In listening, learners must turn to both bottom-up and top-down strategies in order to successfully parse the acoustic signals and segment the speech into individual words. However, topdown strategies are sometimes less fully utilized, especially by the listeners with lower levels of proficiency. In the present study, it is examined if providing the learners with semantic and contextual hints before listening would help activate their top-down strategies, thereby enhancing their word recognition. In the experiment, only the participants in the experimental group were given Japanese translations before dictation practices and instructed to guess on the text they would soon hear. The results showed that the participants in the experimental group fared better in the posttest even without the scaffolding of semantic and contextual cues than those in the control groups. In particular, their recognition of function words was significantly improved, which was presumably caused by their reference to contextual, semantic, and linguistic knowledge.

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Owning excessive clothing wastes resources and energy, and increases environmental burdens. To solve this problem, sustainable wardrobe management is required. Therefore, I developed the worksheets as Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) for solving this consumer problem from a home economics perspective. The LCI worksheets might be utilized by the ESD lesson in high school. In order to confirm it, this paper shows the results that the university students tested the LCI worksheets. Because it was expected that it was difficult for the high school students, I inspected the technique of LCI by the university students who had already learned school home economics. I clarified the problem for high school students. The mean of number of the garments which they owned was 111 (24.4kg). It included 17 (5.0 kg) garments that they did not wear for a long time. The results of the LCI were divided into two groups. The first group had consciousness of owing excessive clothing, and the other group did not have such consciousness. The group with consciousness had been reflected in their decision-making. Additionally, the LCI worksheets have helped university students improve their wardrobe management. In conclusion, I think that the LCI worksheets were effective for discovering their wardrobe problems.

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The purpose of this study was to analyze the self-assessments of their own movement using a full-screen video and a dual-window comparison video. To do this, the study compared the descriptions by pupils who were elementary school 4th graders. The results of this study were as follows; It was surmised that for both the self-assessments using a full-screen video and the selfassessments using a dual-window comparison video adopted the instructions given by the teacher as the perspective for their assessment. Pupils wrote a larger number of descriptions excepting instructions given by teachers in case of the self-assessments of their own movement using a full-screen video than the self-assessments using a dual-window comparison video. This suggests that by using a dualwindow comparison video where one’s technique can be compared with model footage, it is easier to have a new viewpoint that allows them find differences in the movements.

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In the present study, a scale to measure the quality of a learner’s self-regulated learning (SRL) for English as a foreign language was developed. After reviewing the literature of SRL for language learning, an English learning SRL scale was developed based on previous studies that had created scales using Zimmerman’s (2012) cyclical SRL process. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses derived five factors: self-efficacy, planning, effort, self-monitoring, and evaluation/reflection. Furthermore, investigating the connections between the participants’ average scores for determined question items by factor and their English proficiency levels supported the scale’s predictive validity in this study.

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The purpose of this research is to devise and put into practice a teaching method that fosters reflective thinking within critical thinking through the study of programming, and to verify the effectiveness of that method. Therefore, we devised a series of lessons enabling children, via the problem-solving process, to think reflectively by comparing their own views with those of others and by running the program to confirm their own views. Then, we put the method into practice when teaching a “Use of electricity” unit to 15 elementary school 6th graders, verifying it by analyzing the questionnaires, worksheets, and verbal comments generated. As a result, we clarified that it was possible to foster students’ reflective thinking by teaching them to critically scrutinize their own ideas and those of others and to review and modify their own ideas via dialogue.

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This study aims to investigate the factors affecting the students’ decision to choose a higher education course in one of the physical science or engineering. In self-rating questionnaire survey, which covered 1281 freshmen in eight higher education institutions (HEIs) in Cambodia, the researcher collected information about three aspects affecting the students’ initial choice of major namely individual, family and high school factors. Logistic regression indicated that individual factors, both personal characteristics and attitude, revealed to be the most influential compared with the family and high school factors. Some important implications were also discussed for the policy mean to increase the share of enrollment in the field and further research.

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