Practical Research and Development of a Listening Program to Assist Japanese Learners of English by Providing Intensive Support to Overcome Individual Weaknesses

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In order to overcome the inability of listeners to correctly comprehend even simple daily conversations by native English speakers, practical research was conducted to develop an e-learning program to increase the share of bottom-up listening comprehension skills by increasing learners' knowledge about language, rather than a top-down approach which involves comprehension based on vocabulary recognition and understanding overall context.1) We confirmed previous results of experiments indicating the effectiveness of our English listening system which focuses on improving poor phonological analysis and the inability to hear liaison or unstressed sounds.2) In order to further increase the effectiveness of the English listening system, we developed a shadowing practice program using conversations.3) In regards to points 1) and 2) above, we have presented at the 46th and 47th Annual Conference for The Japan Association for Language Education and Technology (2006 & 2007) and have received feedback from experts.4) To ensure long-term viability of the current listening system, more than 1,000 English sentences were created and recorded in two levels, clear level and natural level, using female and male voices.5) We plan to continue improving the reliability of the Internet-based Listening Measurement System by incorporating a variety of components such as questions based in Item Response Theory as well as dictation-style questions.6) In order to tackle the problem of learners' inadequacy to process conversations at natural speed, we have constructed an Internet-based system for automatically evaluating and recording learners' reading ability which is adaptable to any type of English text.7) We also plan to use this reading system to gather data to substantiate our Reading Listening Learning Spiral Hypothesis.8) In regards to points 6) and 7), we plan to present at WorldCALL 2008 which will be held in August of 2008.