Supporting the acquisition of Japanese polite expressions in context-aware ubiquitous learning

It is very difficult for the overseas students to learn Japanese polite expression (JPE) during their course of learning the Japanese language. In this paper, in order to support the foreigners learning JPEs anywhere anytime, we propose a ubiquitous language-learning environment which works without any input of the context information. In the traditional Japanese class, learners only learn the rule of the JPE. This environment can be seen as an extension of the traditional education and it guides the learners to use the appropriate JPE according to the different situations in the real world, at the same time, trains students’ ability and skill of using the JPE. We have implemented a prototype system for this environment, named JAPELAS, and JAPELAS2 is a one-to- many system which is upgraded based on JAPELAS and it supports learners interacting with many persons in the same situation. This paper presents the design implementation and evaluation of the JAPELAS2.