A Research on a Communicative Japanese CALL System

墨尔本大学高级日语班（日语5级）的学生在1995年和1996年与东北大学日语专业的学生进行了E-mail交流，日语E-mail交流是作为墨尔本大学日语专业核心课程的一部分而设计的。在阅读了同一篇文章后，澳大利亚学生通过电子邮件将他们的意见发送给东北学生。1995年的学生对日语的各个方面都很熟练，而1996年的学生在背景和语言能力方面表现出了很大的差异。自1996年开设6门课程以来，日语5的大多数学生都处于高中水平。因此，1995年成功的电子邮件通信任务需要修改。班级规模比上一年增加了7到8倍，由于时间和设备短缺，无法进行最受欢迎的电话会议。该项目的效果通过问卷调查、访谈和电子邮件文本分析进行了检验。对1995名学生的测试结果表明，学生的写作能力和使用正确、复杂的句子的能力都有所提高。然而，1996年的学生表现出不同的倾向。尽管他们认为自己在词汇量、阅读和写作技巧上都有了提高，但写得更多的学生却很少。1996年的项目似乎没有起到激励他们与母语为日语的人进行真实的交流的作用。对于他们来说，有一些有趣的活动来保持他们写作的动力是非常必要的。在1997年，我们将研究如何视频信件交换工程。

In 1995 and 1996, the advanced Japanese (Japanese 5) students at The University of Melbourne have had e-mail communication with students majoring in Teaching Japanese as a foreign language at Tohoku University.The Japanese e-mail exchange was designed as a part of the core unit of the course in Melbourne. After the participants read the same Japanese article on the week's topic, Australian students sent their comments via e-mail to Tohoku students who responded to them.The 1995 learners had high proficiency in all aspects of Japanese, while 1996 learners showed a wide diversity in their background and language proficiency. Since 6 courses were offered in 1996, the majority of students in Japanese 5 were in the higher intermediate level. So the e-mail communication tasks successful in 1995 needed revision. The calss size was 7 or 8 times larger than the previous year and it became impossible to carry out the most favored tele-conferencing sessions due to time and equipment shortage.The effects of the project has been examined by questionnaires, interviews and by e-mail text analysis. The results on 1995 students show that the students have become to write more and to use more correct and complicated sentences in more sophisticated ways. The 1996 students, however, show different tendencies. Although they regarded themselves to have improved in vocabulary, reading and writing skills, the students who wrote more were rare. The project 1996 seemed to have no effect in motivating them to have real communication with the native Japanese.For the higher intermediate learners, writing a lot in Japanese is very demanding. It is definitely necessary for them to have enjoyable activities to keep their motivation to write. In 1997 we will examine how the video letter exchange works for it.