Individualized learning: a course for Japanese heritage learners at a college level
Masako O. Douglas
University of California, Los Angeles

This paper presents an assessment of instructional effectiveness of a curriculum developed for learners of Japanese as a heritage language at the University of California, Los Angeles. Effectiveness is discussed in the light of the achievement of the goals and objectives of the course. The paper consists of the following five parts: 1) students profile and their needs, 2) description of the goals of the course, 3) overview of the course, 4) assessment of learners' progress, and 5) discussion: the effectiveness of the curriculum.

1. Student profile and needs analysis

1.1. Language proficiency

Heritage learners display a very wide range of competencies and proficiencies, which presents a great deal of challenge in terms of designing curriculum to accommodate varied specific needs of the individual learners. The scores of the Intermediate placement test at UCLA show this variety. The score of the grammar and listening tests distribute in a narrow range (81% to 96% and 88% to 100% for grammar and listening test respectively), while those of kanji test distributes in a quite wide range (zero to 65% for writing kanji and zero to 96% for reading kanji). Distribution of the reading scores fall between that of the grammar test and kanji test (45% to 82%). In reading test, in order to prevent kanji ability from influencing reading score, all kanji in the reading text were presented with yomigana, syllabary which show how to read kanji.

The chart shows that kanji knowledge is one of the areas that the learners need to develop.

A language background questionnaire was administered in the beginning of the course to six learners, who enrolled in the Intermediate course for heritage learners in Spring 2000. Self assessment on their Japanese and English language skills indicate their needs to develop literacy skills. The learners ranked their oral skills higher than literacy skills in Japanese, while all ranked high for four skills in English. Five learners reported that the first language they learned for literacy skills was English.

Self assessment of language skills

1.2. Language background

The language background questionnaire also reveal that the learners' parents, both parents or one parent at least, were born in Japan and came to the U.S. as the first generation after having grown up in Japan. One student is a first generation himself, born in Japan and came to the U.S. with his parents at age 5.

Regarding home language, half of the learners used Japanese only at home until they started schooling. However, once they started schools, there is a remarkable shift in their home language, from Japanese only to Japanese and English. They used English mainly to their siblings and Japanese to their parents or grand parents. There is only one learner who used only Japanese even after schooling started. Regarding formal education of Japanese language, all of them had some kind of education in their childhood at heritage language schools, schools for returnees to Japan, and/or courses of Japanese as a foreign language in adolescent.

Home Language

Formal Education of Japanese Language

These learners' competence in basic interpersonal communication skills is remarkably higher than those who have learned Japanese as a foreign language for a few years because Japanese was their home language. As shown in the results of the placement test and self assessment on Japanese language skills, however, their competencies vary in a wide range especially in literacy skills (basic kanji knowledge, and sophisticated use of kango) and in formal register, including but not limited to keigo and stylistic differences in both oral and written languages. Heritage language learners in other languages exhibit similar characteristics as described in Vald市 (1995) and Vald市 & Geoffrion-Vinci (1998). Curriculum for heritage learners, therefore, should accommodate these individually different needs.

2. Goals of the course

In an attempt to accommodate individually different needs, the goals of the curriculum are set as follows:

3.Overview of the course

For individualized learning, the course utilizes Internet for material selection, a computer program called JWPce for kanji and vocabulary learning, and portfolio for assessment. I will briefly describe the course here, but for detailed course description and rationale to use portfolio assessment, please refer to Douglas (1999) and Douglas (forthcoming). The Intermediate Japanese for the heritage learners is offered in spring quarter.

There are two 1.5-hour sessions a week (Tuesday and Thursday) over ten weeks. All sessions are conducted in Japanese.

In order to provide sufficient information about kanji and effective strategies for kanji learning, and to reduce the learner's fear and anxiety of learning kanji, strategy lessons are provided. Learners were given a training in kanji learning strategies in the following two ways:

1. In the beginning of the course, they were assigned to read a book (Douglas, 1998), which instructs learners how to learn kanji. Strategies lessons are part of this book.

2. Over the quarter, learners marked the strategies in the check list , which they focused and used when they learned kanji in reading assignments. This activity aims at building awareness of kanji learning strategies. There were six reading assignments throughout the quarter. So, the learners were exposed this activity six times.

The course also aims at providing the learners with information of register as well as classroom activities that expose them to it.

Learners individually chose reading materials on the Internet and selected kanji to learn. Learners learn their target kanji, utilizing a computer program called JWPce, which provide on-line dictionary, kanji information, frequency count of kanji etc. Kanji quizzes and oral interview tests were administered to the learners individually.

4.Assessment of learners' progress

In order to assess learners' progress over ten weeks, the following direct measurement and self-report were used.

The results of the pre-tests were also used to provide the learners with diagnosis information about their language competence at entry to the course. I will show the results of these assessments.

4.1. Kanji diagnosis pre-post test

In order to measure the learners' kanji ability, Kanji Diagnosis Test (Kano et al. 1993) was administered twice; in the beginning and the end of the course. The test consists of 12 parts: meaning, internal structure, shape (radicals), writing single kanji, writing kanji in compound, choice from context, usage (part of speech), usage (inflectional part), reading from context, reading single kanji (Japanese reading), reading compound kanji (Chinese reading), homophone and phonetic knowledge..

All learners scored better in the post-test and the difference between these two tests was statistically significant (t-test, t=1.94, df=5, p=.002). All the learners in the course significantly improved their kanji ability for ten weeks. The same results, i.e. significantly better scores in post-test, was obtained in '98 as well (t-test, t=-7.76, df=11, p=.000).

4.2.Kanji learning strategies pre-post assessment

Strategy Inventory of Kanji Learning (Douglas, 1998) was administered in the beginning and the end of the quarter. It consists of three parts: Part A: memory strategies, Part B: Cognitive strategies, and Part C: Compensation strategies. For analysis of the results of pre- and post- assessment, Sign test for nonparametric repeated measure was used. The statistical analysis indicates that significant number of the learners improved in their rating of strategies of learning kanji on the post test (p=.05).

Spring 2000

(p=.05)

4.3.Cloze pre-post test

In order to measure learner's reading ability, pre- and post- cloze tests were administered in spring 2000. It was administered to five students. One student was absent on the test day.. The post-test scores were better than those of the pretest at p=0.12

4.4. Quarter end evaluation

Quarter end evaluation asking the students questions in three areas:

To the questions in the areas, all learners, except one in '98, answered positively. Mean scores of the learners' responses to the rest of the questions are shown in the table. The Kruskal Wallis Test shows there is not difference in all variances. This means, learners' evaluation on all these items was high without significant difference.

Learners for the past three years highly valued utilization of the technology for their study. Their rating is equally high according to the Kruskal Wallis test. They also valued learning formal register, formal vocabulary and keigo. Again the Kruskal Wallis test indicates no significant difference in variances. Mean scores of the rating in all cells are high.

Discovery of effective way(s) of learning Japanese

	Found effective way of learning	Use that way in future?
Spring '98 (n=12)	Yes :11 (92%) No: 1 (8%)	Yes :11 (92%) No: 1 (8%)
Spring '99 (n=9)	Yes: 8 (100%) No: 0 (0%) No answer:1	Yes: 8 (100%) No: 0 (0%) No answer:1
Spring '00 (n=6)	Yes: 6 (100%) No: 0 (0%)	Yes: 6 (100%) No: 0 (0%)

Utilization of the technology for learning (5-point Likert scale: 1=never true of me; 5= always true of me)

Learning Japanese (5-point Likert scale: 1=never true of me; 5= always true of me)

4.5. Relationship between awareness training in strategy use and kanji knowledge

Lastly, this study examined relationship between awareness training in strategy use and development of kanji knowledge. The curriculum aims at an organized effort in bringing the learners to an awareness of their own learning characteristics and a knowledge of Japanese. The learners were instructed to focus on some strategies, which are in the check list every time they learn kanji and vocabulary. Frequency of the strategies, which the learners reported to use were counted for each learner. The items, which gained an increase in post-test scores in the kanji diagnosis test were selected. Rank orders of the frequency of the strategies and items in kanji test are compared. The strategies and the items in the kanji test, which represent the same concept, are assigned the same number for rank order comparison. Spearman's rho correlation between these two variables were not significant, except one learner (learner #1: Correlation Coefficient=0.66, p=0.02). However, we can see that the strategies intentionally learned over the course contributed to the increase of the scores of the items in the kanji diagnosis test, which are related to the given strategies. Among the strategies, the strategy #8 ". Learn On yomi (Chinese reading) and Kun yomi (Japanese reading ) of kanji " appears in high rank in five out of six learners' check list. Further analysis reveals that learners' conscious use of this strategy contributed to an increase of the post diagnosis test scores in the items of: reading single kanji (Japanese reading), reading compound kanji (Chinese reading), homophone and phonetic knowledge. All are sound related knowledge.

5.Discussion: effectiveness of instruction

The purpose of this study was to examine effectiveness of instruction. In other terms, to examine if the curriculum goals are achieved. The goals of the course are:

The encouraging results of direct measurements of kanji knowledge and a self report on strategic knowledge, and constructive feedback from the learners in the quarter end evaluation show that the curriculum achieved its intended goal, i.e. learners further strengthen their underdeveloped language competence in individualized learning, utilizing effective strategies. Cloze test, although a small number of the learners, also revealed that some learners' reading ability increased in the end of the course. The learners reported that they learned formal vocabulary, which is related to kanji ability .

Recent theory on second and foreign language acquisition view strategic competence as one of the major components of language ability (Canale and Swain, 1981) and research has been conducted in the following three fields: second language learning strategies and categorization of the strategies, the effect of a training of language learning strategies on second and foreign language acquisition, and variables which affect utilization of language learning strategies (Bialystock, 1981; O'Malley & Chamot, 1990; Oxford, 1989, 1990; Oxford & Crookall, 1989; Oxford & Nyikos, 1989; Politzer & McGroarty, 1985; Rubin, 1975).

There are studies which report on effectiveness of training learners to use strategies in learning foreign or second languages (Bourke, 1997; Carrell et al., 1989; O'Malley et al., 1985 ) The curriculum, which was examined in this study aimed at a more organized effort in bringing the learners to an awareness of their own learning characteristics (i..e. training of procedural knowledge) and developing knowledge of Japanese.

The analysis of the frequency of the strategies that the learners focused in their study, and items in kanji diagnosis test, which gained an increase in the pos- test scores, show some correlation, although statistic significant is not found. Learners reported that they found an effective way of learning kanji and would continue using them in their future study.

The results in this study implies that if the instruction is individualized so that the learners can focus on what they need to improve, the learning occurs in an individually different but in an equally effective way.

This study is limited to examining mainly the development of kanji knowledge, kanji learning strategies, and reading ability. Future studies need to measure learner's reading ability by a cloze test with a large sample as well as by other assessments such as analysis of learners' recall of the passage they read, measurement of writing ability and development of formal register and stylistic difference in oral and written languages as well.

References

Bialystock, E. 1981. The role of conscious strategies in second language proficiency. Modern Language Journal. Vol.65: 24-35.

Bourke, B. (1997) Maximizing Efficiency in the Kanji Learning Task. Submitted in Department of Asian Languages and Studies, University of Queensland, Australia. For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Canale, M. and Swain, M. 1981. A theoretical framework for communicative competence. In A. S. Palmer, P.J.M. Groot and G. A. Trosper (eds.), The construct validation of tests of communicative competence. Washington D.C.: TESOL.

Carrell, Patricia, Becky G. Pharis & Joseph C. Liberto.1989. Meta-cognitive strategy training for ESL reading. TESOL Quarterly, 23, 647-78.

Douglas (forthcoming) Teaching heritage language: Individualized learning. K. Nakajima (Ed.) Learning Japanese in the network

Douglas, M. O. 1999. Individualized learning utilizing the Internet and JWPce computer program: A case study of heritage Japanese language learners. Proceedings. Computer Assisted System for Teaching and Learning/Japanese. University of Toronto.

Douglas, M. (1998). A practical guide to learning kanji: for learners from an alphabetic background. McGraw-Hills.

Douglas, M. O. 1998. Strategy Inventory of kanji learning (unpublished). Revised version of Strategy Inventory of kanji learning in doctoral dissertation.

Kano, C., Shimizu, Y., Takanaka, H. and Ishii, R. 1989. Basic Kanji Book. Tokyo: Bonjim-sha Co.

Kano, C., Shimizu, Y., Takanaka, H., Ishii, R. and Akutsu, T. 1993. Intermediate kanji book: kanji 1000 plus. Tokyo: Bonjin-sha Co.

Ma, B. 1994. What is the FARE to the land of effective language learning? D. Gardner & L. Miller (Eds.) Directions in self-access language learning. Hong Kong University Press. Pp. 59-63.

O'Malley, J.M. & Chamot, A.U. 1990. Learning strategies in second language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

O'Malley, J. M., Chamot, A. U., Stewner-Manzanares, G., Russo, R. P., & Kupper, L. (1985). Learning strategy application with students of English as a second language. TESOL Quarterly, 19, 557-584.

Oxford, R.L. 1990. Language learning strategies. New York, NY: Newbury House Publishers.

Oxford, R.L. 1989. Variables affecting choice of language learning strategies by university students. Modern Language Journal. Vol. 73:291-300.

Oxford, R.L. & Crookall, D. 1989. Research on language learning strategies: methods, findings, and instructional issues. Modern Language Journal. Vol. 73: 404-418.

Oxford, R.L. & Nyikos, M. 1989. Variables affecting choice of language learning strategies by university students. Modern Language Journal. Vol. 73:291-300.

Politzer, R. L. & McGroarty, M. 1985. An exploratory study of learning behaviors and their relationship to gain in linguistic and communicative competence. TESOL Quarterly. Vol.19:103-123.

Rubin, J. 1975. What the good language learner can teach us. TESOL Quarterly. Vol. 9: 41-51.

Valdés, G. 1995. The teaching of minority languages as academic subjects: pedagogical and theoretical challenges. Modern Language Journal. No. 79: 299-328.

Valdés, G. and Geoffrion-Vinci, M. 1998. Chicano Spanish: the role of the "underdeveloped" code in bilingual repertoires. Modern Language Journal. No. 82, 473-501.

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