Usage Situations of Learning Tools

among Pre-Undergraduate Students on the MEXT Scholarship:

Smartphone Apps and Change of Learning Styles

SUZUKI Tomomi, SHIMIZU Yukiko, SHIBUYA Hiroko, NAKAMURA Akira, FUJIMURA Tomoko

Key Words: pre-undergraduate students on the MEXT scholarship, learning tools, smartphone apps, websites, dictionaries

The purpose of this paper is to find out what kind of learning tools pre-undergraduate students at the Japanese Language Center for International Students (JLC) at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies use when they study Japanese, and how they use them, so that the results may help teachers improve their education support literacy.

Such students are “digital natives.” In recent years, some of them had taught themselves Japanese, using Internet teaching materials and study groups before they came to Japan.

In December 2016 and July 2017 we administered online questionnaires and asked JLC students their usage situations of learning tools such as electronic dictionaries, smartphone apps, websites, video sites, etc. We also asked them how useful they were and had them evaluate them.

We have found that smartphone apps have firmly established themselves as learnig tools. The digitization of Japanese learning environments and the ubiquitousness of computer access may be influencing their changing learning styles.

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