The purpose of this study was to evaluate the function of the multi-media CAI system which was developed jointly by the researchers of C&C Information Technology Research Laboratories of NEC and those of the Language & Speech Science Laboratory of Chiba University. The system was developed to help Japanese learners of English to learn how to comprehend spoken English. Eleven college students majoring in English participated in this experimental study. They used the system for 11 hours per person. The average score in comprehending such English passages as the ones recorded from PBS News was improved by 28 points from 48/100 (pre-test) to 76/100 (post-test). The amount of improvement observed in this study was approximately the same as that shown by a number of college students who had studied abroad (US or UK) for one year. In a follow-up questionaire on learneru27s self-evaluation, the experimental subjects expressed a strong desire to use the system further after they finished learning all the materials which had been prepared for them. In comparison with previously used materials, they reported that the system they used in this experiment was by far the best of all the teaching methods they had used or known of.
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