An online platform to improve the learning effect in large-scale Japanese SFL speaking courses (本文)
Year: 2023
Type: dissertation
Abstract: An Online Platform to Improve the Learning Effect in Large-scale Japanese SFL Speaking CoursesJapanese language courses taught outside Japan tend to be large in scale and they provide insufficient speaking practice and feedback during classroom hours.Computer-mediated speaking practice and feedback outside classroom hours have drawn much attention as one possible solution for improving both the efficiency and the effectiveness of large-scale language courses.Despite such attention, few studies implement computer-mediated speaking practice and feedback for large-scale language classes, hence the practicality and learning effect have been unclear.I hypothesize that online oral assessments with computer-mediated speaking practice and feedback can be applied to a large-scale SFL class and will improve individual students' speaking performance.To investigate the practicality and learning effect of the proposed approach, I conducted three experiments over seven years with more than 1,600 students, using action research, observational research, and controlled experiment.This progressive set of experiments culminates in a complete system dubbed ORP Gym.ORP Gym has been used in actual large-scale Japanese SFL courses at an Indian university.As a result, the proposed approach achieved relatively higher uptake and error repair rates than a benchmark of the existing oral corrective feedback (OCF) approaches throughout the course.This research demonstrates how to design and implement the proposed system to improve learners' speaking improvement as well as exhibits its practicality, feedback utilization, and learning effect as evidence.The first experiment using action research observed detailed problems in a Japanese speaking basics course at an Indian university in the first cycle and introduced a learning management system (LMS) to enable individual monitoring and feedback and online oral assessments/exams in the second cycle.From the third cycle onward, the proposed LMS was extended as an online oral repetition practice support system (ORP Gym) to increase the number of computer-mediated oral assessments and provide speaking practice and feedback throughout the course.To alleviate the workload and time to generate computer mediated feedback, ORP Gym employed automatic speech recognition (ASR) and Online i External Assistants (OEA).Oral exam scores through the cyclic trials during the five-year action research were found to have significantly improved after the introduction of the ORP Gym.The second experiment using observational research confirmed the utilization of computermediated feedback by students on ORP Gym.It also measured their uptake and repair rates among observed speaking errors for the first time.As a result, the type of implicit audio and text feedback was actively utilized by the students and contributed to statistically significant speaking posttest score improvement.The uptake and repair rates were relatively high in the pronunciation category, but low in the grammar category.The third experiment using a control experiment examined the effect of teacher electronic feedback (TEF), which is a type of teachers' explicit text feedback.The result shows that the experimental group who practiced with TEF exhibited higher successful uptake (repair) rate among their speaking errors than the control group who practiced without TEF, especially in grammar categories.Throughout the three experiments, this research presents the practical difficulties with and findings from extending the LMS to improve the quality and quantity of large-scale Japanese SFL courses abroad.
Authors: カタオカ, ユカ, Kataoka, Yuka, 片岡, 友香
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7134539113