This paper explores the concept of quality assurance and its application to university language education programs. It begins by surveying approaches to external and internal quality assurance at leading universities around the world and among institutional organizations involved in the formulation of educational policy in order to understand recent developments in quality assurance internationally and in Japan. It then proceeds to consider the relationship between quality assurance and the notion of quality culture, taking the position that formal and structural measures for implementing quality assurance cannot lead to a higher quality in educational outcomes within institutions of higher education unless attention is also given to developing a quality culture. Finally, it considers the importance of developing a quality framework at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU) in light of the Top Global University (or SGU) project and provides recommendations on how to address the issue of quality in language education programs at APU.

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This study sought to determine the vocabulary gap for domestic Japanese learners of English prior to college entrance. Teacher-researchers analyzed the 1K and 2K lists from the General Service List (GSL) (West, 1953) and created two separate sets of Yes/No tests for these respective lists. The 2K list was divided randomly into nine Yes/No tests of approximately 110 items each, and each test was given to different groups of approximately 37 pre-intermediate English learners (total N=334) at a medium-sized Japanese university in the fall of 2013. The 1K list was similarly divided into eight Yes/No tests and given to the same-sized groups (total N=298) in the fall of 2014. Test-takers claimed to know about 47% of the 2K list and 72% of the 1K list items after correcting for false alarm rates of 8 and 9% respectively. The results support Browne’s (1998) claim that high school English curricula do not develop adequate depth of knowledge of the most frequent English vocabulary among high school English learners in Japan. This has led to creating a list of the “Forgotten 400” unfamiliar 1K and 2K words, which is provided along with the item facilities (IF) for each of these words.

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Internet and smartphone technology provides the English language learner with access to free and accessible dictionary technology like never before. However, the implications of this dramatic shift have yet to be fully addressed in dictionary usage and comparative effectiveness research. The primary aim of this research is to establish an up-to-date picture of Japanese college students’ usage of traditional electronic and Internet-based dictionary applications. A questionnaire was conducted and responses analyzed from 498 undergraduate college students taking compulsory EFL courses. Follow-up interviews were also conducted with five students and their responses were analyzed. The results showed that the vast majority of students were not using traditional paper dictionaries and that not only has the possession rate of electronic dictionaries fallen, but also that a substantial number of electronic dictionary owners were choosing to use other types of Internet-based dictionary applications. The pedagogical implications of these results are discussed within the framework of the “mental effort” (Hulstijn, 1992) and “involvement load” (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001) hypotheses. The potential outcomes of a “lowered consultation trigger point” (Aust, Kelley, & Roby, 1993) as a result of the ease and convenience of Internet-based dictionaries and applications are also discussed.

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A Tip-of-the-tongue state is a strong feeling that a target word, although currently unrecallable, is known and will be recalled (Schwartz, 2008). This phenomenon, while universal in occurrence, takes place not only among monolingual speakers but also among multilingual ones. In this paper, episodes of TOT are reported during a word retrieval experiment on Japanese speakers of Spanish L3 with English L2. A similar method from Ecker’s study (2001) was employed regarding the acquisition and processing of L3 words and their organisation and relation to other words (L1 and L2) in the mental lexicon. The study focused on learners’ salient attributes in lexical retrieval of Spanish words during a Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state. Considering the typological distance between the L1 and the L3 of the subjects, similar principles of integration, organisation and processing of L3 words found by Ecker’s study are reported in this study. A description of cross-linguistics influence (CLI) in L3 word retrieval during a +TOT is provided by considering aspects related to word form, meaning and syntactic class. The subjects were 17 Japanese speakers from a beginning level Spanish class. Initial word form and syntactic category, among others aspects, were found with considerable frequency during TOT states on L3 word retrieval. CLI from L2 and L3 represented the first and second higher source of influence in comparison with L1. The results showed how learners continue to rely on the languages more closely related to the target, irrespective of whether these are first or non-native languages.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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