Consideration of Language Learning Service with Visualized Vocabulary Map Derived from WordNet

The authors aim to propose highly effective, efficient and satisfactory service of language teaching and learning by means of educational technology from the viewpoint of usability engineering. In the field of computational/quantitative linguistics based on corpora data, many linguists have been numerically analyzing lexical characteristics for each English vocabulary and compiled them as a vocabulary list which is machine-readable since 1960s. On the other hand, a lexical database of semantic relations called WordNet has also been developed in the field of computing science. This study consists of three components. One is to enrich, refine and integrate already-existing vocabulary information in terms of “frequency”, “difficulty”, and “relativeness”. Another is to develop the system of language learning and teaching service with the integrated vocabulary information. And the other is to evaluate the system from usability engineering point of view. So far, the authors reached and conducted the first two kinds of studies, succeeded in deriving the newly-integrated vocabulary list and visualizing the word relations in each experiment.