Noriko Nagata

Professor

Chair, Department of Modern and Classical Languages

Director, Japanese Program

University of San Francisco

2130 Fulton Street, San Francisco, CA 94117, U.S.A.

Phone: (415) 422-6227; Fax: (415) 422-6928

E-mail: nagatan@usfca.edu

 

Research Areas

Intelligent Computer Assisted Language Instruction

Natural Language Processing
Second Language Acquisition
Japanese Linguistics
 

Awards

Winner of the 2004-2005 USF Distinguished Research Award

 

Publications

Computer Software

ROBO-SENSEI: Personal Japanese Tutor, Cheng & Tsui Company, Boston, Massachusetts, 2004.

 

      Special features:

  • Based on newly developed artificial intelligence technology (morphological and syntactic parsers).
  • Allows the learner to compose any sentence in response to a question.
  • Provides immediate, detailed feedback tailored to the learner’s mistakes (like a real teacher).
  • Incorporates twenty-four modular lessons, readily integrated as supplements into a standard high school or college curriculum.
  • Organizes lessons by the grammatical topics commonly covered in beginning through advanced level Japanese textbooks.
  • Provides five types of exercises in each lesson, including word-level, phrase-level, and sentence-level production, paragraph-level reading, and sentence-level dictation.
  • Based on real-life communicative situations.
  • Unified by a variety of cultural themes, including information about travel in Japan and Japanese history, literature, and daily life.
  • Presents colorful photographic and cartoon images of Japan and of everyday situations in each exercise.
  • Handles Japanese character (kana and kanji) input.
  • Provides detailed, on-line reference notes describing the grammatical constructions covered.
  • Maintains an on-line vocabulary glossary for each lesson.
  • Provides Japanese pronunciations of correct responses.
  • Written entirely in Java and runs directly on the user's web browser over the Internet for distance learning applications.

 

ROBO-SENSEI Lessons:

1.       Verb -Masu Form Lesson (At the Train Station)

2.       Particle Lesson 1 (Kamakura Tour)

3.       Particle Lesson 2 (Kamakura Tour)

4.       Particle Lesson 3 (Kamakura Tour)

5.       Particle Lesson 4 (Kamakura Tour)

6.       Noun Modifier Lesson 1 (Tokyo Tour)

7.       Noun Modifier Lesson 2 (Tokyo Tour)

8.       Verb Direct Form Lesson 1 (At the Supermarket)

9.       Verb Direct Form Lesson 2 (At the Restaurant)

10.   Verb Direct Form Lesson 3 (At the Supermarket)

11.   Verb –Te Form Lesson 1 (Izu Tour)

12.   Verb –Te Form Lesson 2 (Izu Tour)

13.   Honorifics Lesson 1 (Kyoto Tour)

14.   Honorifics Lesson 2 (Kyoto Tour)

15.   Honorifics Lesson 3 (Kyoto Tour)

16.   Relative Clause Lesson 1 (At the Department Store)

17.   Relative Clause Lesson 2 (At the Department Store)

18.   Relative Clause Lesson 3 (At the Department Store)

19.   Conditional Lesson 1 (Enoshima Tour)

20.   Conditional Lesson 2 (Enoshima Tour)

21.   Passive Construction Lesson 1 (Hakone Tour)

22.   Passive Construction Lesson 2 (Hakone Tour)

23.   Causative Lesson 1 (Daily Chores)

24.   Causative Lesson 2 (Daily Chores)

 

Editions

Nagata, N. (1993). Special Issue on Asian Languages and Technology, CALICO Journal, 19 (3).

Articles

Nagata, N. (forthcoming). An Online Japanese Textbook with Natural Language Processing. In Ian Lancashire (Ed.), Teaching Literature and Language Online, MLA (Modern Language Association of America) Handbook, New York.

 

Nagata, N. (2007). Input Enhancement by Natural Language Processing. In Carolyn Gascoigne (Ed.), Assessing the Impact of Input Enhancement in Second Language Education: Evaluation in Theory, Research and Practice, New Forums Press, Oklahoma.

Nagata, N. (2004). 自然言語処理を応用したインテリジェントランゲージチューター (Intelligent Language Tutor as an Application of Natural Language Processing). In Minami, M. and Asano, M (Eds.), 言語学と日本語教育 (Linguistics and Japanese Language Education) Vol. III, Kuroshio Publishers, Tokyo.

Nagata, N. (2002). BANZAI: Computer Assisted Sentence Production Practice with Intelligent Feedback. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Computer-Assisted System for Teaching and Learning Japanese (CASTEL/J ).   

Nagata, N. (2002). BANZAI: An Application of Natural Language Processing to Web based Language Learning. CALICO Journal, 19 (3), 583-599.

Nagata, N. (2000). Japanese Courseware for Distance Learning. Proceedings of the 12th World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA).

Nagata, N. (1999). The Effectiveness of Computer-Assisted Interactive Glosses. Foreign Language Annals, 32 (4), 469-479.

Nagata, N. (1998). The Relative Effectiveness of Production and Comprehension Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 11 (2), 153-177.

Nagata, N. (1998). Input vs. Output Practice in Educational Software for Second Language Acquisition. Language Learning and Technology, 1 (2), 23-40.

Nagata, N. (1997). An Experimental Comparison of Deductive and Inductive Feedback Generated by a Simple Parser. System, 25 (4), 515-534.

Nagata, N. (1997). Rules vs. Examples: An Experimental Study Using the Banzai Parser. Proceedings of CALICO Annual Symposium.

Nagata, N. (1997). 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. (1994). The Cost of Politeness. YMCA English Quarterly, Autumn, 1.

Nagata, N. (1993). Intelligent Computer Feedback for Second Language Instruction. The Modern Language Journal 77 (3), 330-339.

 

Nagata, Noriko. (1992). A Study of the Effectiveness of Intelligent CALI as an Application of Natural  Language Processing. Ph.D. Dissertation directed by David Evans, Laboratory for Computational Linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University. University of Pittsburgh.

 

Technical Reports

Nagata, N. (1994). Dropping Ni in Topicalized Position in Japanese. Technical Report 83094, Department of Modern and Classical Languages, University of San Francisco.
 

Presentations

A New NLP-based Online Japanese Textbook. Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO) Annual Symposium, San Francisco, CA, 2008.

 

Robo-Sensei's NLP-based Error Detection and Feedback Generation. Workshop on Automatic Analysis of Learner Language, Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO) Annual Symposium, San Francisco, CA, 2008.

 

自然言語処理に基づいた新しい「ロボ先生」オンライン教科書 (A New Robo-Sensei Online Textbook based on Natural Language Processing). International Conference on Practical Linguistics of Japanese (ICPLJ). San Francisco, CA, 2008.

Integrating New Technology into Asian-Language Classrooms. Cheng & Tsui Session. American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Annual Meeting, Baltimore, Maryland, 2005.

Prospects for an Online Language Textbook with Intelligent Feedback. Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO) Annual Symposium, East Lansing, Michigan, 2005.

Integration of ROBO-SENSEI into Japanese Curricula. American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, 2004.

The BANZAI Project: Empirical Studies on the Effectiveness of Intelligent Feedback and Sentence Production Practice. American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Annual Meeting, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2002.

Teaching Japanese particles: コンピューターによる助詞の効果的な教え方. Northern California Japanese Teachers' Association (NCJTA) Meeting at Foreign Language Association of Northern California (FLANC) Annual Conference, Berkeley, CA, 2002.

BANZAI in the classroom. San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, 2002.

BANZAI: Computer Assisted Sentence Production Practice with Intelligent Feedback. International Conference on Computer-Assisted System for Teaching and Learning Japanese (CASTEL/J), San Diego, CA, 2002.

BANZAI: A Web-based Intelligent Language Tutor. CALICO Annual Symposium, Davis, CA, 2002.

Phrase Structure Rules Applied to Intelligent Japanese Tutoring Software. International Conference on Practical Linguistics of Japanese (ICPLJ). San Francisco, CA, 2002.

BANZAI: New Intelligent Tutoring Software. Foreign Language Association of Northern California (FLANC) Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA, 2001.

Japanese Courseware for Distance Learning. World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA), Tokyo, Japan, 1999.

Interactive Strategies in Computer-Assisted Language  Instruction. San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, 1999.

An Overview of Some Empirical Studies on the Effectiveness of Computer Software in Second Language Acquisition, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 1999.

Japanese Reading Exercises in Java. CALICO Annual Symposium, San Diego, CA, 1998.

Rules vs. Examples: An Experimental Study Using the Banzai Parser. CALICO Annual Symposium, West Point, New York, 1997.

Japanese Language Instruction with the Banzai Program and HyperCard Japanese CALI. Northern California Japanese Teachers' Association (NCJTA) Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, 1997.

The Relative Effectiveness of Computer-Assisted Production and Comprehension Practice in the Acquisition of Japanese. Second Language Research Forum (SLRF) Annual Meeting, Tucson, Arizona, 1996.

The Use of Natural Language Processing in Computer-Assisted Language Instruction. American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA, 1995.

Computer-Assisted Japanese Instruction. Foreign Language Association of Northern California (FLANC) Annual Conference, Berkeley, CA, 1995.

The Instructional Effectiveness of Natural Language Processing. American Society for Information Science (ASIS) Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, 1995.

Metalinguistic Instruction about Non-Trivial Grammatical Systems. American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) Annual Meeting, Long Beach, CA, 1995.

Resources for Teaching Japanese Culture. Ethnic Literature Forum, San Francisco Unified School District, San Francisco, CA, 1994.

A Study of the Effectiveness of Intelligent CALI as an Application of Natural Language Processing. American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, 1992.

Assessing the Effectiveness of Natural Language Processing in Intelligent CALI for Japanese. Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, 1992.