Extensive Reading SIG of JALT:

PresentERs - ER in Japanese: Using NLP and Aozora Bunko to support intermediate and advanced L2 readers of Japanese

Date: Sunday, March 30th, 2025 Time: 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Kimberley Rothville (The University of Auckland)

Description:
We will have a short talk about Extensive Reading from Kimberley Rothville on Sunday 30 March 19:00-20:00. The event will involve a short 20-30 minute casual talk from our PresentER, followed by around 20-30 minutes of questions and discussion.

PresentERs takes place on the last Sunday of each month online on Zoom. It is free for anyone to attend.

While Japanese graded readers for L2 learners have been rapidly developing in the last 5 years, these resources only cater to beginner or lower intermediate learners. Independent reading in Japanese requires knowing between 9500 lexemes (95 per cent coverage of all tokens in L1 Japanese texts) or 20,000 lexemes (98 per cent coverage) (Matsushita, 2014). Therefore, although the flourishing of graded readers is a welcome development, they will not support learners to reach the level of independent reading of Japanese texts. Natural Language Processing (NLP) using the Python coding language was used to classify more than 18,000 works of Japanese literature hosted by the Aozora Bunko digital repository according to their vocabulary coverage levels. This enables this trove of Japanese texts to be used to support intermediate and advanced learners of Japanese to develop their reading skills and level towards independent reading of texts written for L1 speakers of Japanese.

Organization: Extensive Reading Special Interest Group, Japan Association for Language Teaching (Extensive Reading SIG of JALT)

Cost: free

Venue: online; see https://er.jalt.org for Zoom details

Location: Online, Online Events, Online Event

Contact Extensive Reading SIG of JALT

Website: https://er.jalt.org