The present study explores marketing and public relations strategies of Japanese universities for student recruitment in the era of globalization. Specifically, it examines university brochures in English issued by two universities: Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU) and Akita International University (AIU). Discourse analysis was applied along with corpus analysis to illuminate their strategies and underlying values behind verbal and nonverbal messages. The analyses identified “becoming global” and ”leading/thriving” in the global society as the major values in the APU brochure. Those values are supported by collaborative learning and hands-on experiences with strong emphasis on pragmatism, downplaying the image of Asia and systematized curriculum. The AIU brochure emphasized both international learning environments in English and rich local experiences in Akita. It also appealed to potential audience differentially, stressing on academic information for degree seeking international students and on touristic information for short-term international students.

Japanese universities have been tackling the globalization of education. In order to examine the discourse of globalization in Japanese universities, this paper investigates English prospectuses of two universities renowned for their internationalized education, namely Akita International University (AIU) and Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU). The study employs critical discourse analysis (CDA) as a theoretical framework and conducts linguistic and nonlinguistic textual analyses. Prospectuses are multimodal discourse combined with both linguistic and nonlinguistic semiotic elements. We apply social semiosis (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006) to analyze visual designs. The study explores how ‘internationalization’ is represented in the educational advertising discourse by analyzing linguistic features such as social actors (van Leeuwen 2008) and process types (Halliday 1994; フェアクラフ 2012) as well as layouts and pictures. We argue that the two universities present their ‘internationalization’ in different ways in accordance with their characteristics and promoting points.

This report is intended as an attempt to explore the possibility of fostering autonomous learners in college English language classrooms through the process of allowing individual students to make a presentation of an English newspaper article of their own choice. The online newspaper database, LexisNexis, was introduced as a means of helping learners search for an article which was interesting and relevant to them as well as appropriate for their presentations. A questionnaire was distributed to all participants to elicit such information as to how long they had spent preparing for their own presentations and to what extent they agreed with the statements about the implementation of a student-centered approach in the language classroom. Drawing on the model of Autonomy in Language Learning proposed by Benson (2001), pedagogical implications were also discussed from both learners' and a teacher's perspectives to pave the way for EFL learners to develop autonomy effectively.

The Twitter account of President Trump is widely being noted as a way of taking advantage of social media. This paper focuses on the characteristics of the President's Twitter account through qualitative data analysis. First, it explores the element of his being a "star." With repetitive use of slogans and catch phrases, he urges and drives supporters to join events and to vote for him. This shapes an "inner circle" where supporters cohere. Secondly, the topics of his tweets are not concrete and scarcely clarify his policies as a new president, as his hashtags suggest. Finally, his choices of words effectively work to strengthen his inner circle, as he sets enemies and uses certain words exclusively when referring to the enemies. Thus this paper argues that President Trump has become a star who leads the inner circle formed by loyal supporters on Twitter.

Latina /o people in the Southwest part of the United States have a long history of environmental practice, though it either is said not to exist, or exists in practices which may not seem to be environmental, such as land use or agricultural irrigation practices. Th is paper provides a timeline of Latina /o environmentalism in English language media from the 1880 s until the late 1960 s and then in contemporary new media to argue how Latina /o environmentalism has continued a few themes. The themes are: 1) an environmentalism where people can use land without destroying it; and 2) mythical representations employed to portray the environment and agriculture . These themes contradict modernist ideas of conservation, agriculture, industrialization, and urbanization.

This study examines relationships between self-efficacy, metacognitive self- regulation strategies, and L2 English reading skills development. It proposes a model combining self-regulation, motivation, academic success, self-determination theory, and social cognitive theory. While many studies in educational psychology show that self- efficacy predicts self-regulation strategy use, which in turn influences academic success, few studies investigate such links in L2 learning. Data were collected from English majors at a Japanese university using a questionnaire measuring self-efficacy, metacognitive self- regulation strategies, and scores on the TOEFL’s reading section. The data were analyzed employing structural equation modeling to highlight relationships between these variables. Results indicate that self-efficacy predicts metacognitive self-regulation strategy use, which in turn influences L2 reading skills. The research aims to improve advanced L2 reading skills since these are essential if Japanese university students are to effectively analyze information from the media, especially the social media, and critically discuss, justify, and if necessary modify their views.