DaRT: A CALL System to Help Students Practice and Develop Reasoning Skills in Choosing English Articles
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/cj.v16i2.121-155Keywords:
English as a Second/Foreign Language, Articles, Diagrams, Reasoning Tool, Pascal, LISPAbstract
DaRT is a Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) system for helping English as a Second/Foreign Language students master English articles. The system uses a diagrammatic reasoning tool described in previous studies (Yoshii, 1997, 1998) to present communicative contexts for exercises in choosing appropriate articles. These diagrams make explicit the "intent-assumption" factors involved in article choice for many situations and permit students and teachers to discuss these factors without relying on English language explanations which depend on concepts foreign to most Asian students. DaRT can generate numerous exercise sentences, provide help based on student interactions, and choose the next exercise based on student performance. DaRT functions, therefore, as a tutorial to help students acquire the skills necessary for analyzing and applying the "intent-assumption" factors in choosing English articles. This article describes the major stages of the project, provides details of the system components, and concludes with the results of an evaluation of the system by Japanese students.References
Brown, R. (1973). The first language. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Burton-Roberts, N. (1976). On the generic indefinite article. Language, 52 (2),427-448.
Celce-Murcia, M., & Larsen-Freeman, D. (1983). The grammar book: An ESL/EFLteacher’s course. Rowley MA: Newbury House.
Covitt, R. (1976). Some problematic grammar areas for ESL teachers. Unpublishedmaster’s thesis, University of California, Los Angeles.
Dulay, H., Burt, M., & Krashen, S. (1982). Language two. NY: Oxford UniversityPress.
Little, B. G. (1980). Acquisition of determiner functions. Unpublished master’sthesis, University of California, Los Angeles.
Master, P. (1987). Generic the in scientific American. English for Specific Purposes,6 (3), 65-186.
Master, P. (1988). Teaching the English article system. English Teaching Forum, 26(3)
Master, P. (1990). Teaching the English articles as a binary system. TESOL Quar-terly, 24 (3), 461-478.
Rinnert, C., & Hansen, M. (1986). Teaching the English article system. Paper pre-sented at the Japan Association of Language Teachers’ International Con-ference on Language Teaching and Learning.
Sugamoto, N. (1976). A comparative study of Japanese and English noun usagewith respect to number distinction. Unpublished master’s thesis, Univer-sity of California, Los Angeles
Yoshii, R. (1997). Diagrammatic reasoning tool for learning the English articlesystem. Paper presented at the Annual Symposium of the Computer As-sisted Language Instruction Consortium.
Yoshii, R. (1998). A CALL diagrammatic tool for ESL/EFL students learning En-glish articles. CAELL Journal, 9 (1).
