Generalization support environment for understanding ways to use English words

Tomoko Kojiri,Takushi Yamada

doi:10.1186/s41039-020-00142-8

Tomoko Kojiri, Takushi Yamada

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s41039-020-00142-8

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Abstract

When we translate Japanese sentence into English, sometimes several English words become the candidates. However, the usage situation of these candidate words is not the same. In order to choose appropriate words from them, we need to understand the usage situation for each candidate words. Usage situation of the words can be inferred by co-existing words in their example sentences. Co-existing words in example sentences are not always the same, so in order to understand usage situation, we need to generalize co-existing words from several example sentences. However, some of us who do not consciously generalize the co-existing words do not acquire the usage situation. This paper proposes the system which provides the environment where we can explicitly generalize co-existing words (keywords) in the example sentences to acquire the usage situation of the target words. This system also has a generalization support mechanism to provide concepts of words acquired through WordNet as hints. According to the experimental results, participants who used the system in learning English words reduced the number of incorrectly choosing the words and promoted to derive the own understanding of the usage situation.

Highlights

When we learn second language, it is sometimes difficult to understand the usage situation of words, especially if there are more than one words of the similar meaning
English words create, make, build, and design are all translated into the same Japanese word tsukuru, but their meanings are slightly different
If we only understand the meanings of these English words by corresponding Japanese words, we cannot tell their differences and, are not able to use these words at the correct situation

Summary

Introduction

When we learn second language, it is sometimes difficult to understand the usage situation of words, especially if there are more than one words of the similar meaning. Gamification is introduced to make memorization task enjoyable (Hasegawa, Koshino, & Ban, 2015; Smith et al, 2013) These approaches might promote the memorization of the meaning of English words, but did not support deep understanding of the meaning of words including their usage situations. Nishihara et al introduced comic to learn role words in Japanese and create quizzes by using scenes in the comic book (Nishihara, Matsuoka, & Yamanishi, 2018). These systems encouraged us to learn words according to our context. They did not explicitly discriminate the usage situation of the similar words

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