The purpose of the present study is to evaluate activities in elementary school English teaching methodology classes. There were two parts of the activities. In the first activity, students watched a model elementary school English lesson and analyzed it with a partner using Google Jamboard. In the second activity, students tried to imitate the model lesson in a group, based on their previous analysis. They took turns playing the roles of the teacher, the ALT, and the student. A questionnaire was then administered after each class. The descriptive texts were then analyzed with the qualitative data analysis software, KH Coder. The results indicated that, on the premise of imitating a demo lesson, class analysis could lead to more detailed class observation. In addition, reenacting a demo lesson would enable students to experience smooth teaching. However, since the model lesson was an excellent demonstration, it was observed that such quality was difficult to reproduce completely.

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Numerous research attempts have been made to study and compare contemporary liberal arts education in Japanese and American higher education. However, nobody has paid attention to the differences between these types of secondary education, the foundations of college education. Because Japanese and American secondary educations are obviously different, high school graduates’ readiness for college education is also different in these two countries. In this study, therefore, I deal with how to lessen the gap between Japanese and American secondary educations by sharing the experience of delivering a logical thinking course to 29 Japanese high school students and the resulting educational effect. The effect was calculated by BEVI, a scientific tool based on a psychological theory and used all over the world. The result shows favorable accomplishments stemming from the logical thinking or debate course provided and the limitations it certainly had.

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A global perspective has become indispensable in Japanese education. As the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s (MEXT) most recent Courses of Study states in its preamble and general provisions, students should be “creators of a sustainable society.” MEXT’s required Period for Inquiry-based Cross Disciplinary Study and similar courses, along with various educational practices and research, have been implemented to nurture students’ global perspectives. However, most of these efforts target the whole school or are practices designed to create positive impacts over the long term. Few studies capture changes in students’ awareness through short-term practices. In this study, short-term global education lessons were conducted involving 110 first- through third-year high school students. A questionnaire was used to analyze changes in students’ attitudes and dispositions toward a variety of cultures, and the significance of short-term global education lessons was examined. The results suggested that students’ international disposition was higher after the practice than before.

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The primary aim of this paper is to examine the role of literature and its film adaptations incorporated into a non-literary course in a Japanese university EFL class. The paper first describes how George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and its films were introduced into the course, in which students primarily read a book titled Language Myths—a collection of essays on sociolinguistic issues written by linguists. After discussing classroom activities, the paper presents an example of student writing that predicts a sequel to Pygmalion. Next, it analyses, based on data from questionnaires, student responses both to those literary materials and to the related activities. The findings suggest that literature and film used even in a part of the course can provide students with enjoyable and creative learning experiences. They can also help deepen students’ understanding of facts learned from information-based texts and help students better assimilate knowledge. In conclusion, this study shows that literary materials can be effectively incorporated into a non-literary course and that there seem to be some exclusive benefits of the use of literature and film with texts of the other type.

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The purpose of this study is to explore the dynamics of English pronunciation instruction in elementary schools and teachers’ beliefs that affect teachers’ decisions about what English phonetic and phonological features to select for lessons and how to teach those features. In this study, the author observed 88 lessons of 5th and 6th grades taught by a teacher with a high level of proficiency in English and English teaching licenses for junior and senior high school, and had reflection sessions with the teacher. The analysis showed that (1) the teacher started to talk more about the relationship between sounds and letters than the previous year because of some external factors such as the new course of study and the influence of COVID-19, (2) the teacher recognized Japanese English teacher as a facilitator who promotes students’ awareness toward English sound features, and (3) the teacher’s perception of accepting varieties of English pronunciation as Lingua Franca became much clear through team teaching with the ALT who was a non-native English speaker.

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The purpose of this study was to compare grammar instruction using movies with grammar instruction utilizing only textual information for first- and third-year students at a private university, and to examine the degree of retention of grammar items by each teaching method. In this study, I focus on the relative and the subjunctive, which are generally regarded as difficult grammar items to comprehend for Japanese students studying English. The results of the survey show that students’ understanding of grammar was enhanced after using this method of instruction compared to previous instruction strategies. There was no significant difference between the first-grade subjunctive (movie), relatives (text only), the third-grade subjunctive (text only), and relatives (movie) before and after instruction. However, there was a significant increase in the scores of the first-grade students when they were taught the subjunctive grammar forms using movies. This was probably due to the fact that the students voluntarily led the rules of the subjunctive. These results indicate that the use of the movies can influence the retention of grammatical items, in particular, the subjunctive grammar form.

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In English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes that use literary texts, evaluating learners’ literary engagement is necessary. Unfortunately, the evaluation of literary engagement is an under-researched process partly because the development of literary competence models has been insufficient to conduct such evaluation rigorously. However, there have been some significant recent developments in this field, which are expected to help establish an evaluation framework for EFL students. This review study identifies five specific problems with past literary competence models and examines how they are covered in the new models including the new framework of Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR), CEFR-J, the Innsbruck model of literary competence, and Nishihara’s (2015) model for designing an EFL literature test. It further addresses the issues to be explored by the literary competence studies in the future to create a literary engagement evaluation framework for EFL learners: development of scales and can-do descriptors related to literary competence, validity confirmation of literary competence models, scales, and descriptors, and the necessity to establish more multimodal and multifaceted literary competence models.

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This is a case study which explores writer agency and writing transfer from second language (L2) to first language (L1) with two participants’ writing data and interview results. The two participants taking general English classes at a university were asked to complete their argumentative essays in L1 Japanese and L2 English, and then interviewed after completing the two essays. As a result, it was revealed that a participant with poor experience in taking writing lectures in L1 and L2 but more than upper-intermediate English proficiency showed a strong transfer from L2 to L1, whilst the other participant who had experienced enough writing training and practice in both languages but intermediate proficiency level hardly exhibited transfer from L2 to L1. Subsequently, this paper proposes that balanced writing instructions are essential for writers to develop appropriate attitude depending on language.

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This article is the essence of lecture which the author gave at the academic conference of the Japan Association of International Liberal Arts on 13th March 2021. In the Twenty-First Century we can recognize only twenty-eight countries which held monarchy among almost two hundred countries in the world. Does it mean the monarchy would disappear from human history in the near future? The author investigates special role of the British Queen, Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 1952 in contemporary political and diplomatic world. She is the Head of State, not only for British people, but also for fifteen more countries as Canada and Australia; moreover, as the symbol of national unity, she has given her state continuity and stability. We also would be able to know her important role as the Head of Commonwealth of Nations which has challenged to protect human rights and prevent Global Warming since 1970s.

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