2005 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
English Vocabulary Building for Elementary School and Junior High School Students
| Project/Area Number |
16520331
|
|---|
| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
|
| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
|---|
| Section | 一般 |
|---|
| Research Field |
Foreign language education
|
|---|
| Research Institution | Chiba University |
|---|
Principal Investigator |
NISHIGAKI Chikako Chiba University, Faculty of Education, Associate Professor, 教育学部, 助教授 (70265354)
|
|---|
| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
CHUJO Kiyomi Nihon University, College of Industrial Technology, Associate Professor, 生産工学部, 助教授 (50339272)
|
|---|
| Project Period (FY) |
2004 – 2005
|
| Keywords | English vocabulary teaching / CALL / English teaching for children / everyday life vocabulary / basic words for JHS / corpus linguistics |
|---|
| Research Abstract |
The government's change of policy toward ‘education without cramming' has resulted in a weakening of Japanese students' English vocabulary knowledge and performance. To address this issue this research project tried to sequence vocabulary teaching systematically across elementary school and junior high school grade levels. There were three major goals in this study : 1)identifying ‘500 everyday words' most relevant to elementary school (ES) students ; 2)identifying basic words for junior high school (JHS) students ; and 3)creating CALL material for students to acquire these words.
1)Identifying 500 Daily-Life Words Relevant to Elementary School Students
For the first time in Japan, ‘daily-life words for ES students' were identified by means of corpus linguistic technique that integrated three objective data : a)5,259 words relevant to students' everyday lives collected from 20 picture dictionaries published abroad and 10 published in Japan ; b)the statistical score showing a target word's use ‘with outstanding frequency' determined by comparing a children's corpus of spoken data, Child Language Data Exchange System (one million words), and the BNC Spoken Corpus (10 million words) ; and c)the U.S.vocabulary grade level word list.
2)Identifying Basic Vocabulary for Junior High School Students
The basic vocabulary for JHS students was selected in three steps : a)collecting all the words appearing in the six JHS English textbooks used in Japan ; b)identifying 1,608 different types of words from these JHS textbooks ; c)and of these, identifying the 553 words which appeared in three and more of the JHS textbooks.
3)Creation of CALL material
Based on the creation of these two original word lists, together with a sophisticated systematic program, we have developed CALL to meet the needs of instructors and students. Some of this developed material is currently being implemented in English classes at junior high schools in Japan.
|
Research Products
(30 results)
