Yoshiko Okuyama355CALICO Journal, 24 (2), p-p 355-379. 2007 CALICO JournalCALL Vocabulary Learning in Japanese: Does Romaji Help Beginners Learn More Words?YOSHIKO OKUYAMAUniversity of Hawaii at HiloABSTRACTThisstudyinvestigatedtheeffectsofusingRomanizedspellingsonbeginner-level Japanese vocabulary learning. Sixty-one rst-semester students at two uni-versities in Arizona were both taught and tested on 40 Japanese content words in a computer-assisted language learning (CALL) program. The primary goal of the study was to examine whether the use of RomajiRoman alphabetic spellings of Japanesefacilitates Japanese beginners learning of the L2 vocabulary. The study also investigated whether certain CALL strategies positively correlate with a greater gain in L2 vocabulary. Vocabulary items were presented to students in bothexperimentalandcontrolgroups.TheitemsincludedHiraganaspellings, colored illustrations for meaning, and audio recordings for pronunciation. Only theexperimentalgroupwasgiventheextraassistanceofRomaji.Thescores ofthevocabularypretestsandposttests,thetypesofonlinelearningstrategies andquestionnaireresponseswerecollectedforstatisticalanalyses. Theresults oftheprojectindicatedthattheuseofRomajididnotfacilitatethebeginners L2 vocabulary intake. However, the more intensive use of audio recordings was found to be strongly related to a higher number of words recalled, regardless of the presence or absence of Romaji.KEYWORDSCALL, Vocabulary Learning, Japanese as a Foreign Language (JFL), Romaji Script, CALL StrategiesINTRODUCTIONLearning a second language (L2) requires the acquisition of its lexicon. How do American college students learn basic L2 vocabulary in a CALL program? If the vocabularyiswritteninanonalphabeticL2script,suchasJapanese,isitmore efcient to learn the words with the assistance of more familiar Roman-alphabetic symbols? This experimental study explored these questions in the context of Japa-nese CALL vocabulary learning.356CALICO Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2Teachers of less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) are faced with a variety of issues that include lack of pedagogically sound resources and instructional ma-terials (Johnston & Janus, 2003). Although categorically an LCTL, Japanese is in fact the most commonly taught Asian language in the United States. A great chal-lenge awaits learners of this nonalphabetic language, however, because Japanese is ranked as category 4 language (highest) by the US Federal standards in terms of its difculty for American students to acquire. While more college-level course books are being published and software programs being created, many aspects of teaching and learning Japanese still remain to be empirically investigated. One of these underresearched aspects is the effect of nonalphabetic script on word learn-ing.Japanese OrthographyJapanese consists of three types of script: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. The rst two are called syllabaries because each symbol is a syllabic unit, while Kanji characters are ideographic symbols. Japanese children have to memorize the two syllabaries, with each set made of the basic 46 syllabic units and 61 extensions, beforemasteringover2,000Kanjicharactersinordertomasterallthreesets of Japanese script. This is no easy task for learners since the difculty with the syllabaries only worsens when learners come to understand that not all symbols clearly map onto the sound units of the Japanese language (e.g., the same sound e in oneesan big sister and eego English happens to be transcribed with dif-ferent hiragana symbols). Yet, the perceived difculty in learning Kana might be relative. According to the orthographic depth hypothesis (Katz & Frost, 1992), it is easier to learn to read words written in a transparent script than an opaque script. Kana syllabaries are considered a transparent script, a type of orthography in which phoneme-graph-eme mappings are highly consistent, and these symbols are processed differently than Kanji characters by native speakers of Japanese (Ellis et al., 2004; Kawaka-mi, Hatta, & Kogure, 2001; Sumiyoshi et al., 2004). English, on the other hand, is called an opaque script, a type of orthography that lacks systematic sound-symbol correspondence.InEnglish,manyalphabeticlettersareassociatedwithseveral different sounds (particularly in the case of its ve vowels), making the mapping of the letters to the sounds less predictable. Thus, unlike the English alphabet or Kanji characters, the regularity of the symbol-sound mappings makes hiragana an exceptionally transparent orthography (Ellis et al., 2004, p. 443). Romaji versus Japanese ScriptAccordingtotheStandardsforJapaneseLanguageLearning(NationalStan-dards in Foreign Language Education Project, 1999), there is an orthographic bar-rier between English and Japanese: In order to be able to read Japanese materials written for adult native speakers, students must learn two different syllabic writing systems and approximately 2,000 Chinese characters (kanji), most of which have multiple meanings and readings (p. 332). The complexity of the Japanese writing Yoshiko Okuyama357system poses a great challenge to learners of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) especially at the beginning level. In the US, Romaji (i.e., Romanized spellings of Japanese text) is commonly used as a starter for JFL beginners.Romaji is not entirely foreign to native speakers of Japanese. The script is used on limited occasions by Japanese native speakers, such as writing their name on a passport or indicating the name of a train station to foreign visitors. However, it is not an integral part of the native orthography and is not mixed with the other scripts within the same text. Romaji does not always transcribe the spoken lan-guage in a perfect grapheme-phoneme match. Moreover, both the Hepburn sys-tem (a style of Romanization invented by a missionary in 1867) and Kunrei-shiki (a Romanization system adopted by the Japanese government in 1937) have been used in Japan (Hannas, 1997). Two varying ways to transcribe some sounds (e.g., /fu/ vs. /hu/, /zi/ vs. /ji/) cause confusion on the part of readers and writers. Con-trary to Romaji, grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences are entirely regular in Hanyu Pinyin (meaning assembling sound), a phonetic alphabet set of 26 Ro-man letters in 13 letter groups used in addition to the traditional character system in China (Chen, Fu, Iversen, Smith, & Matthews, 2002, pp.1089-1091). Pinyin is taught to school age children in China as a phonetic assistance in learning a set of about 6,000 meaning-based characters. Like Romaji, however, Pinyin is not used as an independent written script nor mixed with the Chinese characters. Thus, it is much easier for (adult) native speakers of Japanese and Chinese to process texts entirely in the traditional orthography rather than in Romaji or Pinyin.Many textbooks for JFL learners published in the US seem to encourage the use of Romaji as an effective pedagogical aid. Books designed for self-study, such as Japanese in 10 Minutes a Day (Kershul, 1992) and Master the Basics: Japanese (Akiyama & Akiyama, 1995), are also written entirely in Romaji. An audiotape-based program, Just Listen n Learn Japanese (Katao & Takada, 1994), is accom-panied with a transcription of the recordings written only in Romaji. By contrast, college-level textbooks for JFL beginners, such as Yookoso (Tohsaku, 1994) and Nakama (Makino, Y. Hatasa, & K. Hatasa, 1998), are mainly written in authentic Japanese orthography. When it comes to CALL software, existing programs lack consistency in spell-ing Japanese materials. CALL tutorials and commercially available language soft-ware vary in the degree of their use of Romaji as opposed to authentic Japanese orthography.Forexample,NihongoWare1presentsvocabularyandconversa-tional materials exclusively in Romaji, while TriplePlay Plus! Japanese has these items only in Japanese script. Yet, some programs, such as Robo-Sensei (Nagata, 2004), come in two versionsRomaji only and Japanese script onlyfor the user to choose from. In the North American context, Romaji is assumed to be an effective learning aid particularly during the initial period of JFL learning. However, when to switch totheauthenticscripthasbeencontroversialamongJFLpractitioners(Dewey, 2004; Hatasa, 2002). Those who advocate the early introduction of kana and kanji havepedagogicalphilosophiesquitedifferentfromthoseoftheproponentsof delayed introduction. Divided views on the use of Romaji also exist among JFL 358CALICO Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2learners. Even if the kana syllabaries are taught in the early stages of instruction, as in most JFL classes, many students are likely to use Romaji as a quick and easy note-taking device throughout the rst year. These students claim that the use of Romaji reduces their language-related anxiety and helps them overcome the chal-lenge of learning Japanese especially when their L1 is English, a Roman alpha-betic language. They may adamantly defend their Romaji transcription as a way to absorb a large amount of new words efciently for quizzes and exams. Others may simply consider this assistive device as a crutch, inhibiting themselves from developing strong reading and writing skills in Japanese. Moreover, JFL learners viewsonRomajimayalsobeinuencedbytheirteachersattitudestowardthe script (Dewey, 2004). The question is: does the use of Romaji really facilitate JFL beginners lan-guage learning? Little research has been done to test whether substituting Japanese orthographyforRomajiinintroductorytextbooksorCALLprogramsisindeed an effective pedagogical tool. In the absence of empirical evidence for the value of Romaji, teachers are left to select courseware or textbooks for beginning-level studentsbasedontheirexperienceasanL2learnerortheirowninstincts.The primary goal of this study is, therefore, to nd empirical evidence to address the question of the pedagogical value of Romaji in CALL for JFL beginners.L2 Vocabulary Learning across Different Nonalphabetic OrthographiesThe main issue of second language acquisition discussed in this study is college-level students L2 word learning in a nonalphabetic language. L2 vocabulary gain plays a crucial role especially in beginning SLA (Ellis, 1995). Although the topic of vocabulary is no longer undervalued in SLA research due to a rapid increase in L2 vocabulary research, little is available regarding how L2 learners process, store, and retrieve words written in nonalphabetic script. Because research on L2 word recognition skills tends to be conducted on the learners of alphabetic lan-guages, some issues specic to the lexical acquisition of nonalphabetic languages are yet to be investigated. As mentioned above, a major challenge to the beginners in Japanese is to learn new vocabulary in the orthographically different script. In fact, for L2 learners of any nonalphabetic language, the orthographic form is one key element affecting lexicallearning:Theformofitemsismorelikelytoinuencedifcultythan meaning, because there is much more shared knowledge of meaning between two distinct languages than there is shared form (Nation, 2001, p. 29). Learning new words by itself is a complex process and requires learners to access the seman-tic representation of the new word while simultaneously making sound-spelling correspondence. Naturally, the process becomes even more demanding if the L2 script is completely different from that of L1. For learners whose rst language is not related to the second language, the learning burden will be heavy (Nation, 2001,p.24)becausethelearningburdenofthewrittenformofwordswillbe strongly affected by rst and second language parallels (p. 45). L2 orthography also plays a signicant role even beyond word recognition. L2 learners acquisi-Yoshiko Okuyama359tion of reading skills is dependent upon their ability to identify the printed (i.e., orthographic) form of a word or lexical item in order to activate the words mean-ing, structural/syntactic information, and other pragmatic or world knowledge as-sociations (Fender, 2003, p. 291). The orthographic distance between L1 and L2 creates a cognitive overload in deciphering L2 lexical items or processing L2 reading materials (Akamatsu, 1999; Fender, 2003; Laufer, 1997; Koda, 1997, Tan et al., 2003), whereas the similar-ity in L1 and L2 spelling patterns facilitates word recognition (Muljani, Koda, & Moates, 1998). The orthographic mismatch may make L2 word learning challeng-ing for beginners but not impossible. For example, Wong, Perfetti, and Liu (2003) foundthatnativespeakersofEnglishwereabletodevelopsensitivitytoward structuralcomplexityandcompositionalrelationshipofChineseradicalsatthe early stage of L2 learning. According to their lexical processing model of Chinese characters, understanding Chinese characters involves three interlinked constitu-ents: orthographic, phonological, and semantic. Since one-to-one grapheme-pho-neme mappings are unavailable in the logographic script of Chinese, L2 learners visual-orthographic processing turned out to be the most critical element. In this model, learners of Chinese must rst work on stroke analysis, seeking informa-tionintheorthographicunitofthecharacter,andthenaccessthephonological unit of the character as well as its semantic unit. Yet, rst-year learners of Chinese have not made a strong connection between the orthographical and phonological units. Chung (2002, 2003) also looked at alphabetic learners of Chinese, shedding light on how to reduce cognitive overload derived from L1-L2 script discrepancy. When it comes to alphabetic learners of Japanese, research has been done primar-ily on American students processing of Kanji characters (e.g., Matsunaga, 1995, 2001) rather than Kana. As mentioned before, Japanese syllabaries and kanji characters require differ-enttypesofprocessing. Therefore,drawingdirectlyonthendingsofresearch in logographic script does not sufce in understanding how L2 learners process and store words written in syllabic script. The current study lls a critical need by investigating whether Romaji, a phonetic assistance consisting of visually famil-iar Roman alphabet letters, helps JFL beginners overcome the burden of learning words in Hiragana, a nonalphabetic orthography.CALL StrategiesThisstudyalsoinvestigatedwhatstrategiesstudentswerelikelytousewhen learning L2 words in multimedia software. Gathering useful information on learn-ers strategies has always been a challenge to researchers. Survey studies on vo-cabulary learning strategies (e.g., Kudo, 1999) provide an insightful account on learners self-reported strategy use, but there is often a discrepancy between what strategies L2 learners report having used and what they actually used in language-learning problem solving. To obtain a holistic view of L2 learner behaviors, we need to incorporate a method of recording the students actual strategy use. Here,CALLresearchtechnologiescomeinhandy:thecomputercanbepro-360CALICO Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2grammed to compile inventories of behavioral patterns followed by users of lan-guagesoftware.Theuseofhypermediapresentsintensiveinteractionbetween user and computer and executes a variety of tasks, allowing for a rich recording ofonlinelearningstrategiesinanunobtrusiveway.Recently,therehasbeena surgeofinterestinCALLstrategiesandCALLusertrackingtechnologies(Al-Seghayer, 2001; Ashworth, 1996; Collentine, 2000; Hwu, 2003; Hegelheimer & Tower, 2004; Laufer & Hill, 2000; Liou, 2000; Vincent & Hah, 1996). For example, Ashworths (1996) CALL program, The Observer, was designed tostoreL2learnerskeyboardactivities(e.g.,mouse-clicksandcursormove-ments) in computer les. He suggested the possibility of observing other online actions, such as transcriptions of user input in computer-mediated conversational exchanges or frequency counts of accessing online dictionaries and thesauruses inareadingcomprehensiontask.Liou(2000)alsoemphasizedtheadvantage of using computers recording abilities to collect learner data. Hwu (2003) used WebCTs student-tracking system to collect learner data during CALL activities. Other SLA studies have also incorporated user behavior tracking technologies as a data collection methodology or have documented strategies employed by CALL users for L2 word learning (Collentine, 2000; Laufer & Hill, 2000; Al-Seghayer, 2001), showing great promise for conducting L2 vocabulary research in this elec-tronic medium. CALL is thought to have great potential in increasing the amount of L2 input and improving the relatively low L2 achievement by learners of Asian languages (McMeniman, 1997). Although Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew and other nonalpha-betic LCTLs have traditionally suffered from a shortage of orthographically well designedCALLprogramsduetoproblemsindisplayingideographsorright-to-left writing (Ariew, 1991, p. 34), the development of Unicode has improved CALLprogramscapabilityofhandlingforeignfonts(Corda&VanDerStel, 2004). However, it is still unknown how efciently CALL can assist learners of non-Western,nonalphabeticlanguages.Forinstance,whatsortofCALLstrate-giesdoJFLstudentsuseinaself-pacedcomputerenvironment?WhatCALL strategiesfacilitatethelearningofthisorthographicallycomplexdifcultlan-guage, especially with respect to trying to absorb as many new words as possible? Thecurrentstudyattemptstodemonstratethefeasibilityofapplyingcomputer technologytodocumentCALLstrategiesemployedinlearningnonalphabetic vocabularymaterials.Thendingsfromthestudywillalsoaddinsightonthe relationship between L2 script and vocabulary learning in a CALL environment, providing useful implications to JFL teachers as well as software developers. METHODOLOGYThe main purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of using Romaji on English-speakingcollegestudentslearningofbeginning-levelJapanesewords. The research question was whether or not the availability of Romaji signicantly facilitated learners short-term learning of such words when using a CALL pro-gram.Yoshiko Okuyama361The primary independent variable of the study was the type of orthography used to present the Japanese vocabulary items (i.e., Japanese vocabulary instruction in Hiragana only or together with Romaji). The dependent variable was L2 learners immediatevocabularyincreaseinJapanese,measuredbybothkanaandsound recognition tests in the same CALL environment. Because the research purported to test the impact of the independent variable (i.e., script type) on the dependent variable (i.e., L2 vocabulary learning), an experimental design was selected. The students in the control group learned new words in a Hiragana-only version of the CALL program, while the students in the experimental group learned the same words in a Romaji-plus version of the program. It was hypothesized that the use of Romaji would result inbetter attainment ofthenewly learned nonalphabetic (Japanese) words by English-speaking students. SubjectsThe target population for this experiment was dened as English-speaking learn-ers of entry level Japanese who were enrolled in American universities. A sample of students from rst-semester Japanese courses was thought to be representative of the identied population. Sixty-one students of rst-semester Japanese in two research universities were randomly assigned to either the experimental or control group. The control group (n = 31) was made of 18 students from Arizona State University (ASU) and 13 students from Northern Arizona University (NAU), while the experimental group (n = 30) consisted of 17 students from ASU and 13 students from NAU. The aver-age age of the students was 21.7 years. Although there was a gap in the mean ages of the students at the two universities (M = 20.8 for ASU; M = 23.0 for NAU), an unpaired t test showed that the discrepancy in age distribution was not statisti-cally signicant when the alpha level was set at .01: t (59) = -2.101, p = .0399. Afrequencydistributionofeachoftheotherdemographiccharacteristicswas also made between the groups by university. There were more male students (23 in ASU, 16 in NAU) than female students (12 in ASU, 10 in NAU). More than half of each group (n = 20 for both groups) had no experience with the Japanese languagepriortothesemester.SixteenASUstudentsidentiedthemselvesas uentin a language other than English, while only 6NAUstudents identied themselvesasuentinanotherlanguage.However,Eachgrouphadthesame number (n = 5) of international students (i.e., nonnative speakers of English). The demographic comparisons of the two school groups indicated that, whereas NAU students were relatively older, ASU students had slightly more linguistically en-riched backgrounds. Despite these few differences, the overall background char-acteristicsof ASUandNAUstudentsweresimilar.Thus,itwasappropriateto treat the two school groups as one and to draw conclusions about the population. Thestudentsatbothinstitutionsusedthesametextbook,Yookoso!intheir classes.1 Having little or no previous knowledge of Japanese, the students at both ASU and NAU were introduced to the hiragana and katakana syllabaries in class withintherstfewweeksofthesemester. Theywereinstructedtousethevo-362CALICO Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2cabulary CALL program to learn new Japanese words (i.e., words other than those presented in the textbook) as a supplemental learning task. Pilot Phase of the ProjectEarly prototypes of the CALL program were piloted for feasibility and effective-ness in a series of sessions with 20 volunteer subjects. Feedback from the volun-teer subjects enabled the researcher to address problematic areas and strengthen the programs design and functionality, including the use of English translations to reinforce learners accurate interpretation of visual and audio input and the ad-dition of situational contexts (e.g., dialogues) to enrich the vocabulary learning.Hardware and SoftwareThe instructional materials used in the vocabulary CALL program were an adap-tation of a commercially available CD-ROM software program, Learn to Speak Japanese (1994), a self-paced language program for beginning-level learners of Japanese. Four of 20 lessons in Learn to Speak Japanese, four lessons were se-lected and adapted for this study.2 The existing words of the four lessons and their accompanying illustrations and audio recordings were entirely replaced with new wordsandcolordrawingsaswellasnewrecordingsbytwodifferentJapanese speakers (a male and a female). The modied lesson materials contained a total of 40 words that were not included in the rst-semester Japanese class (for more information, see the Tasks section below). The CALL program, designed for Macintosh,3 consisted of three modules: (a) a preview module on how to use the CALL program, (b) a lesson module contain-ing the exercises, and (c) a testing module to administer tests on vocabulary recall. Itisimportanttoemphasizethatthelessonmodulewasdesignednotonlyto provide L2 vocabulary lessons to the students, but also to gather learner data on each student (i.e., data on online learning behaviors such as how long the student spent on each lesson). Similarly, the testing module was programmed to execute the test batteries and then to record an individual students test scores and other information (e.g., reaction time to test items).Themethodofcomputer-mediateddatacollectionwaschosenbecauseofits ability to discretely and objectively capture language-learning data and language-testing data and to reduce internal threats to validity such as teacher experience duringthelearningsession(ChapelleandJamieson,1991).Specically,inthis study, the program randomized the test items in the testing module. Students were testedonthesamewordsbutindifferentorders,therebygreatlyreducingsub-jectsensitivitytowardindividualitemsthatcouldhavedevelopedinthelesson module. This method also randomly distributed words of varying difculty (e.g., word length ranging from two-syllable to ve-syllable words) throughout the test. Thus,computertechnologyhelpednotonlytocontroltheeffectofextraneous variables but also to secure accuracy and consistency in measurement. The study was able to pool a large amount of data without data collection errors. Yoshiko Okuyama363TasksThe aim of instruction in this experiment was to expose the students to 40 Japa-nese lexical items in two versions of a CALL program (with Romaji and without Romaji)inordertotestwhichversioncanteachL2vocabularylessonsmore effectively. All the words were concrete nouns in Japanese and were of appropri-atelengthandcomplexityforthestudentsprociencylevel. Wordscontaining consonant-glide combinations (i.e., hiragana syllables such as kya, hyi, ryo) and geminates (i.e., double consonants as in sakka) were avoided except for one item (sentakki refrigerator). The selected words were relatively high frequency words, and the range of the number of syllables varied from two to ve. All words were hiragana type words that t each lessons vocabulary theme and which had clear English equivalents. Because the students lived in Arizona, familiar creatures of desertlife(e.g.,scorpionandhummingbird)werealsoincluded.TheJapanese instructors at each school were also consulted on the nal corpus of vocabulary items in order to eliminate any words of potential familiarity to the students. For preliminary vocabulary assessment, 10 words were drawn randomly from the 40 for each of two pretests. All 40 words used in the lessons and the tests are listed in Table 1.Table 1List of Japanese Vocabulary Items Lesson 1 Structural Emphasis: Likes and dislikes ( )Vocabulary theme: Desert animals1. shika deer2. hebi snake3. tokage lizard4. uzura quail5. sasori scorpion6. yamaneko wildcat7. koomori bat8. fukuroo owl9. hachidori hummingbird10. araiguma raccoon Average word length: 3.4 syllablesLesson 2 Structural emphasis: Describing things (... // )Vocabulary theme: The physical world/the cosmos1. shima island2. taki waterfall3. umi sea4. mori forest5. kazan volcano364CALICO Journal, Vol. 24, No. 26. kasee Mars7. dosee Saturn8. taiyoo Sun9. sekidoo equator10. nagareboshi shooting starAverage word length:3.0 syllablesLesson 3 Structural emphasis: This and that (// )Vocabulary theme: Ocean life1. masu trout2. kani crab3. kai seashell4. same shark5. kame turtle6. hitode starsh7. kujira whale8. unagi eel9. kamome seagull10. tobiuo ying sh Average word length:2.6 syllablesLesson 4 Structural emphasis: Where is it? ( )Vocabulary theme: Household items1. hasami scissors2. kabin vase3. kagami mirror4. denchi battery5. soojiki vacuum cleaner6. dentaku calculator7. gomibako trash can8. fuutoo envelope9. reezooko refrigerator10. sentakuki washing machineAverage word length:3.8 syllablesEach word was presented with a color drawing and an English translation. The use of the English gloss was necessary to ensure the clarity of meaning of the L2 word, which may not always be immediately evident in a drawing alone. There were also buttons for the pronunciation of a single word and for a conversation containingtherelevantvocabularyitem.Theaudiorecordingsofsingle-word pronunciations as well as dialogues were made in a male voice for some and in Yoshiko Okuyama365 Button to hear dialogue and see its written scriptButton to review hiraganasyllabaryButton for grammar explanationDrawing withbutton forsingle-wordpronunciationNavigation buttons afemalevoiceforothers.BothspeakerswerenativespeakersofstandardTo-kyoJapanese.Eachdialoguewasadyadicconversationscriptedtopresentthe keyword in a sentence structure familiar to the rst-semester Japanese learners. For example, in lessons 1 and 2, Speaker A asked a yes/no question (e.g., X wa suki desuka? Do you like X? or X wa tooi desuka? Is X far away?), to which Speaker B responded positively or negatively. In lessons 3 and 4, Speaker A asked an interrogative question (e.g., Sore wa nan desuka? What is that? or X wa doko desuka?WhereisX?)towhichSpeakerBsuppliedpertinentanswers. These sentencestructureswerealsoinaccordancewiththegrammarinstructionthat both the ASU and NAU students had already been provided in their regular class-roomlessons. Thespellingsofthevocabularyanddialogueswerepresentedin Hiragana because of the students prociency level. The Romaji spellings of the 40 words (not the dialogues) were included in the version of the CALL program used by the students in the experimental group. Figure 1 shows the structure of the vocabulary displays in the lesson module.Figure 1Vocabulary Display in the Lesson ModuleIn the lesson module, the following types of information were collected: (a) to-tal learning time (i.e., the time the subject spent per lesson and on all the lessons), (b) audio access (i.e., the number of clicks made on the drawing to hear the Japa-nese pronunciation of the word), (c) kana access (i.e., the number of clicks made onKanatoreviewthesyllabaryofthe46basichiraganasymbolsandtolearn some tips on how to read sets of symbols as words), (d) grammar access (i.e., the numberofclicksmadeongrammarbuttontoaccessgrammaticalexplanation), and (e) dialogue access (i.e., the number of clicks made on dialogue button to hear the dialogue and have it displayed in Japanese text).366CALICO Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2The testing module was made up of two posttests. The purpose of the posttests wastomeasurestudentsshort-termvocabularylearning.Theimmediaterecall of the instructed L2 vocabulary was evaluated in terms of L2 sound recognition and of L2 script recognition. The rst posttest, Sound Games, consisted of four pages of sound recognitions on all the 40 words and measured students ability to identify the illustration (for meaning) that corresponded to an L2 sound cue. The second posttest, Kana Games, presented four pages of kana script recognition test on the same 40 words and assessed students ability to select the correct il-lustration based on the hiragana spelling shown in the upper left-hand corner of the display (see Figure 2). All the test directions were written in English.Figure 2Sample Kana GameIn the testing module, the program collected learner information (e.g., subjects name, response items, and score of each vocabulary test automatically calculated by the computer) and stored the data in the individual subject le. ProceduresThe students were rst given two pen-and-paper pretests, each of which contained 10 Japanese words. The rst pretest was a sound recognition test, and the second pretest was a written hiragana recognition test. The pretests were administered to ensure that there was no signicant difference in Japanese vocabulary knowledge between the experimental and control groups as well as between the two univer-sity groups. After a brief orientation session in which the features of the program were presented and explained, the students started the vocabulary lessons at their own computer stations. They were told that the main instructional objective was to learn new Japanese words using the multimedia software. They were allowed tonavigatefromonelessontoanotherattheirownpace. Aftercompletingall of the lesson modules, the students took the posttest in the testing module. The Yoshiko Okuyama367students completed both the lessons and tests in one sitting at the laboratory. After exiting the program, the students were asked to ll out a short questionnaire as the last procedure. The main purpose of the exit questionnaire was to collect various information on the learners. The rst portion of the questionnaire was designed to obtain subject characteristics (e.g., gender, age, major, native language, prior exposuretoJapaneseandlengthofexperienceinlearningJapanese,andprior foreign language learning experience). Questions related to the students demo-graphic background were adapted from Graces (1995) CALL experimental study on L2 learners of French. Other parts were drawn from a study of JFL learners by Okamura (1995) for comparative purposes.RESULTSGroup DifferencesTheresultsoftheanalysisofthesubjectcharacteristicsfromthequestionnaire showed that both gender and age were evenly distributed between the groups and the universities. The only substantial difference was the amount of previous Japa-nese exposure. In the control group (n = 31), 25 students had had some experience learning Japanese (e.g., as a language course requirement in high school) prior to taking the rst-semester Japanese course in college. In the experimental group (n = 30), only half of the students had had some prior exposure to the language. However, in spite of the discrepancy in their previous Japanese experience, the groups did not differ in their knowledge of the Japanese vocabulary items. The re-sults from a t test conrmed that the group-based difference in pretest scores was not statistically signicant at the .01 level. Table 2 shows the means and standard deviations of the pretest scores by group and pretest type.Table 2 Means and Standard Deviations of Pretest Scores by Pretest Type and by GroupPretest Group M SDPrestest 1 Cont (n = 31) 1.000 1.033Exp (n = 30) 1.233 1.223Pretest 2 Cont (n = 31) 1.613 1.407Exp (n = 30) 1.067 1.015Theverylowscoresinbothpretestsindicatethatthestudentsknowledgeof Japanese words was minimal prior to the CALL instruction and was evenly spread across the groups. Overall L2 CAL-based Vocabulary LearningTable 3 presents a summary of the pretest-posttest results for both groups com-bined.368CALICO Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2Table 3MeansandStandardDeviationsofPretestandPosttestScoresforCombined Groups by Test TypeTest M SDPrestest 1 1.115 1.127Pretest 2 1.344 1.250Posttest 1 21.262 9.588Posttest 2 18.738 11.275Whilethemeanscoresofthepretestswereverylow,thoseoftheposttests indicate a sizable increase in the students vocabulary knowledge after the CALL instruction:studentscorrectlyidentiedapproximatelyhalfofthe40itemson each posttest (21.3 [53%] in posttest 1 and 18.7 [47%] in posttest 2). This general outcomeprovidesevidencethatstudentslearnedanappreciableamountofvo-cabulary as the result of using the CALL program.Research Questions and HypothesesThemainresearch question in this studywaswhetherornotRomajifacilitated Japanese beginners short-term learning of hiragana words in CALL. The primary research hypothesis was There is a systematic relationship between the presence or absence of Romaji assistance and students gain in knowledge of Japanese vocabulary.Romaji and Japanese Vocabulary LearningTo investigate the effect of Romaji, two-tailed independent t tests were performed betweenthecontrolandexperimentalgroupsonthetwoposttests.Generally speaking, a one-tailed t test is more powerful. However, the two-tailed procedure wasusedbecauseboththepossiblepositiveandnegativeeffectsofRomajion vocabulary learning had to be considered. The results of the t tests did not show a signicant difference in either posttest 1 or posttest 2 (t = .262, df = 59, p = .794 and t = .364, df = 59, p = .717, respectively).Another variable measured was reaction time (RT) to the vocabulary items in the posttest, here measured in computer ticks (60 ticks = 1 sec). The experimen-tal groups mean RT was slightly lower than that of the control group, 183 ticks versus 230 ticks, for posttest 1 and virtually the same for posttest 2. Independent t tests did not show a signicant difference for either posttest. CALL Strategies and Japanese Vocabulary LearningAs mentioned earlier, this study also examined the students use of several learn-ing strategies. These strategies were labeled as CALL strategies because they inform us of how students approached the L2 learning tasks in a CALL environ-Yoshiko Okuyama369ment.TheprogramrecordedthestudentsuseoftheCALLstrategiesinindi-vidual computer les. The following acronyms are used in reporting the analyses of the use of these strategies:1. TL = total learning time spent on the CALL program,2. AA (Audio Access) = clicking the audio recording button for each new L2 word,3. KA (Kana Access) = clicking the kana tutor button to review the hiragana syllabary,4. GA (Grammar Access) = clicking the Grammar Help button to learn about the sentence structures used in the program, and5. DA (Dialogue Access) = clicking the dialogue button to listen to a dyadic conversation containing the target word.Students use of each strategy (other than TL) was measured by the number of clicks made on the relevant button. Table 4 presents descriptive statistics of stu-dents use of all CALL strategies. Table 4Means and Standard Deviations of Use of CALL StrategiesStrategy M SDTL 1339.508 631.627AA 188.410 182.836KA 1.918 4.961GA 2.721 2.788DA 71.311 37.649The unit of measure for TL was 1 sec; the average TL (1,340 in the table) is equal to approximately 22 minutes. The standard deviation is very large (631.627), in-dicatingawidedisparityinthelengthoftimeindividualstudentsspentinthe program. Among the other strategies, the mean score of AA was found to be the highest (M = 188.410 clicks). The second most frequently used strategy was DA (M = 71.311 clicks). The least used functions were KA (M = 1.918 clicks) and GA (M = 2.721 clicks).To examine whether the students in the experimental group studied the CALL vocabulary differently than those in the control group, t tests were performed on the use of the strategies. Table 5 displays the results of the t tests. There were no signicant differences between the groups in the use of any of the strategies. 370CALICO Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2Table 5Between-group Comparisons of the Use of CALL StrategiesStrategy Mean diff. df t pTL 34.452 59 0.211 .833AA 72.629 59 1.570 .122KA 1.347 59 1.062 .293GA -0.680 59 -0.951 .345DA -9.226 59 -0.956 .343TodeterminewhetherstudentsuseofCALLstrategieswererelatedtotheir vocabulary learning, the control and experimental groups were combined and cor-relations between their use of strategies and posttest scores were computed (see Table 6). Table 6Correlation Coefcients of Use of CALL Strategies and Posttest ScoresTL AA KA GA DAPosttest 1 .309 .499 -.079 -.078 .056Posttest 2 .285 .513 -.143 -.133 -.048The gures in Table 6 show that using AA (sound) was highly correlated with both posttests: .499 for Posttest 1 and .513 for Posttest 2. A stepwise regression analysis conrmed that the frequent use of audio access was indeed a strong pre-dictor of vocabulary learning. To further investigate the extent to which this strategy alone contributed to vo-cabularylearning,alinearregressionwasrunon AAandthetwoposttests.In this analysis, AA was used as the predictor variable and the posttest scores as the criterion variable. For posttest 1 (sound recognition), the coefcient of determina-tion (r2) was .249, meaning that approximately 25% of the variance in posttest 1 was explained by the variance in AA (Audio Access). For posttest 2 (kana recog-nition), the coefcient of determination was .264, meaning that about 26% of the variance in posttest 2 was explained by the variance in AA. Based on the results this analysis, AA is a clearly important predictor of vocabulary learning. Tosummarizethissection,theresultsofstatisticalanalysesinthisstudydid notprovideempiricalsupportforthebenecialroleofRomajiinlearningnew hiragana words within a short instructional period. Instead, the results showed a systematic relationship between the use of L2 audio and L2 vocabulary learning.DISCUSSIONEffects of RomajiItwashypothesizedinthisprojectthattheuseofRomajiwouldhelpEnglish-speakinglearnersacquireJapanesevocabularybecauseofthesimilarityofthe Yoshiko Okuyama371symbols used in Romaji and the Roman alphabet. However, it was found that the experimental group who learned the Japanese content words with Romaji in the CALL program did not score higher in the posttests than the control group who learned the same vocabulary without Romaji assistance. This nding was consis-tent with the results from both the sound and script posttests. The opportunity to view Japanese vocabulary in Romaji had no effect on the number of words cor-rectly identied by the students in the rst-semester Japanese classes.JFLlearnersattitudestowardRomajihasbeenraisedasasignicantvari-able in a survey study (Dewey, 2004). Is it possible that the results in the current studywereinuencedbythesubjectgroupspreferenceforJapanesescript?In the exit questionnaires, the students were asked whether the presence or absence of Romaji would have helped them remember more Japanese words in the CALL program. The responses from students in both groups were almost evenly divided: 25 students favored the Romaji assistance in the CALL program and 23 students preferred the Japanese script only in the program. (The rest of the students were undecidedontheissue.)Ofgreaterimportance,theseorthographicpreferences were evenly distributed between the control and experimental groups. Thus, the beginning-level Japanese learners personal beliefs about Romaji were unlikely to have affected the overall L2 vocabulary outcome.Is it possible that the students in the experimental group did not pay attention to Romaji because of their solid familiarity with the hiragana syllabary? As many JFLpractitionerscanattest,itishighlyunlikelythatstudentsinrst-semester JapanesecanfullymastertheHiraganasyllabarywithintherstfewweeksof instruction. Their knowledge of the syllabary tends to be shaky until the end of the semester. The reaction time data of the study showed that those who viewed the vocabulary items with Romaji during the CALL lessons were slightly faster in matching L2 audio cues with correct meanings. This nding may suggest that the students in the experimental group made use of Romaji to some extent. The differ-ence in reaction time between the two groups may imply that Romaji assisted the experimental group in speeding up the activation of lexical memory, but it should be remembered that the difference was not statistically signicant.ContrarytothepedagogicalassumptionssupportingtheuseofRomaji,such orthographic assistance did not have an impact on beginning-level CALL-based vocabulary learning in Japanese. Hatasas (2002) study on the classroom use of Romaji provided evidence that conrms this nding. Students who were taught withtheprolongeduseofRomajiinclassdidnotperformsignicantlybetter ontheirmidtermandnalexamsthanthosewhohadanearlyintroductionof authentic Japanese orthography. No effects of the use of Romaji were found ei-ther on their short-term or long-term development of Japanese prociency at the introductorylevelinHatasasstudy.Therefore,onceHiraganascripthasbeen introduced, JFL beginners are ready to handle the learning burden of L2 written forms (Nation, 2001) in acquiring basic Japanese words.WhatarepossibleexplanationsforthelackofeffectsofRomajiassistance, then? One explanation may come from the orthographic depth hypothesis (Katz &Frost,1992)andthecorrelationbetweenorthographictransparencyandthe 372CALICO Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2ease in developing L1 word recognition skills (Ehri, 1999; Ellis & Hooper, 2001; Fender,2003;Seymour, Aro,&Erskine,2003;Ellisetal.,2004;Kim,Davis, Burnham,&Luksaneeyanawin,2004).Forexample,inanexperimentalstudy (Ellisetal.,2004),Japaneseelementaryschoolchildrenrarelymadeerrorsin readingthetargetwordsinthetransparentscriptofHiraganabutwerenotso successful with the opaque script of Kanji. Similarly, Greek children were more successful at reading the words due to the transparent script of Greek with highly regulargrapheme-to-phonememappingsthanEnglish-speakingchildreninthe samegradeswhoseorthographyisfarlesstransparentthantheGreekwriting system.Ellisetal.concludedthatitismuchhardertolearntoreadaloudin orthographicallyopaquescripts(p.455)andthatself-teachingmightbemore difcult in orthographically opaque scripts than in transparent ones (p.456). Kim et al. (2004) examined the visual sensitivity of Thai readers and Korean Hangul readers. Thai is written in 72 alphabetic symbols of some visual complex-ity (e.g., many similar looking symbols), yet has high regularity between symbol and sound. Hangul, onthe other hand, is a script of24alphabetic symbols that has a clear one-to-one match with Korean phonology and presents phonologically similar phonemes, such as /n/, /d/, and /t/, with visually similar graphemes. They foundthatthenatureofThaiorthographydemandshighervisualsensitivityin processing words and that the lack of such sensitivity negatively affects readers of Thai, but not Hangul readers. In a similar study, Kim and Davis (2004) also found that visual processing problems did not result in poor reading in Hangul because the Korean orthography is visually transparent. Drawing from these ndings, one canspeculatethatL2vocabularyismoreeasilylearnedinatransparentscript (e.g., Japanese Hiragana and Korean Hangul) than in an opaque script (e.g., Japa-nese Kanji and the English alphabet) and that it is more likely for L2 learners to become self-sufcient in decoding new words in transparent orthographies early in the learning process. Once Hiragana is introduced to JFL learners, reverting to theRomanalphabetdoesnotappeartobringpedagogicalmerittotheirbegin-ning-level vocabulary learning. CALL StrategiesIn the second set of analyses, the frequency of using the sound button to access audio recordings was strongly correlated with higher scores in both the sound and scriptrecognitionposttests.HegelheimerandTower(2004)alsofoundaclose relationshipbetweenachievementandrepetitiveuseofL2audio.Ontheother hand,thestrategyofspendingmoretimeintheCALLprogramwasfoundto only marginally inuence L2 vocabulary retention. In other words, time on task had little impact on the number of words recalled. This was also similar to what Hegelheimer and Tower (2004) discovered. The students who frequently used the dialogue recordings stayed in the program for a longer period of time mainly be-cause the auditory presentation of each dialogue took longer than that of a single word. Thus, although those who listened to the dialogues took longer to complete theCALLlessons,thelengthofCALLlearningtimepersewasnotastrong Yoshiko Okuyama373predictor of vocabulary learning. The other tools available in the CALL software, such as the kana tutor and grammar review, were rarely utilized by the students (the mean number of mouse clicks on the kana button was 1.9 and on the grammar button 2.7) and had no impact on their vocabulary learning.Why is accessing L2 sound so important in retaining newly learned words in short-termmemory?Baddeley(2000)distinguishedbetweentwodomainsof working memory: verbal and visual-spatial. It has been widely accepted that word recognitionisprimarilyaphonologicalprocessinHiragana,Hangul,orPinyin (Simpson & Kang, 1994; Kawakami et al., 2001; Kim & Davis, 2002; Chen et al., 2002; Ellis et al., 2004) but more of a visual-spatial process in Chinese (Tavas-soli, 1999; Sugishita & Omura, 2001; Ho, Chan, Tsang, & Lee, 2002; Chen et al., 2002;Flaherty,2003).Forexample,aneurolinguisticstudy(Chenetal.,2002) providedfMRIimagesofdifferentbrainactivitiesinvolvedinnativespeakers processing Chinese characters and its phonetic counterpart, Pinyin. If Hiragana also requires a high degree of phonological processing in reading words,English-speakingJFLbeginnersneednotstruggleasmuchduetotheir prior experience with another phonological script, the English alphabet. Further-more, the symbol-sound mapping of the Hiragana syllabary is much more consis-tent than that of English orthography. Thus, adding another phonetic script of high regularity,Romaji,totheCALLprogramwasprobablyredundantanddidnot enable the students to store any more words than their short-term memory could hold. From a pedagogical point of view, it might be more benecial for JFL be-ginners to develop the solid knowledge of all the Hiragana symbols and adequate word recognition skills based on that knowledge. If Hiragana itself was a suf-cient device for the students to learn new words on their own in this brief CALL instruction, then mastering the syllabary within the rst year of Japanese learning should be of high priority. If the use of a phonetic notation device enhances the learning of Kanji (a logograph that demands more visual-spatial processing), then havingHiraganamightbesinequanonforlearningmoreL2wordsviaKanji characters in the following years. The current study demonstrated the important role of L2 sound in CALL vo-cabulary learning. The intensive use of audio recordings was linked to better lexi-cal learning not only in the recognition of L2 sound form (Posttest 1) but also in the recognition of L2 orthographic form (Posttest 2). If the use of audio recordings hasasubstantialimpactonL2vocabularyretention,focusonL2phonological form needs to be recognized as an important CALL learning strategy. CALL users should be encouraged to access the softwares audio input frequently if the goal of an L2 task is to learn new words. Whether students prefer Romaji assistance or not, as long as they utilize L2 audio intensively, they are likely to learn new vocabulary more effectively in CALL-based materials. Limitations of the StudyThe implications of this study should be viewed in the light of some limitations. First, the implication that introductory-level students benet not from reading in 374CALICO Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2Romaji but from listening to L2 sound applies only to the short-term learning of L2 vocabulary. Second, the study focused on students receptive knowledge of L2 vocabularyacquiredinaCALLenvironmentanddidnotaddresshowstudents could develop productive knowledge of L2 vocabulary. Third, the main purpose of this study was to examine the effects of Romaji assistance for JFL beginners in CALL. The students represented in the study were rst-semester Japanese stu-dents who had become acquainted with the hiragana syllabary within the rst few weeks of instruction. Thus, the ndings should not be interpreted as pedagogical implications for those who have no familiarity with Japanese orthography. Last of all, because of the correlational nature of much of the analysis in the study, the results of the study do not offer evidence in support of a cause-effect relationship between any variables. Suggestions for Future StudiesMilton and Meara (1995) estimated that advanced learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) possibly acquire about 2,500 words per year. If this estimate is valid for any foreign language, successful vocabulary learning represents a very important pedagogical agenda. We need to continue our investigation on how L2 wordsarelearnedthroughdifferenttasks,atdifferentlevels,aswellasfordif-ferenteffects(e.g.,short-termvs.long-termretention).IfL2wordrecognition iscriticalindevelopingL2readingabilityatlaterstages,researchonJapanese word recognition will help provide insight for L2 reading experts. Furthermore, because the distance between L1 and L2 orthographic forms can burden L2 vo-cabulary learning, more studies need to be conducted on lexical acquisition in a nonalphabetic language. Although the results of this study did not show a measurable outcome for the use of Romaji, one can investigate long-term effects of using Romaji by conduct-ing subsequent experiments and following the same students over a semester or a year. The long-term effects of Romaji need to be investigated because many JFL textbooks and CALL materials still use Romaji, and many JFL students continue to use it as a quick and easy note-taking device even after their learning materials havecompletelyshiftedtotheauthenticorthography.Individualdifferencesin English speakers predisposition for Hiragana symbol learning (e.g., visual mem-ory capacity) also need to be examined in a CALL environment. Due to the rapid growth of distance learning courses in American higher educa-tion, more and more language courses are offered online. However, the display of non-English fonts continues to pose challenges to course designers/instructors as well as students. For instance, WebCT, one of the most popularly adopted instruc-tional delivery systems in the US, cannot be easily applied to develop a Japanese language course (e.g., the Java-supported chat of WebCT 4.1 does not allow users to type in Japanese, resulting in some confusion and typos derived from Romaji input). Continuing research on the interaction between learner outcomes and L2 script use will help bring about a better understanding of how students can effec-tively use CALL instructional materials in Asian languages.Yoshiko Okuyama375CONCLUSIONThe primary goal of this study was to explore the role of L2 orthography in com-puter-assisted Japanese vocabulary learning. What this study revealed was strong evidencefortheadvantageofusing,notRomajiassistance,butratherL2au-dio recordings. The insights from the study are perhaps most applicable to future developmentofCALLsoftwareorforCALLvocabularyresearch.Nowadays, therearemanycommerciallyavailableCALLprogramsforJFLlearnerseither tosupplementtheirclassroomlearningortolearnthelanguageontheirown. With clear guidelines for language software use, teachers and students of foreign languages are better able to make pedagogically wise decisions. For the adequate incorporation of CALL materials into a classroom curriculum, SLA researchers need to explore empirically what works best in virtual learning environments.NOTES1 The Yookoso! textbook is designed to cover all the four language skills: listening, speak-ing, reading, and writing. 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Strategies employed by users of a Japanese computer as-sistedlanguagelearning(CALL)program.AustralianJournalofEducational Technology, 12 (10), 25-34.Wong,M.,Perfetti,C.A.,&Liu,Y.(2003).Alphabeticreadersquicklyacquireortho-graphicstructureinlearningtoreadChinese.ScienticStudiesofReading,7 (2), 183-208.AUTHORS BIODATAYoshiko Okuyama is Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages at the University of Hawaii at Hilo (UHH). While working at UHH, she completed her dissertationandearnedherPh.D.fromtheUniversityof Arizonain2000.She currently teaches courses in Japanese, introductory linguistics, psycholinguistics, andsecondlanguageacquisitiontheoryandhasservedasUHHLanguageLab Coordinator. AUTHORS ADDRESSYoshiko Okuyama, Ph.D.Department of LanguagesThe University of Hawaii at HiloPO Box 6917 Hilo, HI 96720Phone:808 982 9871Fax:808 974 7736 (Attn: Yoshiko Okuyama)E-mail:yokuyama@hawaii.edu380CALICO Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2