"Learning Through Folktales"
Brief:
"Learn Japanese by reading real Japanese texts."
This concept relies upon a preexisting tool called "Rikaichan," which is a plug-in for the Mozilla Firefox browser. This tool provides the user with a simple popup translation of any Japanese text the mouse cursor hovers over. Rikaichan's elegantly minimal presentation of material proves incredibly effective for anyone viewing Japanese language material on the web.
the idea at work here is to use rikai-chan as instant reference, while reading narrative Japanese texts, such as in the example, which is a transcription of one of Japan's most famous folk tales "Momotarou".
link to transcription can be found here
The objective was to learn and practice Japanese, while reading enjoyable, narrative forms of the language.
Results:
My users explained that any words translated by Rikaichan were then thought of in terms of English and the Japanese counterparts were forgotten. They remembered where the word was in the story and could, therefore, reread the word and translate it; however, if presented the Japanese word out of context, they could not recall its meaning. These results proved a valuable point concerning instant and effortless reference - it offers a drastically less substantial imprint on the student in comparison to laborious reference efforts, which involve multiple steps and interrupt workflow.
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