An Evaluation of Japanese CALL Systems on the WWW: Comparing a Freely Input Approach with Multiple Selection.

This paper describes the comparison of two Web-based systems with different methods of input and different methods of feedback. The Japanese writing CALL system, which was developed by the authors (called the T system), enables learners to key-in Japanese sentences freely, detects learners' errors and displays appropriate feedback messages to guide learners to correct their errors by themselves. Another system (called the M system) enables learners to input their answer from a multiple selection, and displays only the correct answer as feedback, regardless of the learner's response. Twenty-two Japanese language learners were involved in a comparison experiment to examine the usefulness of the T system. The results show that the T system is preferred to the M system in the input method and the feedback method. The results indicate that the ‘freely input’ method and the ‘feedback corresponding to the learner's typed sentence’ is better than the ‘multiple selection’ method and ‘feedback that only displays th...