Abstract

The Internet is being used more often to help teachers of second and foreign languages to create activities for language learning and assess their students' progress. One kind of computer package used to manage various types of online course work is being used ever increasingly in language learning environments: course management systems (CMS). The choice of which language, native or target, to use in a CMS is a source of debate. This chapter details an experiment conducted to determine the effect of an English and a Japanese interface on a CMS quiz module. The participants were 48 Japanese students of English. To control for internal sources of invalidity, random assignment was made and the design was a post test-only control group. The results showed no significant difference in the scores; the English interface may be an acceptable choice for the interface language of the quiz module for those whose native language is not English.

Reference
Melton, J. (2006). The effect of a native-language interface vs. a target-language interface on students' performance. In P. Zaphiris, & G. Zacharia (Eds.), User-centered computer aided language learning (pp. 234-56). Hershey, PA: Idea Group.