2004 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Developing Software of English Teaching for Deaf Students Using Visual Cognitive Ability of Signers
| Project/Area Number |
15520372
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Foreign language education
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| Research Institution | Japan College of Social Work |
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Principal Investigator |
SAITO Kurumi Japan College of Social Work, Faculty of Social Welfare, Professor, 社会福祉学部, 教授 (30225700)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2003 – 2004
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| Keywords | English Teaching / Sign Language / Hearing Impairment / College Education / Learning Software / Visual Perception |
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| Research Abstract |
The numbers of deaf university students are increasing and with the advance of technology such as the Internet and e-mail, deaf students' motivation to study English has steadily increased. However, the support systems at universities and colleges as well as English teaching methods have improved little during these past ten years. English teaching software for deaf students who attend regular English classes needs to be developed. We should take advantage of signers' special visual perception when we design English teaching software.
I designed a model of English software based on some experiments. For example, in one of my experiments I presented English words in many ways and compared the effects on signers' visual cognition and memory. The result showed that signers were better at visual cognition and visual memory of moving words than still words. I propose that in the vocabulary section it is beneficial to move one English word many times and at the same time at the different places on the screen (1)from center to outside or (2)outside into the center. Whether the random movements are more effective than regular movements (eg.one-by-one-spread) depends on the subject. My experiment also showed that the signers perceived a few lines of English sentences simultaneously, which we should take advantage of in reading sections. For example, a whole speech of one scene of a movie can be put on the screen simultaneously, so that the learners could learn the grammatical structure of the sentences. In the grammar section, a few lines of sentence should be moved from right to left on the screen with translation in Japanese and sign language.
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