One of the major findings in previous research on reflexive coreference in a second language context is that learners of English violate the locality requirement of the English reflexive form x-self more readily when it appears in the subordinate infinitival clause than when it is found in the subordinate tensed clause. This paper attempts to show that the cause of this asymmetry is the difference in the event structure inherent to the situation to be described, rather than the difference in the structural type of the sentence per se. In an experiment that was conducted to test the validity of this postulation, the learners responded differently to the different degrees of factivity presumed in individual sentences, in line with the prediction. This result is important not only in theoretical terms but from a pedagogical point of view as well.

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The purpose of this study is to investigate the second language acquisition of information structure in English dative constructions by the speakers of Japanese. Data from acceptability judgments were collected in Japanese from Japanese monolingual speakers, and in English from English native speakers, Japanese advanced learners of English (JSAs) and Japanese novice learners of English (JSLs). Japanese is seen to prefer new-given order in responses to questions asking about the dative (who-dative questions); in responses to questions asking about the accusative (what-accusative questions), there is no such preference. English consistently prefers given-new order. In responses to who-datives, both JSAs and JSLs do not transfer the new-given order from their L1; they acquire the target-like ordering. Transfer effects surface in the environment where no distinction of information ordering exists in their L1, in response to what-accusatives.

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It is argued in this article that procedural knowledge of a second language as the goal of learning is best learned through the learning of exemplars of language use as instances of connecting meaning with form. Two recent theories, ACT-R theory of cognitive skill learning by Anderson (1993) and Usage-Based Model of language acquisition by Tomasello (2003), are cited to show the importance of exemplar learning in second language learning. In discussing the role of exemplars in second language learning, a distinction is made between item-learning and category-learning. Item-learning refers to the learning of particular expressions item by item as exemplars which show how intended meanings are encoded onto forms or how the procedures connecting them are executed. Category-learning is defined as the learning of abstract rules that govern a set of different expressions of the same construction. It is stressed that category-learning occurs at all levels of language and at various stages of learning. It is also claimed that category-learning provides the source from which a whole system of grammar of an interlanguage is formed. Finally it is concluded that the learning of exemplars constitutes the most essential part of second language learning.

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The present study attempts to record and analyze developments in the L2 pragmatic competence of a group of university-level Japanese learners of English as a result of time spent studying intensively in a target language community. Adopting a longitudinal method, this study focuses specifically on the realization of two speech acts: requests and apologies. Realizations of these speech acts were measured using a Discourse Completion Test with four situations based on Brown and Levinson's (1987) categorizations and the test was administered twice in a pre/post design, before and after the overseas experience. A detailed analysis of the data was carried out focusing on pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic features. As a result of the study, some positive effects of the overseas experience were identified, with some specific findings on the development of syntactic, lexical, and semantic aspects. Furthermore, some implications for future research were suggested.

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The present study focused on the effect of instruction in circumlocution among communication strategies (CSs) on the communicative ability of Japanese EFL learners. Concerning the teachability of CSs, considerable controversy has persisted for the last decade. Negative viewers of CSs teachability have claimed that strategic competence develops in L1 and is freely transferable into L2, while positive viewers insists the usefulness of instruction in CSs. The present study hypothesized that circumlocution consists of transferable and untransferable parts between L1 and L2, both of which are teachable, and that instruction in circumlocution contributes to the development of communicative ability of the learners. In order to prove this assertion, two-month period instruction was given to the learners, and pre and post-test were conducted on L1 and L2. The results showed the significant improvements of the communicative ability and CS use of the learners both in L1 and L2, although the effects were greater in L2. It is assumed that in L2 the learners have improved both in referential level, which is transferable between different languages, and in encoding level, which is untransferable between languages, while they improved only in referential level in L1.

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The present study is an attempt to explore the structure of the speaking ability of Japanese EFL learners, by constructing a speaking process model. The model, consisting of two types of speaking, which are expected for the Japanese to live as global citizens communicating together, was designed to investigate the internal process, a kind of causal chains among several factors which may contribute to oral performance in English, within a psycholinguistic framework. 35 university students participated in a series of the survey, including Oral Performance Tests [OPT], an English proficiency test, a set of questionnaires on English learning motivation, willingness to communicate [WTC], meta-cognition, and cognitive styles. The results of the two OPTs were rated, using a multiple-trait scoring method, utilizing a rating scale, for both intuitive and objective ways. After validating each variable according to the two test theories, an exploratory regression analysis yielded the hypothetical model, with 2 types of speaking as dependent variables, linguistic variables, affective and cognitive variables as independent ones. A path analysis, based on this model, showed the causal chains. As a result, several dissimilarities along with some commonalities were identified between two types of speaking ability in the explanatory structure.

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Although chunking (phrase reading or slash reading) is a widely used method for raising reading speed in classes, its effect on comprehension has not been clear. In addition, an adequate theoretical explanation for the effect of chunking on L2 reading has not been provided. In this study, four types of reading condition were allotted to 87 Japanese university students; whole passage, chunk-cued passage with no pause, chunk-cued passage with pauses at every chunk, and chunk-cued passage with pauses at the end of sentences. Results showed: (a) that chunking promotes reading comprehension with pauses between chunks, and (b) that effects of chunking and pause were equally found among L2 reading proficiency and memory span groups. The paper concludes by arguing that the important aspect of chunking for comprehension is integrating chunks rather than processing each chunk rapidly.

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A translation test is one of the most common reading test methods in Japan, although its reliability and validity have been quite controversial. This study investigated the reliability and validity of translation tests as a measure of reading comprehension in Japanese university entrance examinations, with a particular focus on two research questions: (a) In terms of reliability, what types of translation materials cause difference in rating severity? (b) In terms of validity, what types of sentence can make great differences between translation and comprehension tasks? In order to examine the first research question, four experienced teachers scored English-to-Japanese translations made by 102 university students. Results showed that rating divergence is attributable to raters' different points of scoring (holistic vs. partial), and raters' leniency for inappropriate Japanese expressions or careless mistakes. The second research question was examined by administering 18 sets of translation and reading comprehension tasks to the same participants as above. Results showed that 4 out of 18 English sentences used in Japanese university entrance examinations were considered to be inappropriate as materials for translation tasks when examinees' reading comprehension was intended to be measured.

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The purpose of the present study is to investigate the relationship between EFL reading comprehension and readers' metacognition, focusing on the latter's variation in terms of locations within texts, types of metacognitive knowledge, the manners of text presentation, readers' proficiency, and readers' awareness of logical connectives. The obtained results show that the participants' metacognition was activated more strongly for word meanings and sentence structures than for logical connectives and background knowledge, that participants' metacognition was activated more strongly for the beginning parts of the texts, and that highlighting logical connectives was found to help readers of high proficiency to activate their metacognition even at the latter parts of the texts. Based on these findings, pedagogical implications will be presented for the teaching of EFL reading comprehension.

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Error feedback in writing has long been a divisive topic resulting from different conditions in variables. A more systematic and controlled study with such differences decreased is obviously necessary. This present study is therefore intended to fill this need, employing a text where eight kinds of treatable errors' are implanted beforehand as target forms. Focusing on variables - feedback type, error type, the subject of feedback effect, and learner's metalinguistic knowledge of target form - three hypotheses were tested: (1) that any feedback causes error repair/editing more than no feedback; (2) that feedback on forms with more metalinguistic knowledge causes more error repair/editing; (3) that feedback effect depends on a form itself rather than its level/type. Results suggested that some feedback on some form can be effective on repair/editing to some extent more than no feedback, depending on the conditions of the variables.

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The present study examines the role of peer responses in learners' writing process. It focuses on what kind of peer responses the students produced, how they revised their first draft according to those responses, and what they learned through such peer responses. The students received comments from their peers about their first draft, after which they produced a second draft, using the comments they received as guidance. Then they were asked to record their reflections. The results of analysis of students' original and revised texts and peer comments are consistent with the students' reflections. The peer comments were mainly about specific content. They helped the students to realize that they needed to include more explanation or information in their text. As a result, adding sentences to the text was the most popular way of revising for the students. This research revealed that they were able to understand what was needed to improve their writing without an instructor's direct input. Although there were some limitations, this type of writing activity with peer response seemed to promote autonomous learning.

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The present study examines the value and the application of a new vocabulary learning method devised to promote the efficiency of lexical memory retrieval. It is the method of presenting a word in chunks with its L1(Japanese) translation. The experiment was conducted to discover the difference between the conventional method (paired-association) and the new method. The subjects, 52 university students, were engaged in matching tasks on a computer assisted program developed by the author, and during the tasks they were supposed to use inference to discover correct answers. After learning sections they were given four tests, two of which were conducted on the same day while the other two were conducted seven weeks later to examine short-term effects and long-term effects. The result was that the new method or the chunk presentation method, in spite of the lower achievement rate in the first two tests, proved more effective in the test given seven weeks later. This result reveals that the chunk presentation method can be an alternative to conventional methods for intermediate English learners who are required to memorize some thousands of words in a limited period. The effect of structural difference in chunks on memory retrieval efficiency is also examined.

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Ninety-three Japanese college students were tested productively on three aspects of word knowledge: meaning senses, paradigmatic and syntagmatic (collocational) knowledge for each of 30 target words (10 words each for noun, verb and adjective), together with vocabulary size and proficiency tests. The results show that syntagmatic links are stronger than the paradigmatic ones in their lexical networks for both the upper and lower groups of vocabulary size and proficiency. However, paradigmatic networks as well as syntagmatic ones tend to expand as their vocabulary size grows. The vocabulary size seems to play an important role in network building. It is also suggested that the productive test devised in this study may be a useful measure for exploring lexical networks.

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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of text readability on incidental vocabulary learning through glosses. Sixty-six university students participated in this experiment. Each participant read four English passages with different readability. Each passage had four target words with L1 (Japanese) marginal glosses. Afterwards, an unexpected vocabulary test on those target words was conducted. The main results were: (a) text readability affects incidental vocabulary learning through glosses and, (b) incidental vocabulary learning is unlikely to occur when the text readability is so high that the text demands too much cognitive load from learners. Some pedagogical implications are drawn from these findings.

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The present study has shown with empirical evidence that vocabulary knowledge plays an important role in reading comprehension in EFL, and has demonstrated that for intermediate or advanced EFL learners with Japanese as their L1, vocabulary size, affix knowledge, depth of vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension are closely related to each other. Also, for the cohort of learners who had sufficient knowledge of 3,000 word families, the role of depth of vocabulary knowledge was not prominent although still evident to some degree in reading comprehension, contrary to general expectations. Rather, a suggestion has been made that they utilize affix knowledge or vocabulary size while reading. The lower group in this study tends to use affix knowledge, particularly prefix knowledge, in order to make up for their lack of vocabulary. On the other hand, in the case of the upper group, their wider vocabulary plays an important role in reading comprehension. The study also shows that affix knowledge plays an important part in reading comprehension for both groups.

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This study is designed to investigate whether there are differences in difficulty of acquisition depending upon categories of Japanese loanwords derived from English, and how effective categorical teaching of loanwords is on vocabulary teaching. Five categories were selected based on a review of the literature. It is assumed that teaching loanwords by using categories is more effective than teaching one by one in vocabulary teaching. Thus the two teaching methods, i.e. categorical teaching and item teaching, were compared to investigate the potential advantages of categorical teaching on vocabulary acquisition. The results showed that (1) there were differences in the score of the recognition test depending upon categories of loanwords; (2) learners taught vocabulary in relation to loanword groups tended to succeed in learning more vocabulary from loanwords than learners taught without the categories; (3) there were the positive effects of categorical teaching on three categories at two different proficiency levels. A possible explanation will be discussed for the effects of vocabulary teaching in the Japanese EFL classroom.

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The aim of this study is to investigate the characteristics of attention of Japanese children in English vocabulary learning. The participants were 3rd and 6th grade students in a public elementary school. In the experiment, they were divided into two groups: a single task performance group (SEP) and a dual task performance group (SIM). The former group learned phonological information and orthographic information of target words separately, whereas the latter group learned the phonological information and the orthographic information of the target words simultaneously. In the analyses, posttest scores were compared with pretest scores of listening and reading tests with regard to the target words. As a result, it could be suggested that the participants in the SEP had paid more attention to the orthographic information of the target words than the participants in the SIM, and that the participants in the SIM had paid attention to the phonological information as well as the participants in the SEP. Thus, it could be conjectured that 3rd and 6th grade students in the SIM had regarded the phonological information of the target words as primary information and the orthographic information of the target words as secondary.

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This study quantitatively and qualitatively compares junior high school (JHS) students who were taught English including some reading and writing in elementary school with their counterparts who had no exposure to English in ES in their performance of oral reading at two times: in the 4th (Time 1) and the 12th months (Time 2) after their entrance to JHS. The quantitative analysis indicates that the experienced group outperformed the inexperienced counterpart at Time 1. At Time 2, however, no statistical difference was found between the two groups. The qualitative analysis showed that the experienced learners had a better understanding of letter-sound association at Time 1. At the same time, however, both groups committed similar errors at both times, mispronouncing the words they would never mispronounce in conversations and mispronouncing inflectional endings.

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Most language proficiency tests provide very little information about the tasks that test-takers can actually perform in real life. However, if we can find methods to relate test scores to a wide range of real-life tasks, we will then be able to empirically predict how well test-takers can perform outside the domain of particular tests. There seem to be two approaches for inferring test-takers' ability to perform real-life tasks based on their test scores. One is to examine the common characteristics of the test items that they answer correctly and show how these characteristics are related to the performance of real-life tasks; the other is to relate test scores to test-takers' performance of language-related tasks outside of test situations by using questionnaires and similar measurement tools. The former approach generates what we refer to as the Proficiency Guidelines in this project; the latter approach generates the CAN-DO Statements. This paper reports on the development process we used to create an English proficiency scale based on the GTEC for STUDENTS.

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Hosaka (2004a) has revealed that there are six main factors which explain what outstanding English teachers in academic high schools are like. Hosaka (2004b) has also revealed the relationship among the learners' variables (leaning styles, learning motivations and learning strategies), expectations on their teachers and their achievement in English. In this study, a path analysis was conducted to clarify the difference of the relationship between upper and lower level students. According to the results of the path analyses, the lower class students often use memory strategies to improve their achievement, but in fact these have no significant effects (p<.05) upon their achievement in English. On the other hand, the results have shown that the upper class students often use meta-cognitive strategies, which have a strong significant effect upon their achievement in English. In the end, the results mentioned above are discussed in terms of their implications for streaming classes (classified lessons according to their achievement in English), which have recently become very popular in many kinds of schools all over Japan.

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Films have been successfully used in the language classroom for more than two decades. In spite of their current wide acceptance by language teachers, teaching through films is still conducted mainly with materials produced by individual teachers, not textbooks. In order to determine the reason, this paper, as a historical study on the use of films in English education, examined how films had been used in senior high school English textbooks. A total of 1444 textbooks used for the past 25 years were surveyed and the results showed that film-based materials first appeared in the early 1980s and made a rapid increase in the early 1990s. Despite the steady increase, the percentage of textbooks which include film-based materials remains low. The findings of the study also revealed a distinct discrepancy between films dealt with in textbooks and films often used in the classroom.

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This study examines how reading and writing activities can be adopted into English teaching to the higher graders of primary school, and further evaluates how the combinations of listening, speaking, reading and writing are significant for teaching English to this particular age group. In this study, I present various activities taking advantage of the students' listening and speaking skills which they have gained in the lower grades. Such practical examples demonstrate that this integrative approach is intended to enhance the students' English ability and to promote their motivation towards English learning. Throughout, the study is based on a review of relevant literature and an examination of the students' performance in English classes at a private primary school. This study will encourage English teachers to open up new perspectives and effectively adapt them to English teaching to the higher graders who are at different levels concerning proficiencies, needs, interests, preferences and motivations.

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