Kathie

Hi! At last I have managed to get on to this page to edit it. More passwords etc! Anyway, I have decided to research with my yr 10 class which out of the Aukje Both powerpoints and the Katakana in 48 Minutes flashcards is the most helpful to their learning of Katakana. They are familiar with the 48 Minutes method from when they learned hiragana. They are a class of 31 girls who had done a 6 month course in yr 9. There is one student who identifies as Maori and none who identify with any other ethnic group. When I did a pretest to see how much, if any, katakana they already knew the results were as follows: written knowledge - 8 of the 31 could write some, one of the 8 knew them all and 1 other knew a lot of them. reading knowledge - 16 out of the 31 could read some of them; one girl could read them all and a couple could read many.

My method for using Aukje Both's powerpoints (which I think are great!) has been to go through each powerpoint systematically at the beginning of a lesson, with time for student input as we went. Then I would get the girls to mark off on their own katakana chart which ones we had covered, and then write out the katakana words from the powerpoint 5 times each. This would take about half a period each time. After covering the first 4 I took them to the computer room to complete the quiz, and again, after finishing the presentations they had another session in the computer room to do the 5 - 9 quiz. Most of the girls seemed to enjoy the quizzes, and worked well at them. Interestingly one or two of the girls who are less likely to work well in class were among those who worked well at the quizzes. Also, at the beginning of each lesson I would briefly review the previously learnt katakana with either the powerpoint, or (more usually) the Katakana in 48 Minutes flashcards. So far the comments during class have been somewhat negative. Quite a few liked the stories that go with the Hiragana in 48 Minutes and so they were missing that. Some of them said they preferred the more systematic approach of the Hiragana in 48 Minutes where the symbols were learned in chart order. I am planning to survey them next term about what they thought of the approach, and also test them to see how much they have improved from the pretest. I am also going to test their word recognition and ability to write words in katakana, as I think the powerpoint approach should have given them more idea of how katakana is used for words. Previously, when teaching katakana, I have noticed that students have trouble working out how to translate katakana words; that it is more about the sound of the word than the spelling.

My last year's year 10 class, which I took over mid-year, had started to learn katakana via the powerpoint method, and I took them back to the start with the 48 Minutes method. When I was looking at doing this question, I asked the girls who had carried on to Yr 11 which one they liked, and had about a 50/50 split. Also, a girl in my current Yr 12 class was reminiscing about learning katakana via the powerpoints, and seemed to have enjoyed that method. I will be interested to see how my current yr 10 class goes!

These are the questions I am putting on the questionnaire: How confident are you now in reading katakana? (not at all, a bit, okay, quite, totally) How confident are you now in writing katakana? (not at all, a bit, okay, quite, totally) What did you like about the powerpoint method of learning katakana? What did you not like about it? Do you feel you learnt anything extra from the powerpoints? If so, what? Comparing learning hiragana through the flashcards and katakana through the powerpoints, which was most helpful to your learning? Which method did you enjoy most? What else do you think would have helped with your katakana learning? If you were recommending a katakana teaching method for another Y10 class, would you recommend the powerpoint, the flashcards, a mixture of both or something else?

Here's a file we're uplopaded as practice and now my completed report to share.