158 'in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like 82 catch a bat, and that's very like a mouse, you know. But do cats eat bats, I 150 Alice; 'I must be shutting up like a telescope.' And so it was indeed: she was 122 how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only know 35 went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped 159 the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could 129 rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this time she found a little 171 there's no use in crying like that!' said Alice to herself, rather sharply 96 to be lost: away went Alice like the wind, and was just in time to hear it 159 I wonder what I should be like then?' And she tried to fancy what the 48 it was empty: she did not like to drop the jar for fear of killing somebody(Text from Alice in the Wonderland, Chapter 1)
Improvement of the computer technology made it possible to use KWIC concordance programs not only in academic areas, but in language education. The application of KWIC concordance programs to the language education started in the mid 80Õs. (Higgins and Johns, 1984; Johns, 1986; Tribble and Jones, 1990)
Why is KWIC concordance effective in foreign language learning? One reason is that KWIC works as a tool to learn word usages inductively, and another reason is that it complements lack of native intuition on word usages in most foreign language classes.
For the foreign language learners, the usage (collocation or selection restriction) of each word should be acquired to use the word to produce new sentences in the target language. However, usage acquisition is not as easy as the word meaning memorization, because usage acquisition is the process of extracting abstract patterns from actual uses of sentences in order to utilize the pattern to produce new sentences. This type of knowledge acquisition is called Òprocedural knowledge.Ó It is no use to present the procedural knowledge as a form of declarative knowledge. Each of these two knowledge has its own acquisition process. (GagnŽ 1985)
The examples produced in the form of KWIC can be regarded as resources for the learners to work with to discover usage patterns by themselves. The learning activity of finding patterns is the first step acquiring procedural knowledge. As learners get accustomed to finding the patterns, the patterns get incorporated into the learners knowledge as procedural knowledge, which leads to automatic unconscious application of the knowledge.
Spoken languages, however, are not the same as written languages in many ways. Spoken languages accompany the context of situation as well as the context of text. In other words, spoken expressions cannot be fully understood without the situational context including tones of speech, facial expressions or gestures. In order to be fluent with spoken languages, learners have to learn the principles of pragmatics which work in the context behind the language itself.
Hypermedia has made it possible to handle text, sound, and movies (situational information) all together on computers. Learner can retrieve the target spoken phrases with sounds and movies in the form of KWIC. We have created a program called Quick-KWIC-Dialog (QKD) with which learners can take a look at a series of movies with sounds, each of which includes the key word required by the learners. This version of QKD uses a set of 30 minute digitized movies as a hypermedia corpus to retrieve.
The bottom part of the QKD screen is the text field showing the result of the keyword retrieval (Figure 2). In Figure 2, the utterances including the key word ÒandÓ are shown with the utterance index number at the head of each utterance. Clicking on each utterance, then, makes the program play the corresponding part of the movie with sound (see Figure 1). In addition to the selected clip of the movie, learners can add several utterances before and after the selected utterance as a context. Thus learners can watch the series of movie portions which include the key word they want to learn. In order to observe the speakerÕs non-verbal characteristics, each speakerÕs bust movies from the front are shown on the both sides. Here, learners can watch the speakerÕs movement of eyes, hands, and body to the utterance. Observing a series of movie clips which include the same key word can give the learners the opportunities to find some patterns of the correlation between the verbal communication and the non-verbal communication, which can never be given by observing conversation from the beginning to the end in linear order.
Besides, a movie taken from the third personÕs point of view is shown in the middle of the screen. This provides information concerning the situational context as a whole. The learners can watch the two speakers easily at the same time. This also gives the learners a chance to catch any features the listener shows while listening.
Fotos, S. (1996). Multimedia Language Teaching. Logos International.
GagnŽ, E. D. (1985). The Cognitive Psychology of School Learning. Scott, Foresman and Company.
Higgins, J., & Johns, T. (1984). Computers in Language Learning. London: Collins ELT.
Johns, T. (1986). Micro-Concord: A Language Learner's Research Tool. System, 14(2), 151-162.
Sinclair, J. (1991). Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford University Press.
Tribble, C., & Jones, G. (1990). Concordances in the Classroom. Longman.
Masatoshi SUGIURA, an associate professor at Nagoya University, Japan, has created hypermedia programs including HyperLibrary, HyperComp, QuickDialog, HyperPictureDiactioary, HyperDictation, and HyperJP. He is the cofounder of the Hypermedia Works Group, Japan. EFL, Text Processing Workshop, and Language Acquisition Theory are some of the courses he has taught so far.