Although there is a growing body of research into the vocabulary load of international academic English tests, methodological decisions in compiling a corpus vary. Among these disparities, treatment of written and spoken discourse differs markedly. Yet, little research has been undertaken to explicitly investigate the extent to which discourse variations impact receptive vocabulary in international academic English tests. The present study examined two effects of discourse variations on vocabulary in reading and listening passages from TOEFL iBT past tests. Text coverage in Reading, Listening, and Mixed Corpora was calculated via the computer program Range, respectively. The vocabulary load coupled with text coverage by the Academic Word List were compared across the three corpora. Results demonstrated that the vocabulary load of Reading Corpus was in stark contrast to that of Listening Corpus with a difference of 3,000 word families. In addition, there was a marked difference in text coverage by the Academic Word List between the reading and listening passages. Findings of the present study indicate that reading and listening tests should be separated in exploring the vocabulary load of academic English tests and validating wordlists, as the combined reading and listening passages yielded inaccurate estimates. Pedagogical suggestions stemming from the findings are discussed in detail.

This study examined the effect of the presence or absence of an assigned lead student on group work dynamics (GWD) and students’ motivation in an online English class. A total of 78 university students were divided into groups of three, either with or without a leader, to work on a picture description task. To analyze the GWD process, we used Poupore’s GWD instrument as a reference to record and quantify all verbal and nonverbal student behaviors. The results showed that: (1) the groups with a leader maintained a higher level of motivation throughout the task; (2) the groups with a leader yielded higher verbal and nonverbal GWD scores than the groups without a leader; (3) GWD scores were higher in the groups with a leader for almost all positive verbal/nonverbal characteristics; (4) these higher scores were especially pronounced for the characteristics “Asking for others’ ideas” and “Mild laughter”; and (5) groups with frequent “Mild laughter” had higher positive verbal/nonverbal GWD scores than the overall average. Based on the results, pedagogical implications for teachers are discussed concerning the use of group work in an online English classroom.

The use of e-learning to facilitate out-of-class English learning is on the rise. However, studies have reported that a limited number of learners fully engage with it. While researchers agree that active engagement in e-learning requires higher metacognitive capacity, its nature and function have not been investigated. The present study, therefore, attempted to qualitatively analyze the metacognition of Japanese EFL university students who demonstrated better engagement in out-of-class e-learning, with a particular focus on the three types of metacognitive knowledge (i.e., person knowledge, task knowledge, and strategy knowledge) and their metacognitive activities. The results showed that successful e-learners activated task and person knowledge to develop strategic knowledge during the forethought and self-reflection phases of learning to successfully engage in e-learning. The authors suggest that students must participate in peer group sessions to collaboratively analyze the task and devise strategies to engage in e-learning before starting e-learning assignments.

Critical thinking (CT) has been regarded as one of the most important aspects to deal with today’s information society in English education in Japan. However, there has been little research on the assessment of CT skills for learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Japan. Therefore, this study developed an English test to measure CT skills that are required to be cultivated in English education in Japan, named the Critical Thinking Test for English Education in Japan (CTTEE). The construct of this test was the following three skills: (1) clarification, the skill of identifying the main points; (2) basis of inference, the skill of examining the content; and (3) inference, the skill of inferring facts and conclusions from contents (Ennis, 1987, 2018). The CTTEE comprises 45 test items and was validated with 68 Japanese university students using item analysis and exploratory factor analysis. The results show that the CTTEE was relatively easy for the participants whose English proficiency ranged from A2 to B2 in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). In addition, this test extracted the following three factors: (a) “examination of content,” (b) “identification of main points,” and (c) “inference.”

This study aimed to investigate the effects of reading instruction, where we set a specific goal for reading, on the detection and resolution of inconsistent information in several dimensions during narrative reading. A total of 39 Japanese university students, comprising learners of English as a foreign language (EFL), read short English texts introducing consistent or inconsistent information on the protagonist or spatial dimensions. We asked participants to verbalize their thoughts while reading the texts (think-aloud) under the following two conditions: (a) control condition, where the readers read for comprehension, and (b) image instruction condition in which they read while picturing the situation of the narratives in their minds. To explain whether the readers could understand and maintain coherence in the texts, that is, detect and resolve inconsistent information about the protagonist and spatiality, we analyzed their think-aloud protocols. The results showed that image instruction was effective in helping readers maintain protagonist coherence regardless of their proficiency level, whereas it was not significantly effective for spatial dimensions. The pedagogical suggestions from these findings are discussed in detail.

　　Japan’s Common Test for University Admissions was first held in January 2021, replacing the National Center Test for University Admissions. One of the major shifts in the new university entrance exam was in the focus on assessing students’ abilities to think, judge, and express themselves in a multilateral and comprehensive manner, along with knowledge. However, thinking skills in English as a foreign language along with university entrance exams have not been extensively explored. This study examined the English Reading Tests of the 2021 and 2022 Common Tests, as well as the Course of Study revised in 2009 on which those tests were based, to determine if they were indeed developed to assess thinking skills in parallel with reading comprehension in English. The study applied the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy to analyze the cognitive processes that examinees need to employ while answering each test question. The results showed that all questions required lower-order thinking skills and only a few required higher-order thinking skills. Contrary to the claims of experts affiliated with educational institutions and academic associations in Japan, the current research demonstrated that the assessment of thinking skills in the English Reading Tests was limited.

Although verbs’ implicit causality (IC) bias is an essential bridge between word- and discourselevel comprehension, when and how IC is used (the time course of IC) during second language (L2) comprehension is not fully clarified. This study sought to explore the time course of IC during L2 learners’ comprehension, with a focus on the directions of IC bias (first noun phrase [NP1] bias: Mary hurt John vs. second noun phrase [NP2] bias: Mary punished John). Thirty-seven Japanese undergraduates read sentences containing IC verbs. The sentences had pronouns that are consistent (e.g., Mary punished John because he...) or inconsistent (e.g., John punished Mary because he...) with the bias of IC. The results showed that only the NP2 bias of IC quickly affected participants’comprehension, as reflected by a significant slowdown in reading times immediately after the biasinconsistent pronoun. In contrast, the NP1 bias of IC only influenced the later phase of comprehension. Further analysis showed that this delayed effect of NP1 bias cannot be explained by the lack of participants’ lexical knowledge, but more likely relates to their utilization of knowledge. Together, these results indicate that how quickly IC is used during L2 comprehension depends on the directions of the IC bias. The findings were adapted as scaffolding for learners to facilitate their transition from word- to discourse-level comprehension.

The Global and Innovation Gateway for All (GIGA) school concept could significantly change English education in Japan, but the actual situation regarding information and communications technology (ICT) usage remains unclear. This study explored the characteristics of ICT usage and its related perceptions among English teachers in Japanese junior high schools, with a focus on the teaching years. We used data from a questionnaire that was administered to 872 English teachers across Japan and conducted an exploratory analysis from multiple perspectives. We identified four teacher groups, each using ICT in different instructional situations. Regardless of teaching experience, English teachers had strong positive perceptions regarding ICT usage and believed that it could improve academic achievement. However, they perceived a certain lack of ICT-related knowledge and indicated a need for ICT-related teacher training. We discuss the issues that need to be addressed to promote teachers’ usage of ICT.

It is important for second language (L2) learners to acquire the knowledge of noun phrase (NP) structures in overall L2 development. The purpose of the current study is to examine to what extent Japanese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners are exposed to NP structures in their input, by analyzing Japanese senior high school English textbooks. The results indicate that certain types of NP structures (e.g., NPs postmodified by prepositional phrases) appear in the textbooks more frequently than other types of NP structures (e.g., NPs postmodified by object relative clauses). Additionally, the frequency information obtained from the current analysis is discussed with the results of previous studies investigating Japanese EFL senior high school students’ acquisition of NPs. The discussion shows that the frequency data might be able to explain parts of the differences in the degree of acquisition. Some pedagogical implications toward Japanese EFL classrooms are also discussed.

As English education in Japan moves away from a native-centric English language model, many learners still feel that a native-like American accent is considered the goal to convey messages intelligibly but how necessary is a native accent? Previous studies have generally analyzed aspects of Japanese English pronunciation, including grammar, pitch, and stress, as well as opinions of Japanese speakers regarding speaking English. However, there is a lack of studies that focus on vowels and their impact on pronunciation specifically. Thus, this study aimed to combine analysis of vowels, a major indicator of accentedness, and perceptions of native speakers to create a comprehensive analysis of six key American English vowels as spoken by Japanese speakers to see the effect of Japanese-accented vowels on message conveyance in terms of intelligibility and accentedness perception. Recordings of Japanese speakers were shown to six American raters, who performed dictation tasks to judge the accuracy of the messages conveyed. The raters also used Foreign Accentedness Ratings to show their perceptions of Japanese pronunciation. Results found that although the vowels /ʌ/, /æ/, and /i/ were more likely to result in misunderstandings, even sentences spoken with accented vowels were clear enough to be deciphered by raters with an average intelligibility of 80%. This supports previous research to focus on key aspects of pronunciation rather than perfection to improve overall message conveyance in English.

This study reports on whether or not knowing the results of a diagnostic test measuring the degrees of nativelikeness of word clusters in the mental lexicon (ML) boosts the effects of a self-study online vocabulary learning program (Word Cluster Master Program: WCMP) that the authors developed to promote the restructuring of the L2 English ML of Japanese EFL learners. Thirty college students in a High (CEFR B2 and C1 levels) group and a Low (CEFR A2 and B1 levels) group, respectively, took the diagnostic test and were told their results before working on the WCMP, which takes six weeks. The results showed that the cluster structures in the ML were statistically significantly different between the groups before starting learning with the WCMP, but after the six-week program, this difference was gone, indicating that the restructured ML structures of the groups turned out to be quantitatively similar to each other. High percentages of learners in the High group (67%) and in the Low group (73%) produced a perfect word cluster structure in the posttest, whereas much lower percentages of 7% and 17% did so in the treatment groups for two of our previous studies (Orita, et al., 2016, 2019), respectively. This suggests that introducing the results of the diagnostic test prior to executing the WCMP is effective. Future studies are also discussed.

This paper reports an action-research study on the implementation of a classroom-based paired oral test for Japanese high school students. Following the steps of action research, we investigated whether teachers could properly discriminate students’ interactional performance during the test period. The paired oral test was administered to 15 students; they engaged in an impromptu interaction about everyday topics for 150 seconds. Two teachers scored their interactional performance with respect to speech content, interjections, gestures, pronunciation fluency, and grammatical accuracy. In Study 1, we analyzed the interrater reliabilities and the correlations between observed scores and speaking accuracy, fluency, and complexity. Results showed that assessing linguistic features of students’ performance was more difficult than non-linguistic features. Based on reflection, Study 2 sought to identify sources of disagreement between the teachers and to promote students’ interactional competence through feedback based on the test scores while maintaining the practicality of the paired oral test. The problem-solving process related to the paired oral tests for classroom-based assessment was described.