Development of and Pilot Studies on Effectiveness of Tasks for Vocabulary Acquisition

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A Web-BT System for Acquisition of Vocabulary for Japanese beginners has been developed. It can operate both in Japanese and English, The System, called "Kaguyahime", has the following features: (1) it is targeted for the acquisition of Japanese vocabulary. (2) It promotes autonomous learning. (3) It promotes collaborative learning. (4) Data derived from the learners will be used in the research of vocabulary acquisition.Sound files have been added to the System this year. However, as 2007 is the final year of the Project, the main task was to test and evaluate the System. It was tested by some international students at Oita University and feedback was obtained by Japanese language teachers at Australian Universities. On the whole, teachers and students had positive reactions to the System; it was generally thought that the System was interesting and useful for beginners. However, initially, some technical problems came to the surface. One of the problems, for instance, the corruption of Japanese letters, was solved by the obtaining of good technical advice. Other occasional difficulties involved the correct identification of the picture chosen by students in their attempt to associate the picture with the vocabulary meaning. This problem was solved by providing a meaning in English to each picture. The System is now available to distance-learners of Oita University.On research side of the Project, more substantial data will be needed to test the system and additional studies must be conducted on how learners can acquire vocabulary using the System. Six Papers on this Project and vocabulary learning were delivered at Conferences in Japan and overseas and six papers were published in 2006 and 2007.