English Vocabulary Development Using Everyday Katakana Eigo Loanwords

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This paper describes a semester-long project that utilizes Katakana Eigo loanwords, gathered by university students from their daily environment, as a tool for developing English vocabulary. The exercise begins by demonstrating the futility of relying upon katakana for English vocabulary recognition, correct spelling, or proper pronunciation. Students then discover firsthand their imperfect, katakana-based knowledge of a large number of English words. They activate this latent vocabulary pool by collecting Katakana Eigo words, determining their real English equivalents, and producing sentences using these English words. The vocabulary generated is used in real-world communication (albeit in corrupted katakana form) and thus represents a unique, context-rich class of "authentic materials." Learner autonomy and critical awareness are fostered by the fact that students are free to choose words expressing their individual out-of-class interests in food, fashion, sports and entertainment. Students also learn how to extend their vocabulary base by adding affixes to certain root words, and to use dictionaries more creatively. To date, 429 students have participated in the ongoing project. A vocabulary master list, consisting of hundreds of English words arranged by various categories, currently is being compiled.
久留米工業大学の論文
1998-12-20