The Development of Multimedia English Sound Training Materials for Japanese Elementary School Children from Perspectives of Difficulty and Intelligibility

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26370732
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Foreign language education
• Research Institution: Meijo University (2016); Gifu Pharmaceutical University (2014-2015)
• Principal Investigator: NISHIO Yuri 名城大学, 外国語学部, 教授 (20455059)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): TATSUMI Toru 岐阜大学, 教育学部, 教授 (10452161)
• Research Collaborator: SERAG Adam 岐阜薬科大学, 薬学部, 准教授 (60622983)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 小学校英語活動 / 発音 / マルチメディア教材 / 習得困難度 / 中心特性

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In order to foster global communicators with English skills, we developed multimedia English Sound Training Materials for Japanese elementary school children from the perspectives of "difficulty" and "intelligibility". Specific features of the native language affect some features of the target language to be acquired and some mispronounced sounds may hinder the intelligibility of the communication between NSs and NNSs. First we reviewed the previous research. Next, we analyzed which words and sentences and how much elementary school students have learned from the English activity textbooks named “Hi, Friends 1 & 2” and also analyzed the English sounds from the attached the textbooks' CDs. And then, we selected the words and sentences based on the concepts of difficulty and intelligibility. From these procedures, we developed the multimedia materials consisting of native speaker’s video clips showing her pronunciation, pictures and letters corresponding to words and sentences.

Free Research Field

外国語教育