A Study of EFL Teaching Material Generating System on the Internet

在这项研究中，我开发了一个全计算系统，该系统利用互联网上发布的报纸/杂志文章自动生成EFL教材。首先，我将一些文章归类为几个类别，让日本的英语学习者感到宾至如归。其次，开发了一个新的基于学习者词汇能力水平的文章处理系统。在开发这个系统时，我必须根据学习者日常使用的教科书详细掌握词汇水平。经文部科学、体育和文化部认证的初中英语教材有七种。在这些认证的教科书中，教育部规定了所有学生在初中三年期间应接触的基本词汇。然而，我必须构建一个完整的词库，其中不仅包括那些指定的单词，还包括七本教科书的编辑采用的其他单词和短语。创建的系统接受网站上非特定用户的请求，他们是英语教师，并提供了一个精心设计的菜单，用于选择教师想要为其制作教材的学习者的级别。系统接受请求后，对用户想要处理的Web页面进行各种界面改造。该系统的意义在于：允许用户使用最新内容的文章作为他们的英语教学材料；系统本身可以进行修改，以满足希望参加高中甚至大学入学考试的教师的要求，通过切换系统参考的词汇库来实现。因此，该系统可以为制作具有很大潜力的EFL教材提供详细的基础。

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.