earticle

영어

This paper is regarding Katakana learning by association method for Koreanlearners. With this method, cards were created to associate Katakana character withstories and images. The effect of the Katakana character acquisition through theuse of the cards was examined from an experiment lesson, and then Katakanalearning-materials development was proposed. First, creation of the Katakana study card was given as a subject to seventy-fourcollege students who received instruction using the teaching materials of IS Hiraganaassociation method by Quackenbush (2007). For each card, the students drew picturesthat associated the Korean letter with the Katakana character. The Katakana imageswords had similar sounds to the beginning sounds of the Korean words. Over a thousandcards were submitted; the cards that best associated the sounds were selected. In Seoul in October 2012, ten high school sophomores with no prior knowledgeof Japanese attended the experiment class. After being exposed to the Koreanrepresentative of the Katakana characters, the students were able to identify 41.4characters out of 46. A questionnaire survey was conducted in order to improvethe study cards. Results showed that confusion remained for the characters whichwere very similar, such as “セ” and “ヤ”, “チ”, “テ” and “ナ”, and that to ease theburden of learning each individual character, it was more effective to relate thosecharacters together with one connecting story. Thus, the challenge of discerning thedifferences among the similar cards was alleviated. Students commented on the experimental class that through this activity, theynow had an interest in studying Japanese and because they learned the newinformation so quickly, they felt a sense of accomplishment. Furthermore, thestudents felt that they would retain the knowledge long-term. In the future, the fewineffective cards will be improved and trialed again. Eventually, a smart phoneapplication will be developed.