In this study, we investigate the effects of raising the consciousness of learning objectives in learner-centered videoconferencing. The aim of this study is to determine the issues in using videoconferencing system for oral communication improvement in learning a foreign language (Experiment 1) and to evaluate whether consciousness of learning objectives leads to action based on that consciousness (Experiment 2). We implemented a system to raise learners' consciousness of learning objectives in second language acquisition (SLA) by displaying the target expression during videoconferencing, to encourage learners to utter the expression. The effect of this system was evaluated compared with a video conference system without expression display from the viewpoints of consciousness and action. The results showed a significant difference between the system with expression display and the system without expression display in both consciousness and action. However, the result also revealed that attention to system design and instructional design will be needed for more frequent action in videoconferencing.

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This paper describes evaluation methods of English utterances by Japanese speaker. The proposed methods consist of the following two methods: a pronunciation evaluation method and a prosody evaluation method. The pronunciation evaluation method detects phoneme-level mispronunciations, and the prosody evaluation method treats intonation and rhythm of the speech. The pronunciation evaluation method exploits VFS speaker adaptation technique to improve precision of phoneme labeling. On the adaptation, we developed a new adaptation scheme that uses Japanese utterance to adapt English acoustic models. This method enables speaker adaptation for speakers who are not good at English pronunciation. The prosody evaluation method compares the pitch pattern of native speakers' utterances and that of a learner's one, and returns a score that reflects the utterance's naturalness. Besides intonation, the method compares the rhythm of utterances between native speakers' speech and the learner's one. Evaluation experiments are carried out to compare native speakers' evaluation scores and the system's one against Japanese speakers' utterances, and we obtained significant correlation between the two evaluations.

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In the present study, we conducted a three-wave panel study with an interval of half a year in order to examine whether spontaneous use of the Internet by junior high school students improved their information literacy and its sub-skills. Structural equation analyses of data obtained from 539 students revealed that most of the short-term effects that developed within half a year failed to show positive significance. The longer-term effects that developed within a year, however, often indicated positive significance, mainly in terms of web-page creation or e-mail use. These results implied that sufficient time was necessary for spontaneous Internet use to develop information literacy. In addition, the positive effect of Internet use on the ability to create (the ability of an individual to create information based on his/her own ideas and opinions) and the positive effect of web-page creation on information literacy were identified. These effects were rarely reported in previous studies.

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In recent years, the Japanese-language proficiency of university students has been conspicuously deteriorating. Given this situation, we have provided our students with some methods on how to improve their command of Japanese. After the lessons, our students have to contribute their letters on daily life or current topics to a newspaper to check the attainment of their proficiency. We have been accumulating text files of their letters over three years. Our goal in this study is to statistically analyze the characteristics of our students' letters in order to take full advantage of the result of analysis in our class on Japanese proficiency. We calculated rhetorical features such as sentence length, Yule's K, and so on by using a Japanese essay scoring system called JESS, and then analyzed the result statistically. The analysis indicated there was a significant difference in sentence length and vocabulary diversity between our students' letters and the letters reported in the newspaper. On the basis of the findings, we are going to provide our students with more modified materials for Japanese learning.

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In this study, a questionnaire was administered to student teachers and their teacher educators with the aim of gathering information that can be used to improve and strengthen the teaching practice program. The data were analyzed to make clear what factors aid teachers and student teachers when they are engaged in activities at the overall preparatory stages of instructional design. (1) Using factor-analysis, we extracted and interpreted 13 factors such as teacher's manuals for textbooks, organization of teaching, encouragement, and readiness, among others. After considering the correspondence between the extracted factors and the scripts of instructional design and preparatory activities, the factors were arranged and classified as follows: a) interpretation and understanding of teaching materials (teacher's manuals for the textbooks, textbooks); b) presentation (concretization) of teaching materials (encouragement, response and reply, studies of teaching materials, learning activities); c) structure of the teaching process (structure of teaching, simulation); and so on. (2) While engaged in instructional design, student teachers make use of only observable and prominent aids while teachers, on the other hand, use latent as well as observable aids in the whole process of teaching. Furthermore, there are common characteristics in terms of the kind of school. Namely, elementary school teachers and student teachers put emphasis on the predictability of children's learning activities, while junior high school teachers and student teachers place great importance on how to explain the contents of each subject. (3) The aids used by student teachers in each region and school are affected by their advisors there. (4) At the beginning of their teaching profession, teachers design instruction by focusing on presentation (concretization) of teaching materials. As they become more experienced, they learn to make substantial and worthwhile classes, going through almost all of the following processes: a) understanding the learners, b) structuring the teaching process, and c) adjusting and considering issues through (concrete) trial classes. These processes are all included in the scripts of instructional design.

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This paper proposes a new automatic characteristics analysis method of e-learning contents using the response curve of e-Learning time data in the learning historical data-base. Many researches concerned with the mathematical model of the response time data have been studied, but they have a disadvantage that it is very difficult to interpret the parameters and estimate the parameters. The proposed model of e-learning time data in this paper is derived from maximizing the Entropy as same as Nagaoka, Wu (1989), but the unique feature of the paper is to derive the model with the following two parameters by employing the maximizing Entropy method with some restrictions to make the parameters interpretation more easily. The two parameters α and β in the model are respectively interpreted as follows: The parameter α means "Complexity of the content (which means the numbers of simple understanding processes to understand or solve the content)" and the parameter β means "Expected time of the simple understanding process in the content". That is, this means that the average of the learning time for a content is divided into the two parameters α and β. In the other words, the average of the learning time for a content is equivalent to the product of the two parameters α and β. Using these properties of the parameters, this paper proposes a new content evaluation method using α-β plain, which is called" α-β chart". Furthermore, the authors developed a LMS (Learning Management System) which it is inserted into, and show the effectiveness of the system by practical use.

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Learning by investigation using the Internet is going on in the context of school education. Web retrieval systems are useful for that purpose. When primary school students use particular terminology as keywords to retrieve information over the Internet, however, they will not be able to retrieve the desired information unless they enter the terms using the correct Chinese characters (hereafter kanji characters). As it happens, there are terms with kanji characters that young children will not have learned yet, in which case they will not be able to retrieve the correct information. The present research was conducted, therefore, to develop a retrieval support system with word conversion capability that will accept input in a kana syllabary or in a mixture of kana and kanji characters and still convert that input into the proper kanji characters. Using this system, entering search terms in kana or a mixture of kana and kanji characters will retrieve the same results as when entering those terms using only kanji characters. Moreover, even if one or two incorrect kanji characters are entered as part of a term, the system will select similar study terms and display them. Therefore primary school students whose learning of kanji characters is still incomplete will also be able to carry out correct searching and retrieval.

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We developed the "Keyboard Island Adventure", Japanese language keyboard learning system for elementary school children. In order to improve the speed and accuracy of input, the design principles of the learning system include a test function. For two months from May 2003, the system was evaluated by 1,897 children from 19 elementary schools, and before the official launch, we revised the test levels and adjusted the system to support large-scale access. The system was released free of charge to elementary school children nationwide in September 2003, and until March 2004, the site was used by 52,326 children. When we analyzed the study history of the students in grades 3 to 6 which represented the greatest number who registered, we found that the system improved the speed and accuracy of the children's Japanese language keyboard input, and that the test function helped to improve their level.

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