A Research on CALL to Develop Multi-skills in Japanese

本研究的目的是开发一个计算机辅助教学系统，从多个维度提高日语学习者的语言水平。多项技能包括说、听、读、写四项技能，具有社会语言能力和跨文化和跨文化交际能力。对于海外学习者来说，拥有真正的交流机会来培养这些技能是非常重要的。为了提高学习者用日语交流的积极性，研究小组将互联网的使用引入了课堂。1997年，研究的重点是视频短片邮寄。如果澳大利亚的日语学习者通过互联网收发多媒体邮件与以日语为母语的人进行交流，这将有助于他/她获得更真实的目标语言交流技能。为此，课题组开发了一个视频剪辑打包系统，但其用户界面并不像预期的那样友好。1998年，墨尔本大学日语专业的学生和东北大学日语作为外语教学专业的学生开发了网页作为每节课的必备任务之一。此外，电子邮件交流已贯穿墨尔本大学的整个学年。东北学生制作的自我介绍网页让墨尔本学生清楚地了解了在跨文化背景下，网页如何在人际交流中发挥作用。它也是一个简单的网页样本，也是网页构建的动力驱动力。很明显，尽管日语网页的制作对日语学习者来说是一项相当繁重的任务，但如果有足够的指导和信息一步一步地彻底提供，它就会取得很好的效果。

The research purpose is to develop a CALL system to enhance Japanese learners' proficiency multidimensionally. Multi-skills include the four skills : speaking, listening, reading and writing, with sociolinguistic competence and cross-cultural and intercultural communication skills. For overseas learners, it is very important to have authentic communication opportunities to foster those skills. To have the learners raise proper motivation to communicate in Japanese language, the research team had introduced the use of Internet into classrooms.In 1997, the research focus was on the video clip mailing. If an Australian learner of Japanese communicates with a native Japanese by sending and receiving multimedia mail through Internet, it would help him/her to acquire more authentic communication skills in the target language. The research team developed a video clip package system for the purpose, however the user interface of it was not so friendly as expected. Consequently, the focus of the research shifted towards the use of web pages instead of the video clips.In 1998, the students of the University of Melbourne studying Japanese and the students of Tohoku University majoring in Teaching of Japanese as a Foreign Language developed web pages as one of the required tasks of each class. Besides, the e-mail exchanges have conducted through the academic year of the University of Melbourne. The self-introduction web page made by Tohoku students provided the Melbourne students a clear idea of how the web pages could work on the interpersonal communication in the cross-cultural setting. It also worked as a simple sample of a web page and as a motivation driver for the web page construction. It became clear that although the web page creation in Japanese is a rather heavy task for the learners of Japanese, it works well if sufficient guidance and information have thoroughly provided step by step.