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Learn
about ROBO-SENSEI's unique features.
Take
a brief tour of the program before you start.
Learn
how ROBO-SENSEI can be used for grammar brush-up, during travel, or
to supplement a course.
Learn
how to best incorporate ROBO-SENSEI into your school's Japanese curriculum.
See
how each lesson in ROBO-SENSEI corresponds to topics taught in popular
Japanese textbooks.
Return
to ROBO-SENSEI home.
System
Requirements for ROBO-SENSEI.
ROBO-SENSEI
by Noriko Nagata, University of San Francisco
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FEATURES
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ROBO-SENSEI is the first
Japanese software package that employs artificial intelligence
technology and natural language processing. This technology
allows ROBO-SENSEI to
analyze any Japanese sentence you type in and to provide detailed
feedback regarding your grammatical errors.
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FEATURE
LIST
- Easy
and fun to use.
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Based
on newly-developed artificial intelligence technology.
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Asks
you to compose full sentences in Japanese.
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Like
a real teacher, ROBO-SENSEI provides
immediate, detailed feedback tailored to your mistakes.
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Incorporates
twenty-four modular lessons that can be easily integrated
with standard high school or college curricula (also see Corresponding
Textbooks.)
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Organizes
lessons by the grammatical topics commonly covered in beginning
through advanced level Japanese textbooks (particles, relative
clauses, honorifics, etc.).
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Provides
five types of exercises in each lesson, including word-level,
phrase-level, and sentence-level production, paragraph-level
reading, and sentence-level dictation.
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Based
on real-life communicative situations.
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Includes
information on Japanese culture, history, literature, and
daily life.
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Presents
colorful photographic and cartoon images of Japan and of
everyday situations in each exercise.
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Handles
Japanese character (kana and kanji) input.
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Provides
detailed, printable reference notes describing the grammatical
constructions covered.
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Includes
a vocabulary glossary for each lesson.
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Provides
Japanese pronunciations of correct responses.
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TECHNOLOGY
Ordinary
language software programs lack artificial intelligence technology,
so their error analyses are very limited. They must compensate
for this by restricting your input to a narrow range of fill-in-the-blank
phrases or multiple-choice selections. They do not allow you
to practice producing full sentences, which is a necessary
component of genuine mastery. In contrast, with ROBO-SENSEI,
you are free to compose your own sentence in response to an
exercise question. If your sentence includes any errors, ROBO-SENSEI generates
intelligent feedback pinpointing the precise grammatical nature
of the errors. In this way, you can receive immediate, repeated,
patient feedback regarding your own specific weaknesses.
ROBO-SENSEI adopts
a cognitive approach that explains the underlying grammatical
principles and then reinforces them through explicit grammatical
feedback in response to your errors. The educational effectiveness
of such principle-based grammatical feedback has been shown
in a series of empirical studies (Nagata 1993, 1995, 1996,
1997a, 1997b, 2002, 2003; Nagata & Swisher 1995). ROBO-SENSEI also
focuses on production practice, and the effectiveness of production
practice over comprehension practice (Nagata 1998a, 1998b)
and over multiple-choice practice (Nagata 2002, 2003) has been
demonstrated.
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ROBO-SENSEI OVERVIEW
ROBO-SENSEI offers a series
of twenty-four Japanese language lessons readily integrated into
standard Japanese curricula from the beginning to the advanced
levels (see “Corresponding Textbooks”).
Each lesson is devoted to a target grammatical structure and
is unified by a cultural theme, such as department stores, supermarkets,
train stations, and the cities of Kamakura, Tokyo, and Kyoto. ROBO-SENSEI incorporates
Japanese characters, so you can type sentences in kana and kanji
and enhance your kana/kanji recognition skills. ROBO-SENSEI also
integrates colorful digital photographs of Japan that enrich
the communicative situations presented in the exercises.
In
the exercises, you will engage in a series of ongoing conversations
with a range of fictional manga-style characters. The conversations
are likely to take place in real life, so you can easily apply
what you practice in ROBO-SENSEI to
real-life communication. The software implements Japanese sounds
so that you can listen to and practice the correct pronunciation
of Japanese sentences.
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FIVE TYPES OF EXERCISES
Each ROBO-SENSEI lesson
presents up to five (5) different kinds of exercises to develop
your skill at each new grammatical structure gradually.
- VOCABULARY
AND GRAMMATICAL PATTERNS
To introduce new vocabulary and grammatical patterns, and to
provide some preliminary practice before you start to construct
entire sentences on your own, each lesson set begins with word-level
exercises in which you are asked to fill in a blank with a
single word.
- NOUN
AND VERB PHRASES
To gradually bridge the gap between word-level and sentence-production
exercises, there are phrase-level exercises in which you are
asked to produce target noun phrases or verb phrases.
- SENTENCE
COMPOSITION
Next, there are sentence-level exercises in which you will
produce entire sentences on your own. This is whereROBO-SENSEI’s
advantage over other language programs is most apparent, for
you are free to generate your own sentences and your own grammatical
mistakes. ROBO-SENSEI's
error feedback then provides reinforcement concerning the exact
grammatical principles you either failed to apply or applied
incorrectly. Generating sentences on your own is harder than
choosing multiple-choice answers, but studies have shown that
it also helps you learn the language better.
- READING
COMPREHENSION
Sentence-level
practice is followed by paragraph-level exercises (involving
reading comprehension) in which you are presented a short paragraph
simulating a written letter or journal entry, and are then
asked to fill in blanks in the paragraph using the words and
phrases you’ve just learned.
- DICTATION
Finally, there are dictation exercises, in which you are asked
to listen to and type a sentence as it is spoken by a
native Japanese speaker. This provides some practice
listening to spoken Japanese at natural speeds.
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REFERENCES
Nagata,
N. 2003.  “Intelligent
Language Tutor as an Application of Natural Language Processing,” in
Minami, M. and Asano, M. (Eds.), Linguistics and Japanese
Language Education Vol. III (Tokyo: Kuroshio Publishers).
Nagata, N. 2002. “BANZAI: An
Application of Natural Language Processing to Web Based Language
Learning,” CALICO Journal 19 (3), 583-599.
Nagata, N. 1998b. “The Relative
Effectiveness of Production and Comprehension Practice in Second
Language Acquisition,” Computer Assisted Language Learning
11 (2), 153-177.
Nagata, N. 1998a. “Input vs.
Output Practice in Educational Software for Second Language Acquisition,” Language
Learning and Technology 1 (2), 23-40.
Nagata, N. 1997b. “An Experimental
Comparison of Deductive and Inductive Feedback Generated by a
Simple Parser,” System 25 (4), 515-534.
Nagata, N. 1997a. “The Effectiveness of Computer-Assisted
Metalinguistic Instruction: A Case Study in Japanese,” Foreign
Language Annals 30 (2), 187-200.
Nagata, N. 1996. “Computer vs.
Workbook Instruction in Second Language Acquisition,” CALICO
Journal 14 (1), 53-75.
Nagata, N. 1995. “An Effective
Application of Natural Language Processing in Second Language
Instruction,” CALICO Journal 13 (1), 47-67.
Nagata, N. & Swisher, M. V. 1995. “A
Study of Consciousness-Raising by Computer: The Effect of Metalinguistic
Feedback on Second Language Learning,” Foreign Language
Annals 28 (3), 337-347.
Nagata, N. 1993. “Intelligent
Computer Feedback for Second Language Instruction,” The
Modern Language Journal 77 (3), 330-339.
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