An analysis of typing errors by JFL learners and the causes of those errors.

Abstract

The present study investigated the tendency of common typing errors by JFL (Japanese as a Foreign Language) learners, focusing on errors that relate to long vowels and the causes of those errors. With the widespread use of computers and the Internet, communication through "typing" such as e-mailing and social networking has increased more than ever. Also, activities and assignments which require skills of Japanese word-processing have been increasing in Japanese courses. To maximize the benefit of those new types of language tools, accurate typing skills are essential. The present study examined the following hypotheses. 1) JFL learners make typing errors because they are unable to perceive Japanese duration contrast and thus cannot spell words accurately. 2) JFL learners make typing errors because they are unable to use appropriate romaji or Roman alphabet to input Japanese words correctly to computers. Forty-two JFL learners (21elementary and 21 intermediate learners of Japanese) and eight Japanese native speakers participated in this study. Three tasks were conducted in order to test the hypothesis: the mora counting task, the romanization task, and the hiragana transcription task. The results indicated that the problem of perceiving duration contrasts mainly affected the accuracy of transcribing words with long vowels. On the other hand, the inability of romanization affected the scores of all of the word types regardless of the presence of long vowels. Another finding was that romanization skills improve according to the amount of experience of typing Japanese, i.e., the intermediate group (IG) did better than the beginner group (BG) in the romanization task, whereas the perception of the duration contrasts does not develop greatly even as the learners' proficiency level advances, i.e., there was no significant difference between the BG and the IG in the score of the mora counting task. The error analysis of the learner groups' answers revealed that the most common error of the transcription tasks was the wrong spelling of long vowels. Both the BG and the IG showed similar tendencies in this error type, though the error ratio was higher in the BG. Over all the results imply that it is easier to acquire the romanization of Japanese than the perception of Japanese duration contrasts. Therefore, introducing common errors in romanization in the early stage of Japanese typing instruction will let the JFL learners be aware of those errors and prevent them from occurring.