Evaluation experiment and result

1
MultiPod a Multi Linguistic Word Learning
System Based on iPods Hasegawa,
Kazunori, Satoko Amemiya, Keiichi Kaneko Haruko
Miyakoda, Wataru Tsukahara Tokyo University of
Agriculture and Technology, Japan s020050_at_cs.tuat.
ac.jp
, ,

Learning material made by learner
Introduction
In this system, the learners can participate in
making the learning material.

• 3 crucial conditions for effective and efficient
  language learning (Willis 1996)  1. exposure to
  the target language  2. use of the language  3.
  motivation in learning the language
• Multimedia technology can effectively assist
  language learning (Pennington 1996)

The learner takes a short movie or the still
picture.
MultiPod is an educational foreign word learning
system which is based on the iPods. The user can
easily make learning materials of short movie by
themselves. Also, they can download materials
from web database that they want to learn. The
learners can learn foreign words at any time and
anyplace by transferring their materials to their
iPods via iTunes.
The movie/picture is fed to the system.
Reference button

1. The user enters the spelling, the meaning of the
   word and the movie/still image file path. Then,
   the user can refer to a file from the reference
   button.
2. When the user clicks the conversion button, the
   system begins to make learning materials.

Spelling
Meaning
Movie/still image file
Select words
User
Conversion button
Screen of generation material
Make material
A learning material consists of a 5 second
movie/still image, text data and sound data.
During the five seconds, the pronunciation of the
word is repeated twice, and the spelling and the
meaning of the word are displayed as subtitles.
Download material
iTunes
User
User
Movie/still image
Spelling Meaning
Pronunciation
Learning Material
Spelling
User
iPod
Meaning
Pronunciation
Web database
Learning material
sec
Example of learning materials
0
5
Outline of MultiPod

• Why use iPods?
• Portability Mobility
• easy to carry
• learning materials may be replayed as many times
  as necessary
• easier for learners to create own learning
  materials compared to other media
• movies can be used as learning materials   cf.
  experiment by Al-Seghayer 2001       video clips
  text explanation vs. pictures text
  explanation       result using video clips had
  better effect on learning

The users can share their materials among the
users by registering them to the Web database.
The users also can evaluate the contents created
by others.
Screen of web database
Concluding remarks
Evaluation experiment and result

• We developed the educational foreign word
  learning system,
• MultiPod
• 1. Exposure to L2 made easier 2. Motivation
  in learning maintained 3. Extensive
  learner-centered task made possible
• The test result proved that the self-produced
  learning materials
• are effective in retaining the meaning of the
  foreign words.

We conducted an evaluation experiment in order to
evaluate the effectiveness of MultiPod.

• 10 subjects in our university
• 10 words
• Learning materials created by the subjects
• (2 words)
• Learning materials created by others(8 words)
• Translating the English words into Japanese.

Acknowledgement This study is partly supported by
the Special Coordination Funds for Promoting
Science and Technology, Ministry of Education,
Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)
Japan. It is also partly supported by MEXT Fund
for Promoting Research on Symbiotic Information
Technology.