Use of information technologies to improve productive skills of the Japanese language students (in English)

it is possible if one uses technologies that can communicate (or mimic communication) with a student.

One of the ways of implanting it into students’ individual work is presented in an article by A.V. Mah-rakova called “E-learning in Teaching Japanese Language” [3, p. 273] To prepare students to communication one can introduce them to a dialog simulation with the help of such services such as iSpring Suite (an extension of ower oint) or its free online analogues like Online Test ad Teacher creates a dialog in a electronic form with several answer options One of them shows a correct unfolding of a dialogue, and wrong answers lead to conversation stumbling. It can be done in a form of a gamification of the textbook dialogue, by extending its original context, ensuring students learned material of the lesson and acting as a preparation stage for real communication.

Modern machine learning, speech recognition and natural language processing take dialogue simulation and by automizing it take it to the next level. Throughout the last years many researchers examined virtual assistants’ technology, or intelligent personal assistants (henceforth – I A), and its readiness for implementation into language learning process. In Russia this topic was studied by A.N. Al-Kaisi, A.L. Arkhangelskaya and O.I. Rudenko-Morgun, as they introduced Russian-speaking voice assistant “Alice” developed by Yandex to a class of students learning Russian as foreign language [ , p. 240]. The results of their research show that in blended learning environment students can benefit from communicating with a personal virtual assistant as it has a wide range of answer phrases, can teach students new phrases and though being a robot, has a set of build-in personal characteristics that makes communicating with it interesting to students A teacher can overlook some of students’ mistakes in class, but if a student makes mistakes in their speech when talking to an I A a communication will fail, which makes an I A a determinant of real language know- ledge and a strict speaking training partner.

Although most research on virtual assistants in the field of language learning revolves around their use in English classrooms, directed by a teacher, in 2022 G. Dizon, D. Tang D and Y. Yamamoto performed a study where they gave one I A Alexa to each student of the Japanese language group for their individual self-directed training at home. The experiment was hold for 2 months, and all interactions between students and Alexa were recorded as a data collection and then were reviewed by researchers. articipants were not given direct instructions how they were supposed to communicate with Alexa, but they were encouraged to freely engage in a dialogue. The results showed that participants’ speech was understood by Alexa for 80 % of the time and students managed to learn many new words and in general considered Alexa a good addition to their self-training, which makes it possible to conclude that Alexa as a virtual assist-

ПРИМЕНЕНИЕ ИНФОРМАЦИОННЫХ ТЕХНОЛОГИЙ ДЛЯ РАЗВИТИЯ ПРОДУКТИВНЫХ НАВЫКОВ ОБУЧАЮЩИХСЯ ПРИ ОБУЧЕНИИ ЯПОНСКОМУ ЯЗЫКУ ant has a potential to act as a useful technology for self-directed Japanese learning [5, p. 3].

Negative feedback given by students in the study revolve around topics of “too many possibilities” (students feeling overwhelmed due to the lack of instructions) and their Japanese level being not good enough. In the frame of this research, it is recommended to start using the technology of virtual assistant from the beginner level to facilitate the studying curve and to give students clear instructions in the form of project method Not all students in Russia have access to Alexa, so an alternative free I A Google Assistant that most students have on their phones can be used Though Google Assistant will not become a dialogue partner as it cannot initiate new topics [8, p. 28], it can answer to students’ questions and execute commands, that can be easily integrated into the system of projects where students perform tasks given by a teacher for a homework and present their results in the form of a written text and a phone screen

Writing .As .V. Sysoev and K.A. Merzlyakov write in their article, in comparison to teaching other aspects of language and communicative skills (grammar, phonetics and vocabulary, reading, speaking, and listening), teaching writing requires considerably more time, which can present a problem when working with a big group of students [4, p. 37]. Another issue is that students can feel not comfortable enough to share their ideas in class, which is especially relevant for beginner learners of a foreign language [7, p. 7].

To productively organize the process of teaching writing, it is proposed to create an online educational space where students are provided with clear explanations, examples, and requirements of what their assignment is, where they can communicate with their groupmates and receive teacher’s feedback and guidance. Similarly with the use of Google Assistant the aim of adding technologies to the process of organizing training of language productive skills is to partly shift the responsibility from the teacher to a technology or to students, which corresponds perfectly with the tendency that outside the educational sphere most writing is done collaboratively. That is the reason why many educators advise to implement usage of the peer-writing method together with modern technologies such as Google Docs, Evernote, Notion [2, p. 9]. eer-writing as a method got popularized at the rise of MOOCs where students reviewing each other’s work helped the organizers of the online course to maintain a big number of students in one group and to increase their productivity and engagement. However, for this study it was decided to expend the role of each student and to assign to everyone their own individual part, and to set a teacher as a methodical organizer, supervisor, and editor. An online service adlet was chosen for conducting the research.

adlet is an online space where a group can share their texts,im-ages, audio messages and videos. First, a teacher records a video explanation where all requirement and instructions for students are explained. Students receive the link to a page with the video and start working on the first draft. Work on one essay was separated into 2 parts, where students first did a draft and shared it by mail with the teacher. Many researchers suggest sharing a draft version with groupmates, but for this study due to the difference in the language knowledge level of the participants of the group it was decided to follow the idea of .V. Sysoev and K.A. Merzlyakov to let students first receive feedback from the teacher and make further refinements to their essays in order to avoid copying each other’s mistakes and avoid unnecessary stress After correcting the mistakes and finishing the draft students shared their essays and illustrations on the ad-let platform.

One of the difficulties of the Japanese language is that writing by hand is considerably more difficult than typ- ing on a phone or a computer, as Japanese has 3 writing systems and beginner learners can write a kanji by typing its romaji reading and changing it into the needed kanji. Within the framework of this study, it was not emphasized whether students should submit a hand-written essay or a printed file, so each student decided how they wanted to submit their work individually.

During the second phase of work students were supposed to read each other’s pieces and ask questions and give feedback with reactions in the comments. To finish the second assignment, they had to make a record-

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Figure 2. Screen of Google Assistant when asked to set a reminder to rest

Figure 3. Padlet page with students’ compositions, images, audio recordings and teacher’s video explanation

ing through the site with them retelling the contents of their essay and answering to the questions, which made them look back on their previous mistakes, connect both types of productive language skills and get to know their groupmates better by sharing their ideas and personalities.