A comprehensive review of three core English language subjects was conducted for the first time in a university of Hong Kong on top of the regular QA measures that were employed every semester. This paper explains the framework adopted for the review, describes the overall results obtained, and discusses the lessons learnt from the review experience and its value.

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Higher education today is a global enterprise. In order to compete in this environment, a growing number of universities are offering programmes and courses delivered through the medium of English. These programmes promise to increase enrolment numbers and attract high-fee paying international students. However, if academic standards are to be maintained and all students to benefit maximally from their university experience, then English language entry standards need to be suitably rigorous. This article calls into question the suitability of high-currency gatekeeping tests such as IELTS and TOEFL in terms of their ability to prepare students adequately for the particular demands of their degree programmes. It goes on to consider the implications of this for the practice of post-enrolment language assessment (PELA) and the nature of in-sessional English language provision offered by universities.

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This article provides more details for some of the central ideas presented in a workshop at the 2016 JACET summer seminar. The focus is on interdisciplinary team teaching and a specific model known as Collaborative Interdisciplinary Team Teaching (CITT). The article weaves findings from research on team teaching together with actual practice. Interviews of teachers in CITT partnerships are quoted and the author provides narrative accounts of his own experience to provide a window into the dynamic process of interdisciplinary team teaching. The article ends with a call for “team learning” between students and teachers across disciplines as a creative alternative to the current models that favour teacher autonomy.

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The present study investigated whether the categorization of sentences based on the degree of semantic transparency worked as the predictor of linguistic comprehension dif ficulty and acquisition process of English tough-sentences. The results of the grammar test conducted with 36 Japanese learners of English as a foreign language indicated the following: （1） both animacy of subject noun phrase （NP） and verb please determined the relative comprehension difficulty of tough-sentences;（ 2） adjective did not affect comprehension difficulty of tough-sentences;（ 3）existence of preposition at the end of tough-sentences would not facilitate tough-sentence comprehension; （4） the acquisition of tough-sentences would begin with the identification of the prototype sentences holding inanimate NP subject （example: The book is easy to read）; and the comprehension of the prototype sentence would then gradually be applied to more peripheral sentences holding animate NP subject（ example: The man is difficult to teach） and then applied to even more peripheral types of sentences holding animate NP subject and verb please（ The man is difficult to please）. Directions for further research on acquisition of tough-sentences are also discussed.

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This study examined how intermediate-level Japanese EFL students’ written English changed over 15 weeks. The study aimed to identify measures of students’ L2 short-term writing development in terms of fluency, syntactic, and lexical complexity. Two groups of undergraduates, who differed in prior writing background, received an English writing course of similar content. The study first compared pre- and post-course English compositions within each group, and then between-group comparisons of the pre- and post-course compositions were made, respectively. Nine linguistic measures were employed including raw fluency, and ratio measures of syntactic and lexical complexity. The results revealed that the less experienced students showed a significant increase in fluency, lexical complexity, and one syntactic complexity measure (number of T-units per sentence), whereas the more experienced students made no significant changes in any measure. Based on the findings, implications are discussed and several directions for future research are provided.

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This study investigated the impact of the Test of English for Academic Purposes (TEAP) on English learning (i.e., washback) by comparing learning activities of those who took the test and those who did not and by exploring the factors in their learning behavior. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 355 university students and inquired about the test preparation methods they used before entering university. Subsequently, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 students to probe how they prepared for their examinations and why they chose particular preparation methods. The results showed that students’ test preparation methods were similar regardless of the test they took. However, students who took the 4-skill TEAP did speaking practice and memorized verbal expressions more frequently than their counterparts. This study demonstrates that test preparation methods are not determined by the test alone but by the educational context, as well as other various mediating factors. The results of this study are particularly meaningful for developers and users of the TEAP, as they indicate the actual impact of the test on test-takers’ learning behavior. Furthermore, this study provides insights to stakeholders in entrance examination reform by addressing the mediating factors in washback.

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This study discusses the processes of reading in a second language that determine success in maintaining the coherence of narrative comprehension. In an experiment, Japanese university students thought aloud their cognitive processes when reading narratives, which included discrepancies between characters’ traits and actions. Participants, first, read 4 narratives to answer comprehension questions and then mentally visualized situations described in the other 4 narratives to prepare for drawing the 4-frame pictures. After classifying their verbal reports from lower-level processing (e.g., lexical and grammatical analysis) to higher-level processing (e.g., inference production), a decision tree analysis was conducted to examine which types of reading processes were more likely to reach success in keeping narrative comprehension coherent. In conjunction with the qualitative interpretations of think-aloud protocols, the results revealed that (a) mentally visualizing characters’ traits based on inference was a trigger for detecting coherence breaks in comprehension, and (b) strategic rereading and reasoning were used to resolve these comprehension in consistencies. These findings were consistent with the framework of the standards of coherence; goal-oriented reading regulated by a specific instruction affected the criteria that individual learners set for the level of coherence in comprehension.

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This study examined the effects of strategy instructions on Japanese EFL learners’ thematic inference and cognitive resource allocation during reading. To facilitate the construction of global coherence of mental representations, the present study gave strategy instructions aimed at thematic inference, which is defined as understanding implicit points, messages, or morals in narrative stories. Japanese university students were asked first to read two short narrative passages for understanding, and then to read two other passages to generate thematic inferences. The learners’ cognitive resource allocation during reading was measured by a think-aloud method and a short questionnaire. The results demonstrated that the strategy instructions facilitated learners’ thematic inference generation and helped learners to distribute cognitive resources from lower-level processing, such as word and sentence analysis, to paraphrasing. In contrast, although the strategy instructions induced learners to set higher standards of coherence, their ability to allocate their cognitive resources to other kinds of inference can be related to learners’ English reading proficiency

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