本研究は日本人の英語初級者(中学3年・高校1年生)を対象とし, (a)スピ-キング能力と語彙(発表語彙知識・話す際の語彙運用)の関係と, (b)スピ-キング能力は「発表語彙知識」によってどの程度予測が可能か, (c)スピ-キング能力は「語彙知識を使う能力」によってどの程度予測が可能かについて調べた。その結果, 発表語彙知識はスピ-キング能力に強い影響を与え, スピ-キング能力は話す際の語彙運用に強い影響を与えることが示された。スピ-キング能力の半分以上は発表語彙知識によって予測が可能であり, またスピ-キング能力の約5分の1は語彙知識を使う能力によって予測が可能であった。

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When surveying many texts and research articles on the teaching of vocabulary, what often seems to be missing is a clear and systematically elaborated taxonomy of essential strategies for lexical acquisition based on findings in applied linguistics and learning theory. Teachers are left wondering how to help language learners build up a large TL vocabulary quickly, especially those who intend to do further academic or technical study and work in English. Since building learners' understanding of word meanings is so crucial to any other language development, the following reason- and research-based taxonomy is recommended to help teach students how to more systematically and successfully process new target language (TL) vocabulary. A 'Depth of Lexical Processing Grid or Taxonomy' is proposed, which relates to both common, essential vocabulary learning strategies and logical steps for cognitively processing and storing new words. Having a practical and user-friendly Depth of Lexical Processing Taxonomy available can help both language instructors and learners to better monitor their vocabulary development, so that they can be given more specific vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) instruction and practice in crucial but oft-neglected areas. Can the complex and various facets of second language vocabulary learning actually be measured with instruments that are user-friendly, and which can be made understandable to students and teachers alike? This article proposes several evaluative and instructional tools and ways in which both L1 and L2 vocabulary assessment and instruction can be made more accessible and understandable by using them within a simple, yet all-encompassing model of second language vocabulary acquisition (SLVA).

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This study attempted to examine five types of questions in the English reading proficiency tests based on effectiveness of test-wiseness. Reading comprehension sections of the pre-2nd and 3rd grade of the STEP test (EIKEN) were used for the study. Based on question and answer relationships, questions were categorized into five types. These types were 'copy,' 'synonym,' 'paraphrase,' 'context,' and 'in-between.' The participants were 160 first-year and 69 third-year senior high school students. 'Written Recall' and 'Retrospective Interview' were adopted to gather protocols of test-takers. The data were classified and analyzed according to the list of test-taking strategies, in which strategies mainly dependent on language use strategies were marked 'Type A' and strategies mainly relying on test-wiseness strategies were named 'Type B.' The results suggest the participants decided how they would read the passage and answer the questions based on the test format. In other words, regardless of types of questions, test format may determine the way the participants deal with the test before they begin to answer questions. The results also imply that the questions which meet the following three conditions may have high validity. They are 1)a high rate of obtaining correct answers by utilizing Type A strategies, which means the text is easy enough for the examinees to read and understand, 2)no clues, except the contents of the passage, to reach correct answers,which makes Type B strategies less useful in acquiring correct answers, and 3)a less than 25% success rate of Type B strategies, which expresses that Type B strategies are not more effective than random guessing.

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Translation tests are widely used for high school term tests and entrance examinations as well as university entrance examinations. Although a considerable number of papers point out the possibility of low reliability for scoring, little is known about the factors raters play in the reliability of scoring (Watanabe, 1994). This study examines how the professional backgrounds of raters affect rating criteria. The results indicated that novice raters tended to over-estimate examinees' comprehension whereas experienced raters were more likely to focus on the correctness of the Japanese sentence. In addition, it turned out that the difficulty of sentences affected the scoring of both experienced and novice raters. After administering a sorting task, the difficulty of the sentences showed that the perception of sentence difficulty did not correspond to the difficulty of examinees' translation. The paper closes by suggesting several pedagogical implications for administering translation tests. Of particular importance is that test developers should consider not only the complexity of sentence structures and vocabulary, but also the examinees' topic familiarity of the sentences to be translated.

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The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of motivational strategy for Japanese high school students. The increasing number of researches has been conducted to propose motivational strategies, though the effect of them has not been examined yet. Based on Deci and Ryan's Self-determination theory, Group Presentation Activity was proposed as a motivational strategy to facilitate intrinsic motivation. After the preliminary survey, the experiment was conducted in a high school classroom for 20 days. The participants were 40 highs school students in Hiroshima prefecture. The results showed that 1) Group Presentation Activity was effective in facilitating intrinsic motivation or identified regulation in spite of learners' individual differences in motivation, 2) Group Presentation Activity was the most effective toward 'low English language learning motivation' group. The educational implication was discussed based on these results for the teachers who have trouble in motivating their students.

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