Developing Computer Programs for English Vocabulary Analysis Using Shell Script

Abstract

As Japanese learners/teachers of English as a foreign language, we are often faced with questions such as "What English vocabularies should we learn/teach?" or "How can we acquire/teach English vocabularies effectively?" The author has proposed new methods using computers for English vocabulary analysis and for effective teaching of English vocabularies to Japanese learners of English. In this study, computer programs which could quickly analyze English vocabularies were developed and trial runs were conducted in order to see their effectiveness. These programs were created using shell scripts and run under Linux. The specific purposes of this study were to speed up English vocabulary analysis using computers,then to make these programs capable of processing great deals of text data,and finally to develop programs which could help English teachers in making teaching materials. Through this study,10 programs were developed for English vocabulary analysis as well as five for the creation of teaching materials. As the results of our test runs show, these programs succeeded in the speeding up of the processing time for vocabulary analysis and development of teaching materials as well as making it possible to handle large quantities of text data more efficiently.