A Study on the Validity of Key Words to Describe Japanese Language Teaching Materials

本研究的目的是通过分析人们使用我们的WWW服务时记录的日志数据，选择有效的关键词来描述日语教材。1999年5月，我们在万维网上开设了阅读和检索由Bonjinsha出版社出版的日语教材指南第28号日文版的服务，并通过研究报告，ML（邮件列表）和万维网上的链接页面，请世界各地的人们使用它们。2001年10月，我们共收集了136 107次访问; 133 026次为只读访问，3 081次为搜索访问。对3，081个案例的分析表明，最常用的搜索项是学生的水平，日语标题，书籍描述，文本中使用的语言，最常用的关键词是“对话”。“交谈”被大量使用的原因尚不清楚。可能发生的情况是，还搜索了诸如“语法”、“听力”、“写作”和“阅读”之类的主题词，但没有搜索。事实上，日语教学专家认为，关键词应该表现出更多的多样性：例如，学习者的类型如“大学生”、“商务人士”、“儿童”、“居民”，学习类型如“强化课程”、“大班”、“自主学习”，以及学习方法或方式如“交际”、“项目工作”、“游戏”，专家们对检索项目的结果判断合理。本研究结果将有助于出版目录与广告的有效描述，以及必要教材的制作。

The purpose of this study is to select the valid key words to describe Japanese language teaching materials by analyzing the log data which are recorded when people use our WWW services. In May 1999, we opened WWW services to read and search Japanese edition of Guide to Japanese Language Teaching Materials No.28 which was published by Bonjinsha publishing company, and through research presentations, ML(mailing list) , and link pages on WWW we asked people all over the world to use them. In October 2001, we collected 136,107 accesses in total; 133,026 for read only and 3,081 for search. The analysis of 3,081 cases clarified that the frequently used search items were students' level, title in Japanese, book description, language used in the texts, and the most frequently used key word was "conversation". The reason why "conversation" was highly used was not clear. It could be happened that the subject words such as "grammar", "listening", "writing", and "reading" were also searched, but they were not. In fact, experts of Japanese teaching believe that key words should show more variety: e.g. type of learners like "university student", "business person", "child", "resident", type of learning such as "intensive course", "large class", "self-access", and learning approach or way like "communicative", "project work", "game", etc. The experts judged the results on search items were reasonable. The results of this study will benefit the effective description of publishing catalogs and ads, and the production of essential teaching materials.