Creating a corpus based educational word list for learners of Japanese - 6000 words for reading -

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K00708
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 02090:Japanese language education-related
• Research Institution: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
• Principal Investigator: Honda Yukari 東京外国語大学, 大学院国際日本学研究院, 研究員 (00817413)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: 日本語教育 / 語彙リスト / 基本語彙 / コーパス / 日本語教科書

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study developed a list of "6,000 Basic Japanese Vocabulary Words from a Versatility Perspective" ("6,000-word list") based on the Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese (BCCWJ). Honda (2019) developed a 10,000-word vocabulary list ("10,000-word list") by means of frequency and distribution statistics. To improve this list, the ranks were adjusted and refined based on a vocabulary survey of Japanese language textbooks to create the "6,000-word list". The "6,000-word list" also corrects problems with the "10,000-word list. Furthermore, the kanji vocabulary was assigned a Japanese-Chinese isomorphic synonym tag indicating the difficulty level of the vocabulary for learners of kanji-speaking countries. Finally, based on these vocabulary lists, a Japanese language learning support web tool for judging vocabulary level was released.

Free Research Field

日本語教育

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究は日本語テキストを読む際に役立つ基本語彙を6000語選定した。この語彙リストは日本語の書き言葉コーパスに基づき、汎用性の高い語彙を日本語教育的なレベル感を考慮して学習優先度順にランキングしている。そのため、この語彙は専門家の判定を主な基準として作られた語彙表の語彙と違うが、それは日本語の教師の直感が、語彙の使用実態や汎用性の高さと一致していないことを意味する。このように、コーパスと統計を基軸に語彙を選定し、量的研究に基づいて提示する総語数を決めてレベル分けを行うことによって、従来とは質的に異なる語彙リストを開発した点に本研究の学術的意義がある。