A Study of EFL Teaching Material Generating System on the Internet

在这项研究中，我开发了一个总计算系统，可以利用互联网上分发的报纸/杂志文章自动生成英语教材。首先，我把一些文章分成了几个类别，让日本的英语学习者感到自在。其次，提出了一种基于学习者词汇能力水平的文章处理系统。在开发这个系统的过程中，我必须根据学习者日常使用的教材来详细掌握词汇的水平。经教育、科学、体育和文化部认证的初中英语教材有七种。在这些经认证的教科书中，教育部规定了所有学生在初中三年中应该接触的基本词汇。然而，我必须建立一个完整的词库，不仅包括指定的词，还包括七本教科书的编者使用的其他词和短语。创建的系统接受来自网站非特定用户的请求，这些用户是英语教师，并提供一个精心设计的菜单，供教师选择想要为其制作教材的学习者的水平。系统接受请求后，在各个界面中对用户需要处理的Web页面进行改造。本系统的重要意义在于：允许用户使用最新内容的文章作为自己的英语教材；并且系统本身可以通过切换系统所引用的词汇库来满足想要参加高中甚至大学入学考试的教师的要求。该系统为英语教材的编写提供了详实的基础，具有很大的开发潜力。

In this study I developed a total computational system that automatically generates EFL teaching materials utilizing the newspaper/magazine articles distributed on the Internet. First I classified a number of articles into several categories with which Japanese EFL learners feel at home. Secondly a new system is developed that process the articles based on the level of the power of vocabulary of the learners. In developing this system, I had to grasp in detail the level of vocabulary in accordance with the textbooks learners are using on a daily basis. There are seven types of junior-high school English textbooks certified by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture. In these certified textbooks the Ministry specifies the basic vocabulary that all the students should be exposed during the three years in junior-high school. However, I had to construct a complete word database that includes not only those specified words but other words and phrases adopted by the editors of the seven textbooks.The created system accepts requests from unspecific users of the site, who are EFL teachers, and presents an elaborate menu for choosing the level of the learners for whom the teachers want to make teaching materials. After the system accepts the request, it reforms the Web page which the users want to be processed in various interfaces. What is significant for this system is described as follows : the users are allowed to utilize the articles with the newest content as their EFL teaching materials ; and the system itself can be modified to comply the request from the teachers who want to make an entrance examinations for high-schools or even for colleges by switching the vocabulary database with which the system refers. As a result, the system can present a detailed foundation for making EFL teaching materials with a lot of potential.