Japan faces significant challenges in education. National Curriculum Guidelines and Center examinations are being reframed, but ambiguity toward future education is still prevalent among our citizens. As technology shows swift development in an increasingly global society, Japan must adapt to these changes and adequately respond to social needs. In 2020, English, as well as programming and presentation, becomes a mandatory subject, which highlights the emergent demand to revolutionize schooling. The trend also emphasizes the output of knowledge in line with critical thinking, in light of the failure of legacy systems based on cramming data and simply regurgitating it. This is an excellent opportunity to shift our learning style to a more practical manner aside from exam-based learning. This paper argues the importance of employing presentation training in English education because it helps students to participate in productive conversations in their direct pursuit of knowledge.

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This article tries to provide a rationale for using English presenatation and performance events such as OPP to help develop students’ English presentation and communication skills. To do so, I use MATSURI (rituals/festivals) as an analogy to explain how such events provide learners the opportunity as well as the motivation to obtain the necessary skills. This will clarify how active/collaborative learning may not be a panacea to all predicaments that we are confronted with in terms of teaching English to Japanese learners. I hope that this article will encourage the readers to put active/collaborative learning in perspective and be more understanding towards the implementation of speech-related events, which are apparently long-standing practices of English education in Japan’s history.

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This article presents a result of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis concerning EFL reading strategy for English learners in Japanese university and an analysis of the relationship between English proficiency and EFL reading strategy is also presented. Questionnaire research for EFL/ESL reading strategy has shown the results of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) in general, whereas confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) has not been the focus of the research. An aim of this research is to clarify the relationship among factors by doing CFA. As another aim, the correlation coefficient between the score of each factor or subscale and reading proficiency is also analyzed. Research has shown that there is tendency for good reader to use top-down strategy and bottom-up strategy, and for poor reader to use only bottom-up strategy, which is revealed by the relationship with reading test score. However, there is still room for argument on this point for EFL reading in Japan. By reconfirming the correlation between the score of each factor or subscale and reading proficiency, this research reveals some aspects of EFL reading strategy used by Japanese university students and suggests the educational implication to instruct strategy for EFL reading.

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The purpose of this study is twofold. First, it seeks to verify the validity and reliability of the Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction Scale for Elementary School Pupils developed by Someya (2019). Second, it examines how the satisfaction of need of autonomy, competence, and relatedness affects children's listening comprehension ability. The Participants comprised 710 elementary school pupils who sat for a questionnaire and listening comprehension ability test. We also used cluster analysis to analyze the satisfaction values of the three psychological needs, obtaining three clusters: a low group, a middle group, and a high group. Based on a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), a significant difference was observed among the three groups. We found that the higher the pupils scored in the satisfaction of the three psychological needs, the higher their listening comprehension ability. Future research should discuss which factors are needed for promoting the satisfaction of the three needs.

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