Yukari Kato

Different Evaluations of e-Learning for Japanese Academic Reading between Foreign Students and Japanese language Teachers

This study aimed to investigate the different attitudes and preferences between foreign students and Japanese language teachers in using a reading support e-learning system for Japanese language education. In experiments, 20 language teachers and 22 foreign students used reading e-Learning content on LMS Serve and answered a 33-item questionnaire that investigated four factors (function, relevance, aptitude and achievement). Results revealed that foreign students show a positive attitude toward new tasks and explanation with graphics. They also approved of ordinary language tasks (vocabulary and grammar practices). On the contrary, Japanese language teachers indicated difficulty and inadequacy of textual information in new tasks and explanations on e-learning. They also showed a negative attitude toward ordinary language tasks.

E-Contents for Technological Literacy in a Pre-College Program

This study provided attractive course materials for technological literacy education for a wider audience, including first-year students, high school students, and foreign students in pre-college courses. This prototype e-Learning system is designed to engage a wider range of engineering faculty students paired up with Japanese language teachers to develop an e-Learning system, creating four modules that include video lectures, auto glossary for technical terms, reading materials with narration, and two types of comprehension activities. Evaluation results indicate that a multimedia e-Learning environment is effective and has the potential to better prepare students for engineering education, especially for advanced learners of Japanese in pre-engineering courses.

Evaluation of a Web-Based Training System

This study investigates the conditions under which graphical information can support reading comprehension in a second language. This paper presents results of an experimental study in which reading comprehension of foreign students in two different environments was compared: vocabulary learning only vs. vocabulary and grammar plus graphic tasks. The results indicate that tasks decreasing grammatical complexities were more effective than lexical practices.