Abstract
There are many ways to improve reading comprehension for learners of English as a foreign language. Learning vocabulary is one of the ways to improve it. The more vocabulary learners acquire, the deeper their understanding becomes when reading English texts. It is suggested that the learners improve reading comprehension if they understand unknown words before reading a text. The Word-level Classification and Vocabulary Learning System (WCVL) was designed based on the constructivism education theory and the cognitive theory of multimedia learning. It was developed by using the Waterfall software development methodology. The NLP-Compromise JavaScript library was used for morphological analysis to extract the words in an English text. The extracted vocabulary was also classified into 12 difficulty levels based on the ALC12000 vocabulary database. The system displays only the words whose levels are higher than the student's estimated vocabulary level and it also adds the Japanese and Thai meanings. The WCVL system provides six types of exercises for students to learn unknown words and collects learned vocabulary in the user's database. To make the system available on any device, responsive web design was employed, which adapts to the user's device environment depending on the screen sizes and the types of operating systems. This study investigated a new approach to learning unknown words through various vocabulary practices using the WCVL system. In addition, the questionnaires were asked to collect Thai and Japanese students' reactions toward the proposed system and evaluate its efficiency.
Author Information
Kamal Baha, Tokyo Denki University, Japan
Makoto Shishido, Tokyo Denki University, Japan
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