This paper aims to clarify the translatability of poetry through the translation language of modern Chinese poetry. In translation of poetry, metaphor should be rendered creatively, while the original meter cannot be transferred precisely into the target language. This makes the translatability of poetry a critical issue. In the 20th century, both Japan and China have been influenced by European modern poetry, especially by French symbolism and surrealism. In contemporary China, modern poetry was revived at the end of the 1970's after the Great Cultural Revolution. Contemporary Chinese poetry was first introduced into Japan in the late 1980's and has continued to spread over the several decades since this revolution. Walter Benjamin asserted that the radical mission of translation is dedicated to the realm of pure language on the philosophical side of poetry translation, while Roman Jakobson attempted to explicate poetry from linguistic points of view and defined the poetic function in linguistic terms. This paper describes the findings through the empirical analyses of the translation language of Chinese modern poetry, focusing on both philosophical and linguistic facets.

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In international education, the ability to comprehend English-medium lectures has become an important benchmark for many students from non-English speaking cultures, yet the issue of second-language lecture comprehension has received only occasional attention by scholars. This research aims to address this gap by exploring the linguistic factors that affect lecture comprehension of Japanese users of English in an English-medium lecture course at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU) in Japan. It identifies the key linguistic factors that are likely to pose a challenge for non-native users of English in this context and investigates the effects of these factors on the comprehension of the participants as they attend lectures in the course. It concludes with recommendations for improving lecture comprehension and options for future research in this area.

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This paper employed the lexical coverage construct, defined as the percentage of words in a text that a reader understands (Laufer & Ravenhorst-Kalovski, 2010, p. 16), to establish a) the vocabulary size needed to achieve adequate comprehension of the TOEFL (ITP) reading section and reading passages taken from two EFL textbooks, and b) whether the EFL textbooks provide opportunities for vocabulary instruction sufficient to achieve specific reading comprehension targets; in this case, a reading comprehension level of approximately 50%-55% (at the intermediate level) and 65% (at the upper-intermediate level) on the TOEFL (ITP). Using the RANGE software package and employing 95% and 98% lexical coverages, the results pointed to a gap of at least 2,500-4,000 word families between TOEFL reading texts and the two EFL textbooks. At 98%, the gap was approximately 6,000 word families. It was concluded that the two textbooks do not provide sufficient vocabulary instruction for students to meet the lexical demands of the TOEFL reading comprehension targets. The implications of this for textbook selection and vocabulary instruction are discussed.

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For tertiary level students, organising and writing texts requires a considerable amount of time. To minimize this issue, they need to be taught how to organise a text as a whole. In Systemic Functional Linguistics, the notion of periodicity can help teachers explain to students how to organise their texts successfully. As Martin and Rose (2007) state, “periodicity is concerned with information flow: the way in which meanings are packaged to make it easier for us to take them in” (p. 188). The pedagogical purpose of this study is to propose the integration of the notion of periodicity when teaching writing to EFL learners at the tertiary level to improve the coherence and cohesion of their academic essays. Using central ideas from systemic functional linguistics, this study shows how coherence and cohesion were developed in two academic essays by analysing their hierarchical structures. Essay A followed a traditional composition style method and Essay B followed a suggested method using ideas from the notion of periodicity. The results showed that the hierarchical structure of Essay B was more consistent and organised than Essay A. The paper concludes with the introduction of an outline that aims to improve the quality of EFL learners’ essays in terms of their coherence and cohesion.

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The internationalization of tertiary education is a process that is continuing around the globe, ever deepening in complexity. Connected to this evolving situation is the question of how best to integrate the students who are brought together on internationalized campuses by these efforts. This paper reports the findings of an investigation of former international student teaching assistants at a highly internationalized university in Japan and considers the various personal and professional benefits they felt they acquired. Using testimony from interviews with nine former teaching assistants, and using a grounded theory approach to analyze and identify common themes in the participants' reported experiences, this report concludes that the hiring of international students as teaching assistants has the potential to benefit the individuals included in such a program and the institutions who recruit them.

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This preliminary study aimed to gather data about English teachers’ beliefs regarding the provision of corrective feedback for student writing in university English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes. Participants included English instructors from Japan and abroad who responded to a survey that employed both qualitative questions about teachers’ beliefs and practices, as well as quantitative questions regarding the methods they used and the time used to explain them. The data was analyzed with the goal of answering these questions: 1) What types of feedback do teachers prefer and why? 2) How long do teachers spend explaining their feedback system? 3) Do teachers require a revised draft and why/why not? 4) How much time do teachers spend making corrections? 5) Is there a difference in the type of feedback teachers prefer depending on the elements of writing that they are focusing on? How well do they feel that students act on those corrections? According to the results, teachers preferred indirect and explicit feedback for all aspects of writing. They spent a short time explaining feedback systems due to assumptions that students already understood, but a long time correcting individual student work.

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本研究は、就職支援を視野に入れた日本語教育の研究である。日本で就職を希望する留学生が採用面接時に評価されるコンピテンシーと「社会人基礎力」の2つの関係を明らかにすることを目的とする。まず、留学生に企業が新卒者の採用面接で用いるコンピテンシー面接の手法を用いて、「学生時代に力を入れたこと」について過去の行動を掘り下げて尋ね、その行動をもとに留学生が有するコンピテンシー・レベルを5段階で評価した。 　次に、評価した各レベルの対象学生が持つ「社会人基礎力」を抽出した。その結果、対象学生を3つのコンピテンシー・レベルに分けることができ、そのレベル判定には、セルフマネジメント・サイクル（PDCA）が影響を与えていることがわかった。また、コンピテンシー・レベルに対する面接者の評価には、「課題発見力」「計画力」「実行力」の3つの「社会人基礎力」の質が影響を与えており、難易度が高くチャレンジに値する課題設定が、それに続く計画の質を高め、大きな実行力を生むというモデルを示すことができた。

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本稿は、地域のリソースを活用して行った「まち歩き」が、留学生に与える影響を調査したものである。実施後のアンケートの結果、地域や文化・歴史への関心、成績への加点が参加の動機につながっていること、留学生が「まち歩き」を地域の情報を知る機会になると捉えたことがわかった。また、活動後に提出されたレポートをテキストマイニングで分析したところ、固有名詞や人名の出現頻度が高く、それらの言葉の使用例には「見えているものを、よく見る」（茶谷2012）ことから得られる詳細な記述が見られ、別府に対する印象が「何もないつまらない田舎の町」から「豊かな文化がある面白い町」へと変わったと述べているものも多かった。実施から半年後のインタビューでは、固有名詞の記憶は薄れているものの、「まち歩き」のルートやエピソード等はよく覚えており、「まち歩き」後の行動の広がりや意識の変化も確認できた。このことから、留学生を地域に誘い出し、地域を知り、愛着を生む機能としての「まち歩き」の有効性が示された。

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