2001 ATJ Seminar
Thursday, March 22, 2001, Sheraton Hotel, Chicago, Illinois
Seminar E: Pedagogy: Teaching Japanese in the Internet Era
インターネット時代に対応した新しい日本語教育

II. 情報技術を用いた日本語聞き取り発音評価システムの運用と評価
"Implementation and Evaluation of a Testing System for Listening and Speaking Skills of Japanese Using the Information Technology"
三輪譲二、 岩手大学工学部
Jouji Miwa, Iwate University
miwa@cis.iwate-u.ac.jp
http://sp.cis.iwate-u.ac.jp/sp/lesson/j/index.html

LESSON/J (Japanese Language Education System for Speech on an On-demand Network) is for listening and pronunciation skills and uses the information technology such as Java and relational database. It is a CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) system delivered over the Internet for distance learning named E-Learning. The system is web-based, therefore any learner can use anytime anywhere on their convenience. It is programmed with Java and it is operating system independent. In face-to-face classes, learners may feel shy or intimidated practicing pronunciation or listening, but they would feel more comfortable and confident doing so in E-Learning.

The materials for listening of Japanese are syllables, words, sentences, consonant pairs, special morae and word accent. In the listening for sentences, it is possible to select one of 16 different speaking rates and dictation errors such as substitutions, additions and insertions are automatically detected with a method of dynamic programming. In the pronunciation, speech signals uttered by learners are automatically analyzed and evaluated. For special morae, the score is calculated as ability of pronunciation skill. And for word accent, a type of accent is decided such as 0, 1, 2 and so on. This information is useful for learners to achieve improvements

Learners' scores and materials for listening and pronunciation are managed by a relational database. This will allow the system to keep track of the weak points of the learner. The system is also easy to use for teacher for class implementation. The system will be available at the following URL.
http://sp.cis.iwate-u.ac.jp/sp/lesson/j/