The current study investigated 29 first-year Japanese university students’ usage of an online vocabulary notebook that automatically searched eight different word and phrase lists to provide students with reference information about their self-selected vocabulary. Over the course of a 14-week period, participants read English books and articles and added self-selected vocabulary that they wanted to learn to individual online vocabulary notebooks. The notebooks immediately and automatically showed whether the vocabulary appeared on any of eight different reference vocabulary lists. The distribution of participant vocabulary across lists was examined and participant surveys and interviews were conducted to understand usage of the system. Analysis of participant vocabulary, learner surveys, and interviews indicated that participants selected relatively high percentages of standardized-test related vocabulary (i.e. TOEIC and TOEFL), chose individual vocabulary items over multi-word expressions, and studied vocabulary items even when they did not appear on any reference lists. Learner surveys and interview results suggested that use of the system directly or indirectly influenced half of the participants’ decisions about which vocabulary to include in their notebooks, though participants reported that it did not affect their choice of reading material.

本研究调查了29名日本大一学生对在线词汇笔记本的使用情况，该笔记本自动搜索8个不同的单词和短语列表，以向学生提供有关其自选词汇的参考信息。在为期14周的课程中，参与者阅读英语书籍和文章，并将自己想学习的自选词汇添加到各个在线词汇笔记本中。笔记本立即自动显示该词汇表是否出现在八个不同参考词汇表中的任何一个上。检查了参与者词汇表在整个列表中的分布，并进行了参与者调查和访谈以了解系统的使用情况。参加者词汇分析，学习者调查，访谈表明，参与者选择了相对较高的标准化测试相关词汇（即TOEIC和TOEFL），选择了多词表达形式的单个词汇项目，并且即使没有出现在参考文献列表中也研究了词汇项目。学习者的调查和访谈结果表明，该系统的使用直接或间接影响了参与者决定要在笔记本中包含哪些词汇的一半决定，尽管参与者报告说这并不影响他们对阅读材料的选择。