The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of beliefs about learning formed in high school on freshman’s adjustment to professional education college. Scales of beliefs about learning and adjustment to school in adolescents were administered to 112 freshmen. The data from the 101 participants who completed all surveys were analyzed. Based on the results for adjustment to school, the participants were categorized into 4 groups; highly adaptive, moderately adaptive, at-risk, and maladaptive. According to the results, the maladaptive group showed a significantly lower “understanding orientation” score than the other 3 groups. This indicates that students who are not eager to understand the meanings of learning contents would have difficulty in adjusting to college. The results also showed that a high score in “learning strategy orientation” is a predictor of good adjustment to school. Thus, students who are conscious of learning strategy tend to easily adjust to college. Furthermore, the highly adaptive group showed a marginally significant higher score in “flexibility to failure” than the maladaptive group. These results suggest the importance of developing an educational program which can enhance “understanding orientation”, “learning strategy orientation” and “flexibility to failure”.

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Teachers are one of the demotivating factors for students who learn English. Some studies clarify the features of demotivation caused by teachers. However, such studies do not specialize in remedial education. In this study, the author conducted a survey among Japanese university students with low English proficiency regarding the characteristics of English teachers who demotivate students. The findings indicate the following: (1) they are not sufficiently enthusiasitc about helping students understand, (2) they make students think that they cannot keep up with the class, (3) they do not show interest in students, (4) they teach English in a boring manner, and (5) they do not consider the anxiety of students with low English proficiency. To prevent decrease in students’ motivation for learning English, teachers need to reflect on themselves as well as their teaching. If they think that these characteristics apply to them, they should improve their attitude and teaching to raise students’ motivation.

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This paper aims to examine the influences of written feedback on students’ writing skills and attitudes, as well as the differences in the influences according to the type of written feedback. In this study, we conducted an experimental writing course for undergraduate students (n = 45) for eight weeks. One group received only evaluative comments on their writing; the other group received evaluative and instructive comments. The results revealed both groups showed positive effects on their writing skills and attitude. However, the group with the two types of comments had more positive attitude toward the feedback. In addition, the findings from the interview survey suggested that the types of effective feedback may be different depending on the targeted writing skills.

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The purpose of this paper is to try to specify the basic ICT knowledge of ordinary Japanese high school students and discuss the relationships between their ICT knowledge and their usage of ICT devices. At the beginning of the academic year 2017, the authors of this paper introduced a program for the 10th grade students of Ehime University senior high school. They chose this school as a model school to introduce front-loaded ICT-driven education and e-learning of the Pioneer Advanced Placement (P-AP) Program. In the first lessons in 2017, they conducted a placement test followed by two surveys with questionnaires on the test and their usage of information devices. Finally, they concluded, from the test results, that the levels of the basic ICT knowledge of the high school students were one grade lower than those of the participant freshmen of colleges and universities in Japan. Furthermore, they clearly deducted, from the results of the second questionnaire survey on their usage of information devices, that how many hours and for what purpose they would use ICT devices were an important key to enhancing their basic ICT knowledge.

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[in Japanese]

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In this study, first-year nursing students in a Written Expression class at a medical junior college were asked to write three short essays based on three different topics: (1) a theme-oriented essay, (2) a data-oriented essay, and (3) an essay based on writing task prompts. The submitted essays were evaluated using a rubric from four perspectives: description of the issue, logical organization, appearance of sentences, and polishing of expression. The results were statistically analyzed from each perspective. It was found that the students showed significant progress in technical skills, but seemed to have trouble expressing their thoughts or feelings, especially in the case of the essay based on writing task prompts, which had a higher level of abstraction.

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[in Japanese]

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This study investigates whether using wooden blocks can promote the learning and long-term retention of English participial constructions. In the case of learning grammar, learners are required to memorize several rules at once. Consequently, this creates burden and difficulty for learners to retain the rules for a long period. In this study, the participial construction was introduced to 48 Japanese university students. The all-female student-participants came from two levels of proficiency: Pre-intermediate and Intermediate. Following the Silent Way, they used small wooden blocks to learn how to construct sentences with participial construction. Both levels showed higher scores in the posttest compared with those in the pretest. In addition, the test analysis revealed that the Pre-intermediate class demonstrated a greater capacity to retain data than did the Intermediate class, and that using blocks is effective for learning participial constructions.

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[in Japanese]

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