Effects Comparison between English and Chinese Speakers in Learning Japanese Role Words with Comic Scenes

Abstract

The role word is one of the expressions for letting people imagine one’s character. It is difficult for people to learn the role words from conversation examples written in textbooks of foreign language because few examples are shown to learn the role words on the textbooks. Comic scenes have the examples of conversation in their line texts of character’s speech. We have proposed a support system for learning Japanese role words with comic scenes. The system classifies comic scenes according to a role word included in the scenes. System users can learn how to use role words by watching comic scenes and lines. We have verified the efficiency of the system for Chinese speakers whose language culture is similar with Japanese language culture; both of them use Kanji in writing. The good results might be caused by the similarity of language culture. In this paper, we report results of an experiment with English speakers. The results of English speakers were compared with those of Chinese speakers. We verified that the system can support English speakers to learn Japanese role words. We also discuss improvements of our system by referring comments from English speakers. They said that the system should enables the users to learn the role words in enjoying comic stories.