subordinate clause-> modifying phrases…
In this study, we conclude that the organization of a narrative further determines the location of the main story line
in a narrative. The relationship among narrative structure, discourse function and manifestation can be depicted asshown in Table 1.
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Table 1. Relationship among Narrative Structure, Discourse Function, and Manifestation
Composition
Structure

Narrative
Structure

Discourse
Function

Manifestation
Syntactic device & tense
Semantic device

Abstract

Backgrounding

States, static verbs, existents

Orientation

Backgrounding

Temporal, spatial phrases

Imperfective forms

Main Events

Foregrounding

Simple S., Compound S.,
Main Clause (Past tense)

Perfective forms
Dynamic
RealisBody Paragraph(s) Supporting

Backgrounding

Sub. Clause, Detached
Participle, Initial Participle.,
Embedding

Imperfective forms

Comment
Evaluation

Backgrounding

Structures with states, static
verbs and comparators

Imperfective forms
Comparators
Irrealis

Coda

Backgrounding

Structures containing states,
static, process, verbs in present
tense

Comparators
Irrealis

Introduction

Conclusion

Perception of the Main Events and Manifestation
To examine whether there is a discrepancy between students’ perception of the main events and their manifestation, we asked 18 students to write down the main events in their writings. The findings obtained from ouranalysis are as follows. First, some of the students do not understand what an event means, so comments andevaluation are included in their list of main events as shown in the following original.
1.

921 has become our national suffering day.

2.

I still remember being shocked and awakening by the forcefully horrifying earthquake.

3.

Foreign secure organizations from many companies, liberally give Taiwan a big hand.

4.

The most important thing we must pay attention are [sic] to rebuild our home, settle sufferers’
life, take care of the orphan, and the soul reestablishment. (8893095)

Second, one student has a better understanding of what the main events are. However, the last one in thelist is not the main event.
1.

The early morning when the earthquake happened, I was in “Holiday KTV” with my friends.

2.

We were really worried about our family and other friends.

3.

More than two thousands of people were killed and injured by this strong quake.

4.

We should see the bright future ahead. (893097)

Third, one of the students did not list the main events. The main events were put in the second paragraph andthey are numbered. Let’ s look at the original, which is the second paragraph and whose errors are not marked andcorrected.

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To contents(1) We were frightened by the strong earthquake at 1:47. (2) After a succession of violent
vibrate [vibration], everyone screamed and ran away houses. (3) The earthquake cut power lines andcaused power failure. (4) It plunged millions of houses into darkness. (5) It forced roads and railways
to cut, as a result, the government ordered offices and schools [to[ shut. (6) Thousands of buildings
were collapsed. (7) The damage to human’s life and property and agriculture amounted to countless.
(8) Many people were homeless and displaced. (9) The earthquake is one of the most natural disaster
before. (893099)
Each sentential unit expresses a complete thought. In terms of manifestation, this kind of structure is themost possible candidate for manifesting the foregrounding. In fact, expressions such as “were frightened”, “screamed
and ran away”, “cut power lines and caused power failure”, “plunged millions of houses into darkness”, and“ordered offices and schools to shut” denote dynamic actions, which in turn function as the foregrounding. However, sentences from (6) to (9) should be regarded as a description, a report, or a comment rather than dynamic
actions. They actually serve the backgrounding function.
Analyses above reveal that some of the students know how to arrange their narrative structure and put
necessary content in the framework, while some of them misunderstand the meaning of main events and makemany a mistake in their writing, including syntactic structures, spelling, semantics, and voice. These mistakes will
reduce the quality and may affect the coherence of the writing. Take the following excerpt for example:(1) On the night, I was fell asleep [had fallen asleep] already. (2) When the quake began toswing, my roommates were shouting, [shouted.] they [They] kept on calling my name.
The first error is in the use of voice. It is wrong to use the passive to refer to someone’s falling asleep. The second
error results from the wrong manifestation of situations in (2). It is possible that the student’s roommates were
doing something such as taking a shower, singing a song, or chatting when the quake occurred. However, unlesssomething happened before this happening point and caused her roommates to shout for a period of time, it is
impossible for her roommates to be shouting at the time point when the quake occurred. We think that the student
writer know the chronological order of the event. However, she does not have a better understanding of the function
and manifestation of certain structures.
The third error is in the run-on sentences. There are two successive actions happening right after the quake.
The following in which the first sentence functions as a temporal and situation orientation is one of the possible
manifestations: On the night, I fell asleep deeply. When the quake began to swing, my roommates shouted, andthen they kept on calling my name.

Conclusion
In this study, we first conducted an in-depth investigation of the manifestations of the foregrounding andbackgrounding. The outcomes of the investigation show that the structures of main vs. subordinate clauses, embedding, and phrases as orientation are three commonly-used structures. Detached participles and initial participles,though are good devices for marking the backgrounding, seldom appear.
Besides, our analyses reveal that some of the students misunderstand the concept of main events. Criteria
for determining the foregrounding and backgrounding vary from culture to culture. For example, sequentiality,
importance, causality or importance for plot development, and predictability as pointed out by Fleischman (1985:85960) are practical. Other content criteria such as temporal criteria, functional-dependency criteria, and culturedependent criteria are also practical in analyzing the discrepancy between students’ thinking and manifestations(Reinhart 1984). A better understanding of the relationship between grounding and narratives will improve thestudents’ ability of narrative writing. Therefore, it is a good step to apply the theory of discourse grounding into thepractice of English teaching, especially narrative writing. Further research to examine the effect of this application
will contribute to the success of the writing class.
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References
Andreasen, Andren John (1981). Backgrounding and Foregrounding through Aspect in Chinese Narrative.
Alto: Stanford University Ph.D. dissertation.

Palo

Caenepeel, Mimo. (1995). “Aspect and Text Structure.” Linguistics 33(2), 213-253.
Chan, Daniel Yu-ching (1996). “A Semantic and Cross-Linguistic Study of Imperfective Aspect in Narrative
Discourse.” In Research Papers in Linguistics and Literature. Taipei: Graduate Institute of English, National Taiwan Normal University.
Chan, Daniel Yu-ching (1998). Background and Foreground Structures in EFL English Written Narratives: A
Case Study in Senior High School. Unpublished dissertation. Taiwan: NTNU.
Chang, Vincent Wuchang (1997). Freshman English Composition: An Error Analysis from the Discourse
spective. Taipei: The Crane Publishing Co., Ltd.

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Chatman, Seymour (1978). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell
versity Press.

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Chen, Chiou-mei (1999). “Application of Discourse Grounding to the Teaching of Advanced English Writing.” In
The Proceedings of the English International Symposium on English Teaching. Taipei: The Crane Publishing Co., Ltd.
Fleischman, Suzanne (1985). “Discourse Functions of Tense-Aspect Oppositions in Narrative: toward a Theory of
Grounding.” Linguistics 23, 851-882.
Fleischman, Suzanne (1995). “Imperfective and Irrealis.” In Joan Bybee & Suzanne Fleischman (eds.), Modality
in Grammar and Discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Genette, Gerard (1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca:
University Press.

CornellGivon, T. (ed.) (1979). Syntax and Semantics 12: Discourse and Syntax. New York: Academic Press.
Hopper, Paul J. (1979). “Aspect and Foregrounding in Discourse.” In Talmy Givon (ed.), Syntax and Semantics
12: Discourse and Syntax. New York: Academic Press.
Labov, William (1972). “The Transformation of Experience in Narrative Syntax.” In Language in the Inner City.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Matthiessen, Christian, & Thompson,Sandra A. (1988). “The Structure of Discourse and ‘Subordination’.” InJohn Haiman & Sandra Thompson (eds.), Clause Combining in Grammar and Discourse. Amsterdam:
Benjamins.
Reinhart, T. (1984). “Principles in the Gestalt Perception in the Temporal Organization of Narrative Texts.”
Linguistics 22, 779-809.
Schiffrin, Deborah (1981). “Tense Variation in Narrative.” Language 57, 45-62.
Thompson, Sandra A. (1987). “‘Subordination’ and Narrative Event Structure.” In Russell Tomlin (ed.), Coherence and Grounding in Discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Toolan, Michael J. (1988). Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction. New York: Routledge.

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Style Elements in Foreign-Language Writing among
Japanese College Students
Sandra Leishman
Chiba University, Japan

Chikako Nishigaki
Chiba University, Japan
Abstract
This study investigated the outstanding style features of Japanese college writing both for surface detailand more fundamental characteristics. The 33 students who took part in this study were English major andminor students enrolled in Basic English Composition at a Japanese national college. Their compositions wereanalyzed for overuse or under-use of particular features relative to the standard conventions of academic register. We classified the results along a continuum from academic elements representing an informational andabstract conceptual focus to conversational elements, representing highly involved, interactive and affective
discourse. Among the features isolated were pronouns, Wh-questions and discourse particles, hedges, amplifiers and emphatics, type-token ratio, word length, nominalizations, gerunds, downtoners, seem/appear, private
verbs and public verbs speaking like, ‘say, tell, and speak’. Through this, we hope to clarify why the academic
English writing for Japanese students falls short of the rhetorical expectations of academic prose.

Introduction
In general, EFL students are often unaware of the differing communicative needs of various genres of writing. Academic prose, press reportage, fiction, for example, all have a different communicative purpose and as such,
use the grammatical and rhetorical resources of English in different ways. Academic writing can be characterized
as highly informational, non-narrative, explicit, and abstract. Japanese students’ background and experience inwriting composition does not include familiarization with these conventions. In Japan, composition instruction has
usually emphasized the consolidation of grammatical components and translation from Japanese to English. As aresult, composing successful communicative academic rhetorical prose in English is a significant academic challenge for Japanese EFL students.
In Nishigaki and Leishman (2000, 1999) we examined Japanese college-level academic writing in terms offour categories: content knowledge; language system knowledge (style and grammatical elements); context knowledge; and writing process knowledge. We found in these previous studies that it was among the style-based elements that students deviated most widely from the accepted conventions of academic discourse. In order to investigate these initial findings more deeply and to determine what specific linguistic elements accounted for thedeviation between the students’ target and their production ability, we applied Biber’s model of linguistic dimensions (1988).
Biber’s linguistic dimensions represent quantitative research that identifies groups of linguistic features that
regularly co-occur in texts. These patterns of features represent an underlying communicative function. Analysis
of a correlation matrix of these linguistic features, are represented linearly, as ‘factors’, in a complementary patternof positively and negatively weighted features that co-occur with high frequency. Biber’s Factor 1 represents themost basic dimension of variation among spoken and written texts in English. We adopted 23 key features of Factor
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1, from Biber’s exhaustive investigation of 67 features, which registered a score of ±.50 or above and were related
to our previous studies. Biber provides an appendix of the frequency counts for a variety of registers, including two
used in this study, academic prose and face-to-face conversation.
A close analysis of how these 23 features appeared in students’ compositions provides a very detailed picture of where students’ strengths and weaknesses lie along the linguistic continuum of text features with an informational focus such as academic prose, to text features that have an involved focus, such as spoken conversational
English. Although Biber points out that student essays are unlike any of the published genres of English in thatthey use only surface forms of academic writing, and are relatively non-informational and persuasive in form, we
agree with Shaw (1998) that there is merit in a global approach that generates enough numbers for statisticalanalysis. Hence, we have used Biber’s model as a tool to gain a deeper insight into the gap between students’compositions and formal academic rhetoric by contrasting the results of our tabulations with Biber’s results for the
genres of academic prose and face-to-face conversation.

Objective
The objective of this study was to investigate the surface features and more fundamental linguistic featuresof Japanese college writing that contributed to the deviation from academic rhetorical text.

Methdoloogy
Students
The subjects of this study were 33 students enrolled in Basic English Composition at a national university inJapan: 19 English majors, 12 English minors, and 2 auditors. The primary objective of this freshman writing course
was for students to develop schemata for written academic discourse.

Data Collection
Data for this study was collected through a take-home composition assigned to the students at the start of theacademic year. Students were asked to compare or contrast two topics and submit their composition within two
weeks.

Data Analysis
Students’ compositions were stored on a computer and analyzed for surface features, text length and topic
selection, among others. In addition, compositions were analyzed for more fundamental characteristics: The
frequencies of 23 linguistic features were tabulated both by hand and computer. The linguistic features isolated
were chosen from Biber (1988) to illustrate the style elements that were the focus of our study. The elements were
past tense, present tense, 1st person pronouns, 2nd person pronouns, 3rd person pronouns, pronoun IT, Wh-questions,nominalizations, gerunds, nouns, BE as main verb, prepositions, type-token ratio, word length, downtoners, hedges,
amplifiers, emphatics, discourse particles, public verbs, private verbs, seem/appear, and contractions. We used
Biber’s classifications of the features as the standard for our counts. The frequency counts were normalizedaccording to the following formula: Frequency Counts of a Linguistic Feature / Length of the Text X 1000 (Biber,
1988).

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Results
Results Overview
The results of our analysis of the surface characteristics of students’ compositions are shown in Table 1.
Students’ compositions had a total of 9,579 words, 184 paragraphs, and 784 sentences. On average a composition
consisted of 290 words, 5.6 paragraphs, 4.3 sentences per paragraph, and 12.2 words in a sentence.

Table 1. Students’ Composition Overview
Surface Features#

Total # of Words

9,579

Total # Paragraphs

184

Total # of Sentences

784

Mean # of Words in a Composition

290

Mean # of Paragraphs in a Composition

5.6

Mean # of Sentences in a Paragraph

4.3

Mean # of Words in a Sentence

12.2

Topic Selection
We then analyzed the degree to which students went beyond their common knowledge and researched an
unfamiliar subject area. The results are shown in Table 2. The number of student compositions whose topic dealt
with an immediate subject area was 26 or 78.8%. The number whose topics dealt with a distant subject area was 7
or 21.2%. Immediate subject area topics included: Candy and Chewing Gum, Baseball and Soccer, Two Different
Types of Shopping Bags. Distant subject area topics included: The differences between American university students and Japanese university students, Japan of Today and Former Japan.

Table 2. Comparison of Immediate and Distant Subject Areas
Topics#%Immediate Subject Area

26

78.8%

Distant Subject Area

7

21.2%

Linguistic Features
The following table shows how the 23 features we isolated for students’ compositions (SC) compared with
Biber’s results for academic prose (AP) and face-to-face conversation (FFC). The figures in the table show thefrequency counts of the linguistic features normalized to a text length of 1000 words, except for TTR and word
length.

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Table 3. Frequency Count of 23 Features in Comparison with Biber
Linguistic Features

AP

SC

FFC

Past Tense

21.9

30.3

37.4

Present Tense

63.7

153.0

128.4

1st person Pronouns

5.7

36.3

57.9

2nd person Pronouns

0.2

5.4

30.8

3rd person Pronouns

11.5

29.3

29.2

Pronoun IT

5.9

13.9

20.0

Wh-questions

0.0

1.2

0.7

Nominalizations

35.8

15.7

9.2

Gerunds

8.5

9.9

4.7

Nouns

188.1

264.0

137.4

BE as Main Verb

23.8

53.3

39.5

Prepositions

139.5

110.6

85.0

Type-token Ratio

50.6

41.9

46.1

Word Length

4.8

4.4

4.1

Downtoners

2.5

3.5

1.5

Hedges

0.2

5.2

2.1

Amplifiers

1.4

6.4

6.0

Emphatics

3.6

10.9

12.2

Discourse Particles

0.0

5.6

3.9

Public Verbs

5.7

2.9

8.8

Private Verbs

12.5

12.3

35.4

Seem/Appear

1.0

1.8

0.4

Contractions

0.1

6.6

46.2

Type-token Ratio and Word Length
Type-token ratio (TTR) is lower in conversation texts than in written registers. The results of our analysis areshown in Table 4. Students’ compositions had a TTR of 41.9 compared with Biber’s mean score of 50.6 for AP and
46.1 for FFC. The second feature we examined was word length. Shorter words are more frequent and moregeneral in meaning; longer words convey more specific, specialized meanings. The results of our analysis areshown in Table 4. The average word length in students’ compositions was 4.4 letters, compared with Biber’s mean
length of 4.8 for AP and 4.1 for FFC.

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Table 4. Comparison of Type-Token Ratio and Word Length
Linguistic Features

AP

SC

FFC

Type-token Ratio

50.6

41.9

46.1

Word Length

4.8

4.4

4.1

Noun Elements
Nominalizations refer to all words ending in –tion, -ment, -ness, or –ity. Gerunds are verbal forms serving
nominal functions. Nouns refer to all nouns found in the dictionary, excluding nominalizations and gerunds. The
results of our analysis are shown in Table 5. Students’ compositions had a nominalization frequency of 15.7
compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 35.8 for AP and 9.2 for FFC. They had a gerund frequency of 9.9
compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 8.5 for AP and 4.7 for FFC. Finally, students’ compositions had a noun
frequency of 264.0 compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 188.1 for AP and 137.4 for FFC.

Table 5. Comparison of Noun Elements
Linguistic Features

AP

SC

FFC

Nominalizations

35.8

15.7

9.2

Gerunds

8.5

9.9

4.7

Nouns

188.1

264.0

137.4

Academic Hedging: Downtoners, Seem/Appear
Two hedging strategies common to academic discourse are downtoners and seem/appear. Downtoners arewords like, almost, nearly, or only. They are used to lower the force of the verb. Seem and appear are usedsimilarly, or as markers of evidentiality (Chafe, 1985 (Biber, 1988)). The results of our analysis are shown in Table
6. Students’ compositions had a downtoners frequency of 3.5 compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 2.5 for AP
and 1.5 for FFC. They had a seem/appear frequency of 1.8 compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 1.0 for AP
and 0.4 for FFC.

Table 6. Comparison of Downtoners and Seem/Appear
Linguistic Features

AP

SC

FFC

Downtoners

2.5

3.5

1.5

Seem/Appear

1.0

1.8

0.4

Public and Private Verbs
Public and private verbs illustrate the differences in a text with an informational focus and text that has an
involved focus. Public verbs are speech act verbs, e.g. say and explain. Private verbs express intellectual states,e.g. believe or discover. The results of our analysis are shown in Table 7. Students’ compositions had a public verb
frequency of 2.9 compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 5.7 for AP and 8.8 for FFC. They had a private verb
frequency of 12.3 compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 12.5 for AP and 35.4 for FFC.

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Table 7. Comparison of Public and Private Verbs
Linguistic Features

AP

SC

FFC

Public Verbs

5.7

2.9

8.8

Private Verbs

12.5

12.3

35.4

Verb Elements
The results of our analysis on verb elements are shown in Table 8. Students’ compositions had a past tense
frequency of 30.3 compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 21.9 for AP and 37.4 for FFC. Students’ compositions
had a present tense frequency of 153.0 compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 63.7 for AP and 128.4 for FFC.
They had a BE verb frequency of 53.3 compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 23.8 for AP and 39.5 for FFC.

Table 8. Comparison of Verb Elements
Linguistic Features

AP

SC

FFC

Past Tense

21.9

30.3

37.4

Present Tense

63.7

153.0

128.4

BE as Main Verb

23.8

53.3

39.5

Pronouns
The results of our analysis on pronouns are shown in Table 9. Students’ compositions had a 1st person
pronoun frequency of 36.3 compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 5.7 for AP and 57.9 for FFC. They had a 2nd
person pronoun frequency of 5.4 compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 0.2 for AP and 30.8 for FFC. They had
a 3rd person pronoun frequency of 29.3 compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 11.5 for AP and 29.2 for FFC.
Finally, they had an IT pronoun frequency of 13.9 compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 5.9 for AP and 20.0
for FFC.

Table 9. Comparison of Pronouns
Linguistic Features

AP

SC

FFC

1st Person Pronouns

5.7

36.3

57.9

2nd Person Pronouns 0.2

5.4

30.8

3 Person Pronouns 11.5

29.3

29.2

Pronoun IT

13.9

20.0

rd

5.9

Wh-Questions, Discourse Particles and Contractions
Rare features in AP are Wh-questions, discourse particles, e.g. anyway, now, and well, and contractions. The
results of our analysis are shown in Table 10. Students’ compositions had a Wh-questions frequency of 1.2 compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 0.0 for AP and 0.7 for FFC. They had a discourse particle frequency of 5.6
compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 0.0 for AP and 3.9 for FFC. Finally, they had a contraction frequency of
6.6 compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 0.1 for AP and 46.2 for FFC.

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Table 10. Comparison of Wh-Questions, Discourse Particles and Contractions
Linguistic Features

AP

SC

FFC

Wh-questions

0.0

1.2

0.7

Discourse Particles

0.0

5.6

3.9

Contractions

0.1

6.6

46.2

Hedges, Amplifiers and Emphatics
Some features common to spoken English are hedges, e.g. maybe, kind of, and sort of; amplifiers, e.g. very,
highly, and totally; and emphatics, e.g. a lot, really, and so+adj. The results of our analysis are shown in Table 11.
Students’ compositions had a hedges frequency of 5.2 compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 0.2 for AP and 2.1
for FFC. They had an amplifiers frequency of 6.4 compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 1.4 for AP and 6.0 for
FFC. Finally, they had an emphatics frequency of 10.9 compared with Biber’s mean frequency of 3.6 for AP and
12.2 for FFC.

Table 11. Comparison of Conversation Hedges
Linguistic Features

AP

SC

FFC

Hedges

0.2

5.2

2.1

Amplifiers

1.4

6.4

6.0

Emphatics

3.6

10.9

12.2

Surface Features
Among the results on the overview of students’ compositions (Table 1), the most interesting was thenumber of sentences per paragraphs. The average paragraph was made up of only 4.3 sentences. Students appeared
to be unaware of the requirements of a standard paragraph.
As seen from our results on topic selection (Table 2), many of the students picked topics from an immediate
subject area, about which they had personal knowledge or experience. Only a fifth of the subjects chose topics froma distant subject area, which required investigation of outside resources. It is reasonable to assume the majority ofstudents completed their writing tasks based exclusively on their own general knowledge and used their personal
experience as support or to illustrate their ideas.

Fundamental Features
An analysis of the 23 linguistic features chosen revealed two significant tendencies. The first was a lack of
an informational and abstract conceptual focus, most clearly illustrated by the results for TTR, word length, noun
elements, academic hedges, public and private verbs, which we grouped under the heading academic elements. The
second tendency was towards a highly involved and interactive discourse, best illustrated by the results on verb
elements, pronouns, Wh-questions, discourse particles, contractions, hedges, amplifiers, and emphatics which wegrouped under the heading conversational elements.

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Lack of Academic Elements
Our results on TTR (Table 4) revealed that students’ compositions were lower than the mean score for FFC,
considered the lowest of all registers. This suggests little variety of vocabulary and an unusually high degree ofrepetition. It’s clear that students lack the necessary lexical resources to write credibly in an academic style. The
results on word length (Table 4) however, show more moderate findings. The average word length for students’compositions was midway between AP and FFC. Word length reflects the difficult production task of precise
lexical choice. Our TTR findings, together with our word length, suggest students may have translated key phrases
from the Japanese using a dictionary and used them repeatedly.
The findings on noun elements (Table 5) revealed some mixed results. Students’ compositions reveal a
relatively low number of nominalization compared to AP, however, higher than FFC. Nominalization is considered
as one of the most fundamental distinctions among registers (Biber, 1988) and means a highly abstract or informational focus. Students used a high number of gerunds and nouns, though, the gerund finding may represent thetendency to repeat the same gerunds as the subject of a sentence, e.g. Chewing itself is reasonable act to relax, orChewing is a continuous act for something tender. In combination with the low TTR above, this suggests thatstudents tended to repeat the same nouns in lieu of using synonyms or other strategies.
Our examination of academic hedges (Table 6) reveals that students demonstrated a strong use of downtoners,
one and a half times the average number used in AP and over twice the number used in FFC. Downtoners lower theforce of the verb to indicate probability or politeness to the addressee (Holmes, 1984 (Biber, 1988)). Our results
also showed students used seem and appear (Table 6) excessively. Though seem and appear are considered academic hedges marking evidentiality, students tended to use them in conjunction with an attempt to avoid explicit
statements, e.g.: There seems to be more different [between today and the past], if I try to find. Students’ excessive
use of downtoners and seem/appear may suggest a transfer from the Japanese rhetorical convention of avoiding
statements that are too direct.
Our results on public and private verbs (Table 7) show that students tended to under-use public verbs. Biber
distinguishes public verbs as primarily speech act verbs and private verbs as common in the introduction of indirectstatements. Among the private verbs students used, 46% of the verbs were think and 85% of these were used at the
beginning of the sentence. This suggests the first language transfer of introducing ideas hesitantly, e.g. Now, I try
to think differences between them, or At least I think so.

Excess of Conversational Elements
Our results on verb elements (Table 8) revealed an excessive use of the present tense, over twice theaverage for AP, and above average for FFC. Similarly, our findings for BE verb were above average for FFC. The
present tense is considered common to unplanned speech styles. Students’ lack of vocabulary contributed to theover-use of BE verbs. This assumption is supported by our results on TTR.
Our results on pronouns (Table 9) reveal students demonstrated an excessive use of pronouns for AP: over
6 times the average for 1st person pronouns, over 27 times for 2nd person pronouns, over 2.5 times for 3rd person
pronouns and twice as many times the average for the pronoun IT. Greater pronoun use is associated with an
involved style (Chafe, 1985 (Biber, 1988)). Students appeared to write as if they were speaking to someone.
The results on Wh-questions, discourse particles and contractions (Table 10) show that students were unaware of the relative absence of Wh-questions, discourse particles and contractions in academic writing. Of thefive discourse particles listed by Biber, the students’ compositions, consisted of one particle, now (86%). This may
suggest that a lack of variety of connectors (Nishigaki & Leishman, 2000) resulted in the overuse of ‘now’ as ameans of calling attention to a new topic.
Our results on hedges, amplifiers and emphatics (Table 11), show that students used an excessive number ofconversation hedges, 26 times the norm, as a means of modifying the force of their comments and introducing a
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degree of uncertainty or fuzziness in their conclusions (Chafe, 1982 (Biber, 1988)). Among the 16 amplifiers
students used, 92% consisted of the word very. This included 4 cases of very very and 2 of very very very. Students’use of emphatics was much closer to FFC than AP. All three are informal strategies that appeal to a listener either
to infer from fuzziness in the discourse or to signal solidarity (Holmes, 1985 (Biber, 1988)).

Conclusion
This study was conducted to identify the features that represent the gap between students’ production of
written English and the standard conventions of academic discourse and ultimately guide teachers and students
over the barrier of academic style. From the results of this study we learned the areas of greatest challenge forJapanese freshmen students are the following.
1.

A lack of awareness of paragraph organization.

2.

The personalization of topics.

3.

A lack of explicit nouns and noun expressions.

4.

The repetition of the same expressions.

5.

The overuse of academic hedges.

6.

The overuse of the present tense and BE-verbs.

7.

The overuse of pronouns.

8.

The use of Wh-questions, discourse particles and contractions.

9.

The overuse of informal colloquial hedging strategies.

We believe that if students and teachers focus on these specific areas of study in college-level writing classes,
the challenge of producing a written text in an accepted academic style will be achievable.

Acknowledgments
We wish to thank Rieko Kubo for administering the perception tests to the Japanese subjects and Kanae
Nishi and Winifred Strange for administering the perception tests to the American subjects. We also thank colleagues at ATR for helping out with pilot studies and for valuable comments on earlier presentations of this study.
We thank K. Saitou for the drawing of Fig. 1, and Kris Stewart for her insightful comments about rhythmicaldifferences in Japanese and American frog songs.

References
Biber, D., (1988). Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, Leech, G., Conrad, S. & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken andwritten English. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.
Hamp-Lyons, L. (ed.) (1993). Assessing second language writing in academic contexts. New Jersey: Ablex
Publishing Corporation.
Hirano, K. (1987). Japanese students’ use of communication strategies in written production. JACET Bulletin 18:
49-69.

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Nishigaki, C., & Leishman, S. (1999). Developmental stages in EFL writing of Japanese college students. A paper
presented at Program and Abstracts, 12th World Congress of Applied Linguistics, AILA ‘99: 357.
Nishigaki, C., & Leishman, S. (2000). An analysis of compositions of Japanese college students, Bulletin of theFaculty of Education, 48/II: 87-99, Chiba University.
Shaw, P., & Liu, E. (1998). What develops in the development of second language writing? Applied Linguistics
19/2: 255-271. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shleppegrell, M. J. (1996). Conjunction in spoken English and ESL writing. Applied Linguistics 17/3: 271-85.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Task-Based Instruction in Large EFL Classes
Meili Yeh
Liching Hung
Liju Yien
National Lien Ho Institute of Technology, Taiwan
Introduction
This paper presents the authors' experiences in using a variety of tasks in large EFL reading and listeningclasses, which always consists of about fifty to sixty learners with varied English proficiencies. Facing such a large
number of students, the traditional grammar-translation approach fails to activate students' participation. Swain(1995) indicates that tasks provide input to learners and opportunities for meaningful language use and therefore
may force students to pay close attention during the process of learning. Hence, we use tasks in reading as well as
listening classes to make the instruction more student-centered so as to activate the learners' participation and toenhance their listening and reading comprehension. These tasks are mostly use at pre-listening/reading stage as
warm up activities or at while-listening/reading stage as a guide for their learning. In general, the pre-listening or
pre-reading tasks focus on activating learners' background knowledge or relevant schema. The purpose of whilelistening or while-reading tasks is to lead the learners to focus on reading for comprehension or to force them toparticipate in the learning. We have also made use of the technological aids in the language laboratories to facilitate our task-based listening instruction. For instance, we used the computer software such as PowerPoint topresent the tasks. And through the Language Learning System (Panasonic WE-7900), teachers can get students'
responses and give the students immediate feedback, which highly interests them and is able to attract their concentration. We have included in the appensix the taks designed or adapted for use in our classes during the pastacademic year.

Benefits of Using Task-Based Instruction
1.

Tasks can be a good tool to force students to concentrate on comprehension instead of word forword processing.

2.

With tasks to complete, students have to become active in the learning activity.

3.

Students can learn through peer cooperation.

4.

Group work can arose their sense of honor and spur them to devote themselves to the task.

5.

The tasks impose responsibility on the students because they are required to give a report (oralor written). Consequently, their participation is increased.

6.

Different kinds of tasks appeal to different abilities (such as verbal and art ability) and thus
provide the students with a chance to activate and develop their multiple intelligences.

7.

Opportunities to do oral reports enhance learners' presentation skills.

8.

Tasks and group works almost take care of all the students in a large class. Every student has toparticipate in fulfilling the tasks.

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Difficulty of Using Task-Based Instruction
It takes a lot of time to design the tasks and required the teacher to do a lot of preparation.

Suggestions
1.

Cooperation among teachers is strongly advocated.

2.

Make good use of group work by assigning each individual a job and requiring them to report.

3.

Give students immediate feedback.

4.

Provide clear instruction on how to do the tasks by giving examples.

Appendix
ADVERTISEMENTS
Task 1: Semantic map: Advertisements in Modern Life
Objective:

To activate vocabularyType:

Pre-reading, group work

Preparation:

Handout of the semantic map

Procedure:

1.

The teacher distributes the handout.

2.

Students form groups of four to fill in the semantic map.

3.

Several groups to write their results on the board.

Task 2: Blank-filling: The World of Advertising
Objective:
Preparation:

Procedure:

To get ideas of advertising, logos, slogans
1.

Pick up an article concerning advertising.

2.

Delete 10 words and put them under the article.

3.

Select five famous slogans around Taiwan under the 10 words.

4.

Put nine famous logos on the bottom of the handout.

1.

Explain ‘slogan’ and ‘logo.’2.

Ask a couple of students to exemplify ‘slogan’ and ‘logo.’3.

Ask students to identify the nine logos provided on the bottom of the handout

4.

Ask students to fill in the 10 blanks of the text

Figure 1. Advertisements
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Task 3: Scanning Advertisements
Objectve:Type:

To find out recurrent words for restaurant advertisements
Brainstorming

Material:

Restaurant Ads from China Post

Procedure:1.

Students think of any words concerning restaurants.

2.

Students form group of four.

3.

Each group is responsible for four pieces of Ads.

4.

Each group presents their recurrent words.

5.

The teacher picks up some useful expressions from the Ads and asks some groups
in English and ask them to translate them into English.

Follow-up:

Students design a logo and copywrite for a restaurant which is going to open.

Task 4: Activating Background Knowledge
Objective:
Type:

Activate background knowledge
Brainstorming

Material:

Three advertisements from Time Magazine

Procedure:1.

Students choose the kind for each product from multiple-choice options.

2.

Several students explain their reasons for their own responses.

3.

Students learn to get the implication and grasp the meanings of the advertisements.

Task 5: Listening for Specific Information
Objective:

Activate vocabulary in the listening task

Figure 2. Movies

Type:

Pre-listening, brainstorming

Material:

Advertisements from ICRT

Procedure:1.

Students listen to advertisements individually and discuss what the content might
be about and what kind of products may be promoted.

2.

Students listen to advertisements again.

3.

Students read the transcriptions on the monitor and fill in the blanks on a pieceof paper.

4.

Students share their own answers with their classmates.

Figure 1. Advertisements (Cont’d)

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MOVIES
Task 1: Semantic Map: Movies
Objective:

Activate vocabularyType:

Pre-reading, group work

Preparation:

Design the semantic map

Procedure:

1.

Distribute the handout

2.

Students form groups of 4 to fill in the semantic map

3.

Ask four groups to write their results on the board

Task 2: Info Gap: Let's Go to a Movie
Objective:
Preparation:

Procedure:

Follow up:

Teach students to read for specific information
5.

Find the reviews of four different types of movies (from websites or magazines)

6.

Condense the reviews, picking out the parts about different aspects of the movie

7.

Place different symbols (♣♦♥♠) and numbers on the four reviews

5.

Distribute the handout: each student was given a review

6.

Grouping: students form groups of four -- those who hold the handout with thesame number are grouped together. Each one is assigned the role as the leader,recorder, time-keeper and reporter respectively.

7.

The four students provide information needed to complete the table summarizing
the director, type and good points of the movie

8.

After finishing the table, they discuss which movie they would like to see. They
have to negotiate and decide on one.

9.

The reporter from each group presented their results.

Groups write a short summary of the movie plot.

Figure 2. Movies

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NEWSPAPER ENGLISH
Task 1:
Objective:
Type:

Skimming the Newspaper
To recognize the content of an English newspaper
Warm up

Preparation:

The handout with blanks for students to write pages of the newspaper and pages forcertain information

Procedure:1.

Students form groups of four or five2.

Students skim the newspaper quickly by group and fill in the blanks

3.

Some groups present their ‘work’

Task 2:
Objective:
Preparation:

Procedure:

Task 3:
Objective:
Preparation:

Chunking Different Information
To learn to identify the main idea of an article
8.

A handout with several headlines and leads

9.

Under each headline and lead followed by blank spaces for students to write‘subject’, ‘main verb’ ‘why’, ‘when’, ‘where’

10.

Students form groups of four.

11.

The four students provide information needed to complete the questions

12.

Students present their result by group.

Blank-Filling
To listen to specific information and retrieving the meaning of the listening text
1.

A handout provides the skeleton of the text with some blanks.

2.

The handout provides some clues to make the listening task easier.

Material:

A transcription of local weather report from ICRT

Procedure:

6.

Students go through the handout to get the general idea about what is going tolisten.

7.

Students listen to the text twice. Students complete the chart and check their answers
with classmates.

Task 4: Getting the Gist of the Text
Objective:

To use key words to get the gist of a text in the listening task

Material:

Traffic report from ICRT

Preparation:

1.

Transcribe a piece of traffic report from ICRT

2.

Make up some multiple-choice questions.

Figure 3. Newspaper English
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3.

Present the material using Powerpoint

1.

Students are given a few of the key words and phrases from a traffic report.

2.

Students are told to guess, from those key words, the gist of the text, given multiplechoice alternatives.

3.

Students give answers and get feedback immediately.

Task 5: Listening for Specific Information
Objective:

To listen for specific information

Material:

News report from ICRT

Preparation:

Procedure:

1.

Transcribe a piece of news report from ICRT (select shorter and easier ones).

2.

Make up some multiple-choice questions.

3.

Present the material using Powerpoint.

1.

Students listen to the text three times.

2.

The teacher plays the tape again if necessary.

3.

Students respond the questions through Panasonic WE-7900. 4. Students get the
feedback immediately on the monitor.

Figure 3. Newspaper English (Cont’d)

Poem 1 --- THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
Task 1: Jigsaw
Objective:Time:
Category:

To get Ss participated in reading the poem
30 min.
Pre-reading

Preparation:

Leave every other line of the poem blank

Procedure:1.

Ss form groups of four.

2.

Ss work together to put the lines which T had taken out from the poem at the rightplace. Remind them to pay attention to cohesion and coherence.

3.

Ss present their "work".

Figure 4. Poem 1 — The Road Not Taken

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Poem 2 --- DO NOT STAND BY MY GRAVE AND WEEP
Task 1: Blank-Filling, Creation and Presentation
Objective:Time:
Category:

Activate Ss' imagination, let Ss create a poem with a model of this poem
30 minutes
Pre-reading, warm up

Preparation:

Delete the five natural things in the poem

Procedure:1.

Ss form groups of four2.

Ss read the poem and fill the five blanks as their imagination leads

3.

Some groups present their "work"

Task 2: Blank-Filling and Comparison
Objective: Give songs of related theme and have comparison 20 min.
Time:

20 Minutes

Type:Pre-listening

Preparation:

Leave some words of the song blank.

Procedure:

1.

Discuss the relationship among angels, roses and rain.

2.

Listen to the song "Angels, roses and rain" and fill in the blanks. Compare the songwith the poem and discuss.

Figure 5. Poem 2 — Do not Stand by My Grave and WeepMUSIC
Task 1: Semantic Map
Objective:Time:
Category:

To activate the idea of music
15 min. for each stage
Pre-reading and during-reading

Preparation:

Create a graphic organizer according to the text

Procedure:

1.

Ask Ss to fill out the GO themselves

2.

Then Ss read the text and fill the bubbles according to the text, using another colorof ink.

Figure 6. Music
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Task 2: Research and Sentence-making
Objective:

Get Ss to know more about music by self-research.

Category:

Post-reading

Procedure:1.

Ss search information about one type of music

2.

Ss digest the materials they found in newspapers, magazines, books, internet orother source of information3.

Ss make 10 sentences based on the materials to introduce the music they chose topresent

Figure 6. Music (Cont’d)

Festivals and Holidays
Task 1:
Objective:
Type:
Preparation:

Procedure:

Brainstorming the Pictures-- When do you do these things?
Activate vocabularyPre-reading, group work
1.

Prepare handout which contain the pictures of the activities that people do during
different holidays.

2.

As the topic is about Chinese festivals and holidays, the activities are those Chinese
people do during different festivals and holidays.

1.

Distribute the handout

2.

Students form groups of 4 to fill in blanks3.

Ask groups to present their results

Task 2: Holiday Survey
Objective:
Type:
Preparation:

Procedure:

Teach students to read for specific information
During-reading
1.

Find the materials (books, pamphlets, websites…) containing the introduction ofChinese holidays

2.

Prepare handouts for the homework

13. Introduce the resources on Chinese holiday (such the homepage of the Information
Government.
14. Distribute the handout and give instruction about how to do the task.
15. After one week, students turn in their homework and give an oral report.
16. Distribute handout. Students complete the matrix while listening to the oral report.

Figure 7. Festivals and holidays
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Task 3: The History of Thanksgiving
Objective:
Type:

Check comprehension
During-viewing, brainstorming

Material:

Family Album 6

Preparation:

Make handouts

Procedure:

8.

Distribute the handouts

9.

Ask students to complete the flow chart by writing down three key words in eachbox.

Figure 7. Festivals and holidays (Cont’d)Review
Benefits of using task-based instruction
1. Tasks can be a good tool to force students to concentrate on comprehension instead of word for word
processing.
2. With tasks to complete, students have to become active in the learning activity.
3. Students can learn through peer cooperation.
4. Group work can arose their sense of honor and spur them to devote themselves to the task.
5. The tasks impose responsibility on the students because they are required to give a report (oral or written).
Consequently, their participation is increased.
6. Different kinds of tasks appeal to different abilities (such as verbal and art ability) and thus provide thestudents with a chance to activate and develop their multiple intelligences.
7. Opportunities to do oral reports enhance learners’ presentation skills.
8. Tasks and group works almost take care of all the students in a large class. Every student has to participate
in fulfilling the tasks.

Difficulties of using task-based instruction
It takes a lot of time to design the tasks and required the teacher to do a lot of preparation.

Suggestions
1. Cooperation among teachers is strongly advocated.
2. Make good use of group work by assigning each individual a job and requiring them to report.
3. Give students immediate feedback.
4. Provide clear instruction on how to do the tasks by giving examples.
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Teaching English in a Multimedia Classroom:
Nurturing Self-Study Abilities with Modern Technology
Hisako Okuda
Hiroshima Shudo University, Japan
Abstract
This paper concerns the use of a multimedia classroom - a computer-assisted laboratory (CALL) - for thedevelopment of interactive/communication skills. It focuses on the importance of motivation and consequent
self-study. In order to illustrate the points in my presentation, I use MPEG clips I developed using MPEG 1 andnon-linear editing systems. Most of these MPEG are available on the web at http://comm.shudo-u.ac.jp/canpus/
auszemi.files/frame.htm.
A new multimedia classroom was completed at my university just in time for the 1999-2000 school year.
The students work at six hexagonally-shaped islands. Each island accommodates six students. Many Shudo
University English teachers expected that the students would work at the computers and be given questions via
programmed instruction and the teacher's job would simply be to ensure that the students were working. For
this reason, there was widespread skepticism as to the usefulness of the CALL room. Contrary to such skepticism, I have found CALL to be highly effective in developing students' communication and self-study skills. I will
describe the program and comment on its effectiveness.

Who Are the Students?
My course is one of the Preparatory Study Abroad Classes for the students who will be participating in theAmerican Overseas Seminar (AOS) set up between Arizona State University (ASU) and Hiroshima Shudo University. The backgrounds of the 30 students in this class are varied. They are all majoring in business or computersciences, and there is a wide range of abilities in English comprehension and speaking. Therefore, in order tomaintain the students' motivation, it is extremely important that the lessons in this course be closely tied to what
would be expected of them during the AOS program.

The Goals of the Course
My goals for this preparatory course are for the students to1.

improve verbal and non-verbal communication skills,

2.

develop skills in gathering new information quickly, and3.

extend competence in day-to-day interactions.

In order to have the students understand these goals, PowerPoint slides and MPEG clips were used. I developed them using the videos that I taped at ASU. They were effective in having students realize the importance ofbeing active both in and out of the classroom. One of the stills is shown below.

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Figure 1. Basic principle of the American overseas seminarPrecepts
In order to accomplish these goals, I emphasize four precepts:
1.

Punctuality and Manners -- The students are constantly reminded of the importance of punctuality and courtesy.

2.

"The Three-Second Rule" -- A response in any form made within three seconds gets extra
points.

3.

Self-Confidence for Active Participation -- Help is provided to overcome shyness or selfconsciousness about English.

4.

Promoting "Self-Education" -- Enjoyable and productive classroom activities promote a commitment to independent study.

Basic Principles and Practices
With these goals and precepts in mind, I will elaborate on the principles behind them, my strategies, andsome of the multimedia resources I used.

The Teacher as Guide and "Entertainer"•

Keep students engaged in productive, enjoyable activities.

•

Help students realize "English is fun."•Credit sustained effort for self-expression rather than accuracy.

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Guide the students to be observant of contextual clues.

•

Use meaningful texts in context so that students learn to predict, using their knowledge oflanguage and the world.

Figure 2. What’s American food?
Most of the class time should be spent on learning activities that guide the students toward expressing what
they really want to say. The teacher gives students words of encouragement and creates an atmosphere in which
they can express themselves with confidence. I don't believe that students will be able to gain good spoken language ability by only drilling on fragments of language which have no context. Students should be given whole andmeaningful texts or dialogues in context so that they can learn to guess at meanings by making use of their current
base of English and their knowledge of the world. This will lead them to improve their strategies to survive inEnglish. Therefore, as little time as is necessary should be spent on studying the correct forms of the language.
Students should also be given enough practice to sort out what they have learned as well as to expand and connect
it to their own lives and experiences. MPEG clips such as the ones above have been developed for this course basedon these principles of learning.

Concerns for Students' Anxieties•

Recognize students' reluctance to speak.

•

Give them "excuses" to open their mouths first.

•

Use bilingual materials as learning aids (e.g. Japanese translations of summaries and English
subtitles on MPEG clips).

The teacher should be aware that however great the students' hopes for learning spoken English might be,some students may still experience frustration. Their previous education is likely to have been limited to desk- andbook-bound learning. There are even those who have never heard authentic English. There is still another reason
why Japanese students hesitate to give voice to their ideas. All Japanese are to some extent conditioned not to speak
their minds openly. They are often silenced by the thought "What would they think of me?" Special attention was
paid to this cultural aspect and efforts were made to free the students from their uneasiness by adhering to the above
principles and practices.
One of the class activities which helped to overcome the students' reluctance to speak was a scheme whereby
the students earned dollars that were deposited to their 'Okuda International Exchange Bank' accounts at the beginning
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To contentsof the semester. They earned these dollars by speaking up, especially for breaking the ice. The dollars were thenconverted into grade points. As a result, the students who kept silent found themselves feeling embarrassed, so they
began to participate actively.
The students' mother tongue should not play an important role in teaching a foreign language. However, as
described above, students' English abilities are diverse, and some may feel alienated or stressed from not being able
to comprehend. It is important to keep in mind that there are students who need Japanese support to some extent. If
students have to leave the class uncertain what is expected of them, their stress will be too great, or they will be too
downhearted to do any further work on their own. Therefore, I do not forbid the use of the Japanese language
altogether in English classes. The students' mother tongue can be an asset if it is used in such a way that students'
interest and joy of studying are sustained. Among the materials appreciated by the students were bilingual summaries both in English and Japanese. Below is an example of the use of bilingual instruction that students find helpful:

Figure 3. How to open the MPEG clips
Respect for Different Cultures•

If students are ready to meet new people without inhibition, they can learn a great deal.

•

Be aware of students' feelings of frustration or threats to their status in new environments.

•

Teach respect for different cultures.

On the AOS program, the Shudo students have many opportunities to meet people from all over the world
and Americans with different ethnic backgrounds. This is an opportunity for the students not only to learn from thehost culture, but also to share their personal interests and their knowledge of life in Japan with their ASU conversation partners. However, most Shudo students have never had a chance to meet a person from a different cultural
background. Considering the gaps in the social context between people from different cultures, it is essential toteach students how to combat their feelings of frustration or emotional barriers and to respect and attempt tounderstand different cultures. I used a number of MPEG clips to introduce to the students different ethnic culturesin the United States.
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Motivational Features of MPEG Clips•

In every lesson, an attractive wide range of clips on different topics can be made available forthe students.

•

These clips can be made to serve different levels of English proficiency and confidence.

•

Students can experience "authentic English" by enlarging, freezing, or repeating screens asneeded.

Some 140 MPEG clips have been developed so far to meet students' needs and English proficiency levels.
Some of them are of the same topic but many are of differing content. The students had several choices to makeabout the topic or level they wanted to work on. For example, I made several MPEG clips for the same topic
Pharmacy: 1) a short clip for the students at the intermediate level, 2) the same clip with English subtitles which I
typed in when editing the clip, 3) a clip using some news programs in English, 4) the same clip with a Japanesesound track for the students who need help outside the classroom. It was up to the students to choose which clips
they wanted to study. Some started out with the easiest ones and then changed to the ones at the intermediate level.
Some even challenged themselves with the most difficult ones to begin with.
The impact of the MPEG clips on the students was amazing. Their eyes were glued to the screen. Of all thetechniques used to help the students to meet their learning goals, it was the medium itself that made the biggest
difference. Students were well motivated to do follow-up activities and individual studies outside their usual classhours. These choices were useful in freeing a student's anxiety about making grammatical errors. They were also
useful in having students pay closer attention to the content-oriented studies. The clips are all in natural English,
and the students were free to go back to the CALL to review and work more as needed. If they needed someJapanese support, the students were able to click on Japanese sound tracks for some of the clips.

Nurturing Students' “Self Study” and “Self-Education”•

Self-study abilities allow the students to gain knowledge on their own; especially from real life
situations.

•

Give students many opportunities to read for both purpose and pleasure.

One of the most important goals in this course is to foster, within each student, the commitment to individual
study. I believe it is crucial to help students develop good self-study habits. What can be taught during the classroom time is obviously very limited. Therefore, while striving to develop the students' interactive/communication
skills in a productive and fun environment, I also try to give them the skills and motivation they need for self-study.
Strategies employed to this end were, in short:1.

paying close attention to the students' psychological states;2.

creating a productive learning environment, which could extend beyond the classroom; and3.

making the content of learning materials and teaching methods flexible to match the students'
rates of progress and personal interests.

Towards this end a variety of materials were readied for them in both a Class Preparation Room and the
CALL. Students use these rooms to listen to and view materials of their own interests. The most popular materials
among the materials were American movies with English closed captions and English sound tracks (that is, both
voice and captions are in English.) The students were provided with a large selection of movies. The students
looked forward to going to the rooms and checking out new movies because many of them were not yet available inJapanese theatres. They were also encouraged by the practice in which these self-study hours were logged anddeposited to their "bank accounts."

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When deciding which movies to watch, the students read through the file of critical reviews, written in
English, of the available movies. The students read these without suffering through the strain and effort some ofthem put into 'studying' English. That is, they were committing themselves to meaningful reading in order to meetsome purpose. Such study encourages the students to pursue their own interests, which can develop a feeling ofconfidence and justified accomplishment.

Self-Study Hours for Maintaining Motivation
In addition to the study abroad preparatory course under discussion, I taught another non-AOS course in the
CALL. During the same semester, I also taught four other required courses in a traditional language laboratory(LL), a room with individualized audio-visual machines but without computer equipment. All the students wereencouraged to pursue their studies beyond their class hours. A record was kept of the number of hours students
used videos outside class in the Class Preparation Room. In terms of the average total number of recorded selfstudy hours, the study abroad preparatory class scored the highest, and the other class taught in the CALL scoredthe second highest.

Figure 4. Average self-study hours per student per semester
However, the high recorded level of self study is not evidence that the students of the study abroad program
course have become more motivated as a result of teaching using the multimedia facilities. What it may suggest isthat through familiarity with multimedia resources in class, the students are comfortable with using these resourcesby themselves outside class.

A Scene from the Study Abroad Prep Class
We invited students from an American culture class to participate in our class. This activity gave each
student a chance to act as a 'teacher.' The students imagined they were meeting their unknown friends at an airport
in Arizona and welcoming them to ASU. They went to the door to meet their friend 'at the airport.' This role
reversal gave the students a feeling of pride and accomplishment. The students came to the class well prepared toopen the computer files efficiently and with a command of the expressions needed, including correct pronunciation.

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Conclusion
In my teaching, it is my view that language learning is not merely an acoustic and muscular process nor aprocess which can be accomplished by the inculcation of rules. It is a 'total human experience' that goes beyond thesimple act of memorizing correct forms. As some scholars such as Earl Stevick (1976) advocate, I believe that the
deeper the source of a sentence lies within the students' personality, the more lasting value it has for learning aforeign language. From this standpoint I have placed an emphasis on personal and interpersonal significance of thepractice activity.
In this presentation, I have outlined goals and principles that I believe are important for effective language
learning. In my experience multimedia facilities have shown great potential for meeting these goals. However, wehave just begun to understand how best to employ this new technology. A further purpose of this paper then is tospark additional investigation into the use of multimedia facilities for language teaching and learning.
Although I have painted a positive picture of my use of the multimedia classroom, there are certainly someproblems or drawbacks. One of them is sudden equipment breakdown. For example, if students arrived late inclass, and certain materials such as Flashware had to be fed to them, this sometimes caused the system to freeze up.
While we continue to iron out the wrinkles in the system, an all-out effort should be exerted to teach students
important basic habits as punctuality. No matter how innovative or creative the teaching material may be, thestudents' cooperation with regard to punctuality and self-study is essential for successful class management and,
therefore, learning, especially in the multimedia classroom.
Another big concern is the lack of funds to buy commercially developed materials, especially CD ROMbased multi-level teaching materials with movie clips. The cost of this material is very high since we need one foreach student computer. As I have stated above, one of the outstanding features of the multimedia room is that we
can make it possible to meet all students' needs and levels. However, it is to be understood that in order to make itpossible, we need an attractive and wide range of materials on different topics and levels. Without these, multimedia equipment is only a set of useless empty boxes. If we cannot afford to buy commercially developed materials,
we have to develop them ourselves, and this takes a great amount of time and talent. The students' response andlearning makes it worth the effort, however. As discussed at FLEAT IV, considering its great potential, I believe it
is important for the ESL community to become more involved with and promote the advancement of the use of themultimedia learning environment.

References
Goodman, Kenneth (1996). On reading. London: Heinemann.
Iwai, Chiaki (1997). Computer-assisted writing in CALL. In P. Liddell (ed.), Foreign language education andtechnology--Proceedings of the third conference, pp. 147-158, University of Victoria.
Matsuoka, H. (1999). Making use of networking and server systems. Presentation at Workshop on CALL, Yasuda
Women's College.
Okuda, Hisako (1997). Awakening to literacy: A child-centered and meaning-centered approach to bilingual
language development. Studies in the Humanities and Sciences, 37(2), Hiroshima Shudo University.
Stevick, Earl (1976). Memory, meaning and method. Mass: Newbury House.

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Text, Video, and Strategy:
A Survey of Junior College Students’ LLS Use with aVideo-Equipped Textbook
Kaoru Kobashi
Kobe University, Japan
Abstract
This study was conducted in English classes through one school year at a junior college in Japan. A
video-equipped textbook was adopted and students were given various tasks. At the end of each lesson thestudents described what LLSs they had utilized and evaluated their effectiveness. In addition, pre- and postcourse tests on their English proficiency were conducted, and the results were statistically analyzed.
The findings suggest that video-equipped textbooks can give students more sources of information andtherefore enable students to utilize various LLSs. Moreover, it may not be wrong to assume that such use of new
LLSs had led to development in their listening ability and that video-equipped textbooks have a possibility ofgiving an opportunity to find a new way of studying English, especially to students who are not good at acquiring information from text-only textbooks.

Introduction
The purpose of this study is to clarify how utilization of audio-visual equipment facilitates students’ language learning strategy (LLS)1 use and affects their performance in English lessons.
In recent years an increasing number of textbooks equipped with their own videotape recordings have been
published for college students. The entertainment aspect of such textbooks may more effectively motivate students
to learn English than text-only textbooks do in ordinary English lessons. But is that all? This study researches
other advantages of using audio-video equipment through a survey of students’ LLS use and pre- and post-course
English proficiency tests.

Research Design
This study was conducted in English classes through the school year of 1999 with 51 freshmen at a juniorcollege in Kobe, Japan. These students were in a medical technician’s course and took only one English class, oncea week, in the first semester, during which time this study was carried out, though they had another English class ofreading medical topics in addition to the class for this study in the second semester.
For this study a video-equipped textbook was adopted and students were given various tasks which required
them to receive textual, audio and visual information. The textbook consisted of 12 units. To complete one unit alistening-task-based lesson and reading-based-lesson were provided. The first lesson was for listening. Students
learned new vocabulary, watched a video, answered true-or-false questions, and filled in blanks while listening. In
a second lesson, students were given reading comprehension questions about the transcription they completed in
the first lesson. The same types of tasks were carried out in each unit.

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At the end of each lesson, the students were asked to describe what LLSs they had utilized during the lesson
and to evaluate the effectiveness of those LLSs for their performance in the lesson. The LLSs described by thestudents were collected and listed in handouts to let them share the LLSs, which may have been new and useful forsome of them. In the last lesson of the first semester, a list of all the LLSs which had been described, utilized, andevaluated by students through the lessons was given to them, and they were asked to evaluate the LLSs again interms of whether or not each LLS was in their effective use.
In the second semester, students were asked to keep an English learning diary at the end of each lesson. In thediary they reported what strategies they used or how much they thought their English ability had improved.
In addition to the survey of students’ LLS use, English proficiency tests were conducted in the first and thelast lessons of the first semester and in the last lesson of the second semester, in April and July 1999 and January
2000, in order to determine how the lessons had affected the students’ English learning process. The test consistedof 9 listening questions and 9 reading questions. The same questions were utilized in all three tests.
To pay closer attention to the students’ learning process, the students were classified into three groups: highscorers, medium scorers and low scorers. Twelve students who scored 10 points or more were classified as highscorers, 9 students whose scores were 5 points or less were classified as low scorers, and the rest of the students
were medium scorers. The results were then statistically analyzed.

Table 1. The Number of Subjects
High Scorers

Medium Scorers

Low Scorers

Total

12

30

9

51

Findings
Findings for the Whole Class
The results of proficiency tests (Tables 2 & 3) showed some statistically significant development of theirlistening proficiency. The development of the students’ reading proficiency was not statistically significant although the means of the scores themselves had risen.

Table 2. English Proficiency Tests (The Whole Class) —April and July—
April 1999

July 1999

Mean

Mean

SD

t-value

Listening

3.04

3.64

1.71

2.54*

Reading

4.75

5.06

1.89

1.18 n.s.

Total

7.78

8.70

2.31

2.86**

N = 51, n.s. = not significant * p < .05 ** p < .01

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Table 3. English Proficiency Tests (The Whole Class) —April and January—
April 1999

January 2000

Mean

Mean

S D

t‑value

Listening
Reading

3.04
4.75

3.82
5.25

1.68
2.62

3.34**
1.39 n.s.

Total

7.78

9.08

3.09

2.99**

N = 51, n.s. = not significant * p <. 05 ** p < .01
Table 4 contains a total of 30 kinds of LLSs reported by the students, 16 of which were audio-visual LLSs
(listening LLSs) and 14 textual LLSs (reading LLSs). The four strategies in the end of the list were strategies
introduced by the teacher.
For the final evaluation in the first semester, 6 of the listening LLSs (L1-2, L1-3, L1-4, L2-1, L2-2 and L32) were classified as useful by more than 50% of the students and so were 4 of the reading LLSs (R1-1, R2-1, R22 and R2-5). These LLSs will be more closely examined later.

Table 4. The List of Language Learning Strategies in Use
Listening Strategy
1

2

3.

The number of students
who reported“This LLS is efficient”

To understand the story while watching the video
1-1 While watching the video, I listen to the words I know and guess the story.

17

1-2 I first check the keywords or questions given on the handout, then watch the video.

38

1-3 I pay attention to parts spoken in a loud voice.

28

1-4 I try to find any word I know, while watching the video.

39

1-5 When I find a word I know, I try to guess the meaning of the immediate sentence.

15

1-6 I try to understand the video just like native speakers do (I don’t use Japanese).

1

To get the words to fill in the blanks
2-1 I pay attention to the first sound of the missing word.

32

2-2 After (While) I check the list of new vocabulary and read the text, I do the task.

39

2-3 When I can’t understand the missing word, I guess from the immediate words.

14

2-4 I pay attention to the idioms given in the vocabulary list.

17

2-5 The first time, I just listen; the second time, I fill in the blanks (or vice versa).

11

2-6 I pay attention to liaisons, rhythms and speed of the speech.

4

To concentrate on listening efficiently
3-1 I pay attention to individual words.

17

3-2 I especially pay attention to the missing words.

44

3-3 I don’t read the text and concentrate on listening.

2

3-4 I try to remember the sounds of the new words while practicing the pronunciation in class. 17
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Table 4. The List of Language Learning Strategies in Use (Cont’d)Reading
1

2

The number of students
who reported“This LLS is efficient”

To understand the questions in the handouts.
1-1 I read the text while looking for the words used in the questions.

46

1-2 When the teacher is reading the text for us, I pay attention to parts read in a loud voice.

17

1-3 While listening to the teacher reading the text for us, I translate it into Japanese.

7

To understand the whole text.
Sentence - structure oriented strategies
2-1 I translate the text while telling apart the subjects and verbs of the sentences40

2-2 While telling apart the subjects and verbs, I translate them following the English word order. 38
2-3 While telling apart the subjects and verbs, I translate them following the Japanese word order. 12
2-4 I pay attention to modifiers, such as to-infinitives or relative pronouns when reading the text.

20

Words or idiom oriented strategies
2-5 I look for the words or idioms I know and guess the whole story.

43

2-6 I write down the new idioms in the text beforehand.

25

Context oriented strategies

3

2-7 When I encounter an unfamiliar word, I guess the meaning from the context (with no dictionary).

8

2-8 I try not to translate a sentence literally but get the main idea of the sentence.

25

2-9 I read the text, remembering the scenes in the video.

102-10 I use the questions given in the handout to get the whole idea of the story.

24

When the text is read, I try to understand the meaning.

3

New strategies introduced (by the teacher) and practiced in class.
1

Read the text checking out words indicated by pronouns or relative pronouns.

19

2

Think about things related to the topic, then watch the video and read the text.

173

Summarize the text after the class to understand the text better.

19

4

Try to get more information about foreign countries to understand the text better.

13

Findings on the high scorers and low scorers
High scorers showed moderate development of their listening proficiency, but their reading proficiency had
dropped (Table 5).
As shown in Table 6, low scorers showed substantial development of their listening and reading proficiency,
notably reading proficiency. Surprisingly, the mean of their reading test score in January was higher than those ofhigh and medium scorers. To find the key of these low scorers remarkable development, let us look at their use of
LLSs and compare them with the high scorers’ usage.

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Table 5. English Proficiency Tests—April and January— (High Scorers)
April 1999

January 2000

Mean

Mean

SD

t-value

Listening

4.17

5.33

1.59

2.54*

Reading

6.83

5.00

1.85

3.43**

Total

11.0

10.33

2.35

0.98 n.s.

N = 12, n.s. = not significant * p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p < .001

Table 6. English Proficiency Tests—April and January— (Low Scorers)
April 1999

January 2000

Mean

Mean

SD

t-value

Listening

1.56

3.11

2.01

2.33*

Reading

2.67

5.78

2.42

3.86**

Total

4.22

8.89

2.55

5.49***

N = 9, n.s. = not significant * p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p <.001
Table 7 clarifies what strategies high scorers and low scorers used. Their use of LLSs is mostly the same, butthere are some differences. A much higher percentage of high scorers used LLSs, such as L2-1, L2-2, L3-4, R2-4,
N-1. The first three LLSs, L2-1, L2-2 and L3-4, may be entitled task-oriented LLSs and the rest, R2-4 and N-1, aregrammar-oriented, or in other words, they are all “bottom-up processes.” 2
On the other hand, low scorers show high use of guessing (inferential, inferencing) LLSs, such as L2-3, R28 and R2-10. N-3 is also used by many more low scorers, and their use of these LLSs illustrates that they read andlistened to the text with “top-down processes.”

Discussion
On the whole the development of the students’ listening proficiency was clearly shown. It can be said thatthe use of a video-equipped textbook through a year enabled them to listen more efficiently. On the other hand theirreading proficiency showed their unique and complex development. As was mentioned above, the low scorers’
reading proficiency had improved remarkably, and the key of their success could be their efficient use of contextoriented, guessing LLSs.
Some comments written in language learning diaries kept by the students clearly showed the different use of
LLSs between high scorers and low scorers. The following comments were written by a low scorer whose scores
had risen much through the year (April - L = 1, R = 3; July - L = 4, R = 5; January - L = 7, R = 7).
Oct. 8 (Listening task)
Before the filling-in-the-blank task started, I read the sentences around the blanks and thought about
how the story went, then I guessed what words should be in the blanks.

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Table 7. The Percentage of LLSs in Use
Listening LLSs High Scorers

Low Scorers

Reading LLSs High Scorers

Low Scorers

L1-1

41.7

44.4

R1-1

100.0

100.0

L1-2

75.0

66.7

R1-2

41.7

33.3

L1-3

50.0

44.4

R1-3

8.3

11.1

L1-4

83.3

77.8

R2-1

91.7

77.8

L1-5

50.0

44.4

R2-2

66.7

77.8

L1-6

0.0

0.0

R2-3

33.3

22.2

L2-1

83.3

44.4

R2-4

50.0

22.2

L2-2

91.7

66.7

R2-5

100.0

100.0

L2-3

33.3

66.7

R2-6

58.3

55.6

L2-4

41.7

33.3

R2-7

25.0

0.0

L2-5

25.0

11.1

R2-8

41.7

77.8

L2-6

8.3

0 .0

R2-9

25.0

33.3

L3-1

33.3

33.3

R2-10

25.0

44.4

L3-2

91.7

88.9

R3

8.3

11.1

L3-3

8.3

11.1

L3-4

41.7

22.2

New LLSsHigh Scorers

Low Scorers

N-1

58.3

33.3

N-2

25.0

33.3

N-3

16.7

55.6

N-4

25.0

33.3

Oct. 29 (Reading task)
I first read the whole story quickly while remembering the scenes of the video, then I answered thequestions.
Dec. 10 (Evaluating my English improvement)
Now I can read and understand English sentences without checking a dictionary.These comments
demonstrate a possible factor of her improvement: her efficient use of top-down strategies. She used
contextual and visual information intelligently, and this characteristic becomes more evident whencompared with comments from a high scorer (April - L = 5, R = 6; July - L = 7, R = 8; January - L =8, R = 4).
Oct. 8 (Listening task)
I found many parts difficult to get in listening, and it was difficult to understand the story.

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Oct. 15 (Reading task)
I recognized how poor my vocabulary is.
Dec. 10 (Evaluating my English development)
I think my listening proficiency has improved, because I am now much more familiar with the pronunciation or speed of native English speakers. But my reading ability has dropped. I think it is because
I have much fewer English classes than I used to have in high school. I think I have lost much of myvocabulary and knowledge about English grammar.
As she mentioned in her diary, the decrease in the number of English classes negatively affected her English
knowledge. It can also be inferred that she was not good at utilizing the information given in the video and relied
exclusively on her decreasing English knowledge.

Conclusions and Implication
These findings suggest that video-equipped textbooks can give students more sources of information thantext-only textbooks and therefore enable students to utilize various LLSs which would not be accessible withouttapes and videos. Moreover, it may not be wrong to assume that such use of new LLSs had led to the developmentin their listening ability, and that video-equipped textbooks have a possibility of giving an opportunity to find a new
way of studying English especially to students who are not good at getting information from text-only textbooks.
Although this study has the limitation of a small number of subjects, it suggests the utilization of videoequipped textbooks, in other words giving students more sources of information, facilitates students’ English learning
process.

Notes
1.

A definition of Strategy given by Oxford (1989): “Language learning strategies are behaviours
or actions which learners use to make language learning more successful, self-directed andenjoyable.”2.

In Ellis (1994) the two ways of processing information are succinctly explained:Færch and Kasper (1986) also recognize the importance of ‘top-down processes,’ in whichlearners utilize contextual information and existing knowledge to understand what is said, butthey also point out that they may sometimes make use of ‘bottom-up processes,’ where they pay
closer attention to the linguistic forms in the message.

References
Ellis, R. (1994). The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University PressFærch, C. and Kasper, G. (1986). The role of comprehension in second language acquisition. Applied Linguistics,
7, 257-74.
Oxford, R. (1989). Use of language learning strategies: a synthesis of studies with implications for teacher training. System, 17, 235-47.

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TOPLINE Telementoring: On-Line Teacher Development
Daniel T. Kirk
Paul A. Beaufait
Prefectural University of Kumamoto, Japan
Abstract
The TOPLINE program is the result of ten years of evolution in a teacher development program in
Kumamoto, Japan. It is Kumamoto's first on-line teacher development program. It has as its broad mission thecreation of teacher development opportunities for in-service junior and senior high school English teachers,some of whom find attending courses or seminars difficult because of location or time restrictions. A narrower
mission of the on-line program is to foster the networking of teacher-trainees (university students) with inservice language teachers. Specific aims of the program are to help participating teachers and trainees define
and achieve their own goals in three areas: computer literacy, language development, and teacher development.
This paper summarizes the program's background, then details the goals, issues, and protocols that continue todrive it.

Introduction
Ten years after initiating a seminar for junior and senior high school English teachers' in Kumamoto Prefecture, the coordinators of the Recurrent Teachers’ Seminar at the Prefectural University of Kumamoto’s saw theneed for an on-line seminar and have responded to the challenge by initiating Kumamoto’s first on-line teacher
development program. Dubbed the Teachers’ On-line Program for Language Improvement through Networking in
English (TOPLINE) by its creators, this program's general mission is to create teacher development opportunities
for English teachers who find it difficult to take advantage of other programs because of location or time restrictions.
For some teachers who participate in TOPLINE, unfamiliarity with electronic communication will compound the challenges of self-directed teacher development. Thus part of the coordinators' efforts to facilitate participation must be dedicated to helping technologically challenged teachers get connected to the Internet, in orderfor on-line language development and professional networking to begin.

Background
Evolution of the LTD Project
Change has been an essential part of meeting the needs of junior and senior high school English teachers in
Kumamoto during the ten years that we have been coordinating the Language Teachers’ Development Project(LTD Project). In general flexibility has led us toward a more open and responsive seminar when comparing thefirst seminars conducted in 1991 and the most recent course offerings. The project has evolved through three
distinct stages and in two focus areas. The dimensions of evolution include the distribution of the seminar and its
content.
The first stage was that of one-off, intensive seminars. In the second stage we initiated semi-distributed,
participant-oriented seminars, taking on numerous challenges of bottom-up development (Beaufait, 1997). Now,TOPLINE Telementoring: On-Line Teacher Development [Poster Presentation]

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with the help of participants, we have initiated a project that promises to address the needs of teachers in Kumamoto
regardless of their busy schedules and distance from Kumamoto City.

First Stage: Top-Down
In 1991 the coordinators came to work at Prefectural University of Kumamoto (PUK), and were put incharge of the first English Teachers Summer Seminar. The goals of the first seminar were to teach teachers about
listening, speaking, reading, writing, and culture. At this stage the coordinators determined the content of theseminar, except for details of the participants’ demonstrations. We devoted five class periods to one skill per class,and then allotted time for each teacher to lead a demonstration class in a skill of interest to him or her. We continued
with this one-off style of seminar until we began to find that teachers who attended two years in a row were either
not carrying out changes, experimental or otherwise, in their classrooms, or were unable to talk about them. The
coordinators concluded that, though it may have been helpful for teachers' language development, a one-off schedule contributed little to real changes in their teaching.

Second stage: Across
The second stage came as a result of negotiations with the PUK administration, which allowed us to add apre-session before the regularly scheduled seminar and a follow-up session after the end of the seminar. This madeit possible for the coordinators to meet with participants once before the seminar started and initiate teachers’
inquiry into features of their own classrooms. After the seminar was over, we asked teachers to experiment with afeature of the seminars in their classroom, and then return to a follow-up session to discuss the results of theirexperimentation.
In order to give participants more control over the content of their seminars, we included in application
forms a list of workshops that we were able to lead. The teachers chose those that appeared most interesting tothem, or suggested others, and we tallied the results. We then selected the most popular topics to include in theseminar.

Third stage: Bottom-Up
Creating a program distributed throughout the year had always been our aim, and we have achieved this aim
in the last two years. Teachers coming together regularly in a group for the purposes of teacher development is agood idea, but unrealistic for teachers who live too far away from the university, or for teachers who have responsibilities that prevent them from attending regular gatherings. The solution was to offer teachers an on-line equivalent of the seminar. In 1999, we piloted the TOPLINE program that would offer teachers a distributed program andmake it possible for busy or remote teachers to participate.
In addition to finally offering a distributed seminar, we have also made it possible for teachers to choose theirown content. Participating teachers are responsible for determining their own goals, making the program truly
adult education (Knowles, 1980, pp. 25-26).

Goals
The aims of the on-line program TOPLINE, in short, are to help language teachers achieve their own goals inthree areas from the relative safety & comfort of a personal computer connected to the Internet (www.pukumamoto.ac.jp/~pab/topline.preview.html):
1.

Computer literacy,

2.

Language development,

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Teacher development.

The in-service teachers in the TOPLINE program can interact with the coordinators and other teachers
through the Internet. They can exchange ideas, learn from other professionals, and publicize the results of theirlearning without having to make great investments of time and money.

TOPLINE Policy
The following policy statement for the TOPLINE teachers’ seminar is written for two groups of people, forthe participants in the seminar and for the coordinators. It is a written description of our purpose, our philosophicalcommitments, and the resources that we believe are available for the successful completion of the seminar. The
policy section headings are from Knowles (1980, pp. 70-72):•
The role of adult education: Since the participants are adults, the type of program that will best suit
their needs is one in which they have direct input in the preparation, the execution, and the evaluation of their own
learning.
•
Human growth, development, and individual self-fulfillment: We see the two terms growth and development as indicators of quantity and of quality. Growth is an increase in size or amount. Development is an improvement in what already exists. Self-fulfillment is a feeling of reconfirmed self-worth as a result of successfullycompleting a project or achieving a goal.
•Specific purposes in terms of outcomes:©
a greater understanding of how teachers can use available methods of communication to improve their language learning and teaching•©

improved language skills©

improved teaching skills

Commitment of resources©
Human- the equivalent of one 90-minute period of class time per week for two instructors forthe academic year, April 1, 2000, to March 31, 2001, plus preparation and reflection time©
Financial- the portions of the coordinators' research budgets that they choose to and are able touse for the program according to university policy, augmented by a nominal amount from the Foreign Language
Education Center materials acquisition budget©
Physical- the material that the coordinators have acquired with their research budget to date;computer facilities, rooms, and classroom facilities assigned to their use by the university•

Target populations: The target populations for the TOPLINE project are in-service junior andsenior high school teachers of English as a foreign language who are employed in public andprivate schools in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. The target populations also include pre-service
English teachers, teacher-trainees at universities, as legitimate peripheral participants.

•

Special conditions governing the employment, training, supervision and compensation of personnel, i.e., the coordinators: The coordinators of TOPLINE, for the purposes of this program alone, are under the direct supervision of the Foreign Language Education Center Director. The coordinators are affiliated to the Faculty of Administrative Studies and are, for all otherpurposes, under the supervision of the Dean of that faculty (www.pu-kumamoto.ac.jp/~pab/
topline.policy.html).

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IssuesMentoring
Mentoring is a slippery concept.... In exploring previously unknown byways that are revealed to themas they travel, [adults] discover goals never before considered and satisfactions not previously experienced. The mentor of adult learners is not so much interested in fixing the road as in helping the
protégé to become a competent traveler. (Cross, 1986, p. ix)
One fact that stands out in research on adult education, and specifically language education, is that adults
learn best when they are self-motivated and directed, able to interact with their peers, and have someone, often
referred to as a mentor, to confer with from time to time.
As professional language teachers, one of the concerns the coordinators share with participants is how tohelp their respective students get what they need. We think that participants have a better understanding of whatthat is for their students than we do, so we aren’t going to try to tell them what that is. We also feel that they know
best what happens in their classroom, so we aren’t going to tell them about that either.
What we do is help participants develop and implement plans for their own development, where they can
decide what they and their students need, and how best to get it. We also try to keep them in touch with otherteachers so that they can tell how they are progressing and help each other with their needs, and so that we canbetter assist them all (www.pu-kumamoto.ac.jp/~pab/topline.outline.html).

Language
The language for communication in TOPLINE is English, because only by using English can participants
hope to grow in the language (http://www.pu-kumamoto.ac.jp/~pab/topline.outline.html).

Privacy
Out of respect for the privacy of the individual teachers and teacher-trainees who participate in the TOPLINE
On-Line Scheme and Language Teacher Development Forum, the coordinators explicitly request that participants
grant permission to publicize personal information from or about them.

Resources
For any project involving technology, certain resources are necessary. Additional resources are icing on the
cake. This is the story of the coordinators' struggle to obtain the resources necessary.

Sources of Funding
Tapping the Prefectural University of Kumamoto's FLECThe Teachers' Recurrent Seminar was initially funded by Prefectural University of Kumamoto's Foreign
Language Education Center (FLEC) only. The facilities available were those at the FLEC. The coordinators developed materials with resources available to them with their research budgets.
Teacher-participants were responsible for their own transportation fees, room and board if they came from a
distance that would necessitate it, and for course fees. The coordinators have continued to seek ways of reducing
the financial burden on teachers. The TOPLINE program was initially conceived as a method for reducing the timeand financial burdens that the teachers bore.
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Seeking a "C Schedule Grant"
When we first conceived the program, we decided that one method of acquiring the funds necessary would
be to apply for a research grant through the Japanese Education Ministry. The application process is outlined indetail in Kirk (1998).
A "C Schedule Grant" would have provided sufficient funds over a period of several years to allow for
development of the program: including the acquisition of hardware, software, and Internet connections for theparticipants; as well as for its implementation, and for reporting on the results of the program.
Reporting on the program at academic conferences would have been part of participating teachers' course
work. Funds from a "C Schedule Grant" would have been sufficient to cover domestic and international travel costs
for both coordinators and participants.

Exploiting Research Budgets
Upon receiving notice that our proposal for a grant had been rejected, we decided that we would carry on
with funds available to us through our research budgets, while the university and the FLEC continue to provide
rooms for face-to-face meetings. Our budgets have been sufficient to allow the acquisition of computer hardware
and software that the participants could borrow, but will not cover Internet connection services or travel costs forparticipants.

Collegial Support
The TOPLINE project depends upon various sources and types of collegial support:
Sources1.

Coordinators (each other)2.

Project participants (and their colleagues)

3.

Other teachers from the PUK

4.

The PUK administration

5.

Teacher developers at other universities

1.

General encouragement

2.

Linguistic (specifically: help translating concepts in English into understandable
Japanese)

3.

Logistical

4.

Technical

Types

The outline above shows only the sources and types of support given. In actuality, there was significant non-support and, on occasion, active hinderance from the PUK administration.

Protocols
TOPLINE is basically a self-supporting endeavor of the coordinators and participants (see: Policy
Statement, above). It depends upon available resources, mutually agreed development frameworks (Learning

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Contracts, below), and evolving communication protocols. Table 1 indicates the technological entry threshold ofparticipants.

Table 1. Computer Systems, Servers and Software (April 2000)
Participants

A

B

C

D

Operating Systems

Windows 95

Windows 98 at home, Windows 98
Windows 95 and 98
at school

Windows 98 at home,
Windows 95 at
the officeInternet Servers
and Limitations

Biglobe, maybe

Nifty server, few
limitations

nifty.ne.jp at home,
no limitations; NTT
OCN at the office,a strong firewall,
no Realplayer soundfiles or the like.

Word Processing
SoftwareWord 98 and
Ichitaro, Ver. 9

Microsoft Word and Microsoft Word
2000

Justsystem Ichitaro,
Ichitaro, Ver. 10 (1999)

E-mail Software

MS Outlook
Express 5

Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook
Vers 5.

DEODEO
internet service

Outlook Express
Ver. 5

Note: The coordinators use Macintosh OS 9 and have Ethernet access at the Prefectural University of Kumamoto.
Their software preferences are: Corel Word Perfect (3.5) for word-processing, Eudora Pro (4.2) for e-mail, NetscapeCommunicator (4.7) and BBEdit Lite (4.1) for browsing and web page-making.

Learning Contracts
The basic format for the learning contracts and a complete description of the concept can be found in Knowles(1980). Below are a two sample contracts which the coordinators have obtained permission to publish.

Table 2. Teacher B, Senior High School 1
Area ofConcentration

Computer Literacy

Language Development

Teacher Development

Objectives

In order to learn how tomake use of the Internet
site in my classes, I will
document my project on
the Internet reference.

In order to build myEnglish vocabulary, I will
read a newspaper andmagazines written in
English, and try to use
use English in my classas much as possible.

In order to improve theeffectiveness of my classes,
I will try to make my English
class more student-centeredand find ways to improvestudents’ ability to speak andlistening to English.

Resources andStrategies

Software installed on thecomputer, internet sites,books on internet sites

English magazines (Time), Software for improving
books, newspapers, internet pronunciation, books aboutsites, ALT
effective teaching methods

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Table 2. Teacher B, Senior High School 1 (Cont’d)Participants

A

B

C

D

Date for Completion October 1, 2000

October 1, 2000

October 1, 2000

Evidence ofAcomplishment

Take TOEIC or TOEFL
and make sure how much
my vocabulary will be
improved.

Ask other English teachers tocome to my class and to tell me
what they think about my class.
Try to know how much thestudents are satisfied with theclass by collecting data throughquestionnaires and interviews

Language Development

Teacher Development

If I carry out my objectives, I will use internet
as a teaching materials
during my classes.

Table 3. Teacher D, Senior High School 2
Area ofConcentration

Computer Literacy

Objectives

Making a web page,
Enough to understandsending e-mails, finding
this seminar
helpful sites for students,
participating in some forum

To create a file of (1)activities (2) hints toactivities, that will be goodfor classroom situations andwhich involve the use ofcomputers.

Resourcs andStrategies

Access to the Internet
School Web site. E-mailacct. at school, E-mailacct. at home, Use of html

Attend the seminar, ask
questions, keep notes,
send/read e-mails, readbooks/web pages

Join CALL (computerassisted language learning)[Special Interest Group of
JALT]; contact www.hll.
kutc.kansai-u.ac.jp:8000/
fleat4.htm. (nationwide
conference); search in
NACSIS-CAT (an on-line
univ. library network); borrowbooks/periodicals (throughPaul or from the univ. library)

Date for Completion June 2000/February 2001

June 2000/February 2001

June 2000/February 2001

Evidence ofAccomplishment

A glossary of useful words
for teachers, a list ofresources for teachers, alist of useful sites forstudents, with reviews ineasy English for students

Filed documents to help otherteachers, expanded links of
Kumamoto High School
website (for students/forteachers); report ordemonstration of activities
to teachers at Kumamoto
High School

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Expanded links of
Kumamoto High School
Website (for students/forteachers [June 2000/
February 2001]; report ordemonstration to teachersat Kumamoto High School[February 2001]

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E-mail Exchanged (April - Sept. 5)
E-mail is the primary mode of communication in TOPLINE. In Table 4 (below) are the numbers of messages
exchanged between coordinators and participants from the application deadline in April till noon on Sept. 5, 2000.

Table 4. Correspondence
Participants

Messages (w/attachments)*

Notes

A

6(1)

Withdrew from the project**

B

15(2)

Senior high school teacher

C

36(1)

Junior high school teacher

D

39(4)

Senior high school teacher

E

15(1)

Teacher-trainee, 3rd year
university student

Group

9(2)

(Addressed collectively)* Attachments included HTML files, JPEG graphics, and word processing documents.
** This teacher’s stated reasons for withdrawal were that she expected to be like a college student (again), instructed in a traditional fashion. Although interested in teacher (self-) development, she said she was primarily
interested in developing language proficiency. She has not replied to a follow-up inquiry regarding her expectations.
Over the same period of time, the coordinators exchanged with each other at least 48 messages (16 attachments) concerning the LTD Project. Furthermore, since all active participants have granted permission for their email addresses to be shared openly within the current cohort (B-E, below), they also have been able to communicate directly via e-mail with each other.

Assessment and Evaluation
Project assessment is but one realm for evaluation. Centered on participating teachers, this involves formative self- assessment, culminating a project cycle of planning, implementation, and evaluation (PIE).

Table 5. PIE Cycle
Planning

Implementation

At the beginning of a project
cycle, participants set objective
goals and propose evidence ofaccomplishment in contracts
with themselves

Evaluation
In the middle, participants
report and obtain feedback
on what and how they are
via e-mail submissions orat Forums (“Off-kai”).

At the end, participants assess
what they have accomplishedin light of the goals that they
had set at the beginning of the
project cycle.

A major focus of project assessment is individual accomplishments. Coming at the end of the current semester (April - September, 2000), this periodic assessment also calls for joint reflection on the process of electronic
communication amongst teachers and coordinators.
Another realm for evaluation embraces much more than a six-month PIE cycle. This realm resembles what
Hargreaves has described as a ‘moving mosaic:’
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To contents... a complex network of teachers who engage in dialogue around the principles of language learning,
the sharing of good practices, exhibitions of classroom work, and inquiry into case-study portrayals of
language learning. ... a policy process that is not a line or cycle, but a postmodern ‘moving mosaic’ ofteacher discussion and development groups, shifting and overlapping, moving people, issues, ideas,
and activities vigorously around the system. (Hargreaves, in Syverson, 2000)
The TOPLINE telementoring scheme has added an electronic dimension to our language teacher
development project in Kumamoto. The extent to which it has enabled practicing teachers - energetic volunteers to achieve their own goals, in collaboration not only with the university-based coordinators but also with one
another, remains to be seen.

References
Beaufait, P. (1997). Bottom-up teacher development in a top-down environment. In Barfield, A., & Inoue, R.
(Eds.), Teacher education in Japan: options and opportunities. Tokyo: Stonehaven Press, 72-78. (Available
from: A. Barfield, Foreign Language Center, University of Tsukuba, Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba-shi, Ibarakiken 305, Japan.)
Cross, P. (1986). Forward in L. A. Daloz. Effective teaching and mentoring. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Hargreaves, A. (1996). Transforming knowledge: Blurring the boundaries between research, policy, and practice.
Educational evaluation and policy analysis, 18(2), 105-122.
Kirk, D. 1998. Teacher development from a distance, Explorations in teacher education, 6(2), 20-24.
Knowles, M.S. (1980). The modern practice of adult education: from pedagogy to andragogy. Englewood Cliffs,
New Jersey: Cambridge adult education, Prentice Hall Regents.
Syverson, M. A. (2000). On-line learning record. Accessed at: <http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~syverson/olr/
contents.html>, on Sept. 8, 2000.

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To contents‘TOWUMI’ and Its Effectiveness Diagnosis Based on a Whole
Language Learning Approach and Learner Differences
Chang-in Lee
PaiChai University, Korea
Abstract
This paper summarizes the effectiveness of reading, writing, listening, and conversation skills via ahomepage, i.e. TOWUMI, from the results of two fall 1999 surveys. The first one asked about the anticipatedeffect of TOWUMI before students accessed the computer and used TOWUMI, and the second one diagnosed theactual effectiveness of TOWUMI after respondents had used it, and this result was compared with the anticipated effect (Lee & Cousins 2000).
The paper also considers a qualitative and prismatic evaluation based on different learning styles andstrategies of learners (Chapelle, 1989a, 1994a; Levi, 1997). As Yildiz and Atkins (1993) note a ‘fundamental
shift’ in the purpose of evaluation studies, some characteristics of the new media in relation to key factors
associated with learning, the learner, and the learning context are highlighted at this time. Along with thistrend, this paper focuses on inspecting the relation between the effectiveness of TOWUMI and some specifictypes of learning styles and strategies.

TOWUMI Evaluation based on a Whole Language Learning Approach
The term TOWUMI, which will be mentioned throughout this paper, refers to the homepage which was
designed to compliment student learning based on a whole language learning approach incorporating reading,writing, listening, conversation and grammar. TOWUMI serves (a) as an organizer for better class efficiency, (b) as
a motivator for students’ independent study, (c) as the center for student writing and correspondence, (d) as a place
for student entertainment and fun, and (e) as an avenue for communication. Data used in this paper are from thesecond semester of the one-year project. 55 students (87% of 63 students) from three different majors, computerscience, business administration, and tourism management, were enrolled in general sophomore English conversation classes at PaiChai University.
Since the analysis of the effectiveness of TOWUMI for the improvement of the 4 skills of reading, writing,speaking, and listening was already carried out and written elsewhere (Lee & Cousins, 2000), this paper willsummarize TOWUMI’S effectiveness based on these 4 skills.
From the survey questions asking about the effectiveness of the reading material used on the Internet (7questions, before and after the use of TOWUMI), only 11.2% of the students responded negatively. Many students
thought Internet reading material helped them learn more about American and other western cultures in an enjoyable way. Students were required to do reading homework and prepare for an in class conversation exercise basedon their reading. This gave students the opportunity to read authentic materials while at the same time expanding
their vocabulary, linguistic knowledge and interest in the subject.
For the writing evaluation, email, though not a direct part of TOWUMI, served both as an avenue for better
student/teacher communication and as a medium for the submission of homework assignments. Even thoughstudents had uncomfortable feelings about using TOWUMI at the beginning, since it required them to write inEnglish, 72% of the students stated chatting in English improved either their writing skills or the relationship with
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the teacher. Improving ones’ writing skills takes a great deal of continuous practice and time. Based on information
gathered from the survey though, most of the students felt TOWUMI did help them improve their writing skills.
Questions asking about students’ attitude towards speaking through a computer were also asked. Using achat room on TOWUMI for speaking practice was only semi-successful. While 60% of the students expected
chatting would be helpful for English speaking practice before they used TOWUMI, only 28% of the students
agreed chatting helped them improve their speaking skills after they had actually tried TOWUMI. This semisuccess can be attributed to the limited time period when both the students and the instructor were conveniently
available and to the students’ busy school schedule.
For listening practice, Randall’s Cyber Listening was linked to TOWUMI and assigned as independent study
outside of class. The results of the listening section were not very positive. Only 11% responded that Randall’s
Cyber Listening helped them. This negative finding can be the result of leaving the students to practice Internet
listening on their own instead of assigning them listening exercises related to the curriculum of the class. From theresults of the survey, though, very few students thought Internet listening was boring. This implies that students
want Internet listening tasks that aren’t difficult to operate and are related to the themes of the text.

Evaluation based on Learning Styles and Strategies
In reviewing TOWUMI’s effectiveness, the diagnosis in relation to the four language skills of listening,speaking, reading and writing has already been reviewed elsewhere (Lee & Cousins, 2000) and summarized in theprevious section. This section is devoted to reviewing the correlation between the learning styles / strategies ofstudents and the effectiveness of the TOWUMI system. Many researchers (Chapelle & Jamieson, 1986:42) examined the manner in which subject characteristics affected acceptance of, and success with, CALL. They claimed
that effectiveness must be analyzed in terms of the effects of defined types of lessons on students with particularcognitive/affective characteristics and needs. As mentioned in the introduction, evaluation should be made inassociation with the learning processes of learners. To do this, respondents in the study were given a range ofquestions focusing on their field-independence/dependence, left-/right-brain dominance, reserved/ outgoing personality, tolerance/intolerance for ambiguity, and visual/auditory orientation at the end of the second survey. Mostof the results correlated with the theoretical tendency that Brown (1994) claims in his text while some of the results
do not; some of the results that did not correlate with Brown’s theory might be attributed to the small effect size.

Working Hypotheses
In order to draw some implications for EFL teachers, the following hypotheses were established:
1.

Does being from a particular major suggest some guidelines that might help teachers design amore effective class curriculum?

2.

Is there any correlation between the different learning styles & strategies of students and theeffectiveness of TOWUMI?

3.

Which levels of students seem to profit most from using the TOWUMI system to learn
English?

Data Analysis
In order to keep the survey and the paper simple, nine questions based on a 5-point Likert scale, pertaining tostyles and strategies were asked. Therefore, an overall account of the cognitive learning variations students usedduring the course cannot be summed up from these few questions. But from these questions, both the instructor andthe reader can get an idea of how students in this study approached this particular type of teaching method; using a
homepage in an EFL class to teach the four basic language skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking.
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The nine questions and their corresponding styles and strategies are outlined in table 1 below.

Table 1. Survey Questions and the Corresponding Styles and Strategies
Information on Learner Differences

Styles and Strategies
Agree
Disagree

1. Are you better than other people at finding hidden
objects in a picture?

Field Independence

Field Dependence

2. Are you able to accept obscure or contradictory
facts about existing theories without any resistance?

High
Ambiguity
Tolerance

Low
Ambiguity
Tolerance

3.

Do you prefer seeing to hearing in order to understandsomething?

Visual Style

Audio Style

4.

Do you have a strong control over your emotions?

StrongControl overFeelings

Weak
Control overFeelings

5.

Do you think you are more subjective and intuitive thanobjective and analytical?

Subjective &Intuitive

Objective &Analytical6.

Do you solve your curiosities by asking questions in class?

Questions for
Clarification

Reserved

7.

Do you prefer learning by yourself rather than learning
in a group?

Individualistic

Cooperation

8.

Do you try to avoid using unfamiliar words or phrases ina conversation class?

Avoidance

Try

9.

Do you monitor the language you are learning a lot?

More
Self-Monitoring

Less
Self-Monitoring

Students’ Majors and Class Design: To discover the findings for the hypotheses the raw data was manipulated in several different ways. For the first hypothesis, the styles and strategies of students in their particularlabeled class, that is computer science, business administration and tourism management, are analyzed respectively
and a summary is shown in Table 2.
A strong majority of computer science students answered that they were field independent, visually oriented,
controlled their feelings well, and were more subjective and intuitive than objective and analytical.
Based on the teachers’ classroom observations the data looked to be quite valid. There were about 5 students
who were quite outspoken and routinely asked questions in class. Students also showed a keen interest in the classand thus monitored their writing more than others. About 2/3 of the students were quite close thus they enjoyeddoing exercises which involved teamwork.
The business administration data showed a strong division in the learning styles and strategies of students inthis class. This was also apparent in class while teaching. Students who sat on the left side of the class werereserved while those sitting in the middle were sometimes talkative and students on the right were very out-goingand sometimes never stopped talking in class. Even though there was an apparent dissimilarity between the students, the data show a majority of students were visually oriented, and subjective and intuitive rather than objective
and analytical.
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The tourism management students showed a variance in their learning styles and strategies. The three
categories that showed a strong following were ambiguity tolerance, visually oriented, and practiced an avoidance
strategy.
These tourism students were very bright and most were really eager to learn English. The instructor feelsthat the “questions for clarification” and the “self-monitoring” data collected from this class are too low. Many
students were highly motivated and tried their best in every assignment. Also many questions were asked either
verbally in class or through email correspondence. The instructor would agree with the low ambiguity tolerance ofthe students for many thought the class exams were very challenging. Difficult exams were given in this classbecause the student’s English proficiency level was high.

Table 2. Combined Results of the Second Semester Students
Styles and Strategies

Yes

Both

No

Field Independence

24

23

8

Ambiguity Tolerance

15

12

28

Visual/ Auditory Styles

43

8

4

Control Feelings

25

17

13

Intuitive/Analytical

27

14

14

Questions for Clarification

16

18

21

Cooperation

21

15

19

Avoidance

28

17

10

Self-Monitoring

14

27

14

When the three classes are combined, unlike the expectation set up in Hypothesis 1, the results show four
categories with strong results regardless of their majors. Students tended to be visually oriented, more subjective
and intuitive than objective and analytical, practiced avoidance and were not ambiguity tolerant. These results
reveal that students have dual tendencies—left-brain dominant and right-brain dominant characteristics. EFL/ESL
teachers can get some implications from these findings. A visual, intuitive and subjective style would suggest thatthe majority of students showed right-brain dominant tendencies, which implies they can be more free with feelings, good at interpreting body language and are good at dealing better with whole images and generalizations, andthey can be synthesizing, not analytical, readers, (Stevick, 1982). The majority of students were not ambiguity
tolerant and avoided using unfamiliar words or phrases in class. This would suggest that students are also left-brain
dominant learners and they are better at producing separate words, gathering the specifics of language, carrying out
sequences of operations, and dealing with abstraction, and classification. Krashen, Selinger, and Hartnett (1974)
found support for the hypothesis that stated left-brain dominant second language learners prefer a deductive styleof teaching, while right-brain dominant learners are more successful in an inductive classroom environment. Since
the majority of students in this research have dual characteristics, the instructor could design the class in both
inductive and deductive ways.
The Correlation between Students’ Characteristics and the Effectiveness of CALL: The scope of thestyles and strategies of students were expanded to cross-check the correlation between the students’ characteristics
and CALL instruction. The expanded styles and strategies of students were cross-checked with questions seventhrough seventeen below which pertain to computer use. From this cross reference the four skills of reading,writing, listening and speaking were evaluated as well as the general questions (#16 and #17) concerning increased
interest in the class and reduced anxiety.
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7.

The Randall listening site enhanced my listening skills.

8.

Practicing listening through the Internet has more downfalls than benefits in terms of its
effectiveness.

9.

Internet reading material provided me with very authentic reading.

10.

Internet reading material helped me express myself better in the conversation class.

11.

Authenic materials on the Internet helped me to better understand American culture.

12.

Chatting on Towumi helped me with my writing.

13.

Using email improved my relationship with the teacher.

14.

Using email gave me unpleasant feelings about Towumi since it requires me to write in English.

15.

Chatting helped me to improve my speaking.

16.

Using Towumi increased my interest in the English class.

17.

Using Towumi reduced my anxiety about computers.

Results
Listening
Most of the student responses towards the Randall Listening site were negative. From research data only
11% agreed that the Randall Listening site enhanced their listening skills, with 36% disagreeing and 53% remaining neutral. Only the audio oriented students, 3 out of 4 students, and the objective and analytical students were in
any way positive towards this listening site.
The more outspoken students mentioned that Internet listening had more downfalls than benefits in terms of
its effectiveness. Low tolerant students (46%) and students with weak control over their emotions (54%) also
spoke out against Internet listening. It’s also interesting to note that students who didn’t avoid unfamiliar things(60%) and those who monitored their learning (60%) also spoke out against its effectiveness. One would expectthat these two types of students would most likely to be adventurous and at least try to improve their listening skills
through the Internet. According to the analysis, the brighter students tended to monitor their language learning
more than the lower end students. These findings could be the result of leaving the students to practice Internet
listening on their own instead of assigning them listening exercises. The outcome of the data would most likely be
different if listening assignments were handed out during the semester.

Reading
The data’s reading results were quite positive, which would suggest that Internet reading is effective for ESL
reading (Lee, 2000). Almost all types of students agreed that the reading material helped them to learn more about
American culture. The Internet can be quite a good tool for incorporating authentic reading materials into the classcurriculum.
Internet reading was also beneficial for different types of students. First of all, both reserved and talkative
students benefited. Having students read the material outside of class and then talk about it in groups in classhelped both kinds of students. Second, both high and low tolerant students also enjoyed Internet reading. Most
interesting was the response of visual and audio oriented students. Only one out of four audio oriented students
agreed with question 7 dealing with the Internet providing them with authentic reading practice.
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Chatting
Students were quite ambivalent about the effectiveness of Internet chatting for the improvement of theirwriting (question #12) and speaking (question #15). In fact all types of students were neutral towards the effectiveness of improved writing through chatting. In regards to question #15, students were quite ambivalent again, but inthree categories ( reserved students, avoidance strategy, and less monitoring) students had a negative opinion. The
ambivalence towards this question could be affected by the low number of students who actually chatted often with
the instructor.

Writing
There were a few survey questions that asked about writing. Two which pertained to email and writing thatwill be discussed here, and a third question asking whether chatting helped students improve their writing has
already been discussed elsewhere (Lee, 2000). Students responded overwhelmingly positive to whether email had
improved their relationship with the teacher. There was an overall 87% approval rating, therefore it would be
expected that all the styles and strategy categories would have a high positive response rating. Still there were threequestions which showed a relatively lower than average rating towards this question. These are avoidance strategy,
77%, field independent, 79%, and audio oriented students at 75%. Field Independent students are usually audio
oriented, but one would think that these types of students would be better at talking and writing. Emotions could
possibly be factored into this question because students who control their feelings, field independent types, didn’t
fair as well as those who were freer with their feelings.
It can be observed from this data that email is a very effective way of having students approach writing
through the use of the Internet. The instructor, having lived all over North America, finds that Korean students tend
to be more sociable than Westerners. This avenue allows students to feel more at ease with their instructor while atthe same time writing. In regards to this question, the data collected from the two semesters are quite different.
The instructor believes that the second semester data was a lot more positive because the instructor’s response
during the second semester was a lot quicker overall. Students tend to enjoy getting positive feedback and email
from their instructor.

General Question
Questions #16 and #17 were general questions relating to increased interest in the English class due to
Towumi’s use and reduced anxiety towards the computer after using Towumi. Many different types of students
responded quite positively to these questions. 51% and 44% respectively answered positively towards these twoquestions. Almost all the data for questions #16 and #17 show above average percentage rates. A couple of results
which caught the instructor’s eye are both reserved and talkative student’s interest in the class increased after using
the Towumi system and students who were more willing to try things reduced their anxiety about using computers.
The Correlation between the Levels of Students and the Effectiveness of CALL: The styles and strategies of the top and bottom ten students, evaluated on the basis of their quizzes, midterm and final exams will be
discussed. This section attempts to discover whether there are any generalized trends which can be extracted fromthe data collected from these students..
The following differences were extracted from the analysis of the top ten and bottom ten students,
respectively.
1.

Seventy percent of the top ten students were not ambiguity tolerant whereas 60% of the bottom
ten students remained neutral.

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2.

None of the top ten students were auditorily oriented. There were 4 auditorily oriented students
in this research, 2 of them were in the bottom 10.

3.

Sixty percent of the top 10 students asked questions for clarification whereas 50% of the bottom 10 students didn't.

4.

Sixty percent of the top and 10% of the bottom 10 students preferred teamwork while 40% of
the bottom 10 students preferred to work by themselves.

5.

All of the bottom 10 students practiced some form of avoidance.

6.

More of the top ten students practiced a form of self-monitoring.

1.

Ninety percent of the top 10 students were undecided as to whether Internet reading helped
them express themselves better in a conversational class (Question #10). 40% of the bottom 10
students thought it did help.

2.

Sixty percent of the top and 20% of the bottom students thought that Internet materials helped
them understand American culture more.

3.

Forty percent of the top ten students thought that chatting improved their speaking and writing
abilities but 40% of the bottom students thought that chatting didn't improve their speaking or
writing skills.

4.

One hundren percent of the top and 70% of the bottom students thought that email improved
their relations with the teacher.

5.

Sxity percent of the top 10 students said that Towumi reduced their anxiety about using computers.

Summarizing the differences between top ten and bottom ten students the following is a description of these
two types of students.
A top ten student was visually oriented, preferred established clear exercises, asked a lot ofquestions, preferred teamwork, and practiced some form of self-monitoring.
She or he also enjoyed learning more about Western culture and enjoyed chatting and using
email. By learning through the use of Towumi, a top student had a closer relationship with the teacher
and reduced their anxiety about using computers.
In contrast, a bottom 10% of the students were somewhat ambiguity tolerant, didn't ask manyquestions, worked by themselves, practiced some form of avoidance, and didn't monitor their workmuch.
She or he didn't learn much about Western culture through the Internet and that chatting didn't
improve their speaking or writing capabilities much. Many though did believe that email improved
their relationship with the teacher.

Implications of the Learning Styles and Strategies
From the implication of the diagnosis, some suggestions can be made for foreign language teaching.
According to the evaluation, most students answered quite positively that reading is the most useful language skill that can be taught on TOWUMI. Yet teachers have to be aware of the students’ reading level before
giving an Internet reading assignment. Most of the English web pages the instructor has visited, excluding EFL‘Towumi’ and its Effectiveness [Oral Presentation]

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related web sites, have ranged from intermediate to advanced comprehension levels. Without pre-awareness ofstudents’ levels, students might think the English is too difficult. Some web pages also have been found to be rather
confusing. On the Internet, there are multiple web pages that can be found concerning a particular topic. The
instructor’s task is to find a web site that is appropriate to the particular class or classes instead of just picking thefirst one that is found.
To improve student participation in writing, a simple English phrase sheet should be handed out at the
beginning of the semester which students can use while they are chatting in English. This will boost the students’
confidence level and keep them active in the process of chatting.
The discouraging listening results implies that exercises for independent study should be related to in classactivity and as an alternative to linked Internet listening sites, an easy TOWUMI listening system that will attract
students and keep them engaged in the listening task needs to be designed.
If knowledge about different learning styles and strategies of students can be obtained at the beginning of thesemester, the instructor could then offer particular students advice on beneficial in-class and out-of-class activities.
A more appropriate curriculum and classroom management style could also be adapted and certain compensatory
techniques could be practiced to help students overcome certain weaknesses.
The information obtained in this study doesn’t intend to classify Korean university students into who are
successful language learners and who are not. Rather it was done to give insightful information to instructors who
are thinking of teaching via a homepage. Future studies by the researchers will be done to further expand and backup some of the findings in this paper.

References
Brown, D. (1994). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. Prentice Hall.
Chapelle, C. (1989a). CALL research in the 1980s: Setting the stage for the 1990s. CALL Digest, 5(7), 7-9.
Chapelle, C. (1994b). Theoretical bases for human-computer interaction research in CALL, Proceedings of CALICO
1994 Annual Symposium. North Carolina: Duke University.
Chapelle, C and Jamieson, J. (1986). Language lessons on the Plato IV system, System, 11(1), 13-20.
Krashen, S., Seliger, H., Hartnett, D. (1974). Two studies in adult second language learning. Kritikon Literature,
3, 220-228.
Lee, C. I. (2000). The effectiveness diagnosis of ‘TOWUMI’, Multimedia-assisted Language Learning, 4(3), 247263.
Lee, C. I. & Cousins, R. (2000). Teaching EFL with an internet-assisted whole language learning approach. The
Journal of Studies in Language, 2(1), 155-165.
Levy, M. (1997). CALL in context I: a historical perspective. Computer-assisted language learning: Context andconceptualization. (pp. 13-46). Oxford University Press.
Stevick, E. (1982). Teaching and learning languages. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Yidiz, R. and Atkins, M. (1993). Evaluating multimedia applications, Computers in Education, (1-2), 133-9.

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The Use of News and Internet for English Classes at aJapanese University
Kazumi Araki
Saitama Prefectural University, Japan
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to improve university students’ listening abilities and reading abilities byusing computers. In this article, the author will focus on the use of news via video on demand for listening andthe internet for reading. These two media can be combined together and presented to the students in a CAI roomin one class period. In this way, the students are able to have self-access to the material and that allows them tostudy at their own pace. It also gives each student freedom in selection of the material. The author hopes thisstudy will lead to curriculum revision for English classes at Japanese Universities in the future.

Discussion
As far as English education in Japan goes, we often hear many teachers say that our students cannot speak
although they have studied English for more than 6 years at the secondary school. Speaking is certainly one aspect
to show the learner’s English proficiency. But this author believes the learner’s speaking ability is closely relatedwith his listening ability. Based on this belief, she suggests that listening practice should be included in the
curriculum of teaching English for general purposes at a Japanese University.
As Helen Keller (1954) said, “Listening is centripetal; it pulls you into the world.” Looking is centrifugal;
it separates you from the world.” Listening is the start for a language learner to be involved in the speech community. Listening takes place in our mind and its process is invisible. As Donald MacKay et al. (1987, p.2) pointed
out, “Language perception and production are intimately related and difficult to separate operationally. Every
speaker is simultaneously a listener, and every listener is at least potentially a speaker.” This means if we want toencourage the students to speak, then we cannot ignore the aspect of listening as well. These two actions of
speaking and listening take place in turn and they are reciprocal processes of language communication of humanbeings.
As Karl Lashley (1951,p.186) says, “The process of comprehension and production of speech have toomuch in common to depend on wholly different mechanisms.” The importance of giving listening practice to thestudents can be emphasized from the viewpoint of the Input hypothesis, too. Krashen (1985) says that there is acorrelation between the frequency with which linguistic items occur in the input and the order of acquisition of thesame features. Long (1981a) also says that it is necessary for learners to have comprehensible input for acquisition
for a language. Although this input hypothesis is a controversial issue, we can at least say that learners need to begiven enough input in order to acquire a new language.
The theoretical understanding above has lead me the use of English news programs for enhancing thestudents’ listening abilities.
The advantages of using English news programs are:1.

The students are able to get used to the natural speed of speech by native speakers.

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2.

It gives the students a chance to become familiar with the content of their fields of specialty
such as nursing and occupational therapy.

3.

The students are able to increase their vocabulary in a natural context by watching the news.

4.

It is good practice for the students to grasp the main idea and summarize the story.

5.

Pictures in the news help them understand the story better and play a role as a schema, especially for students at the intermediate level.

However, we cannot ignore the difficulties in using English news for listening practice as well. First, thespeed of speech on the news is too fast for most of the students, Therefore they feel it is difficult to understand.
Secondly, they sometimes hear new words. However, there are some ways to solve these problems when we implement the method. It becomes necessary to edit the news so that the students can understand without too muchdifficulty. For example:
1.

Pointing out the new vocabulary to the students

2.

Showing part of the English script on the monitor

3.

The teacher reading part of the English script

4.

Having the students repeat after her

5.

Giving comprehension questions

6.

The students making access to one of these computers with video on demand.

(At the presentation, this author showed the listening program she developed with the use of CNN News.)
In the next section, this author explained how the Internet can be used to give the students backgroundknowledge to understand the listening material better. The following summarizes the reasons why it is suggested
to use the Internet for English classes:
1.

The information is updated.

2.

The way it is presented is very attractive.

3.

The students have several choices for reading depending on their interests and differing levelsof language proficiency.

4.

The students can read at their own pace.

5.

It is easy to find reading material that is related to the content of the listening section.

6.

The reading material on the Internet gives background knowledge for listening.

For the listening program “Children Hope for the Future”, this author chose the reading material about
Convention on the Rights of the Child from the home page of UNICEF. The students can read the pages where all
the rights for children defined by UNICEF are listed such as “The Right to an Identity” and “The Right to an
Education. In class the students read each article in English and then they were supposed to decide the mostimportant right for children and translate the English articles into Japanese. They also wrote the reason why they
thought those articles are the most important for children. Therefore, this task is not only for reading but also forwriting, too. Once the students have written their opinions on the right, it is possible to send their voices to
UNICEF through Internet and exchange their opinions with the young people all over the world. After this task, thestudents can read the Japanese version of the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Internet as well. This
helps the students understand the contents easily and better and they can compare the translation of their own andthe “correct” one. It is also possible for the students to read about Bangladesh, whose poverty and difficulty to get

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enough education was introduced in the video material, and learn more about the situation of its economy andeducation.
As an output or product, the students are supposed to choose the topic which they are interested in and create
their own news program and report it to the class as a group work. This gives them an opportunity to express theirideas and opinions using the vocabulary and usages they have learned by listening to the news programs.
At the end, this author discusses some of the benefits and problems of using computers in teaching English
at a University. The use of computers certainly increases the number of possible teaching style and expands ourimagination when we make teaching plans. The students can freely get access to the abundant information on theInternet and watch and listen to the various listening programs through the video on demand system. These points
are certainly beneficial for any serious language learner. The use of computers also makes it possible for learners
to study at their own pace and to choose the material most suitable for them. However, computers are only tools theboth teachers and students use. They cannot assume all the responsibilities for teaching. The teachers have to becareful about making enough chances for interaction among students and between the teacher and the students aswell. Also computers can cause many unexpected problems that might interrupt our teaching at the same time theygive us wonderful teaching opportunities. Too much reliance on computers does the students harm. However, thisauthor believes the benefits outweigh the potential problems that might occur in class. It is an exciting thing tothink about all the possibilities that the use of computers will bring to the teachers. However, only because newtechnology has a place in our teaching, that does not mean we exclude all the traditional ways of teaching such as
reading books, giving a lecture and discussing various issues in a group. We, humans, are the ones that decide how
to use those machines and computers cannot have a control over teachers or students either.
Computer Assisted Instruction Room is the place where humans and machines coexist. Certainly they areworth exploring to improve our teaching methods.

References
Keller, H. (1954). Story of my life. New York: Doubleday.
Krashen, S. (1985). The input hypothesis:Issues and implications. London: Longman.
Long, M. (1981a). Input, interaction and second language acquisition.In Winitz (ed.)1981b
Lashley, K. S. (1951). The problem of serial order in behavior. In Jeffress, L. A. (ed.), Cerebral mechanisms inbehavior. p.186. New York: Wiley.
MacKay, D. G., et all. (1987). Relationships and modules within language perception and production:. An introduction. In Allport. A., et al. (ed.), Language perception and production, pp.1-15. London: Academic
Press.

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Using DVD in the Classroom
Harold H. Hendricks
Brigham Young University, U. S. A.
Abstract
Video is an important tool of the language classroom, but current video technologies have limited theeffectiveness of video integration into classroom procedures due to various problems:
VHS video: Provides a standard format and some portability for classroom, lab and home with reasonable fidelity, but lacks precise random access. Time in class is often spent fast-forwarding to selected scenes.
Laserdisc: Brought high fidelity and random access to the classroom and language lab but never penetrated the home to a useful percentage. It could hardly be considered portable.
The emerging Digital Video Disc or DVD format promises to combine high fidelity, a standard format
and portability, so that the same video material can be used in class, in the lab, in the home—and even on thego— with portable electronic devices.

DVD Capabilities
The DVD format was developed primarily to bring full-length, feature movies to the consumer market in a
medium the size of the audio CD. But it is more than just the miniaturization of the laserdisc. Whereas a laserdisc
contains digital information representing the entire frame of video, DVD uses sophisticated compression schemes
to compact the amount of data required to reproduce the picture and sound. Even with this compression, the image
and sound quality can be stunning in their fidelity. The compression rates can be adjusted to bring the best matchof quality to the amount of storage space available on the DVD, which itself can vary, thanks to some ingenious
technology. The standard DVD holds 4.7 gigabytes of information, but by creating a second layer and refocusing
the laser with fine precision, a double layered disc can be created that holds 8.5 gigabytes. If two discs are glued
together to create a double-sided disc, then the storage can double to 9.4 and 17.8 gigabytes for single and double
layers.
DVD compression works by saving frames in groups of pictures (GOP’s), with the first frame being digitizedin its entirety and the rest being only the difference from the first. The first frame is called a reference frame and thesubsequent frames are known as delta frames. For random, single frame retrieval, the player searches to the nearest
reference frame and then must decode the delta frames to recreate the exact frame location desired.
Along with the video, up to eight audio tracks can be included to provide alternate sound or language tracks
for the same video program. Another 32 sub-title tracks can be encoded to allow many different types of text
subtitles. Up to nine camera angles can be encoded so the user can change the point of view at any time. And bothbarcode or computer controlled random access is possible in much the same way as with laserdisc.
This DVD format will allow the same disc to be used by the instructor in the classroom with a computer orbarcode controlled player, by the student in a computer lab or home PC setting, or by the instructor or student using
a standard DVD player and consumer remote control. For the first time, video content can be distributed on thesame medium but have very different treatment based on the equipment it is used in.

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The Reality
The promises of this new DVD technology are very great; however, the reality is that the technology is very
new and we are only now beginning to think about how to use all of its possibilities. Producing DVD language andclassroom materials will require a much different approach than traditional, linear video. These approaches willneed new tools and production procedures as well. This will of course increase the cost of the materials.
DVD production is currently very costly and still a rather difficult process. It is true that costs are dropping
rapidly—even more rapidly than earlier technologies: but, they are still high. Development tools and authoring
systems are still emerging, and the players need improved accuracy for single frame, random access retrieval. Dueto the reference frame/delta frame decoding, the actual frame number requested is not always exact—at least in thefirst production models.

A Pioneering Example
In spite of the difficulties listed above, Brigham Young University has experimented with this new technology to create an Italian language resource for both classroom and individual use based on the motion picture
C’eravamo tanto amati or We all Loved Each Other so Much. This film was chosen to introduce intermediate toadvanced students to authentic language usage, including dialect. The movie’s subject and its purposeful allegoryof post World War II Italian history make it a good springboard for political, socio-economic, cultural, and cinematic discussions. BYU had also previously used this film within a laserdisc application in a language lab setting,so materials had already been created and experience with both lab and classroom use had already been gained.
Also, copyright and permissions had already been licensed from the film producers.
Thanks to assistance from Pioneer New Media and Spruce Technologies, a DVD version of the motion
picture was created with introductory textual information, scene summaries, and six types of subtitles. The designof the DVD would allow both home and classroom use with the standard DVD player controls, but along with apublished instructors guide, it also allows for barcode control. An interactive CD-ROM version was also createdfor individual use, since computer-controllable DVD is still not available.
For home or individual use, the DVD provides the ancillary texts in both Italian and English. The subtitles
give the verbatim dialog in both languages as well. Summary subtitles are available either through the entire
summary segment or flash on the screen for only five seconds at the beginning of the segment.
For the instructor the entire dialog of the motion picture has been transcribed and published with barcodes
for each scene, each scene segment, and each utterance. This allows the instructor to use any portion of the motion
picture for classroom discussion or illustration. Sample study questions are also included in the instructors guidealong with biographies and essays about the actors and the film.

Conclusion
Although DVD technology is rapidly becoming commonplace, it is still in its infancy especially in regards toinstructional materials. However, it promises to provide new ways of creating and using language content. It also
provdes a convenient and portable delivery medium that can be mediated in a variety of ways depending on the
playback device being used. With the film C’ervamo tanto amati, Brigham Young University has demonstrated a
few of these possibilities by producing a DVD that can be used by both the consumer and the instructor to deliver
different mediations of the language content. This is just the beginning of new and creative ways to bring video
content into the language instruction process.

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Using the WebLEAP (Web Language Evaluation AssistantProgram) to Write English Compositions
Takashi Yamanoue
Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan

Toshiro Minami
Kyushu University, Japan

Ian Ruxton
Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan
Abstract
This paper introduces a program called “WebLEAP (Web Language Evaluation Assistant Program)”, aprototype software that aims to support writers by reducing the anxiety in their writing. It informs users of theexistence and popularity of expressions in the world. It gets an expression as input and returns the frequencies
in Web documents of the word sequences extracted from the given expression by using a search engine. The
expression and the numbers are presented graphically so that the user can estimate the result easily and judge
with more confidence. We demonstrate its usefulness by illustrating several experiments of finding suitable
expressions and solving questions. We also report the results of the experimental classes of English compositionand discuss its educational effects. From these experiments, we conclude that such a system has high potential
and will become an indispensable tool for all writers in the future.

Introduction
Needs for computer software to support writing as an activity have traditionally been very high. Thanks toword processors, the burden of writing documents is notably reduced. These days, word processors even provide
the means of checking spelling and grammatical errors.
Nevertheless, for non-native English speakers such as Japanese people, these facilities are not sufficient.
Unlike native speakers they cannot judge the appropriateness of English expressions with confidence even with thebenefit of such facilities. Even after checking their compositions, they are afraid that their compositions may
include expressions or words that appear in a dictionary and whose combination is grammatically right, but theexpression is one that no native speakers would use. It would be a great help for them if they are able to knowwhether the expressions they are using really exist and/or to know how many of the expressions appear in theworld.
A lot of effort has been devoted to creating corpora (British National Corpus, http://info.ox.ac.ub/bnc/;
ICAME, http://nora.hd.uib.no/icame.html), in the field of corpus linguistics (Kudo & Inoue, 1995; Saito, Nakamura& Akano, 1998; Takaie & Suga, 1998; Takezawa & Suematsu, 1995), and to providing the information about
usages of expressions. A corpus consists of sample sentences collected from various sources with care.
However the major aim of building up a corpus is to provide analytical tools to the experts of the language
such as researchers, linguists, dictionary editors, and so on. These tools are called concordance programs (Simple
Cordance Program, http://sun1.bham.ac.uk/A.Reed/scp/; TXTANA, http://www.biwa.or.jp/~aka-san/index.html;
WordSmith Tools, http://www.liv.ac.uk/~ms2928/homepage.html). A corpus and a concordance program can beused for assisting writers with their work. However this approach has some problems: (a) Building up a large
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corpus requires a lot of effort and is time-consuming. (b) Because of the duration of time needed for building a
corpus together with the copyright problem, a corpus is often outdated from the beginning. Furthermore, it is also
hard to keep updated. (c) The tools for corpus linguistics are developed for analyzing the target language. Thus thefunctions provided in such tools may not always be best suited in writing and sometimes they are too complicatedto use comfortably for ordinary language learners.
In order to overcome these problems, we took a different approach (Yamanoue, Minami & Ruston, 1999).
Instead of constructing and using a corpus, we use the Web documents as a corpus, which we call the “Webcorpus.” Thanks to the rapid popularization of the Internet, huge amounts of documents have been created and their
existence is recognizable by using the search engines (AltaVista, http://www.altavista.com/; Lycos, http://
www.lycos.com/; Yahoo, http://www.yahoo.com/). We have the following advantages in utilizing these documents
as a corpus: (a) The Web-corpus exists as is and thus is maintenance free. We can use it without effort in creating
and maintaining the corpus. (b) The Web-corpus is the collection of the current expressions of the language, and is
up-to-date at any time. (c) Considering the coming network age, expressions in the Web-corpus will affect thelanguage in the near future. Therefore we may be able to catch new ideas together with new terms and to use them
before they become very popular. (d) A lot of applications have been developed and many more are under development on the Internet. We can use them as tools for the Web-corpus.
The aim of this paper is to describe a system that uses the Web-corpus and demonstrates its usefulness andimportance. The rest of this paper is organized as follows: In Section 2, we describe the design and implementationof the system. In Section 3, we demonstrate the usefulness of our system through various application examples andour experience in experimental classes. In Section 4, we clarify the features of our system in comparison with othersimilar systems. Finally in Section 5, we summarize this paper and present some possible future work.

The WebLEAP System
The WebLEAP (Web Language Evaluation Assistant Program) system is developed as a concordance program for the Web-corpus. Unlike other approaches, WebLEAP deals mainly with the frequencies of documents that
include the word sequences that are found in a search engine.
Figure 1 shows a screen shot of this system. This is for comparing the two phrases “he is married to” and “hemarried with.” At the top of the screen of Figure 1 is the input area. The function buttons are lined up on the left.
The “eval” button is for analyzing the expression in the input area. The “clear” button is for clearing the input area.
The “move” button is for transferring the graphical representation of the result to the lower area. This function isfor comparing two results.
The system organization is illustrated in Figure 2. The system works as follows: The user inputs a target
sentence or an expression to the system. The word sequence generator divides the given sentence or expression into
the sequence of consecutive words.
The minimum number of words is normally one or two and the maximum number is normally four. The
generated word sequences are given to the search engine driver one by one. The driver sends the word sequence toa search engine as the key string for the search. The search engine returns the results. The document analyzer
analyzes the HTML documents that are returned from the search engine and extracts the frequency number for the
Web documents that hit the given key; i.e., the word sequence. The frequencies are presented to the user by thepresenter through the graphical user interface.

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Experiments
In this section we demonstrate the usefulness of WebLEAP by showing several experiments.

“see/watch” the “TV/movie”
We have learned that TV should be “watched”, and movies should be “seen”. Let’s check this.

The results are summarized in Table 1. The ratios of the numbers for “see the TV” and “watch the TV” to thenumber for “the TV” are about 0.4% and 0.8%, respectively. Thus “watch” is more popularly used than “see” forTV. For “movie”, “see” is used in about 2.9% and “ watch” in about 1.4%. Thus for “movie”, “see” is more popularthan “watch.”

Figure 1. Screen shot of WebLEAP: Comparing “He is maried to” and “He married with”

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Figure 2. System organization
We investigated further by checking several Web documents that are hit by the search engine and found that“see the TV” only appeared as a sub-expression as in “see the TV image”, “see the TV program”, and so on. Thus
we conclude that “see” is not correct for “TV”. On the other hand, “watch the movie” is used with this meaning.
So we conclude that both expressions are acceptable. From the frequencies we conclude that people “see” more
often than “watch” the movies.

Table 1. Comparison of the Frequencies for the Combinations of “see/watch” and “TV/movie”“the TV”“see the TV”“watch the TV”

216,107873 (0.4%)

1,593 (0.8%)“the movie”“see the movie”“watch the movie”

472,776

13,638 (2.9%)

6,666 (1.4%)

Proper Nouns
WebLEAP is useful to check the correct spelling of names. Suppose we would like to know which one iscorrect among “Bertrand Russell” and “Burtrand Russell”. We asked to WebLEAP and found that the former one
counted 12575 and the latter only 3. We concluded “Bertrand Russell” is correct.
Next let us suppose we know either “Jenolan caves” or “Genolan caves” exists in NSW, Australia, but wedon’t know which spelling is correct. We do not find either name in our dictionaries. According to WebLEAP theformer counted 992 and the latter only 2. So we concluded that “Jenolan caves” were correct.

Application to TOEIC Questions
We used WebLEAP to solve the 20 questions of a TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication)(http://www.toeic.or.jp/) test. The testees are asked to choose one that should be corrected or rewritten among thefour candidates of words and phrases for each sentence. In 13 questions we got sufficient information to solve themsuccessfully. In two questions we got insufficient information to solve. We guessed and reach the right answers bycomparing the original and corrected expressions. In five questions we did not get any useful information.

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To contents(A) Analysis of a TOEIC question that includes a wrong part(B) Analysis of the corrected sentence
Figure 3. Applications to TOEIC problems.
The following is an example of a successful question.

The stock market average fell down for the third straight day.
A

B

C

D

The result of the system for this sentence is shown in Fig.3(A). The frequency of “average fell down” is 3
and that of “fell down for” is 60. The frequencies of phrases containing three words before and after them are over
100. These results indicate that the part B in the question sentence is not used so much in the context.
On the other hand, the result obtained from the sentence which is corrected by rewriting the “fell down” to“fell”, is shown in Fig.3(B). The frequency of “average fell for” in Fig.3(B) is 5 and that of the corresponding part“average fell down for” in Fig.3(A) is 0. The frequency of “fell for the” in Fig.3(B) is 2636 and that of thecorresponding part “fell down for the” in Fig.3(A), is 18. The correct answer of this question is B. The systemsuggests the place that should be corrected. According to a reference book (International Communications Limited,1999), only 9.4% of the testees gave the correct answer.
The following sentence is a failure example. We couldn’t get the appropriate information.

Each of the machine parts are guaranteed for ninety days.
A

B

C

D

This sentence has the “Each” in the head of the sentence. So “are” should be “is”. Our system couldn't solve
this problem because “Each” and “is” are separated; 4 words exist in between.

Experimental Classes
We made two experimental classes in order to estimate the effects of WebLEAP in writing English essays.
The number of the students participate the classes is 11. They are supposed to write short and simple essays in 30
minutes. In the first class they did not use WebLEAP and in the second class they did.
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Table 2. Resulting Scores of the Experimental Classes
Student
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

Essay 1

Essay 2Errors

Words

Density

Errors

Words

Density

5
9
5
4
5
5
5
6
3
4
4

53
43
31
34
34
34
39
54
35
34
33

9%
21%
16%
12%
15%
15%
13%
11%
9%
12%
12%

4
6
4
7
6
4
8
1
3
5
7

48
32
36
33
42
39
40
11
40
32
32

8%
19%
11%
21%
14%
10%
20%
9%
8%
16%
22%

↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓

The result is summarized in Table 2. We evaluated the effect of using the system with the error density; i.e.,
the number of errors per word. We compared the error densities for the essay one and two. More than half of thestudents got a decrease of the error densities; 7 out of 11, precisely.
From this experiment we recognize some extent of effect of WebLEAP to reducing error density. Considering that the current system is in the early stage, we might be able to say that the WebLEAP system has fairly highpotential in helping its users with writing good English essays.
Despite such potential, the current system is not sufficient in its design as a writer’s assistant program;
especially for beginners of English. In order to utilize the system and get much information and knowledge, theusers are supposed to be at a somewhat high level of using English. Unfortunately, most of the university students
in Japan are considered to be at lower than such a level, they would need to have supports from their teachers whenusing WebLEAP.
On the other hand, it is a good point for the system that almost all the students reported us that using thesystem was quite enjoyable. From the educational point of view, a system that is developed for assisting users is
supposed to be one that they enjoy using, and hopefully they are excited about using it. We have to point out herethat giving the frequencies is a good choice in terms of educational effects of a system. The users are supposed tothink hard what the numbers mean by comparing the differences of those of two expressions. Through such a
process, the users learn what expressions are used popularly and what expressions are not used so much.

Related WorkA number of concordance programs have been developed in the field of corpus linguistics. However most ofthem were rather designed as tools for experts in linguistics, so that they are too sophisticated for ordinary people
in their daily activities. WebLEAP is developed for such people. In this section we take up and illustrate some ofthese systems and clarify the differences.
Satoh’s system (http://www.senshu-u.ac.jp/~thc0408/) is the closest one to our system in terms of the aim. It
also has accesses to the Web documents through a search engine. This system outputs the KWIC (KeyWord In
Context) index of the given keyword, whereas our system outputs the graphical representation of the frequencies ofUsing the WebLEAP [Oral Presentation]725

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words or phrases in an expression. TXTANA (http://www.biwa.or.jp/~aka-sanindex.html) and WordSmith Tools(http://www.liv.ac.uk/~ms2928/homepage.html) provide a collection of tools to analyze languages for the corpora.
It covers KWIC, collocations, and many others. Roughly speaking, these tools are for experts. Most ordinary users
will not be able to use them with satisfactory results. Our system, even in its primitive stage, is easier to use for the
inexpert users. SARA (SGML Aware Retrieval Application) (http://info.ox.ac.uk/bnc/sara/index.html) is a software to access British National Corpus (BNC), which is a large corpus of written and spoken English. SARA also
supports to analyze the ordinary corpus (in this case, the BNC corpus).
There are also other types of writer’s assistant. “SUIKOU” (Ushijima, Suganuma, et al., 1993) is a system
for writers in Japanese to assist in revising their writings. It takes a different approach. It tries to find out the places
that could be problematic. Our system aims to assist creating ideas and to weeding out the expressions that are notactually used by native writers. The Writer’s Assistant (Sharples, Goodlet & Pemberton, 1992) is a prototype
writing environment that combines an idea organizer with a document structure editor and a text editor. It intends
to help the user with mapping out ideas and organize the document structure, whereas our system helps the user
with writing sentences and phrases.

Concluding Remarks
In this paper we introduced a program called “WebLEAP (Web Language Evaluation Assistant Program)”, aprototype software that aims to support the writers with reducing the anxiety in their writings. It informs the usersof the existence and the popularity of the sub-expressions of the given expressions and/or sentences according to
the frequencies of them found in the Web documents. From the popularity number the users are able to know if theexpression is one that has been used in the past or is a totally new invention. Further, the popularity numbers givethe users good tips so that they can decide which expression to use with more confidence.
Comparing to the ordinary corpora used in the corpus linguistics, our approach of using the Web documents
as a distributed huge corpus, has advantages such as: (a) It takes a huge amount of time and elaboration in order toestablish an ordinary corpus, whereas in our approach we just use the Web documents as is. (b) Because of this theordinary corpus easily becomes outdated, whereas our corpus is always up-to-date. On the other hand the “Webcorpus” of our approach includes a lot of noise documents (i.e. documents of little or no use which merely distract)
and thus the user is required to have skill to judge and decide how to use the results. Therefore we can say that ourapproach is rather a proposal for a new type of corpus and its usage to complement the use of ordinary corpora thana substitute for them.
In this paper we also demonstrated the usefulness of the Web-corpus by presenting several kinds of usages of
WebLEAP which include some experiments for finding suitable expressions, comparing two expressions, solving
questions, and so on. We also reported the experimental classes of English composition and discussed the usefulness of the system.
Even though the WebLEAP system is still in a primitive stage, we are convinced from our experiences that
it will open up a new dimension towards the truly helpful writer’s assistant.
In order to step further to realize such a system we need further research and development including thefollowing topics: (a) In the current system, it involves solely the frequency data with the information from a searchengine. We have to investigate the method of integrating other services provided in the Internet so that the systemprovides more useful tips to its users in writing. (b) As a writer’s assistant, it is recommendable that the systemmonitors the user’s behavior and gives more personalized services to him or her. (c) More writing activities will be
performed in collaboration in the network age. Thus it is essential to adapt the system so that it supports thecollaborative writings performed by a group of people working at distance.
Finally we wish to note that the home page for WebLEAP is located at the following URL: http://
www.tobata.isc. kyutech.ac.jp/~yamanoue/researches/WebLEAP/
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Acknowledgment
Part of this work is supported by the Grant-in-Aid of the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture ofJapan(C)(2)(09680401).

References
International Communications Limited. (1999). TOEIC Test Experience Kit. University COOP Union. (in Japanese)
Kudo, I. and Inoue, N. (1995). Co-occurrence knowledge acquisition from corpora and its application, Journal ofJapanese society for artificial intelligence, 10(2), pp. 205-212. (in Japanese)
Saito, T., Nakamura, J. and Akano, I. (Eds.) (1998). English corpus linguistics. Kenkyuusya Syuppan. (inJapanese)
M. Sharples, J. Goodlet and Pemberton, L. (1992). Developing a writer’s assistant, In J. Hartley (ed.), Technology
and writing: Readings in the psychology of written communication. pp. 209-220. London: Jessica Kingsley.
Takaie, H. and Suga, H. (1998). Practical corpus linguistics. Kirihara Yuni. (in Japanese)
Takezawa, T. and Suematsu, H. (1995). Speech/text corpora, Their construction technology and standardization,
Journal of Japanese society for artificial intelligence, 10(2). pp. 168-180. (in Japanese)
Ushijima, K., Suganuma, A. et al. (1993). The writing tool for Japanese documents “SUIKOU”, Iwanami Software Library, Iwanami. (in Japanese)
Yamanoue, T., Minami, T. & Ruxton, I. (1999). A writer’s assistant based on the World Wide Web-Knowledge,
Proc. Fourth Australian Knowledge Acquisition Workshop(AKAW99), pp.1-12.

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Visualization and Modeling:
Analysis of Code Switching and Modes of Communication in a
Beginning Chinese Class Facilitated by Electronic Network
Hui-Mei Hsu
Cheng-Hui Chen
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U. S. A.
Abstract
This study targets a second semester beginning spoken Mandarin Chinese class at a major Midwestern American university. The purpose of the study is to investigate students’ code switching behavior between
their native language and the target language in their electronic interaction as well as their choice of public or
private modes of communication. This research uses multiple methods, including surveys on students’ perception of computer use in language learning, content analysis of e-mail messages, interviews and in-class observations. Quantifiable data from the surveys and content analysis are presented by means of visualization techniques, and the models are constructed out of the data. Furthermore, qualitative data are used to triangulate thefindings and justify the models. Findings indicate that students’ perception, target language proficiency, and theaudience of their electronic messages influence their choice of codes. The findings also reveal that topic relevance and audience influence the students’ selection of public and private modes.

Introduction
The project is motivated by students’ feedback in the first semester of the Chinese language classes. The
students suggest that they should have more opportunities to know and discuss the cultural issues of the target
language. It has been claimed that electronic network facilitates teaching especially in cultural exchange (Leh,1997). By providing proper educational technology incorporated into class instruction, the student-student andinstructor-student communication can entail meaningful educational experiences. Consequently, electronic networking is introduced and used as part of the class instruction in the second semester class.
Technologies such as e-mail, bulletin boards, and electronic conferencing have been widely used in foreign
language teaching. Today, most college students have the ability to operate such software properly without difficulties. Many language learning projects at the university level involve using e-mail to help students learn from native
speakers of the target language. Ruthe (1998) claims that e-mail is effective in teaching cultural awareness, creating
a positive affective climate and making the foreign language curriculum more relevant to students. Singhal (1998)
reviews several CALL studies and concludes that computer mediated communication (CMC), especially e-mailand teleconferencing, provide authentic communication and foster awareness of both the other language learners
and the target language.
Visualization is concerned with obtaining insightful understanding of data by means of graphical representation. As technology advances, the volume of data coming from different sources is multiplying. Visualization,
which generates graphical displays out of data, empowers researchers to analyze the data in a visual way so as tobetter understand a phenomenon under study. Visualization techniques thus appear to be very useful for searching,

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analyzing, and understanding the large amount of information on the Internet. Several techniques have been developed to examine network data (e.g., Eick, 1996; Gershon & Eick, 1995). Furthermore, some analyses have been
employed to study educational uses of electronic communication. These techniques include InterMessage Reference Analysis, Message Act Analysis, Message Flow Analysis (Levin, Kim, and Riel, 1990), and Participant Structure Analysis (Riel, 1990; Riel & Levin, 1990). Nevertheless, the application of visualization techniques to theanalyses of educational CMC interactions is still limited.
Modeling is one of the reasoning skills human beings have used for centuries. In recent years, computermodels with accompanying simulation have been used in teaching science. Not only does modeling have moreengaging power than verbal instruction, but it can also help students re-conceptualize the abstract ideas in science(White & Schwarz, 1998). The purpose of using modeling in learning is basically to encourage students to test theirbelief against the models and make the hidden phenomenon evident to the students. Currently, modeling tools,
such as Stella and Model-It, have the power to produce models and portray changes along with a variation ofvariables. Hsu, Kielmeyer, Kulsamrit, Tham, Brown, Bievenue, and Aaritsky (1999) prove effective in using modeling techniques to arrange data and explain the mechanism of the selection of communication modes in a distributed learning environment.
Code switching is a salient phenomenon in most second language and foreign language classrooms. Codeswitching may result from “bilingual code switching”, which means the language user can use both languages
alternatively unconstrained, and “incompetence code switching”, which means the language user has different
levels of language proficiency in the two languages (Hancock, 1995). Code switching is often viewed as negative
or incorrect, but Duran (1994) suggests that it should be regarded as “a more positive linguistic, cognitive, communicative and developmental term.” There are two levels of code switching, mainly, intersentential code switching
and intrasentential code switching. According to Hammink (2000), intrasentential code swtiching is far more complicated than intersentential code switching. Her studies proved that intrasentential code switching proficiency
requires an adult command of both languages.
Code choice depends on factors such as norms of the situations. In some second language or foreign language classrooms, speaking the native language is a legitimate taboo among the class. In others, the code choice isunmarked and it leaves students to challenge the norms (Hancock, 1995).

Research Questions
This research will attempt to answer the following questions:1.

In a beginning level language class newsgroup, how often does code switching occur? What is
the reason for that?

2.

What are the significant differences between the communication pattern of public cultural discussion and private request e-mail?

3.

What is the mechanism of mode selection between private e-mail and public newsgroup postings?

4.

What is the mechanism of code switching in the beginning level language class?

Methodology
This research uses multiple methods, including surveys of students’ perception of computer use in language
learning, content analysis of e-mail messages, interviews and in-class observations. Prior to conducting the research project, the researchers solicited students’ voluntary participation in the study and assigned pseudonyms toeach participating student in order to ensure confidentiality. The surveys are administered twice to students. One isat the beginning of the semester. The first survey focuses on the students’ computer competence in using e-mail as
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a tool for communication and their expectation of teaching enhancement via e-mail. The other is administered near
the end of the semester. The second survey stresses the students’ perception and satisfaction of the face-to-faceinteraction and on-line interaction, and the students’ perception of code-switching behaviors. Ten out of elevenstudents are interviewed based on their in-class and on-line performances and the results of two surveys. One 30minute interview session for each subject is scheduled prior to the end of the semester. Additionally, the class isvideotaped for two weeks to capture its daily routine. Quantifiable data from the surveys and content analysis arepresented by means of visualization techniques and the models are thus constructed there from.

Class Description
The class consists of eleven non-native speakers of Mandarin Chinese, two females and nine males. Six ofthe students are of Chinese heritage who more or less speak Cantonese or Taiwanese at home. The other five are
Caucasian or Black Americans who either major in languages or have significant others who are native speakers of
Mandarin Chinese.

Data Analysis
Throughout the semester the researchers collect 294 electronic messages including 184 newsgroup or e-mailmessages posted to the class and 110 private e-mail communications between the instructor and her students.
Private e-mail messages between students are not included in this study. A tally of the message counts indicatesthat the instructor is the one who sent most messages in each of the two modes, 81 in public and 75 in private. The
eleven students contributed a total of 103 public messages and sent 35 private e-mail messages to the instructor.
The contribution made by each student to the public domain ranges from 3 to 20 messages; the messages
sent via the private channel range from 0 to 8 per student. On average, each student sent 9.36 public messages and3.18 private ones. The three charts below summarize the public/private messages sent by each student, the total
word counts in the two modes of communication, and the use of Chinese found in the public and private modes,
respectively.
Lam
Lam
JosephJosephMike
Mike

PublicPublicSally

PrivatePrivate

Andy
Andy
Frank
Frank
00

10
10

20
20

30
30

Figure 1. Public/Private messages sent by each student

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Lam
Lam
JosephJosephMike
Mike

PublicPublicSally

Private

Andy
Andy
Frank
Frank
00

500
500

1000
1000

1500
1500

2000
2000

2500
2500

Figure 2. Total word counts in both public and private messages sent by each student
Lam
Lam
JosephJosephMike
Mike

PublicP
ublicPrivatePrivateSally
S ally
Andy
Andy
Frank
Frank
00

50
50

100
100

150
150

200
200

250
250

300
300

Figure 3. Total Chinese words in both public and private messages sent by each student
In terms of message topics, the majority of the messages sent by the instructor are related to administration,
whereas the students contribute more to cultural discussions. The messages sent by the instructor and the students
as a whole are categorized in following five types based on the message content: administration, cultural topic
discussion, social topics, discussion on class materials, and other. The two pie charts below illustrate thecategorization of the messages:
1 = Administration
2 = Cultural topic dicussion
3 = Social topics
4 = Discussion on class materials
5 = Other
Themes from Instructor’s Messages

Themes from Student’s Messages

Figure 4. Message themes
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E-mail Use Survey
According to the result of the E-mail Use survey, the students on average have used e-mail as a communication tool for three years. 72% of the students check e-mail several times a day, and 54% of the students engage
in e-mail communication for about three to five hours per week. E-mail is used mainly for communicating with
their friends and family members. The students are confident using e-mail software. As far as the use of e-mail in
their language learning, 45% of the students have had the experience of using e-mail in their language classes.
However, 73% of the students do not believe that e-mail would benefit their learning. About 50% of the students
like to use e-mail in the class instruction.

End of the Semester Survey
According to the end of the semester survey, 64% of the students enrolled in this class have a generalpreference for using the face-to-face mode over face-to-face and on-line modes combined. For this class, 73% of
the students prefer face-to-face and 27% prefer both of the modes to interact with their classmates. 67% of thestudents prefer face-to-face and 36% prefer both modes to communicate with their instructor.
The students are active in both face-to-face interaction and on-line interaction in the class. However,there are significant differences between their face-to-face interaction and on-line interaction (sig. = 0.002). In
terms of satisfaction, the students are satisfied with their face-to-face and on-line interaction with their instructor
and less satisfied with peer students. Overall, they are positive in their satisfaction. As far as comfort is concerned,
the students are comfortable both in face-to-face and on-line interaction.
Regarding code switching, the students feel comfortable speaking Chinese and English in class but lesscomfortable using Chinese (Pinyin) to interact on-line. 54% of them find inputting Pinyin difficult. As to thelanguage norm, only 18% of the students feel obliged to speak Chinese in class and only 9% of the students feel
obliged to interact in Chinese on-line.

Communication Patterns
The threaded newsgroup discussion on topics related to culture follows a similar interaction pattern. The
topics discussed include globalization, cultural identities, human rights in Tibet, and values on child rearing, mostof which are of the students’ choice. After the moderator of the week introduces a topic of his/her concern andinvites class participation, the class starts to post messages on the specified topic. Usually an initial message bringsout six or seven responses over that week, but the topic is seldom re-visited afterwards. Figure 6 is an illustrationof a typical pattern concerning cultural discussion:
The communication pattern in the private mode is fairly linear. It is always composed of a request and a
response. Since the messages are kept private, therefore, the sender and receiver are the two parties in interaction.
There are cases when the student sends a private request but the instructor sends her reply to the class as a public email message. However, it is less common for the instructor to send a private request to a student and that student
replies to the class (Figure 7).

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Responses

Moderator responds and asks
for more participation

U

U

from EdwardUfrom Sally

U

from May

U

from BenU

from Lam

Ufrom the Instructor

U

Moderator thanks the class for participation andconcludes the discussion of the week.

Figure 6. Communication Pattern in the Public Mode

U

Initial request sent by Ben

Response sent by Instructor

Figure 7. Communication pattern in the private mode
Modeling
Modeling is used to illustrate the code selection and mode selection mechanism. As showing in Figure 8, thecode selection mechanism is decided by the following four factors: students’ perception, language proficiency,
audience and class norm. Students’ perception refers to their personal preference and perceived importance ofusing the specific code. Proficiency refers to the students’ language ability in the target language and the different
level of proficiency between the target language and their mother tongue. Audience refers to their intended audiencein the communication situations. Class norm is the norm for language use in the class.

Discussion
On-line Participation
The students’ degree of contribution is influenced by the topic of the week, accessibility to the class newsgroup,and the perceived usefulness of the newsgroup. Because participation in newsgroup discussion is voluntary, thestudents do not feel obligatory to contribute. However, several students report that their participation is topicdependent. That is, they are more likely to write when they find a topic under discussion is relevant to them.

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Figure 8. Code mechanism

Figure 9. Mode selection mechanism
As indicated in the survey administered at the beginning of the semester, the majority of the students do notbelieve that the newsgroup would be beneficial to their learning of Chinese. Outside of the instructor’s expectation that the newsgroup is an ideal space for discussion on Chinese culture, the students tend to see this publicforum as a channel to know their fellow students better. As one student put it during the interview, “I… get to know
people better with newsgroup.” Another student felt that the newsgroup helped her learn what other people thinkbut nothing about the Chinese language. The students with Chinese origins find the newsgroup less informative interms of Chinese culture, whereas their counterparts feel the information useful.

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Code Switching
Code switching is not a salient feature in the students’ electronic communication. On average, there is lessthan one Chinese word used per e-mail message sent by the students. The Pinyin system, which the researchers
thought might discourage the use of Chinese on-line, apparently plays a minor role in the students’ selection of thecodes in written communication. In interviews, the students mentioned that they do not favor inputting Pinyin, butneither do they see it a major obstacle for their use of Chinese. However, according to the end of the semester
survey, about half of the students feel that inputting Pinyin is difficult for them. The proper explanation for this isthat inputting Pinyin involves two abilities, typing in general and proper expression. For most of the students,
typing Pinyin in general is not an obstacle, since the Pinyin system uses the Roman alphabet. But they would find
it difficult to express themselves properly using the target language. Therefore, the lack of Chinese use in on-line
discussion is mostly due to the students’ Chinese proficiency and the nature of the topics discussed.
It is true that as beginning learners of Chinese, the students do not know enough linguistic structures orvocabulary to communicate fully in Chinese. However, they do not try hard to use the structures or vocabulary
known to them, but choose to use English most of the time. Chinese is kept to a minimum and primarily used as
greeting words. This may partly result from class norm. According to the end of the semester survey, many
students do not feel obliged to use Chinese (Pinyin) to interact on-line. Since their proficiency in the target language and their mother tongue are in great asymmetry, the students opt for the use of English in discussion. As astudent points out, “It’s easier, fast.”
The students also consider the audience of their electronic messages. During the interview, one student
points out that in the newsgroup discussion, the instructor is the only one who uses Pinyin, but everybody else uses
English. When a sender assumes that the audience has a better command of their native language (in this case,English) than the target language, h/she tends to use the native language which is more easily understood by theaudience.

Mode Selection
On the newsgroup, most of the messages are dedicated to cultural discussions. The students also ask administrative questions about exam dates and material to be covered in exams. They make use of the forum to share
their personal experiences, and their views regarding specific cultural topics. Because there is no guarantee of
response, for questions that the students expect quick answers, they usually write directly to the instructor.
In the private mode, most of the messages are dedicated to administrative issues. The students ask questions
about absence and dropping quizzes. In addition, the instructor uses a lot of private e-mail messages to give each
student feedback on his/her weekly quizzes. Since information in the private messages is specific to individuals,
the private mode is consequently chosen.
There are cases of mode switching performed by the instructor, who sends her reply to a private e-mail via
the public mode. For example, one student corrected the instructor’s misspelling in a private e-mail message. The
instructor agreed with the student’s suggestion and later sends her comments along with the message using the
public mode. The selection of modes for communication apparently depends on the topics and the audience of theelectronic messages.

Suggestions for Future Instruction
Technical Aspect
E-mail has been used commonly among the students in this university. However, one student in this class has aproblem with his university account and thus does not have newsgroup access. The university e-mail administrator
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cannot solve the problem until near the end of the semester, so the student is unable to use the newsgroup for mostof the semester. Accordingly, the instructor has to resort to a public e-mail list when she announces administration
issues. Although use of Internet is gradually becoming a common practice in most United States universities,
sometimes communication technology does fail. Therefore, instructors should have enough technical support whencommunication technology is used as part of class instruction.

Curriculum Aspect
The incorporation of the use of technology in this class is viewed as independent of class instruction by somestudents. In order to effectively incorporate technology into class instruction, it is essential to carefully select the
textbook and restructure the language curriculum. Instructors who wish to make technology part of the language
curriculum should begin by designing individualized or collaborative on-line activities that facilitate the learningof the Chinese language. When technology becomes an integral part of the curriculum, students can then see theconnection of the use of on-line communication to their language learning.

Code Switching
Code switching is not a dominant phenomenon in the class’ electronic messages. This may be due to the factthat the research is conducted in a beginning level language class. Furthermore, only the instructor is a native
speaker of the target language. Use of target language could cause the messages incomprehensible to the audienceat large, especially when the senders do not have a good command of the target language. Therefore, there is not asmuch code switching as the researchers had expected.
Although the students seldom use code-switching on-line, they switch more in class when they are required
to do activities in the target language. Based on class observations, most of the code switching in class is in theintersentential level. In class activities, they produce sentences in the target language. However, when they havequestions, they switch back to English to ask questions. Both the instructor and the students feel that the use ofcode switching assists in the understanding of the target language and helps them integrate the two languages.
Therefore, instructors should tolerate code switching when students have problems communicating in the target
language, and should view it as part of the language development.

References
Eick, S. G. (1996). Aspects of network visualization. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications,November: 6972.
Gershon, N., & Eick, S. G. (1995). Visualization’s new tack: making sense of information. IEEE Spectrum,
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Hammink, J. E. (2000). A comparison of the code switching behavior and knowledge of adults and children.
Available: http://hamminkj.tripod.com/babel/CS_paper.htm
Hancock, M. (1995). Categories of classroom code switching: language classroom as bilingual community. Available: http://www.les.aston.ac.uk/lsu/lsub8mh.html
Hsu, H., Kielmeyer, G., Kulsamrit, Tham, Brown, Bievenue, & Zaritsky (1999). Personal interaction in a distributed learning environment: A case study. Student poster session presented at CSIL, San Francisco.
Leh, A. S. (1997). Electronic mail in foreign language learning: Communication and culture. Paper Presented at
the 1997 National Convention of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (19th),(Albuquerque, NM, 1997).

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Levin, J. A., Kim, H., & Riel, M. M. (1990). Analyzing instructional interactions on electronic message networks.
In Harasim, L. (ed.), Online education, pp. 185-213. NY: Praeger.
Riel, M. (1990). Four models of educational telecommunications: Connections to the future. Education & computing, 5: 261-274.
Riel, M., & Levin, A. J (1990). Building electronic communities: success and failure in computer networking.
Instructional Science, 19(2): 145-169
Ruthe, V. (1998). E- Mail exchanges: Teaching language, culture, and technology for the 21st Century. TESLCanada Journal, 16(1): 88-95.
Singhal, M. (1998). Computer-mediated communication (CMC): Technology for enhancing foreign language/
culture education. On-Call, 12(1): 10-15.
White, B. Y., & Schwarz, C. V. (1998). Alternative approaches to using modeling and simulation tools for teachingscience. Preprint.

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Washback Effect of the Introduction of a Listening Test
into a National University Entrance Examination
Hiroshi Shimatani
Terry Laskowski
Kumamoto University, Japan
Abstract
This paper presents the results from a questionnaire designed to explore what effects a listening subtest
on a national university’s entrance examination has had on English teaching at the high school level in Japan.
It also looks at how the introduction of a listening subtest on the nationwide university entrance examination has
affected teaching in Korea and compares the results to those in Japan. Our study concludes the following: (a)When teachers are faced with the reality of an entrance test, they alter their teaching; (b) When there is anationwide standardized entrance test, the washback effect is even stronger on planning and instruction; (c) The
inclusion of the listening tests on a nationwide central examination offers opportunities for positive washback
effects; (d) A negative washback effect can be seen in teachers teaching to the test, and (d) Professional cooperation with other teachers in the region might be seen as a positive washback effect.

Introduction
In 1997, Kumamoto University (KU), a national university consisting of seven departments, started giving a
listening test in its English language examination. A study group at KU gave a Pre-TOEFL test to about 300
freshmen over 3 years: in a year before the introduction (Sohguchi et al, 1996); in the year of the introduction(Sohguchi et al, 1998); and in a year after the introduction (Takaki et al, 1999). Takaki et al (1999) report theresults of the Pre-TOEFL test shown in Table 1 and conclude that the students’ listening competence improved
slightly while their grammar and composition abilities were generally on the decrease. This may suggest that thehigh schools or preparatory schools have become more involved in their preparation for the listening test in theentrance examination. This leads us to consider the washback effect on high school English education. Washback
effect indicates the influence the test has on classroom instruction.

Table 1. The Results of the Pre-TOEFL Over Three Years
Year

N

Mean

Sec I

Sec IISec III

High

Low

1996

294

409.1

39.8

42.0

41.0

500

323

1997

298

403.3

40.7

40.3

40.1

500

323

1998

292

401.7

40.6

39.7

40.2

500

303

Sec I refers to the scores for Listening Comprehension; Sec II, Structure andWritten Expression; and Sec III, Reading Comprehension.

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Research Design
This study sets out to confirm how the introduction of the listening test into the entrance examination of anational university has affected English teaching at high schools. Although the main focus of the study is to
examine the washback effect in Japan, we also consider the situation in Korea. In 1993, Korea introduced alistening test component on their national university entrance exams. The test is referred to as College Scholastic
Ability Test of Korea (CSAT). Since the inclusion of the English subtest on the CSAT, a positive effect on classroom learning has been reported (Lee, 1999). As a frame of reference we also examine the washback effect inKorean high schools. This brings us to another research question in this study: How has the listening test affected
English teaching at high schools in Korea and how do the results correlate with the situation in Japan?

Subjects
In Japan, a written survey was sent to 65 Japanese high school teachers of English (JTE) in the Kumamotoarea and 35 teachers sent back replies (53.8% return rate). All teachers were head teachers of the English departments at their respective schools. In South Korea, a similar survey was delivered to high school teachers (KTE). A
total of 50 questionnaires were prepared and 32 KTEs responded (64% return rate). The teachers were full-timehigh school English teachers.

Results and Discussion
In Question 1 of our survey to JTEs in Kumamoto, we asked how many students at each high school apply
for KU every year, and then high schools were divided into three groups according to the number of the applicants
to KU. In Table 2, High Application (HA) group consists of 8 schools which sent more than 50 applicants; Middle
Application (MA) group consists of 8 schools which sent between 11 and 50 applicants; and Low Application (LA)group consists of 19 schools which sent less than 10 applicants. We analyze our data based on this classification
and also compare the results with those obtained from a similar questionnaire given to KTEs.

Table 2. Three Groups Classified According to the Number of the Applicants to KU
LA

MA

HA

No. of Applicants

0 - 10

11 - 25

26 - 50

51 - 99

More than 100

No. of Schools

19 (54.3%)

5 (14.3%)

3 (8.6%)

4 (11.4%)

4 (11.4%)

In Question 2, we asked if teachers agree with the introduction of a listening test on the entrance examination. Table 3 and 4 show that both JTEs (71.4%) and KTEs (90.6%) were in favor of including the listening test on
the entrance examination. It should be pointed out that the CSAT in Korea is representative of the central examination for all universities in Korea whereas the listening test concerning the JTEs of this study is for one national
university’s entrance test. Moreover, in Korea the CSAT has been introduced since 1993 and in Japan the listening
test on the University’s entrance exam has been introduced only in the past three years.

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Table 3. JTE’s Responses to the Introduction of a Listening Test into KU’s Exam.
Strongly disagree Somewhat disagree

Undecided

Somewhat agree

Strongly agree

HA

0 (00.0%)0 (00.0%)0 (00.0%)

3 (37.5%)5 (62.5%)MA

0 (00.0%)

1 (12.5%)

2 (25.0%)

2 (25.0%)

3 (37.5%)LA

0 (00.0%)

1 (05.3%)

5 (26.3%)

4 (21.1%)

8 (42.1%)

All JTE0 (00.0%)

2 (05.7%)

7 (20.0%)

9 (25.7%)

16 (45.7%)

Table 4. KTE’s Responses to the Introduction of a Listening Test into the CSAT.
Strongly disagree Somewhat disagreeKTE

0 (00.0%)0 (00.0%)

Undecided

Somewhat agree

Strongly agree

3 (09.4%)

9 (28.1%)

20 (62.5%)

In Question 3, we asked how teachers feel about the contents or formats of the listening test for measuring
students’ communicative listening abilities. Table 5 shows none of JTEs thinks the test is inappropriate, and 28.6%
said it is appropriate. However, about half (51.4%) are undecided.

Table 5. JTE’s Responses to the Contents or Formats of the Listening Test on KU’s Exam
Veryinappropriate

Somewhat
inappropriate

I don’t know

Somewhatappropriate

Veryappropriate

HA

0 (00.0%)0 (00.0%)

5 (62.5%)

2 (25.0%)0 (00.0%)MA0 (00.0%)0 (00.0%)

3 (37.5%)

1 (12.5%)

3 (37.5%)LA

0 (00.0%)0 (00.0%)

10 (52.6%)

4 (21.1%)

0 (00.0%)

All JTE0 (00.0%)0 (00.0%)

18 (51.4%)

7 (20.0%)

3 (08.6%)

Table 6 indicates that 59.4% of KTEs found the test to be appropriate, and more than one-third (37.5%) were
undecided. Comments of both JTEs and KTEs range from ‘the test was appropriate as it adequately measured thestudents’ proficiency and what the students cover in class’ to ‘the test should be improved to include items that
better measure various situations of everyday communication.’ In respect to the washback effect, a KTE reported
some types or styles of questions are a bit stereotyped, so students are likely to practice only those typical types ofquestions ….

Table 6. KTE’s Responses to the Contents or Formats of the Listening Test on the CSAT

KTE

Very
inappropriate

Somewhat
inappropriate

I don’t know

Somewhatappropriate

Veryappropriate

0 (00.0%)

1 (03.1%)

12 (37.5%)

15 (46.9%)

4 (12.5%)

In Question 4, we asked how much teachers familiarize themselves with contents or formats of past listening
tests of entrance examinations in order to prepare students for future entrance tests. Table 7 shows that more thana third of the JTE HA group (37.5%) said they do familiarize themselves and an additional 25% said they are a little
familiar with the contents of the test, whereas in the MA 50% either did not or not so much familiarize themselveswith the contents of the test and more than two-thirds of the LA group did not (47.4%) or “not much” consider(21.1%) the contents of the test.
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Table 7. JTE’s Consideration of the Contents or Formats of the Listening Test on KU’s Exam
Not at all

Not much

A little

Much

Very much

HA

3 (37.5%)0 (00.0%)

2 (25.0%)

2 (25.0%)

1 (12.5%)MA

2 (25.0%)

2 (25.0%)

3 (37.5%)

1 (12.5%)0 (00.0%)LA

9 (47.4%)

4 (21.1%)

4 (21.1%)

1 (05.3%)

0 (00.0%)

All JTE

14 (40.0%)

6 (17.1%)

9 (25.7%)

4 (11.4%)

1 (02.9%)On the other hand, Table 8 illustrates about two-thirds (65.6%) of the KTEs paid “much” or “very much”
attention to the formats of the listening test. Consequently, most KTEs (96.9%) considered the formats of thelistening test in their instruction.

Table 8. KTE’s Consideration of the Contents or Formats of the Listening Test on the CSAT

KTE

Not at all

Not much

A little

Much

Very much

0 (0.0%)1 (3.1%)

10 (31.3%)

13 (40.6%)

8 (25.0%)

In Question 5, we asked how much teachers have changed their lesson planning or instruction because thelistening test is now on the entrance examination. As Table 9 shows, more than one-third (37.5%) in the HA groupsaid they either changed “a little” (25.0%) or “much” (12.5%), while in the MA group one-fourth said they changed“a little.”

Table 9. Influences on JTE’s Lesson Planning or Instruction
Not at all

Not much

A little

Much

Very much

HA

3 (37.5%)

2 (25.0%)

2 (25.0%)

1 (12.5%)

0 (0.0%)MA

3 (37.5%)

3 (37.5%)

2 (25.0%)0 (0.0%)0 (0.0%)LA

14 (73.7%)

4 (21.1%)

0 (0.0%)1 (5.3%)0 (0.0%)All JTE

20 (57.1%)

9 (25.7%)

4 (11.4%)

2 (5.7%)0 (0.0%)In the JTEs comments reasons given for not changing much were related to the fact that the introduction of
Oral Communication B which emphasizes listening has already caused the change. Others said that they havealready altered their instruction to suit listening because of school listening tests or other university entrance tests
besides KU. On this same question, as Table 10 shows, a majority of KTEs reported that their planning has been “alittle” (34.4%), “much” (34.4%) or “very much” (12.5%) changed due to the listening test.

Table 10. Influences on KTE’s Lesson Planning or Instruction

KTE

Not at all

Not much

A little

Much

Very much

1 (03.1%)

5 (15.6%)

11 (34.4%)

11 (34.4%)

4 (12.5%)

In Question 6, we asked if teachers use the contents or formats from past listening tests in their lesson plans
and/or instruction. Table 11 indicates that a majority of JTEs (62.9%) said they “never” use past tests, and morethan a third said they include some formats of past listening tests into their instruction. However, in the HA and
MA groups more than half of the JTEs said they use the formats of past listening tests.
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Table 11. JTE’s use of the Contents or Formats from Past Listening Tests
Never

A little

Sometimes

Frequently

AlwaysHA

2 (25.0%)

1 (12.5%)

4 (50.0%)0 (00.0%)

1 (12.5%)MA

4 (50.0%)0 (00.0%)

2 (25.0%)

2 (25.0%)0 (00.0%)LA

16 (84.2%)

3 (15.8%)0 (00.0%)0 (00.0%)0 (00.0%)

All JTE

22 (62.9%)

4 (11.4%)

6 (17.1%)

2 (05.7%)

1 (02.9%)

Table 12 shows that most KTEs (87.6%) said they use contents of past listening tests in their instruction.
Only 9.4% said “never”. The fact that KTEs use past test contents may reflect that teachers are responding to thepressures of helping their students attain success in passing the CSAT. This can be interpreted as a negative
washback effect.

Table 12. KTE’s use of the Contents or Formats from Past Listening Tests

KTE

Never

A little

Sometimes

Frequently

Always3 (9.4%)5 (15.6%)

10 (31.3%)

11 (34.4%)

2 (6.3%)

According to Mehrans (1989), one problem about standardization achievement is that when test scores areused for making important decisions, teachers may teach the test too directly. This would imply negative washback
effect, as teachers would be limiting their teaching to the narrow confines of the contents on tests in order to help
their students achieve a higher rate of success on them. In doing so, teachers may be sacrificing the wider goal of
helping students to effectively develop their communicative abilities.
In Question 7, we asked if JTEs agree that including the listening test on the National Center Test for
University Entrance Examinations (NCT) is a good idea. Presently, in Japan, there is no listening test on the NCT;
however, this policy may change in the future. Table 13 shows that about two-thirds of the teachers agreed (45.7%“strongly agreed” and 20.0% “somewhat agreed”) that it would be a good idea, and less than a fourth (22.9%)
weren’t sure—only 5.8% disagreed.

Table 13. JTE’s Responses on the Introduction of a Listening Test into the NCT
Strongly disagree Somewhat disagree

I don’t know

Somewhat agree

Strongly agree

HA

0 (00.0%)0 (00.0%)

2 (25.0%)

1 (12.5%)

4 (50.0%)MA

1 (12.5%)

1 (12.5%)

1 (12.5%)

1 (12.5%)

4 (50.0%)LA

0 (00.0%)0 (00.0%)5 (26.3%)

5 (26.3%)

8 (42.1%)

All JTE1 (02.9%)

1 (02.9%)

8 (22.9%)

7 (20.0%)

16 (45.7%)

JTEs responses for whether or not they thought including the listening test on the NCT was a good idea weregrouped into three areas: ‘Organizational Problems’, ‘Balance of Four Skills’ and ‘Improving Oral English’. ‘Organizational Problems’ were representative of comments such as: I agree, but I feel uneasy about how it will bedone because too many students take the test; and I doubt if it is possible to do a listening test in the same conditions
all over the nation. Under ‘Four Skills’ a comment was for example, It is necessary to develop well-balanced four
skills. Under ‘Improving Oral English’ a comment includes, More students will pay attention to oral English if alistening test is introduced.

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When the KTEs were asked how they felt about having the listening test on the CSAT they overwhelmingly
supported the idea (90.6%, see Question 2). Unlike JTEs who did not separate speaking and listening skills andconsidered them under the category of ‘Oral English’, KTEs solely focused on improving listening skills. Therefore, in analyzing KTEs’ comments one of the categories that emerged was ‘Improvement of Listening Comprehension’. A Comment representative of this category was: Without introducing the listening test, the students are
not likely to pay much attention to the listening skill. The other category that emerged is similar to the JTEs’ on‘Improving Oral English’ and an example of these comments was as follows: By including the listening test, you’ll
make the students become more concerned about listening and speaking English.
In Question 8, we asked if JTEs know that a listening test was already introduced into the nationwide university entrance examination in Korea. Table 14 shows that 40.0% of JTEs knew that Korea had a listening subtest.
However, a majority (57.1%) had no idea that their counterparts in Korea had listening on the test. This point has
some significance to the result above showing JTEs are worried about organizational problems that may occur
from implementing a nationwide test. If they had more contact with KTEs, who are experiencing success in theadministration of the test, JTEs’ worries about administering a nationwide test would diminish. Therefore, thisresult indicates that perhaps more constructive sharing of information between the two neighboring countries
should take place in order to learn from each other to improve English education in their respective countries.

Table 14. JTE’s Knowledge on the Listening Test of CSAT in Korea
Not at all

Not much

A little

Much

Very much

HA

5 (62.5%)0 (00.0%)0 (00.0%)0 (00.0%)

2 (25.0%)MA

3 (37.5%)0 (00.0%)

1 (12.5%)

1 (12.5%)

3 (37.5%)

LA

12 (63.2%)

0 (00.0%)0 (00.0%)

1 (05.3%)

6 (31.6%)

All JTE

20 (57.1%)

0 (00.0%)

1 (02.9%)

2 (05.7%)

11 (31.4%)

Summary
In this study we have presented the results from a questionnaire designed to explore what effects, if any, alistening subtest on a national university’s entrance examination has had on English teaching at the high schoollevel in Japan. We have also looked at how the introduction of the CSAT has affected teaching in Korea andcompared the results to JTEs responses. After analyzing the results, we conclude the following:
1.

When teachers are faced with the reality or responsibility of preparing students for an entrance
test, they alter their teaching. This creates some influences of the washback effect. This can benoted in the significant difference of responses from JTEs in the HA, MA and LA groups. The
results of Questions 4 and 5 all show that the washback effect on the teaching of JTEs is progressively higher in the HA group compared with the MA and LA groups.

2.

When there is a nationwide standardized entrance test, the washback effect is even stronger,
and therefore it has more of an influence on planning and instruction. In the case of KTEs, amajority (96.9%) of teachers said they familiarize themselves with the contents of the listening
tests. Moreover, 81% reported that they have changed their planning and instruction because of
the influences of a listening test on the nationwide CSAT. In comparison to the results of JTEs,
we can conclude that the CSAT has a more weighted influence on teaching than an entrance
examination at a national university in Japan. This is especially significant because there is nolistening test on the NCT.

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3.

Overall, the inclusion of the listening tests on a heavily weighted nationwide central examination offers opportunities for positive washback effects. Overall the responses of teachers were
mostly positive when asked in Question 7 about the effects of including a listening subtest on anationwide entrance test. Many JTEs commented that the inclusion of the test would be ameans to bring a balance of language instruction in the high school curriculum. Consequently,
many JTEs commented that it would allow more instruction on oral skills and thus the students’
oral English abilities would improve. KTEs also responded in similar fashion by pointing outthat it has allowed them to focus more on their students listening comprehension skills, and inturn their oral English or communication skills—in short, a positive washback effect.

4.

A negative washback effect can be seen in teachers teaching to the test. The results of Question
6 show that a majority of teachers (75.0% of HA group and 87.6% of KTEs) use contents ofpast tests in their lesson plans. Teaching to the test may narrow the scope of teaching andlearning.

5.

Professional cooperation with other teachers in the region might be seen as a positive washback
effect. In Question 8 a majority of JTEs had no idea that their counterparts in Korea hadlistening on the test. This point has a significant relationship to the results from Question 7
when many JTEs reported fears about organizational problems that may occur when trying toadminister a nationwide test. Perhaps, if JTEs had more opportunities to exchange ideas with
KTEs and could talk with them about their experiences of administering the test on a nationwide scale, then their worries would diminish.

References
Lee, W. (1999). An investigation of washback effects of the Korean College Scholastic Ability Test: With reference to the reading test. Paper presented at the 12th World Congress of Applied Linguistics. Tokyo, Japan:
Waseda University.
Mehrens, W. A. (1989). Preparing students to take standardized achievement tests. ERIC Document Reproduction
Service: ED 314 427.
Monbusho. (1989). The guidelines for study in the senior high school. Tokyo: Kairyudo.
Sohguchi, H., et al. (1996). Listening comprehension ability in English language of Kumamoto university students as seen in TOEFL scores. The Memoirs of the Faculty of Education, Kumamoto University 45, 161167.
Sohguchi, H., et al. (1998). Listening test in the entrance examination and English language ability of Kumamoto
university students (1). Bulletin of Center for Educational Research and Training, Faculty of Education,
Kumamoto University 15, 57-61.
Takaki, N., et al. (1999). Listening test in the entrance examination and English language ability of Kumamoto
university students (2). The Memoirs of the Faculty of Education, Kumamoto University 48, 39-47.

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Web-CALL:An Authoring System for Implementing Web-Based CALL
Jun Iwata
Satoru Fujii
Matsue National College of Technology, Japan
Abstract
We have developed a web-based authoring system called "Web-CALL." It consists of a Web-page Materials Production Unit (WMPU)" and a "Learning Support Unit (LSU)." These two units enable teachers without
knowledge of HTML to produce web-page materials and allow students to study online English lessons, regardless of time and their location. We have implemented this system in CALL classes at our college. Score andsurvey results taken after such classes revealed that "Web-CALL" has worked well as a system for implementing
Web-based CALL. The present system needs improvement to be a more user-friendly and effective and further
investigation into the key effective factors in more advanced web-based CALL is also required via further classroom research and through discussion with other researchers. Although there is still room for improvement in"Web-CALL", it has the potential to be a leading tool in language teaching.

Web-based CALL
Recently, among the many CALL systems, web-based CALL seems to be the most popular. Many online
English lessons are now available on WWW. They offer a variety of lessons such as reading comprehension,
grammar and listening quizzes. Various technologies such as CGI, Java and JavaScript have made web-pagematerials more attractive to learners and more effective in language learning. A web-page has three characteristics
that can be directly adapted into the CALL system. Firstly, it has versatility. It is available on the World Wide Web
or on Local Area Networks. It needs no special software but can use browsers and so cost is low. Students are
already accustomed to using browsers and do not need to know special commands which some CD-ROM software
requires. Secondly, it has multimedia capability. It will accept movie, sound and picture files. Last, but not least,
it has interactivity. Using CGI, Java and JavaScript, students get quick feedback from the server. For example, assoon as they finish online grammar quizzes, they get the scores or hints. Furthermore, teachers and students caninteract via e-mail.

Development of a Web-based CALL system
The successful use of CALL largely depends, not only on studies on the effective use of CALL but also on
the teacher-friendly tools. The widespread use of web-based CALL inevitably requires the development of authoring
tools for creating interactive web-based exercises. We have been interested in developing a Web-based CALL
system that enables teachers to produce online teaching materials and enables students to study English lessons
online, regardless of time and location.
We started work on developing an authoring system, which we call "Web-CALL" in 1997. Figure 1 shows
the homepage of "Web-CALL." The main purpose is to allow teachers to produce web-based materials without
difficulty and to provide students with online English lessons. In designing the system, we regard creating a

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student-centered environment as the most important consideration. One of the merits of CALL is that students canlearn at their own pace. Consequently, the system design needs to be quite complex to accomplish this.

Figure 1. “Web-CALL” homepage
Construction of Web-CALL"Web-CALL" consists of two units, the "Web-page Materials Production Unit (WMPU)" and the "Learning
Support Unit (LSU)" as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Construction of “Web-CALL” system
WMPU is authoring software. It enables teachers to produce new teaching materials and modify existingteaching materials. Teachers used to spend many hours, making web-page materials using HTML, but with WMPU,
they don't need to know any computer program or HTML. All they have to do is to input text data with WWW
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To contentsbrowsers. This software allows teachers to incorporate not only text, but also sound, picture and movie files. It is
possible to incorporate on-line reading, writing and listening exercises.
Teachers start WMPU using WWW browsers. They input text data such as questions, answers, hints andcomments, then register the data in the "Teaching Materials Database, TMDB.
Students access LSU via a WWW browser and try multiple-choice questions, referring to hints shown on thebrowser if necessary. They can study at their own pace regardless of time and location. Multimedia files shown on
the browsers help them to understand the lessons. After students have answered the questions or sent their assignments, LSU receives the data and collates it with the correct answers. LSU then records the score results into the"Score Database," SCDB. Students can receive their marks immediately after they have finished the lesson. Teachers
can browse each student's answer sheet from SCDB or check whether students have submitted their assignments.
Moreover, if necessary, teachers can send an e-mail message directly from the assignment tables to the students.
The data stored in the TMDB and SCDB is read by CGI written with Perl. It is displayed on WWW browsers. We use UNIX as the server for the "Web-CALL" system and WWW browsers as clients.
Figure 3 shows the initial setting window of WMPU. Teachers first select the type of the materials. Thenthey input the title and directory name. Next, they set the number of questions. They can choose whether hints andcomments are necessary or not.
Figure 4 shows a window used for making questions. Teachers can produce teaching materials by filling inwindows and check a correct answer. They can add hints and comments to the materials. In this way teachers can
produce teaching materials easily and quickly.

Figure 3. The initial setting window of WMPU
A sample LSU window is shown in Figure 5. The questions appear in the upper-left frame. When students
click the hint button, hints appear in the upper-right frame. When they have finished answering questions, they
push the CHECK button. The score result is then displayed in the lower frame. Students can answer the question
again if they get a wrong answer. They can refer to the hints and comments if necessary.
Teachers can browse students' answer sheets (Figure 6). WMPU also shows the percentage of correct answers graphically (Figure 7). These features are very helpful for teachers in error and question analysis.
Thanks to WMPU, teachers can save time in producing web-page materials and the data stored in the server
can be modified easily. The feedback we get from the students is helpful in error analysis and question analysis.
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Figure 4. A window for making questions

Figure 5. A sample LSU window

Figure 6. Students’ answer sheet (1)Authoring System for Implementing Web-Based CALL [Oral Presentation]

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Figure 6. Students’ answer sheet (2)Evaluation of Web-CALL
English teachers at our college have tested this system in their classes. The test lesson the students took wasa “Reading comprehension” exercise produced by the teachers themselves. Seven class hours were allotted to thisproject. To evaluate the “Web-CALL” lesson, the teachers compared the “Web-CALL” class with a normal, traditional, teacher-oriented class. After the “Web-CALL” classes and the normal classes were completed, all students
took a test which consisted of four types of questions; Comprehension check, Grammar A (multiple-choice), Grammar
B (translation) and Grammar C (put in order). We could assume that the scores for both the evaluation and thecontrol classes (i.e. the classes taught with conventional teaching methods ) should be nearly equal. This assumption was made because the classes were divided into two groups of equal capability based on test scores in previous
achievement tests. The score results are shown in Table 1. On the basis of average score, the CALL class did better
than the normal class in Comprehension and Grammar C. “Web-CALL” is designed to provide students with astudent-centered language-learning environment. In “Web-CALL” classes, students can study at their own pace.

Table 1. The Score Results
Types of
Questions

Comprehension
Grammar A
Grammar B
Total

CALL Class(N=84)

Normal Class(N=42)

AverageSD

Average

SD

80.0
82.8
79.3
76.9

15.7
22.0
27.3
14.2

77.1
89.0
81.0
76.5

10.6
19.4
26.7
11.5

The better results in Comprehension suggest that the system has worked well. During the CALL class,teachers walked around the class, and helped the students as required. They had time to talk to each student.
Superiority in Grammar C means that the students could order words better on computers. Average Grammar A
results were significantly lower in Web-CALL classes compared with normal classes and the average translation
scores were slightly lower. This seems to have been due to design deficiencies in the computerized materials.
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Surveys were taken after the CALL class. The questions were as follows:
Q1:

Do you like English?

Q2:

Do you like to use computers?

Q3:

Did you enjoy Web-CALL class?

Q4:

Did you study positively in CALL class?

Q5:

Do you think Web-CALL classes are effective?

Q6:

Do you like to take more Web-CALL classes?

Q7:

Do you want to do Web-CALL lessons in your free time?

The results of the survey (Figure 8) revealed that 60% students enjoyed "Web-CALL" classes, 67% students
studied positively, and 70% students found "Web-CALL" classes effective in language learning. Overall, students
found "Web-CALL" classes interesting and useful.
We evaluated the "LSU" interface by asking 80 students to complete questionnaires. The questions were
"What did you think of..."Q1:

the menu layout?

Q2:

the layout of the question frame?

Q3:

the operation of the question frame?

The results in Figure 9 show that there is still room for improvement in the layout of the question screen andin the operation of the question frame.

Future WorkWe need to carry out further investigation into the key effective factors in more advanced web-based CALL
to advance our project. We plan to further examine classroom research and consult other researchers actively
engaged in CALL teaching and development. Results from this research can then be used to improve the effectiveness of our present "Web-CALL" system.

Conclusion
In Japan, most English classes have 40 students, which makes student-centered language learning quitedifficult. Although there is still room for improvement in the "Web-CALL " system, it can be an effective tool forovercoming the problem of class size. It seems that the system is successful in shifting the focus from a teachercentered classroom environment to a student-centered, independent, language-learning environment where teachers are more available for individual assistance. Students are not afraid of making mistakes during the lessons,which is said to be one of the key factors in students being unable to express their opinions in front of otherstudents. Computers don't ridicule, they just give appropriate hints or advice.
Of course computers cannot take the place of teachers, who should take the initiative in classes. It is very
important for teachers to realize the ways in which CALL can be more useful than other teaching methods. "WebCALL" is expected to be effective in task-based learning. CALL is directly relevant to all kinds of language
education, at all levels. Successful development of an effective system in Japan could help spread CALL. "WebCALL" has the potential to be a leading tool in implementing Web-based CALL.

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References
Fujii, S., Iwata, J. Hattori, M., & Iijima, M. (1998). Development of English learning support system.
Jouhoushorigakkai Houkoku. 98-GW-28, 83-88.
Fujii, S., Iwata, J., Hattori, M., Iijima, M., & Mizuno, T. (2000). "Web-CALL": A language learning support
system using Internet, IEEE Computer Society ICPADS2000, NGITA Workshop, 326-331.
Iwata, J., & Fujii, S. (2000). Web-CALL—An aid for teachers in producing web-page materials. CALLing Asia
The Proceedings of the 4th Annual JALT CALL SIG Conference. 37-40.
Iwata, J., Iijima, M. & Hattori, M. (1998). English learning and English empowerment—English I class witheffective use of CALL. Research Reports of Matsue National College of Technology (Literature and Social
Science). 33 9-34.

Online Resources
Jun's English Lab <http://black-gw.matsue-ct.ac.jp:1087/foreign/iwata/> This site contains some information about
Web-CALL Project.
Online English Seminar <http://black-gw.matsue-ct.ac.jp:1087/foreign/common/seminar.htm> This site contains
some online English lessons including "Web-CALL.
Web-CALL <http://black-gw.matsue-ct.ac.jp:1087/foreign/class/english/cgi-bin/check.cgi> This site needs user nameand password. Please contact iwata@gs.matsue-ct.ac.jp

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Web-Coursed Contexts Delivered by the CLIM Between On-Lineand Conventional Modes
Der-li Chiao
Republic of China Air Force Academy, Taiwan
Abstract
English is taught as a foreign language in Taiwan. It is especially important for the cadets of Chinese
Air Force Academy (CAFA). Air Force is a high technical service, so it requires the soldiers to be scientific andintelligent. Our nation replaces the old planes and buys new planes such as the Image 21 and powerful fighterplanes. Furthermore, our cadets are responsible for the duty of protecting our country. Therefore, I think that
I endeavor to create a supportive learning environment. Using recent developments in information technology,
I try to use the Computer Language Instruction Model to give more effective teaching and help my cadets toimprove their learning English skill. Furthermore, I wish the treatment to enhance their comprehension in
English learning. In addition, the Internet-based environment also provides a variety of tools and methods tohelp evaluate the learning process and assess cadets’ ability. Afterwards, the CLIM is like knowledge treasureincluding multimedia and hypermedia; furthermore, it contains valuable resources under the World Wide Web.
I teach the cadets how to use them and create the domain of knowledge. So it needs an effective tool to direct thecadets to explore and apply them. This paper attempts to highlight some significant applications and evaluation
issues on network instruction. And the goal is to provide suggestions to improve the teaching.
At the sane time, this study is to investigate what’s the difference with the treatment delivered by the online through the CLIM and without the computer courseware in the conventional modes. Hence 66 cadets
divided into two groups with the half to be the experimental group; vice versa, the rest to be control group.
According to the pilot study, after a semester of regular training and practice in the Computer Language Instruction Model, the experimental group is super to the control group in English skills through the statisticalanalysis and data/ questionnaires analysis or observation.
The Computer Language Instruction Model (CLIM) is an accessible, convenient Web English course andeasy to use (the web site: 163.15.25.231). The CLIM is an open system for the evaluation of Web Enhanced
Learning (WEL) and Web Enhance Instruction (WEI). The CLIM included the teaching and learning procedurein the Appendix. The interactive courseware demonstrated in a real class can be used as classroom material
rather than supplementary material. Developing the CALL use, the researcher could either take the perspectiveof the learner as communicator or the learner as manipulator (Chaplelle, 1997). This is primary creation. The
cadets were trained by the CLIM; they performed the second language acquisition and foreign language learning as communicator as the similar to those of L2 classroom.
Data collected from the questionnaires, pre-test on language acquisition and post-test on network instruction, interviews and classroom observations show that the cadets have positive attitudes toward the Computer Language Instruction Model (CLIM) through the World Wide Web (WWW). This paper attempts to highlight some significant applications and evaluation issues on network instruction. And the goal is to provide
suggestions to improve the teaching. Hopefully, this innovative model will be advocated and integrated into
English instruction in the future.

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Introduction
The aim of this study is to investigate the improvement of the cadets’ English ability via the language
instruction site created for this study and related sites on the Internet in an EFL (English as a foreign language)classroom as well as to increase the cadets’ achievement scores and language learning attitude in the process oflanguage acquisition. The cadets’ using the Internet as well as interacting between teacher and machine are thediscussion and analysis based on classroom data collected by the writer. It briefly states the limitations of theobservations and teaching procedures made in this study and proposes implications for improving classroom teaching on the World Wide Web (WWW). The results of this study will provide English teachers with a reference for
future designs on the English curriculum incorporating the Internet materials; at the same time, I hopefully provide
the findings to create new ideas for the conventional teaching and learning.
English is taught as a foreign language in Taiwan. It is especially important for the cadets of the Chinese Air
Force Academy (CAFA). The Air Force is a high-tech service, so it requires its members to be not only intelligent
but also scientific. Our nation is replacing old planes with new ones such as the Image 21 and other powerfulfighter planes. The technical directions for the planes are completely written in English, such as those computercommands on the operation console. So, the cadets should own more English abilities to conduct the flight mission. Therefore, it is essential to create a supportive learning environment for them. I try to use language instruction on the Internet for more effective teaching and to help my cadets improve their language abilities. In addition,
the Internet-based environment also provides a variety of tools and methods to help evaluate the learning process
and assess cadets’ abilities. Moreover, language instruction on the World Wide Web (WWW) is a learning treasure, which includes multimedia and hypermedia and other valuable resources. Especially, the multimedia andhypermedia are built through the Internet to integrate these four language skills—listening, speaking, reading andwriting—in English instruction. That is to say, English teachers and students must grasp the gist that “the four
language skills are interlocked and interdependent” (Robinett, 1983, p.173). In recent years, some studies havebeen done on the potential for English learning and teaching through web technology (Green, 1997; Sloane, 1997;
Wei, 1997) which has attracted attention and interest of numerous computer users and teachers worldwide forlearning English. I teach the cadets how to use them and create their own learning domain. So there is need for aneffective tool to direct the cadets to explore and apply these treasures. This paper attempts to highlight somesignificant applications and evaluation issues on language instruction. And the goal is to provide suggestions toimprove teaching.
However, current research has not provided sufficient evidence on whether student interests in learning
English increase through the help of web technology or online materials. In order to improve students’ motivationand make learning more effective, I shall integrate the Internet into English instruction. The purpose of this article
is to find out (1) Are the effects of language acquisition on the test group significantly different in influencing
cadets in developing English reading and writing abilities? (2) Are the reading and writing abilities of the cadets inthe test group significantly influenced by the Computer Language Instruction Model (CLIM)? (3) Will studentstudent and teacher-student interaction be significantly improved by using the Internet?
This study provides empirical evidence on the positive correlation between the cadets’ attitude and the use of
the Internet as a teaching tool. The results of this study will provide teachers with a reference for the future English
designs incorporating the Internet English materials and hopefully compensating for the disadvantages of the conventional teaching.

Methodology
Background of the study and Subjects
Generally, the language proficiency of the majority of CAFA cadets is at the beginning level. I chose foursophomore classes, a total of 88 cadets, to train in theComputer Language Instruction Model (CLIM). Those
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subjects were divided into two groups: one group of 44 cadets represent the experiment group; the other 44 cadets
represent the control group.
The purpose of the present study is to enhance the reading and writing abilities of the cadets. To take controlof the cadets’ enhancement of the reading and writing abilities, I chose the ECL test which is held on the beginningof this semester by the authority of CAFA as their baseline of placement for their starting proficiency. When they
graduate from the CAFA, they can have the opportunity to go abroad for the training of the maintenance and flightin the military or company in U.S.A. However, the examinees are required to pass the ECL test given by theAmerican Institute in Taiwan. Even though the students have basic computer skills, they have to take extra basic
computer and Internet training for eight hours.

Settings
The teaching activities for the experiment group are held in a language lab or a computer lab which isequipped with ninety Pentium II computers. The instructor taught the experiment group two hours per week during
the spring semester in 1999. The control group stayed in a conventional classroom or a language lab for theirstudies. Outside the lab are computers available for the cadets to work on their projects or assignments in their free
time. Moreover, many cadets of the G2 have personal computers with network connections. They can work on
their projects either individually or in pairs. However, the teaching activities for the control group are held only inthe language lab and in conventional classrooms.

Instrumentation
These data were collected by using questionnaires, surveys, observations, and student records and comparisons between the experiments and the control groups with open-ended questions about the network teaching via theInternet. These questionnaires—”Language Learning Inventory” (Oxford, 1990a), “Attitudes toward English Instruction” (Corbiy, 1979; Bushyager, 1981; Xenanko, 1996; Jacobs, 1996) and “Strategy Inventory for Language
Learning (SILL)” (Oxford, 1986b)—consisted of six parts: cognitive, memory, compensation, metacognitive, affective and social strategies to integrate overall skills for learning language. Furthermore, the survey in Appendix
I was adapted to help the cadets answer the questions in it. The new survey was given to the two groups to compare
the difference of their perceived attitudes and interest toward network English instruction before and after theexperiment. The main approach of the experiment in this study was to integrate theWorld Wide Web information into English instruction in the experiment group, but maintain the original andtraditional approach to teaching in a classroom in the control group. Another the questionnaire—”Computer
Language Instruction Model” in Appendix II—consisted of thirty items on a 3-point preference-scale with three
being the highest score to measure samples’ general attitudes and interest toward English instruction. Additionally, the open-ended questions in Appendix III consisted of ten items for the researcher to understand students’feelings and opinions toward English instruction through the World Wide Web after this experiment was conductedin the experiment group. Classroom observations with the teaching in the experiment group were also included.
The cadets were assigned to an experimental group and a control group. The post-test was to measure
cadets’ achievement, using a checklist. Process efficiency was operationally defined as a measure of the efficiencyof the process of learning in terms of learner note-taking strategies employed in learning. Learners’ records in theirlearning process were collected immediately following treatment, photocopied for the examination of learning
process in terms of quantity of notes taken, and returned to the subject for studying purposes. These measures ofEnglish ability were used to compare the two groups of cadets: the cadets’ course grades, their scores on thedepartmental final examination and their acceptable-answer scores on a cloze test. The t-test and discriminant
analyses of these measures indicated that the experimental group is significantly better (p < .05) than the control
group on all theses measures in this semester. Probable causes of this phenomenon were discussed, as well as apossible relationship between this “new” variable and previous discouraging learning-gain (pre-test/ post-test)
findings.
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Course Design: Computer Language Instruction Model (CLIM) and Resources
Two primary tools are used for this study: Computer Language Instruction Model (CLIM) and navigational
tools (Netscape Communicator and Internet Explorer). Through CLIM, students exchanged ideas with peers andthe instructor, and sent in homework as well. This created an opportunity for students to communicate in English(Savignon, 1983). In addition, two of the most popular navigational tools, Netscape Communicator and Internet
Explorer, were used as browsing tools for cadets to access the web sites.
The material used network to examine the cadets’ reading ability. First, the classmates browsed the authentic text of American Language Course that I keyed in and converted to the “html” format before uploading it to my
web site (http:// 163.15.25.231). In order to decrease their anxiety and save time as well as to acquire good control
over the Internet, cadets had been introduced to the different types of network instruction feedback which would
allow them to keep track of their own learning process or review the front page on the hints. As with humancommunication (Robinson, 1991), network instruction may depend on factors related to the learner, e.g. learnerperceptual processes, individual readiness and experience, and factors related to the feedback itself.
Furthermore, when cadets did not understand an expression or know the pronunciation of a word or phrase,they could link to on-line teaching resource with the net address which I collected, e.g. the Webster Dictionary,
Encyclopedia, Merriam Dictionary and the Internet Thesaurus. Moreover, I set up useful web sites in the labcomputers to make other search engines accessible. These are several pedagogical criteria for evaluating World
Wide Web sites designed for computer instruction.
According to Jeff Nelson (1986), the ideal ESL web site should be:
1.

Interactive—Students can give input and the program utilizes that input; that is, students effectthe machine.

2.

Communicative—Students send or receive messages from real people.

3.

Contextual—The site has a context or theme for the language which is presented.

4.

Sensor—Information is presented in multiple formats—textual and visual.

Based on these pedagogical criteria, teachers can choose ideal Web sites which may help upgrade learners’
proficiency in using the target language more effectively and appropriately.
Makulowsich (1994) offered some suggestions on how to teach the Internet, including introduction to theInternet, matching objectives to cadets’ interests, the importance of interactive sessions, conducting cadets’ evaluation, follow-up, keeping up with cadets, and renewal of teaching materials and teaching skills. These tips provided guidance for the instructor in selecting teaching materials through the Internet.
Therefore, the instructor selected some web sites from the World Wide Web (WWW ) among the abundantInternet resources (Kitao, 1997; Leu & Len, 1997; Sperling, 1997) for English learning for this study based onthese criteria. Sources available in the web site included the following:
1.

The “Bulletin Board” and the “News Sheet” which were created with the goal of increasing
cadets’ communicative ability. A medium such as computer-mediated conferencing can support two-way or multi-way dialogues very well.

2.

The Encyclopedia and the Webster and Merriam Dictionary can be transferred to interactive
multimedia in the form of multiply-linked teaching resources. The design is more successful inmaking the cadets active learners.

3.

The International Community Radio in Taipei (ICRT) site was made available since it is one of
the most popular radio stations and the only English radio station in Taiwan, which is easily

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accessed through the Web. Many cadets were already familiar with the radio programs andthey are related to their real life experience which can promote their learning interests.
4.

Yahoo or Infoseek were incorporated since cadets already had basic computer skills and were
easily trained to search for information and improve their independent reading ability.

5.

EFL/ESL web sites must be clear and immediate applications to foreign-language teaching.
Accordingly, students can learn English independently through EFL/ESL web sites in the future.

Data Collection and Analysis
All the data for this study were collected before and after the experiment was conducted. The same survey
was given at the beginning and the end of the spring semester in 1999. Those questions included a list of thirty
items as shown to sample the cadets’ interests and attitudes toward English learning in Appendix I. And the survey
in Appendix II consisted of two parts—the evaluation after learning the Computer Language Instruction Model andthe evaluation of network course—to sample whether the cadets enhance their abilities after the CLIM’s learning.
And the open-ended questions were used to sample cadets’ attitudes and opinions toward English instruction
through the World Wide Web (WWW). All participants understood their participation in this research to be confidential, and their responses to the survey to be used only for academic purposes during data collection procedure.
They were not asked to write their names or identification numbers on the questionnaire.
The information obtained by the questionnaires was coded in the SPSS for WINDOWS data sheet and then
the t-test for pre and post-test analysis was conducted. The t-test was used in the significant differences at the levelof .05 in the effects between the experimental and the control groups. The statistical procedures used for data
analysis were based on the research questions, which were related to the cadets’ interests and attitudes toward
English instruction. Moreover, the supplemental information gained from the open-ended questions complemented
the explanation of the survey results.

Limitation of the Study
The subjects for this study were my cadets at the Chinese Air Force Academy. It would therefore bedifficult to generalize the results of the study to the students in universities because the special environment in the
military academy is different than that of universities. Furthermore, because of time constraint in using the computer lab, the on-line chat room was not designed in the course schedule of this study. Sometimes, the web activities were not keeping on the status because this study was limited by the equipment’s speed and capacity. These
factors resulted in the limitation of the study.

Results
The outcome collected in this study was categorized into two categories including the analysis of ttest; multiple regression on the responses of the courseware as well as the scores of the post-test.
The information obtained by the tests on these materials was encoded into the SPSS for WINDOWS 8.0 data
sheet and then the t-test for this semester was conducted. The analysis was used to examine the differences between
the two groups. The significant level was set at .05. In pre-tests, as previously mentioned, students’ scores andlanguage acquisition are not that different; in a word, their language proficiency was similar in terms of academic
record and learning pathway. Reading comprehension scores from the American Language Course (ALC) wereobtained from school records for all subjects. Examination of the mean scores, as well as the t-test for independent
samples (p < .05) indicated that the groups differed in reading comprehension at the end of the school year (seeTable 1). However, the experimental group had been training with the Computer Language Instruction Modelduring this semester; their scores kept on making more progress than the control group’s during the school year, as
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Table 1. The Results of T-test for the Control and Experimental Groups
Weeks in the school schedulet-test for Equality of Means
T

df

Sig. (2-tailed)

Mean Difference

Pre-test

0.46

64

0.651

0.15

Week Four

-1.56

64

0.12

-3.88

Week Nine

-2.96

64

0.00*

-9.94

Week Thirteen

-1.12

64

0.27

-3.12

Seventeenth

-4.13

64

0.00*

-9.91

Post-test

-3.72

64

0.00*

-8.45

*p < .05
shown in Table 1. During the school year, the English Comprehension Level (ECL) examination, which was given
during the pre-test and post-test, was administered to all students, including the students in the pilot study. To
compare the reading comprehension scores, a t-test for independent samples was again used, which was held
during the fourth, ninth, thirteenth and seventeenth week for the two groups. Results showed that the original
hypothesis, that the experimental control who had been using the Computer Language Instruction Model would
exhibit greater reading comprehension than the control group who did not use the Internet, was supported.
According to the results, the students across the CLIM pedagogy were engaged in the web-course reading of
textual information from the HTML on the web site—163.15.25.231. The method of the CLIM pedagogy and its
ability to effect positively the tests taken by the experimental group. The students had ample time to browse
through the linkage under the heading, “Teaching and Learning Resources,” from the homepage through the Computer Language Instruction Model. Through training by the Computer Language Instruction Model, the experimental group upgraded their language learning from a passive into an active learning mode. They used the Internet
learning resources more and showed more cooperation in peer correction. In general, they were motivated to learn
English using the Internet. The students, in such a situation could easily access a greater concentration of material
on language acquisition because of the vast learning resources.
There was no significant difference between the control and the experiment group for the pre-test in terms of
their English ability. There were some items showing significant differences between the two groups after the
English instruction via the Computer Language Instruction Model on the World Wide Web. Those items aredescribed in Table 2.
Table 2 indicates that the data was processed by the multiple regression method of the SPSS to show thecorrelation between two parts of the questionnaire of Appendix 2 and the scores of the post-test of the CLIM’straining course. In addition, the researcher divided the thirty items of Part One in Appendix 2 into five categories,
including cognitive (items 1 to 6), affective (items 7 to 12), social (items 13 to 18) reading (items 19 to 24), andmonitoring (items 25 to 30) strategies. Afterwards, the survey investigated the evaluations of the courseware inpart two of Appendix 2.
At the same time, the researcher divided the questions into five categories: operation interface, software
evaluation, content appropriateness, feedback design and system function. After the investigating research at theend of the semester, the researcher integrated these different opinions so as to compare them with the last test—the
post-test. Furthermore, the researcher again looked for correlation between the scores and the questionnaire.
From this table, the questionnaires of Appendix 2 which included questions on the English class using theComputer Language Instruction Model and the evaluations of the web-based course, were associated with thedependent variable scores of the post-test. From the regression, the questionnaires of Appendix II supported the
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research questions; reading and writing skills were influenced by the Computer Language Instruction Model. The
table indicates the significance of the training methods used for the experimental group. This significance is shownin learned abilities involving cognitive, reading and monitoring strategies in the English class using the Computer
Language Instruction Model. The cognitive strategy was commonly used and proved significant in the Computer
Language Instruction Model. In addition, the reading strategy proved significant in the web-based course; so thestudents’ English abilities were in fact enhanced. The monitoring strategy also made a significant difference in theComputer Language Instruction Model. The students used the monitoring strategy more, their scores gradually
made progress and their English improved. Furthermore, the evaluation of the courseware in part two of Appendix
2 was significantly different from the others. The table shows the content appropriateness, which allowed theexperimental group to significantly outperform the control group on the post-test. The students learning pathway
followed the flow chart of teaching and learning material in the Computer Language Instruction Model. Thus, it
was important that the teachers prepared the material before starting to teach a lesson. The students could easily
motivate themselves to learn the Computer Language Instruction Model. Strictly speaking, using the framework of
the Computer Language Instruction Model meant that the students had to accept responsibility. The teacher was tofulfill only a supporting and guiding role. Therefore, the experimental group did outperform the control group.
The students thought the system’s functions displayed appropriateness and the courseware helped them individually adapt to their learning experience. The system provided the opportunity for real practice and adaptive teachingmaterial without the boundaries of time and space.

Table 2. Multiple Regression: Effects of Factors of English Instruction,
Courseware and the Scores of the Post-test
Betat valueSignificanceCognitive Strategies

0.50

3.11

0.01*

Affective Strategies

-2.04

-1.03

0.31

Social Strategies

-0.22

-1.52

0.14

Reading Strategies

0.53

3.73

0.00*

Monitoring Strategies

0.59

3.85

0.00*

Operation Interface

-0.15

-0.84

0.41

Software Evaluation

-0.24

-1.35

0.19

Content Appropriateness

0.60

3.97

0.00*

Feedback Design

-0.12

-0.58

0.57

System Function

0.49

2.62

0.02*

*p < .05
Notes: 1. Independent Variables: Items in the questionnaires as shown in Appendix 2 (Part I and Part II).
2. Dependent Variable: the scores of the experimental group on the post-test.

Responses of Open-ended Questions
Generally speaking, cadets from the experiment group were satisfied with the teaching materials from theComputer Language Instruction Model such as cloze tests, the usage of a dictionary, idioms and slangs which
attracted their attention more than other texts and materials. They thought that online materials were more practical and useful to their daily life, and that they were authentic. In addition, cadets thought that online materials
could improve their English reading skills significantly. Moreover, there was the perception that “Bulletin Board”
could enhance teacher-cadet, cadet-cadet interaction, and cadets really enjoyed discussing and expressing some
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thoughts through the board. Furthermore, they post their interaction on the “News Sheet” to share with the peers
and teacher together. According to the G1 cadets’ opinions, they thought that the WWW applied in the English
course would be appropriate; furthermore, they agreed that it will be necessary to offer another two-hour-periodclass of the English instruction through the Computer Language Instruction Model besides their regular two-hourEnglish class. Meanwhile, students hoped that this course could be optimal for anyone who expressed interest.
However G1 cadets believed that the learning resources from the World Wide Web were tremendous; they did not
feel free to use the equipment on campus because of the weakness of the settings. Most students did not spend extra
time using the Internet outside the English class; they only searched for some English resources through the Computer Language Instruction Model in class because they could not find the appropriate equipment otherwise. Thereis only one-computer lab open for the cadets, and it is frequently occupied. In addition, not every cadet owns apersonal computer either in the dormitory or at home. They could not use the computer as much as they wished.
When using the computer on campus, cadets often felt frustrated because of the slow speed of transmission. Furthermore, because the campus computers were not equipped with audio systems, cadets felt bored sometimes.
Without audio capabilities, the enhancement of interaction between the computers and cadets in listening andspeaking was limited.

Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to investigate the cadets’ attitudes and opinions toward the English instruction
through Computer Language Instruction Model on the Internet to find out whether cadets were interested in learning English through the Internet, whether the cadet-cadet and teacher-cadet interactions were improved, and whether
their perception of communicative ability was enhanced. The data for this study was collected through pre- andpost-surveys, e-mail feedback, open-ended questions and classroom observations from two groups of students, theexperiment group and the control group. The following discussions of the cadets’ attitudes and interests are toward
online materials and English learning via the interactive function of the Internet. Also, some suggestions to English
teachers are provided.
In sum, cadets involving the Computer Language Instruction Model (CLIM) through the World Wide Web
showed positive attitudes toward language learning, and had more opportunities to interact and communicate witheach otter. E-mail provided cadets with in-class and out-of-class discussion and reduced their anxiety in front of
the screen. Whether the lab equipment could be improved and technical problems eliminated and whether the
instructor could get to know more about the cadets’ interest and needs when selecting the online materials, use of
the Internet will effectively facilitate learning. It is hoped that the results of this study will provide some perspective views of teaching English for the reference of English teachers. There is not only one wholly effective learningteaching approach. Instead of using only one approach or method, most successful English teachers use an eclectic
approach, or a combination of several approaches which they have found form their past experiences to be mosteffective in promoting language learning for their cadets. Another important goal of my research is to provide
hypertext constructs with open hypermedia system. I propose an open hypermedia system framework to classify
and evaluate the hypermedia system and integration on the World Wide Web. In the future, the World Wide Webseems to be the major interface and development environment and all users will have access to it through theInternet. I have adopted the World Wide Web as the backbone of the system architecture to combine the features ofboth the World Wide Web and the hypermedia system and to enhance the users’ convenience. Those features
include integration, distribution, across platforms, collaboration to enable us to adopt merits of both the World
Wide Web and the open hypermedia systems (Chiu, 1997.)
Data gathered in this study included a wide range of formative evaluation and participant-observer accounts
in the form of personal note, meeting notes, interviews, questionnaires and e-mail messages. The achievement
measures for all treatment groups showed significantly higher levels of achievement when compared to the appended control group. Using the t-test analyses of variance, the data is examined to determine what effect, whether
any, the varying instructional strategies have on learning. Results indicate that there were statistically significant
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differences between any of the experimental groups. The significant effects were found in this study; results
indicate further research will prove worthwhile in determining effects of instructional strategies on emerging technology-based instruction with designers’ intelligence.
The possibility of replacing mainstream teaching and lectures by the use of the Internet has a number of
implications for universities. According to Dr. Chuang’s article, the four language skills can be enhanced in the
English Instruction via the Internet (Chuang, 1998). I have demonstrated, using a sophomore English course, how
to make the transition from traditional teaching to lifelong learning. In particular, incremental construction makes
the transition affordable, while at least maintaining the student learning experience, and perhaps improving it. I
hope my experience encourages others to try using hypermedia technology as a central part of the cadets’ learning
experiences, rather than the peripheral role that it often plays today. Being an English teacher, I believe thatincorporating the Internet and multimedia into the integration of four skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing)in English instruction would be more effective and should be advocated (Chuang, 1998). In addition, I hope thatthe outcomes and suggestions of this study will be beneficial in the future curriculum design of English instruction.

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What Spiders Forgot to Weave on the Web:
Synchronous Text-Based Environments for Language Learning
Yoshimasu Awaji
Takushoku University, Japan

Hideto D. Harashima
Maebashi Institute of Technology, Japan

Shuji Ozeki
Chubu University, Japan
Abstract
Although the WWW played an important role in popularizing the use of the Internet among ordinary
users, some of the truly synchronous text-based services have been overlooked because of the WWW’s popularity. While these services can not be functionally incorporated into WWW structure for some technical reasons,they supplement the WWW with various benefits. After quickly reviewing different kinds of such services, theirstrengths and weaknesses are compared, along with some educational considerations and precautions to bemade in using them in the classroom.

Impact of WWW
The WWW has played an important role in popularizing the Internet with its ease of navigation, integrationof various types of information, and magnitude of stored information. Even a novice user can obtain various typesof information in a multimedia format within several clicks after a few minutes of practice with a WWW browser.
On the other hand, its impact and popularity have gone so far that many people have developed misconceptions about it. Not a few people appear to believe the WWW is equal to the Internet. Even better informed users
sometimes prefer more powerful WWW browsers so everything might be available within the window of thebrowser. Unrealistic expectations of the WWW have resulted in oversized WWW browsers and reduced compatibility, as software companies try to incorporate every imaginable function into one product.

What Is Neglected...
The producers of WWW browsers have done a great job and seamlessly incorporated so many features suchas, email, gopher, ftp, and usenet into a single browser. What is neglected here, however, is most of the truly
synchronous services based on fulltime telnet connections.
It is not so much that they are neglected, but rather that they are technically difficult to incorporate within thescheme of the http protocol, with which the WWW functions.

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What Goes on Behind the Web
When a user tries to access information on the WWW, the browser software establishes a connection to thetarget server, and sends a simple request command to retrieve the data that the user wants. The server then sends
back what it has, or else an error message, to the user, and terminates the connection with the user.
This is why the WWW is not capable of fully synchronous communication over the net, which requires
stable connections designated to each user.
Proxy servers function as a middleman. They stand between the user and the target server, listen to the user
requests, pass on the requests to the server, which in most cases sits outside the protected network firewall, and thenpass on the responses from the server to the user. This proxy or firewall can sometimes be a barrier for synchronous
communication services.
Some readers may have experienced difficulty when they tried to use services that require stable connections
such as CU-SeeMe, RealAudio, RealVideo, etc. The same difficulty applies to more traditional text-based services
such as IRC, ICQ, MOO, etc.

Examples of Synchronous Text-based Services
Here, let us review examples of synchronous services, particularly text-based ones. Even users with very
limited Internet connections can use text-based services free of frustration from slow connections.

Talk
A traditional feature of UNIX but
now rarely used. Users on UNIX can talkwith each other on the screen, where two
separate areas are available for input andoutput. The communication is limited to a
one-to-one basis. The figure shows two
windows of distant users in a single screen
for the convenience of the readers.

IRC
IRC is an expansion of the talk above,
allowing simultaneous communication withmore than two persons. There are different
channels available with different interests
and topics, and usually a huge number ofparticipants. The kinds of channels varyfrom server to server, which provide the IRC
service. IRC is much more sophisticatedthan UNIX talk with a fairly complicatedset of commands. In terms of the quality of
the language used, many acronyms are usedin the conversations such as R for are, U
for you, CU for see you, etc. Some channels are adult-oriented with sexually explicit

Figure 1. Talk

Figure 2. IRC

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titles. They are listed in the channel list,
which in consequence exposes students toexperiences which might be regarded as
inappropriate in an educational context.

ICQ
One of the most popular commercial
messaging services, with features such as
chat, paging, file transfer, etc. More useful
if you already know other ICQ users than if
you are looking for new friends. More than
two persons can chat at the same time.

Figure 3. ICQ

MUD/MOO
MOO or MUD is a text-based virtual reality environment. It is fully programmable, and has the notion of space whichallows users to expand the environment torepresent real life situations. It is capableof large group discussions as well as chatamong a few people. The notion of spaceor locations is distinctive compared to otherservices.

WWW Chat
Similar to talk or IRC but no client
software is necessary and it is very easy touse. Only basic authentication is available
and it is relatively slow compared to otherfully synchronous services. This is not an
off-web service but is introduced here forcomparisons with other similar off-web services. As is the case with IRC, there arevarious WWW chat sites of different topics, some of which are not be appropriate
for young learners.

Figure 4. MOO

It is virtually impossible to introduce
each of these services in full details now.
The best way is to try them out yourselves.
References to good introductory documents
are in the reference section at the end.

Figure 4. WWW Chat

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Comparison of Synchronous Text-based Services
A brief comparison will be attempted here with regard to the criteria such as:
Clientif any extra software must be installed to use the service

Ease

if the service is easy enough for novice users

Speed

the speed of the message transfer and how the entire service operates

Security

if there is enough security for user identity

Safetyif the community and the contents are safe enough for students or minors to use

Expandability

if the environment is expandable by programming etc.

Stability

if the service is stable, free from network trouble etc.

Multilingual support

if the service supports multiple languages, especially non-Roman characters

WWW Affinity

if the service can be incorporated into WWW platform, sometimes with thehelp of other plug-in software or Java applets.

Table 1. Comparison of Synchronous Text-based Services
Criterion

Talk

IRC

ICQ

MOO

WWW chat

Client

-

++

++

+

--

Ease

-

+

+

+

++

Speed

++

++

++

++

-

Security

++

+

++

++

+

Safety

+

-

+

++

-

Expandability

--

+

--

++

--

Stability

++

+

+

+

-

Multilingual Support

-

+

+

-

++

WWW Affinity

--

--

--

+

++

Table 1 shows the comparison of services mentioned earlier. While IRC and ICQ are easy to use and speedy
services with fair stability, MOO surpasses them in terms of security and expandability. Although WWW chat is
not a truly synchronous service off the web, its ease of use, WWW affinity and multilingual support are beneficial
for users at introductory levels.

Problems and Cautions for Classroom Use
Using synchronous services in the classroom can be rewarding but some precautions must be kept in mind to
avoid chaos and undesirable situations.

Quality of the Society
Some services are so easy to join and open to the public that the quality of the community might not besuitable for educational purposes. This is not usually a problem if the service offers a good security feature and if
the particular place is well maintained by a responsible staff.
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Class size
Some services are intrinsically more suitable for small groups. Classes in Japan, for example, are relatively
large and thus the instructors should take necessary measures to cope with this problem. Teachers can split students into smaller groups, or change the environment itself by programming, if it is possible.

Necessary software
Most synchronous services require specific software to be installed. You might need to talk to your local
system administrator for cooperation and/or permission to do so. The software might not always be provided forfree.

Firewall/Proxy Issue
Some services are not compatible with network firewalls and proxy servers. If you can not successfully usea service after sufficient reading of the manuals etc., maybe you should contact your local sysads for details. Therecan be ways to work around the firewall issues in some cases.

Cost of the Connection
One needs to be connected to the Internet for as long as he or she uses these synchronous services. In Japanthe phone bill can be unconscionable if one gets too much addicted to the service.

Conclusion
In order to incorporate text-based synchronous communication services into their classes, teachers should
consider different aspects of those services. Particularly important from the educational point of view are the ease,
security, quality of the language used, and the appropriate topics. At the moment, the authors recommend MOO
which appears to be the safest service with sufficient features for classroom use.

References
A Short IRC Primer. [Online]. Available: http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/ircprimer.html
Educational MOO: text-based virtual reality for learning in community. [Online]. Available: http://web.syr.edu/~lmturbee/ericedmo.html
Hypertext Transfer Protocol—HTTP/1.1. [Online]. Available: http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616.html
ICQ Inc.-ICQ Tour. [Online]. Available: http://www.icq.com/icqtour/more.html
I Hate IRC. [Online]. Available: http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Parc/1691/
IRC Prelude. [Online]. Available: http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/new2irc.html
MOO and IRC. [Online]. Available: http://web.syr.edu/~lmturbee/mooyirc.html
saMOOrai Home Page. [Online]. Available: http://samoorai.hyper.chubu.ac.jp:8080/
schMOOze University Home Page. [Online]. Available: http://schmooze.hunter.cuny.edu:8888/

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Worldviews and the Internet
Hiroyuki Obari
Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan
Abstract
This presentation describes a series of seminars conducted at the College of Economics at Aoyama
Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan. They focus on the integration of three pedagogical elements: 1.) Worldviews;
2.) Advanced Computer Skills; and, 3.) English Language Education. The aim of the project is to incorporate
these seemingly disparate fields together to create a greater understanding of each the three elements.
The highlight of this series was a joint lecture given by Dr. Yee and myself. Dr. Yee is a theologian from
Oxford University who specializes in worldviews and she gave several lectures about her research and theInternet. By participating in these seminars, students increased their understanding of worldviews. At the sametime, they improved their computer and language skills by getting involved in web page making activities and agroup presentation using PowerPoint software. The following paper summarizes our models of worldviews, thecontent of the course syllabus, and various activities, which the students participated in.

CourseThis series of seminars, conducted over two terms were offered for Economics majors participating in the
Language and Communication Seminar. Third year and Fourth year students who are concerned with the impact of
the natural and social sciences on the exposition of theology were also invited to attend. I lead the series with theassistance of Dr. Yee Margaret from Oxford University. The discussion was multi-disciplinary in form, withspecific attention being paid each seminar to current thinking in science/religion and global communication.

Goals
The detailed aim of the course was fourfold: (a) to introduce students to a precise understanding of theprinciples of knowledge in the sciences and religion; (b) to Compare Eastern and Western approaches to world
views and evaluate their comprehensiveness; and (c) to enable students to appreciate the principles by which nonpartisan, open approaches to the world, may be pursued. As a result, a more cross-culturally sensitive understanding of human nature may be communicated and further researched; and finally, (d) to enable students to become
familiar with advanced modern information technology such as the Internet.

Structure of seriesPart I: Worldviews: Part I, Science and Religions, is an introductory course, concerned primarily with principles of knowing in the sciences, humanities, and world religions. Part II: Global Communication and the Internet,
is a more advanced and practical course, and assumes attendance of Part I. Several Aoyama Gakuin University andOxford academics with expertise in one of the sciences and religion also took part. The central interest throughout
each seminar was the relation of the sciences and theology to global communication. The vacation period between
Parts I & II allowed students to pursue wider reading and practicals (Web making, familiarization with the Internetand PowerPoint presentation skills.)
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Method of Assessment and Examination
These seminars complement one-to-four tutorials given by myself to students being prepared for working in
the international society. A 1500-word (minimum) essay is to be submitted and discussed at tutorials, along withweekly reading assignments. At the seminars, there is the opportunity for each student to participate fully in thediscussion and presentation with PowerPoint and Internet. Students are required to attend both their tutorials andthis series of seminars together with specific complementary lectures. The marking system employed on essays
and presentations is based on the normal grading scale.

The Course Leader and Colleague
Hiroyuki Obari, BA (Political Science, University of Oklahoma, USA), MA (Public Administration, International Christian University, Japan), MA (TESOL, Columbia University), is Professor at the College of Economics at Aoyama Gakuin University. His research focuses on language and communication, the relation of theology
and the sciences (including world views), and Information Technology. He lectures to all levels of students in thedepartment.
Dr. Margaret Yee (Visiting lecturer during the course) has research interests in the relation of the History &Philosophy of Science, Cognitive Sciences & Theology, University of Oxford, U.K.

Pedagogical Highlights•

Half-hour lecture on topic, followed by discussion.

•

Suitable PowerPoint and Internet Representation throughout.

•Worksheets put on the web prior to seminar with:•

Recommended reading;A question on topic to be considered both in English and in Japanese from a scientific and atheological viewpoint; exercise in PowerPoint Presentation.

•

Multi-disciplinary discussion both in Japanese and English in both the sciences and theology,
and global communication contributing.

•Open discussion between students and teachers encouraged, with coordinating summary atclose.

•

Method of teaching: videotaped and taped lectures from Oxford.

•

Questionnaire for feedback at end of Part II and I.

•

Learning PowerPoint skills, Internet skills, and Making WebPages.

•

Familiarity with oral presentation both in English and Japanese.

•

Video Conferencing.

•Dr. Yee’s visit to our Campus in April to hold an intensive seminar about Worldviews and theInternet at Aoyama Gakuin University and deliver a number of seminars and public lectures on
this area of thought.

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Semester 1
Part I: Topics - Science and Religious Worldviews and the Internet
1.

2.

a.

The Power of the Internet – General Technology, Basic Skills.

b.

Global Communication and exchange of worldviews, noting differences culturally andreligiously (east and west) and academically (physicalist vs. critical realist) Special
lecture 1 given by Dr. Yee from Oxford University.

Worldviews, their differences and the possibility of global exchange.
Frames of reference, assumptions and criteria of judgment to be addressed. Special lecture 2
given by Dr. Yee from Oxford University.

3.

Basic Skills of Internet Research. (Metasearch Engines and Search Engines) Students weredivided into five groups and started to prepare for doing some research using Internet.
Basic Skills of PowerPoint and Presentation Skills (1)4.

Basic Skills of PowerPoint and Presentations Skills (2)Students started to learn how to give an oral presentation in English from the model of international conference and presentation skill video.

5.

Basic Skills of PowerPoint and Presentations Skills (3)Global Communication: language and culture.

6-8.

Criteria of judgment and interpretation. Particular attention was given to review the two
lectures of Dr. M.M. Yee on the Principles of Knowing: Science, Humanities and Theology: a.

Principle of knowing: Theology and the Sciences- Dr. M.M. Yee’s 3-D Graphics of a
“popular” exclusive view of reality contrasted with an “alternative” inclusive view ofreality.

b.

A Science of God? Divine Mystery and Paradox and some Residual difficulties-Austin
Farrer.

c.

A Global Worldview? Revelation OR Reason, or Revelation AND Reason.

9.

Oral Presentation with PowerPoint by two groups.

10.

Oral Presentation with PowerPoint by three groups.

11.

Assessment and examination.

Semester 2
Part II: Topics- An Inclusive versus An Exclusive Worldview.
1.

Global Communication and Comprehensivity – The comparative graphics, G1 and G2 of Dr.
Yee’s research work will be discussed and critically evaluated.

2.

The implications of a model that is inclusive (Graphic 2) will be presented, indicating the“power” of this model for encompassing multi-issues, e.g.-Multi-cultural, Multi-racial, Multifaith, and Multi-disciplinary.
Preparation for making Web Pages (1).

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The open horizons of the science-theology model (Graphic 2-M.M. Yee) will be explored.
Preparation for making Web Pages (2).

4.

Human life and consciousness: Science AND Theology. Students will be studying the lecturewith CD-Rom and have a discussion in the class. Preparation for making Web Pages (3).

5.

Human life and consciousness: Science AND Religion.
Students will be studying the lecture with CR-Rom and have a discussion in the class. Preparation for making Web Pages (4).

6.

Human life and consciousness: Public ethics and public issues. Distinction between moral
injunctions and Dr. Yee’s “empirico-cognitive” principles of knowing, by which fact and error
may be exposed will be made. Students will be studying the lecture with CD-Rom and have a
discussion in the class. Preparation for making Web Pages (5).

7.

Students will prepare for English oral Presentation as a group of 4.
They have been doing some research about certain topic which they chose during the wholeterm and start integrating what they have learned in theClass with computer skills such as Internet research, making homepages, and PowerPoint
Presentation.

8.

Oral Presentation with a PowerPoint and home page. (1)9.

Oral Presentation with a PowerPoint and home page. (2)10.

Comprehensivity – Which models? A final appreciation of different worldviews, and theglobal worldview being developed will be discussed.
The Power of the Internet and Global Communication: Where Now?
This session should summarize all-important points made through the course.

11.

Assessment and examination.

What Did the Students Learn from the Course?
First of all, students were required to take notes using word processing programs that they then submitted tothe instructor via email. Through these activities, students improved their touch-typing skills while familiarizingthem further with e-mail.
Second, they were required to make WebPages and give presentations both in English and Japanese with
PowerPoint. In order to make effective WebPages, they had to learn how to use Metasearch Engines and SearchEngines. Boolean research methods were also taught to narrow down what to look for from key words. The
process of making WebPages in which the students looked for much information and integrate it into their own
research could help them to build up their own intellectual frameworks in their academic disciplines.
And, third, lectures given by Dr. Yee helped students to formulate their own worldviews through which they
could develop their own way of thinking and expand their ideas in multiple form.
All in all they were exposed to current thinking in the science and religious disciplines as well as advancesin global communication. By performing the aforementioned tasks, students saw marked improvement in their
computer skills which are so useful in this advanced age of Information Technology.

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Conclusion
The great advantage that internet-based teaching and learning offers is variety of content, approach andmedia. It allows flexibility in finding meaningful activities similar to real life situations, and most of all it allows
for authenticity with the help of learning worldviews. The Internet is an exciting new tool for language learning.
Though it may have its own limitations, it can add a valuable dimension to face-to-face teaching by providing a
new learning environment for meaningful interactive tasks in various settings. What is clear about these developments is that pedagogy is ever more dependent on modern technology. The advent of CGI, helper applications,plug-ins, JavaScript and Java adds interest and ease of use to the material. Therefore what is important for the
future CALL is how to integrate the new technology into pedagogy, especially worldview teaching.

References
Felix, U. (1998). Virtual language learning: Finding the gems amongst the problems. Melbourne: Language
Australia.
Cumming, G., Okamoto, O. & Gomez, L. (1999). Advanced Research in Computers and Communications in
Education. Volume 1. IOS press.
Brooke, J. H. (1999). Science & Religion – Some Historical Perspectives. OUP.
Ward, K. (1996). God, Chance and Necessity. One World.
Ward, K. (1998). God, Faith & the New Millennium. One World.
Fuller, M. (1995). Atoms and Icons-A discussion of the relationships between science and theology. Mowbray.
Peacocke, A. (1996). Theology for a Scientific Age. SCM.
Debski, R. & Levy, M. (1999). WORLDCALL Global Perspectives on Computer-Assisted Language Learning.
Sweets & Zeitlinger.

Appendix 1.
Dr. Yee’s Explanation of the Model: Graphic 1 and 2
Graphic 1

Graphic 2

Reality judged in terms of PhysicalDynamic interaction & interrelation

Bounded, Limited, Restricted

Unbounded, unlimited, open horizons
Revisable

Exclusive (Theology excluded
by definition)

Inclusive (Theology/Spiritual not
excluded by definition)
Multi-disciplinary, in form

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Figure 1. Dr. Yee’s Graphics 1 and 2

Figure 2. Poster Presentation

Figure 3. Students with Dr. Yee

Figures 4. PowerPoint Presentation

Figures 5. PowerPoint Presentation

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Author Index
Clicking on the author’s name will direct you to the first or only paper;to select one of several pages, click on the page number.
Page Number Coding: Bold = Primary Presenter; Normal = Secondary Presenter.

Page

Page

Akahane-Yamada, Reiko
Information Sciences Division
ATR International
2-2 Hikaridai, Seika-cho
Soraku-gun, Kyoto-fu, 619-02, Japan
yamada@hip.atr.co.jp

117

Brown, Inge
Dartmouth College
Language Resource Center
6192 Bartlett Hall,
Hanover, NH, 03755, U. S. A.
inge.brown@dartmouth.edu

338

Araki, Kazumi
Saitama Prefectural University
820 Sannomiya
Koshigaya-shi, 343-0036, Japanaraki-kazumi@spu.ac.jp

715

214

Arimoto, Jun
Kansai University of International
Studies
1-18 Aoyama, Shijimi-cho
Miki-shi, 673-0521, Japanarimoto@kuins.ac.jp

203

Carroll, Michael
Kyoto University of Education
1 Fujinomori-cho
Fukakusa, Fushimi-ku
Kyoto-shi, 612-0863, Japanmichael@kyokyo-u.ac.jp

656

Awaji, Yoshimasa
Takushoku University
2-8-10 Tsukushiza
Yotsukaido-shi, 284-0026, Japanawaji@mac.com

592, 762

Chan, Daniel Yu-ching
National Taipei Teachers College
Graduate Institute of Children
English Education
134, Sec.2, Ho-Ping East Road
Taipei, 106, Taiwan, R. O. C.
yuching2@ms16.hinet.net
Chen, Cheng-Hui
California State University, Long Beach
1830 E. Ocean Boulevard, #711
Long Beach, CA, 90840-2201, U. S. A.
tchen2000@hotmail.com

728

Beaufait, Paul A.
Prefectural University of Kumamoto
3-1-100 Tsukide
Kumamoto-shi, 862-8502, Japanpab@pu-kumamoto.ac.jp698Black, Paul
Northern Territory University
Faculty of Science, Information
Technology and Education
Darwin, NT, 0909, Australia
pblack@darwin.ntu.edu.au

633

Bradley, Christopher A.
Fukuoka University of Education
Dai Ichi Korin Heights (#13)
2012-1 Suya Nishigoshi-machi
Kikuchi-gun, Kumamoto-ken
861-1102, Japanakiko@aminet.or.jp

173

Author Index

Chen, Howard Hao-Jan
125, 135
National Taiwan Ocean University
1F, 32, Lane 194, Sung-Kiang Road
Taipei, Taiwan, 104, R. O. C.
b0240@mail.ntou.edu.tw
Chen, Shian-Jung
606
National Yunlin University of Scienceand Technology, Taiwan
Department of Applied Foreign Languages
101-53 Tien-hsin, Gukeng
Yunlin, 646, Taiwan, R. O. C
e-mail: j16966@ms33.hinet.net

773

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Page
Chiau, Der-Li
Republic of China Air Force Academy
12f, No.16, Park West Road
Kangshan, 820, Taiwan, R. O. C.
delin@ms10.hinet.net

752

Cho, Seikyung
Kyung Hee University
School of English
1 Hoiki-dong Dongdaemoon-ku
Seoul, Korea
skcho@nms.kyunghee.ac.kr

438

Depoe, Michael
Kanazawa Institute of Technology
7-1 Ohgigaoka
Nonoichi-shi, 921-8501, Japan
mdepoe@neptune.kanazawa-it.ac.jp377

Edasawa, Yasuyo
Doshisha Women’s College
Kodo, Kyotanabe-shi,
Kyoto-fu, 610-0395, Japanyedasawa@dwc.doshisha.ac.jp
Edwards, Nathan
Kanazawa Institute of Technology
7-1 Ohgigaoka
Nonoichi-shi, 921-8501, Japanedwardsn@neptune.kanazawa-it.ac.jp

Fujii, Satoru
Matsue National College of Technology
Information Engineering Department
14-4 Nishiikuma-cho
Matsue-shi, 690-8518, Japanfujii@it.matsue-ct.ac.jp745

Fujikake, Shoichi
13-1 Kamogomae, Chiaki
Ichinomiya-shi, 491-0811, Japanfuji@cc.gifu-u.ac.jp

187

Gallian, Judith M
Miyazaki International College1405 Kano Kiyotake,Miyazaki-gun
Miyazaki-ken, 889-1605, Japanjgallian@miyazaki-mic.ac.jp

557

227

Gilbert, Richard
Prefectural University of Kumamoto
3-1-100 Tsukide,
Kumamoto-shi, 862-8502, Japanrichard_gilbert@email.com

77

377

Goebel, Zane
La Trobe University
Humanities and Social Sciences
PO Box 821
Wodonga, Vic, 3689, Australiazgoebel@aw.latrobe.edu.au

633

Hamada, Mayumi
Ryutsu-Kagaku University
3-1 Gakuen-Nishimachi, Nishi-ku
Kobe-shi, 651-2188, Japan
Mayumi_Hamada@red.umds.ac.jp

579

Harashima, Hideto D.
Maebashi Institute of Technology
460-1 Kamisadori
Maebashi-shi, 371-0816, Japanhideto@maebashi-it.ac.jp562, 762

Erickson, Donna
117
Gifu City Women’s College,
Department of International Cultural Studies
7-1 Hitoichiba Kita-machi
Gifu-ken, 501-0192, Japan
erickson@gifu-cwc.a.jp
Foelsche, Otmar
338, 401, 626
Dartmouth College
Humanities Resources
6192 Bartlett Hall,
Hanover, NH, 03755 U.S.A.
otmar.foelsche@dartmouth.edu
Fujieda, Miho
Tokai University
Foreign Language Center
1117 Kitakaname
Hiratsuka-shi, 259-1292, Japan
mfj11@keyaki.cc.u-tokai.ac.jp

Author Index

Page

526

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Page
Hart, Robert
University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
Language Learning Laboratory
G70 Foreign Languages Building,707 S. Mathews Ave.
Urbana IL, 61801 U. S. A.
rsh@uiuc.edu

414, 492

Hatano, Giyoo
Keio University
6-7-12 Honmagomeiri
Bunkyou-ku
Tokyo, 113-0021, Japangiyoo-h@qb3.so-net.ne.jp

34

Hayase, Mitsuaki
Mie University557-12 Shibumi-cho
Tsu-shi, 514-0063, Japanhayase@edu.mie-u.ac.jp459

Hayashi, Takayasu
Matsusaka Municipal Chubu
Junior High School
8-701 Atsu Yamanote
Isshinden Kouzubeta
Tsu-shi, 514-0061, Japan
bigapple@mctv.ne.jp459

Hendricks, Harold H.
160, 436, 718
Brigham Young University
Humanities Research Center
3060 JKHB P O Box 26098,
Provo, UT, 84602-6098 U. S. A.
harold_hendricks@byu.edu
Hirabayashi, Kenji
Aichi Prefectural Shinkawa
Senior High School
1-49-2 Johoku-cho, Nishi-ku
Nagoya-shi, 451-0023, Japan
E-mail not available

459

Hirano, Michiyo
Ibaraki University
2-1-1 Bunkyo,
Mito-shi, 310-8512, Japanmichiyooh@hotmail.com

98

Author Index

Page
Hirao, Setsuko
Aichi University
Miyoshi-cho, Nishikamo-gun
Aichi-ken, 470-0296, Japanhiraos@vega.aichi-u.ac.jp

292, 347, 371

Hirata, Yukari
Colgate University
Department of East Asian Languages
and Literatures
Hamilton, NY, 13346, U. S. A.
yhirata@mail.colgate.edu

69

Hirose, Koji
Meirin College72-3 Toppara, Kurosaki-machi
Nishikanbara-gun
Niigata-ken, 950-1115, Japanmeirin02@mbd.sphere.ne.jp444

Horii, Ken
Kansai University
Department of Industrial Engineering
3-3-35 Yamate-cho
Suita-shi, 564-8680, Japankhorii@iecs.kansai-u.ac.jp

195

Hsin, Aili
Yuan Ze University
Department of Foreign Languages
and Applied Linguistics
150 Far Eastern Road
Chung-li, , Taiwan, R. O. C.
gealhsin@saturn.yzu.edu.tw

243

Hsu, Hui-Mei
University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
402 West California Ave.
Urbana, IL, 61801, U. S. A.
hsu3@uiuc.edu

728

Hung, Liching
675
National Lien Ho Institute of Technology
1 Lien Kung, Kungching Li
Miaoli, 360, Taiwan, R. O. C.
lhung@mail.nlhu.edu.tw775

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Page
Ikari, Yukio
Osaka City University
2-178-1 Ninji
Kashiba-shi, 639-0261, Japanikari@lit.osaka-cu.ac.jp317

Ikeda, Maiko
Setsunan University
3-8-5 Ohno-dai
Osakasayama-shi, 589-0023, Japanmaioike@wonder.ocn.ne.jp

583

Imai, Yumiko
Doshisha Women’s College
3-6-7 Hakata
Izumi-shi, 594-0023, Japan
BXN03024@nifty.ne.jp

227

Inoue, Narahiko
Kyushu University
Ropponmatsu, Chuo-ku
Fukuoka-shi, 810-8560, Japaninouen@rc.kyushu-u.ac.jp429

Iseno, Kaoru
Osaka Gakuin University
3-38-5 Hinomine, Kita-ku,
Kobe-shi, 651-1233, Japaniseno@utc.osaka-gu.ac.jp

498

Iteya, Hikaru
Sonoda Women’s University
1-9-7 Takamatsu-higashi,
Izumisano-shi, 598-0012, Japan
cca58490@nyc.odn.ne.jp289

Iwata, Jun
Matsue National College of Technology
Foreign Language Department
14-4 Nishiikuma-cho
Matsue-shi, 690-8518, Japan
iwata@gs.matsue -ct.ac.jp745

Joba, Kristi
Aichi University
Department of Comparative Cultures
1-1 Machihata-cho
Toyohashi-shi, 441- 8522, Japan
kristijoba@hotmail.com

91

Author Index

Page
Kadono, Miho
Kansai University of International
Studies
1-18 Aoyama, Shijimi-cho
Miki-shi, 673-0521, Japankadono@kuins.ac.jp

203

Kaneniwa, KumikoTokyo International University
1-13-1 Matoba Kita
Kawagoe-shi, 350-1197, Japan
kumikok@tiu.ac.jp

468

Kanzaki, Kazuo
Osaka Electro-Communication
University
1130-70 Kiyotaki
Shijonawate-shi, 000-0000, Japankanzaki@isc.osakac.ac.jp

601

Katayama, Mari
Kansai University of International
Studies
1-18 Aoyama, Shijimi-cho
Miki-shi, 673-0521, Japankatayama@kuins.ac.jp

203

Kato, Tetsuo
Chubu University
1200 Matsumoto-cho
Kasugai-shi, 487-8501, Japantetsuo@clc.hyper.chubu.ac.jp

360

Kawamura, Yoshiko
Tokyo International University
1-13-1 Matoba Kita,
Kawagoe-shi, 350-1197, Japan
kawamura@tiu.ac.jp

468

Kawanari, Mika
Meikai University
Faculty of Languages and Cultures
8 AkemiUrayasu-shi, Chiba, 279-8550, Japankawanar@attglobal.net

307

Kim, In-Seok
Dongduk Women’s University23-1 Walgok-Dong, Sungbuk-gu
Seoul, 136-714, Korea
iskim@dongduk.ac.kr

540

776

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Page
Kinugawa, Kiyoko
Saitama Woman’s Junior College
1120-8 Kamiyasumatau
Tokorozawa-shi, 359-0025, Japankinu@saitama.email.ne.jp294

Kirk, Daniel T.
Prefectural University of Kumamoto
3-1-100 Tsukide
Kumamoto-shi, 862-8502, Japan
dtk@pu-kumamoto.ac.jp

698

Kitamura, Yutaka
Kansai University
3-3-35 Yamate-cho,Suita-shi, 564-8680, Japankitamura@ipcku.kansai-u.ac.jp

195

Kitao, Kenji
Doshisha University
Kyotanabe-shi, 610-0394, Japankkitao@mail.doshisha.ac.jp639

Kitao, S. Kathleen
Doshisha Women’s College
Kyotanabe-shi, 610-0395, Japankkitao@dwc.doshisha.ac.jp639

Kobashi, Kaoru
Kobe University
4-1-13 Suzurandai
Higashimachi, Kita-ku
Kobe-shi, 651-1112, Japankaorukobashi@ma3.justnet.ne.jp

691

Kobayashi, Yoko
Aichi Shukutoku University
Graduate School
Takara Horita Heights B-1006
2-4 Uchihamma-cho, Mizuho-ku
Nagoya-shi, 467-0853, Japan
MXJ01125@nifty.ne.jp

512

Kodama, Reiko
Kogakkan University
1921-16 Fujikata
Tsu-shi, 514-0815, Japan
kodama@kogakkan-u.ac.jp

187

Author Index

Page
Kohno, Tomohiro
Kansai University
Graduate School of Engineering
3-3-35 Yamate-cho
Suita-shi, 564-8680, Japankouno55@iecs.kansai-u.ac.jp

195

Kojima, Shinya
Toyota National College of Technology
Advanced Engineering Course
2-1 Eisei-cho
Toyota-shi, 471-8525, JapanNo e-mail address

486

Kondo, Yasuki
Mie Prefectural Kawagoe
Senior High School
1395 Imajima-cho
Kuwana-shi, 511-0801, Japan
yasuki@bebop.gr.jp459

Kotani, Kentaro
Kansai University
Department of Industrial Engineering
3-3-35 Yamate-cho
Suita-shi, 564-8680, Japankkotani@iecs.kansai-u.ac.jp

195

Koyama, Toshiko
Ohtani Women’s Junior College
3-11-31 Nishikohri-kita
Tondabayashi-shi, 584-8522, Japanmtkoyama@ohtani-w.ac.jp

452

Kuniyoshi, Hatsumi
Chiba Institute of Technology
4-3-7 Benten, Chuo-ku,
Chiba-shi, 260-0045, Japanhatsumi-ks@mtj.biglobe.ne.jp

179

Kuno, Yuri
Bunka Woman’s University
7-14-8 Seijo, Setagaya-ku
Tokyo, 157-0066, Japanyukuno@lares.dti.ne.jp

548

777

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Page
Kuramoto, Atsuko
Osaka Sangyo University
4-22-14 Matsugaoka,
Takatsuki-shi
Osaka-fu, 569-1031, Japan
atsukoy@osk.3web.ne.jp329

Landahl, Karen L.
University of Chicago
Department of Linguistics
1010 E. 59th St.
Chicago, IL, 60637, U. S. A.
kllc@midway.uchicago.edu

69

Laskowski, Terry
Kumamoto University
Department of English
2-40-1 Kurokami,
Kumamoto-shi, 860-8555, Japan
terry@gpo.kumamoto-u.ac.jp

738

Lee, Chang-In
707
PaiChai University
Dept. of English Language and Literature
439-6 Doma-dong, Seo-gu
Daejon, 302-735, South Korea
cilee@mail.paichai.ac.kr
Leishman, Sandra
Chiba University
5-1-14-111 Hiroo, Shibuya-ku
Tokyo, 150-0012, Japansandra@hpo.net

665

Liversidge, Gordon B.
Otsuma Women’s University
12 Sanban, Chiyoda-ku,
Tokyo, 102-8357, Japan
gordon@gol.com

475

Maeda, Hiroaki
Hiroshima University
Dept. of English Language and Culture
Education, Faculty of Education
1-1-1 Kagamiyama,
Higashi-Hiroshima-shi, 739-8524, Japankeiroh@hiroshima-u.ac.jp

421

Author Index

Page
Maeda, Joyce
Tokyo International University
1-13-1 Matoba Kita
Kawagoe-shi, 350-1197, Japanjoymaeda@tiu.ac.jp

468

Makarova, Veronika
Meikai University
3-663 Namiki
Tsukuba-shi, 305-0044, Japanmakarova@etl.go.jp

613, 650

Matsuta, Ken
Tohoku University of Community
Service and Science
3-5-1 Iimoriyama
Sakata-shi, 998-8580, JAPAN
ken@koeik-u.ac.jp

365

Matsui, June-ko
Meikai University
8 AkemiUrayasu-shi, 279-8550, Japanjumatsi@hotmail.com

278

Matsumoto, Naoko
Saitama Women’s Junior College
3-5-75-303 Hibarigaoka
Hoya-shi, 202-0001 Japannaokom@mine.ne.jp292

Matsumura, Yuko
Kinki University
4-16-3 Sumiyoshiyamate
Higashinada-ku
Kobe-shi, 653-0063, Japanyuko-ma@est.hi-ho.ne.jp237

Matsuno, Ryoji
Prefectural University of Kumamoto
Faculty of Administration
3-1-100 Tsukide
Kumamoto-shi, 862-8502, Japanmatsuno@pu-kumamoto.ac.jp

79

Maurer, Hermann
Graz University of Technology
Schiesstattgasse 4 a
A-8010 Graz, Austria, A- 8010 Austria
hmaurer@iicm.edu

17

778

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Page

Page

Mikami, Akihiro
Suzuka National College of Technology
Shiroko-cho
Suzuka-shi, 510-0294, Japan
mikami@genl.suzuka-ct.ac.jp459

Nishikawa, Kuniko
Doshisha Women’s College
1-7-41 Rokujo
Nara-shi, 630-8043, Japanknishik@silver.ocn.ne.jp

227

Minami, Toshiro
Kyushu University
6-10-1 Hakozaki, Higashi-ku
Fukuoka-shi, 812-8581, Japan
minami@lib.kyushu-u.ac.jp

720

486

Mizohata, Yasuyuki
Sennan Senior High School
2-35-54 Tarui
Sennan-shi, 590-0521, Japan
myasuyuk@tcnet.co.jp

60

Nishizawa, Hitoshi
Toyota National College of Technology
Dept. of Electric and Electronic Engr.
2-1 Eisei-cho
Toyota-shi, 4710-8525, Japansaito@toyota-ct.ac.jp519

Morita, Akira
Waseda University
1-6-1 Nishi-Waseda
Shinjiku-ku
Tokyo, 169-8050, Japanaquila@mn.waseda.ac.jp

161

Noguchi, Judy
Mukogawa Women’s University
School of Pharmaceutical Sciences
8-19 Sudori-cho, Koshien,
Nishinomiya-shi, 663-8151, Japan
KHB04356@nifty.ne.jp479

Nakagawa, Shoji
Kuwana Municipal Ryousei
Junior High School
70 Aikawa-cho
Kuwana-shi, 511-0052, Japan
nakasho@na.rim.or.jp459

Nozawa, Kazunori
Ritsumeikan University
Faculty of Economics
1-1-1 Nojihigashi
Kusatsu-shi, 525-8577, Japan
nozawa@ec.ritsumei.ac.jp

Nakano, Hideko
Kyushu Kyoritsu University
1-8 Jiyugaoka, Yahatanishi-ku
Kitakyushu–shi, 807-8585, Japanhnakano@kyukyo-u.ac.jp

149

Need, Barbara
University of Chicago
Language Laboratories and Archives
1126 E. 59th St. Rm 4
Chicago, IL, 60637 U. S. A.
language-labs@uchicago.edu

69

Nishigaki, Chikako
Chiba University
2-33-6 Maihama
Urayasu-shi, 279-0031, Japan
gaki@e.chiba-u.ac.jp

665

Author Index

Nozawa, Takeshi
203
Kansai University of International Studies
1-18 Aoyama, Shijimi-cho
Miki-shi, 673-0521, Japan
nozawa@kuins.ac.jp
Obari, Hiroyuki
Aoyama Gakuin University
2-12-21 Nakatakatsu
Tsuchiura-shi, 300-0815, Japanna2h-obr@asahi-net.or.jp

767

Ochi, Youji
Tokushima University
Faculty of Engineering
2-1 Minami-josanjima
Tokushima-shi, 770-8506, Japanochi@is.tokushima-u.ac.jp408

Oguri, Seiko
Chubu University
1200 Matsumoto-cho,Kasugai-shi, 487-8501, Japanoguri@clc.hyper.chubu.ac.jp

360

779

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Page
Ohsugi, Masa-aki
Seisen University
13-24 Moegino, Wakaba-ku
Yokohama , 261-0014, Japanohsugi@seisen-u.ac.jp

58

Okuda, Hisako
Hiroshima Shudo University
4-41-9-8 Yasuhigashi, Asaminami-ku
Hiroshima-shi, 731-0153, Japan
hisako@shudo-u.ac.jp

684

Oota, Hiroshi
Tokyo Gakugei University AffiliatedSetagaya Junior High School
4-3-1, Fukasawa, Setagaya-ku
Tokyo, 158-0081, Japanoota@fuchu.setagaya.tokyo.jp647

Orr, Thomas
University of Aizu
Tsuruga Ikki-machi
Aizuwakamatsu-shi, 965-8580, Japant-orr@u-aizu.ac.jp

221

Ozeki, Shuji
Chubu University
Kasuga-shi, 487-8501, Japanozeki@intl.chubu.ac.jp592, 762

Rahimpour, Massoud
Tabriz University
Faculty of Persian Literature &Foreign Languages
Tabriz, East Azerbaijan, Iranrahimpour@ark.tabrizu.ac.ir

112

Robertson, Martha
Aichi University
Department of Comparative Cultures
1-1 Machihata-cho
Toyohashi-shi, 441-8522, Japan
marrober@indiana.edu

91

Ruxton, Ian
Kyushu Institute of Technology
1-1 Sensui-cho, Tobata-ku
Kitakyushu-shi, 804-8550, Japanruxton@dhs.kyutech.ac.jp

720

Author IndexPage
Ryan, Stephen M.
Eichi University
1-5-39-704 Tenno
Ibaraki-shi
Ibaraki-shi, 567-0876, Japan
RX1S-RYAN@asahi-net.or.jp

650

Saito, Tsutomu
Toyota National College of Technology
Dept. of Electric and Electronic Engr.
201 Eisei-cho
Toyota-shi, 471-8525, Japansaito@toyota-ct.ac.jp486

Sakamoto, Takashi
National Institute of Multimedia
Education
2-12, Wakaba, Mihama-ku
Chiba-shi, 261-0014, Japan
sakamoto@nime.ac.jp

51

Sakurai, Toshiko
Kobe Shoin Women’s University
1-2-1 Obanoyama-cho
Shinohara, Nada-ku
Kobe-shi, 657-0015, Japantoshikos@shoin.ac.jp

492

Sasaki, Masako
Akita University College of Allied
Medical Science1-1-1 Hondo
Akita-shi, 010-8543, Japan
shimazak@ams.akita-u.ac.jp

98

Sasaki, Midori
Kansai University of International
Studies
1-18 Aoyama, Shijimi-cho
Miki-shi, 673-0521, Japansasaki@kuins.ac.jp

203

Shimatani, Hiroshi
Kumamoto University
Department of English, Faculty of
Education
2-40-1 Kurokami
Kumamoto-shi, 860-8555, Japan
shima@educ.kumamoto-u.ac.jp

738

780

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Page

Shimizu, Toshihiro
Kyushu University
Ropponmatsu, Chuo-ku
Fukuoka-shi, 810-8560, Japantshimizu@rc.kyushu-u.ac.jp

429

Suzuki, Mika
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
5-10-1 Sumiyoshi-cho,
Fuchu-shi, 183-0034, Japanmika@jlc.tufs.ac.jp

300

Shiozawa, Yasuko
Shumei University
4-7-17 Chuo Nakano-ku
Tokyo, 164-0011, Japanshiozawa@ic.shumei-u.ac.jp

98

Suzuki, Yubun
Kyushu University
Ropponmatsu, Chuo-ku
Fukuoka-shi, 810-8560, Japanyubun@rc.kyushu-u.ac.jp429

Simonian, Jean
Aichi University
Department of Comparative Cultures
1-1 Machihata-cho
Toyohashi-shi, 441-8522, Japanjsimonia@indiana.edu

91

Szirmai, Monika K.
Hiroshima International University555-36 Gakuendai, Kurose-cho
Hiroshima-shi, 724-0695, Japanszirmai@cba.att.ne.jp

Sugimori, Naoki
Osaka Electro-Communication
University21-2 Toji-in, Higashi-cho
Kita-ku,
Kyoto-shi, 603-8343, Japansugimori@isc.osakac.ac.jp452

Sun, Ching-Min
Jin-Wen Institute of Business andTechnology
7F, #14, Section 1,
Sing-Kuang Road
Taipei, Taiwan
Berlin@math.nccu.edu.tw.

571

Suzuki, Hiroko
Tokai University
The Research Institute of Educational
Development
2-28-4 Tomigaya, Shibuya-ku
Tokyo, 151-0063, Japanhiroszk8@yoyogi.ycc.u-tokai.ac.jp526

Suzuki Juichi
Kyoto University of Education
610-205 Kammatsu-cho
Kishiwada-shi
Osaka-fu, 596-0827, Japanjsuzuki@kyokyo-u.ac.jp

562

Author Index

146, 597

Tajima, Keiichi
Information Sciences Division
ATR International
2-2 Hikaridai, Seika-cho,
Soraku-gun, Kyoto-fu, 619-02, Japanktajima@isd.atr.co.jp

117

Takahashi, Miyuki
Chubu Gakuin University4909-3 Kurachi
Seki-shi, 501-3993, Japan
miyukit@hw.chubu-gu.ac.jp394

Takahashi, Satomi
Kyushu University
Ropponmatsu, Chuo-ku
Fukuoka-shi, 810-8560, Japansatomit@rc.kyushu-u.ac.jp

429

Takeno, Shigeru
Miyazaki Municipal University
1-49-504, Wachigawara
Miyazaki-shi, 880-0023, Japantakeno@miyazaki-mu.ac.jp504

Takeuchi, Osamu
Kansai University
3-3-35 Yamate-cho
Suita-shi, 564-8680, Japan
takeuchi@ipcku.kansai-u.ac.jp

583

781

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Page

Page

Tamai, Ken
Kobe Shoin Women’s College
6-19-8 Kashinodai, Nishi-ku
Kobe-shi, 651-2275, Japan
tamaken@aol.com

620

Van Lier, Leo
41
Monterey Institute of International Studies
425 Van Buren Street
Monterey, CA, 93940, U. S. A.
lvanlier@miis.edu

Tanaka, SachikoKanagawa University,
7-11-3 Sugita, Isogo-ku,
Yokohama-shi, 235-0033, Japanfwhs4204@mb.infoweb.ne.jp

210

Tani, Akinobu
Hyogo University of Education
3-10-23 Ichioka, Minato-ku,
Osaka-shi, 552-0012, Japana-tani@excite.co.jp

452

Wakita, Riko
408
Fukui University,
Faculty of Education and Regional Studies
3-9-1 Bunkyo
Fukui-shi, 910-8507, Japan
oriko@cup.com

Teng, Huei-Chun
272
National Yunlin University of Scienceand Technology
Department of Applied Foreign Languages
123 Section 3, University Road
Touliu, Yunlin, 640, Taiwan, R. O. C.
tenghc@pine.yuntech.edu.tw
Tomita, Kaoru
Yamagata University
3-3-4-302 Iida-nishi
Yamagata-shi, 990-2331, Japankaoru@human.kj.yamagata-u.ac.jp

533

Tsushima, Teruaki
Ryutsu-Kagaku University
3-1 Gakuen-Nishimachi, Nishi-ku
Kobe-shi, 651-2188, Japan
Teruaki_Tsushima@red.umds.ac.jp

579

Tsutsumi, Yutaka
Kumamoto Gakuen University
Faculty of Commerce
2-5-1 Oe,
Kumamoto-shi, 862-8680, Japan
yutaka@kumagaku.ac.jp

77

Van Heerden, Monica
105
Da-Yeh University
Department of English Language
112 Shan Jiau Road, Da Tsuen
Changhua County, 50515, Taiwan, R. O. C.
monicavh@mail.dyu.edu.tw

Author Index

Watanabe, Etsuko
Kinran College
5-25-1 Fujishirodai
Suita-shi, 565-0873, Japan
e-watanabe@kinran.ac.jp

260

Watanabe, Yoko
Nagasaki Junshin Junior College
235 Mitsuyama-cho
Nagasaki-shi, 852-8558, Japan
yoko_watanabe@n-junshin.ac.jp245

Wilson, David R.
84
Harton School
Equal Opportunities Department
Lisle Road
South Shields, NE34 6DL, United Kingdom
DavidRitchieWilson@compuserve.com
Yamada, Tsuneo
National Institute of Multimedia
Education
1-12 Wakaba, Mihama-ku
Chiba-shi, 261-0014, Japan
yamada@nime.ac.jp

117

Yamamoto, Eiichi
Kansai University
3-3-35 Yamatecho
Suita-shi, 564-8680, Japanbaaaj307@jttk.zaq.ne.jp

551

Yamamoto, Naoko
Kyoto Girls’ Senior High School
1-10-19-301, Kitanakaburi
Hirakata-shi, 573-0064, Japannaoko-y@mbox.kyoto-inet.or.jp

237

782

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Yamanoue, Takashi
Kyushu Institute of Technology
1-1Sensui-cho, Tobata-ku,
Kitakyushu-shi, 804-8550, Japanyamanoue@isc.kyutech.ac.jp

720

Yamauchi, Hisako
Kurume Istitute of Technology
2-24-26 Sanchiku, Hakata-ku
Fukuoka-shi, 816-0087. Japanyamauchi@cc.kurume-it.ac.jp

152

Yamauchi, Shoichi
Kyushu University
Ropponmatsu, Chuo-ku
Fukuoka-shi, 810-8560, Japanyamauchi@rc.kyushu-u.ac.jp

429

Yanagi, Yoshikazu
Nagoya Gakuin University
5 Naka-Ohkuwa-cho
Gifu-shi, 500-8027, Japanyanagi@ngu.ac.jp

512

Yano, Yoneo
Tokushima University
Faculty of Engineering
2-1, Minami-josanjima
Tokushima-shi, 770-8506, Japan
yano@is.tokushima-u.ac.jp

408

Yeh, Mei-Li
675
National Lien Ho Institute of Technology
1 Lien Kung, Kungching Li
Miaoli, 360, Taiwan, R. O. C.
mlyeh@mail.lctc.edu.tw
Yien, Li-Ju
National Lien Ho Institute ofTechnology
1 Lien Kung, Kungching Li
Miaoli, 360, Taiwan, R.O.C.
ljyien@mail.lctc.edu.tw

279, 675

Yoshida, Haruyo
Setsunan University
3-9-13-1216 Higashimikuni
Yodogawa-ku
Osaka-shi, 532-0002, Japanhyoshi@ilc.setsunan.ac.jp386

Author Index

Yoshida, Shinsuke
Setsunan University
3-9-13-1216 Higashi-Mikuni
Yodogawa-ku
Osaka-shi, 532-0002, Japansyoshi@ilc.setsunan.ac.jp

323, 386

Yoshihara, Shota
Nagasaki Junshin Catholic University
235 Mitsuyama-cho
Nagasaki-shi, 852-8558, Japan
shota@n-junshin.ac.jp

245

Yokota, Hideki
Mie Prefectural Kawananishi
Senior High School
3-9-9 Tsutsuo
Kawana-shi, 511-0901, Japan
yasuki@kuwana.ne.jp459

Yoshimura, Machiko
Doshisha Women’s College38-3 Momoyama Mori-Nagato
Higashi-machi, Fushimi-ku
Kyoto-shi, 612-0063, Japan
yoshijpn@osk3.3web.ne.jp

227

Yoshioka, Takayoshi
Toyota National College of Technology
2-1 Eisei-cho
Toyota-shi, 471-8525, Japan
yoshioka@toyota-ct.ac.jp486

Ziolkowski, Mike
University of Chicago
Department of Linguistics
1010 E. 59th St. Classics 304
Chicago, IL, 60637, U. S. A.
mike@ablab.com

69

783

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Executive Board
LET

IALLT

Hiroshi Asano, President
Morio Kohno,
Organizing Comm. Chair
Hiroshi Suzuki,
Kanto Chapter
Seiya Matsumoto,Chubu Chapter
Mikihiko Sugimori,Kansai Chapter
Masayoshi Kinoshita,
Kyushu Chapter

KAMALL

Read Gilgen, President
David Pankratz
President-Elect
Chris Higgins
Program Director
Lynne Crandall
Secretary-Parliamentarian
Lauren Rosen
Business Manager

Sung Uk Kim, President
In-Seok Kim,
Vice President

Organizing Committee
Chair:

Morio Kohno

Chair Emeritus:
Advisor Emeritus:

Liaison Officers
LET

IALLT

Akio Iwasaki,
Read Gilgen, President
Int’l Relations, Central Office LeeAnn Stone
Yasuyo Edasawa,
Chris Higgins
Int’l Relations, Kansai Chapter
Program Director
Haruo Takimoto, Central OfficeKazuo Kanzaki, Kansai Chapter

Yukinobu Oda
Sadato Tanimoto

KAMALL
Sung Uk Kim, President
In-Seok Kim,
Vice President

Secretariat
Secretary:
Vice-Secretary:
Treasurer:
Administrative Officers:

Yutaka Kitamura
Jun Arimoto, Yasuyo Edasawa
Shigeru Yamane
Takeshi Nozawa, Midori Sasaki, Judy Noguchi, Etsuko Watanabe,Mari Katayama, Miho Kadono

Coodinators and Committees
Fund Raising:
Program:Publications:Public Relations:Exhibits/Advertisements:
Executive Board and Committees

Yutaka Kitamura (Chief), Jun Arimoto, Yasuyo Edasawa,
Morio Kohno, Shigeru Yamane
Shuhei Kadota (Chief), Jun Arimoto, Yasuyo Edasawa,
Yukio Ikari, Yutaka Kitamura, Juichi Suzuki,
Osamu Takeuchi
Jim White (Chief), Donna Tatsuki, Richard Schaepe,
Osamu Takeuchi, Juichi Suzuki, Haruyo Yoshida
Osamu Takeuchi (Webmaster)
Juichi Suzuki (Print Media)
Yukio Ikari (Chief),Masami Yasuda, Yasuyo Edasawa
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Vendor Workshops:
Masami Yasuda
Workshops:
Haruyo Yoshida
Public Seminars:
Midori Iba
Satellite Seminars:
Juichi Suzuki
Poster Sessions:Natsumi Wakamoto
Software Demonstrations: Donna Tatsuki (Chief), Toshiko Sakurai, Thomas Robb
LLA 40th Anniversary Exhibit: Mutsuo Kikuno (Chief), Haruyo Yoshida, Yukinobu Oda,
Masatoshi Obata
Site/Equipment:
Osamu Takeuchi (Chief), Naoki Sugimori (Rokko Island
Bldg., Art College Kobe), Keiichi Ishikawa, (Fashion Museum),
Natsumi Wakamoto, (Kobe Bay Sheraton Hotel, Urban Gourmet),
Yuji Tanabe, Yasunari Saito, Yasuyuki Mizohata, Nobuyuki Aoki,
Kosuke Sugai,
Kawai Izumi (On-site Assistance)
Student Volunteers:
Yasuyo Edasawa (Chief), Haruyo Yoshida, Judy Noguchi,
Richard Schaepe (Recruiting and Training), Masatoshi Obata,Kazuo Kanzaki, Masahiro Shirai, Yae Furuta, Hisae Murakami(On-site Coordination)
Record Keeping:Toshiko Koyama (Chief), Kazuhiro Nomura (Mini-Disc Recording)Social Events/Hospitality:
Mikio Aoki (Chief), Akio Notohara, Haruyo Yoshida (Parties),
Toshiko Sakurai (Hospitality Web Page), Kiwako Yuba, Etsuko
Watanabe (Hospitality), Junichi Azuma (Guests)

Paper Selection Committee
Chair:
Morio Kohno, Kobe Kaisei (Stella Maris) College
Readers (Alphabetical Order):Jun Arimoto, Kansai University of International Studies
Ed Dente, Tufts University, U. S. A.
Yasuyo Edasawa, Doshisha Women’s College
Otmar Foelsche, Dartmouth College, U. S. A.
Kathleen Ford, University of California at Los Angeles, U. S. A.
Nina Garrett, Yale University, U. S. A.
Read Gilgen, University of Wisconsin, U. S. A.
Setsuko Hirao, Aichi University
Yukio Ikari, Osaka City University
Kazuhito Ishii, Fukuoka University
Shuhei Kadota, Kwansei Gakuin University
Yutaka Kitamura, Kansai University
Dick Kuettner, Washington and Lee University, U. S. A.
Hiroto Ohyagi, Takushoku University
Sue Otto, University of Iowa, U. S. A.
Kuan-Yi Rose Change, University of Colorado, U. S. A.
LeeAnn Store, University of California at Irvine, U. S. A.
Juichi Suzuki, Kyoto University of Education
Osamu Takeuchi, Kansai University
Ruth Trometer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, U. S. A.
Executive Board and Committees

785

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Photo Album
The following is a collection of p
hotos taken during FLEAT IV.
photos

R
e
g
i
s
-

FLEAT IV Photo Album

t
r
a
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i
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Poster Sessions

Not a Poster Session

FLEAT IV Photo Album787

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Oral Presentations

LET General Meeting

FLEAT IV Photo Album

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F
o
r
u
m
s

FLEAT IV Photo Album

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Software Workshops

Vendor Workshops

Information

D
E
s
k

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Workshops

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Proceedings of the FLEAT IV Conference

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Commercial Displays
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Proceedings of the FLEAT IV Conference

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Commercial Displays

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Proceedings of the FLEAT IV Conference

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Commercial Displays

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Proceedings of the FLEAT IV Conference

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Commercial
Displays

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Welcome
Reception

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Proceedings of the FLEAT IV Conference

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Welcome Reception

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Welcome Reception
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Party

乾杯

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Party

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P
a
r
t
y
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Party Events

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Closing Ceremonies

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Proceedings of the FLEAT IV Conference

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