In this paper I would like to reexamine the result of a previous longitudinal study of the development of speaking skills among Japanese EFL junior high school students. The main purpose of this follow-up study is to prove the core finding of the original to be in agreement with the other cases. The core finding of the original is that in the former period of speaking development, fluency ("speech rate") was ameliorated, whereas in the latter period, only syntactic complexity was improved. This study is a cross-sectional study whose participants consist of 16-7th year students, 16-8th year students, 16-9th year students and 10 adult native Australian speakers. Unlike our hypothesis, the results indicated that "speech rate" had been being improved from early stage (7th year students) to native speakers'. In addition to that, in the middle of the development, the change of syntactic complexity proved to be accompanied. It seems reasonable to conclude that participants would make a change of their spontaneous utterances on the basis of largely "memory-based" into mainly "rule-based" utterances.

抄録全体を表示

This study investigated the role of information-maintenance efficiency in L2 reading comprehension as performed by adult Japanese ESL learners. Specifically, the study examined the relationship between violation-detection performance for ungrammatical / anomalous stimuli, using experimental paradigm of self-paced reading task, and L2 reading proficiency scored by multiple-choice comprehension test. The results revealed a highly significant main effect between the two variables, suggesting information-maintenance efficiency play a vital role in predicting overall L2 reading performance. The concept of working memory capacity is included in the framework of the study, particularly in terms of speculating the actual form of information maintenance within the theoretical construct of working memory. Pedagogical implications for L2 reading instruction are also discussed in relation to the potential form of information maintenance and the limited amount of resource in working memory capacity.

抄録全体を表示

In recent years, three indicators of language proficiency accuracy, fluency and complexity have been receiving great attention in analyzing speech production. However, there are a number of different statistical procedures used in examining each indicator. What methods should be used is an important issue especially when we have cross-sectional research. This paper addresses several problems of the measures for accuracy, fluency and complexity used in previous studies on planning and task type and in a past study held in 2002. In addition, it offers possible measures that we could employ in future research and in classroom language observation.

抄録全体を表示

Teacher-designed English tests have mainly been analyzed from the perspective of content validity. Item response data of examinees makes it possible to analyze tests statistically. A committee of high school English teachers in Ibaraki prefecture produces two kinds of English tests (IPET) every year: Test A for first-year and Test B for second- and third-year high school students. The IPET administered in 1999 and 2000 were analyzed statistically in a previous study. This subsequent study was conducted to generalize the statistical characteristics of the tests using a larger number of tests as a base. Sixteen IPET tests (8 each of Tests A and B) administered from 1995 to 2002 were analyzed. The item difficulty and item discrimination of 760 items and the reliability coefficients of all the tests were examined. The results of the classical item analysis reveal the common characteristics of the tests. (1) Test specifications helped to generate tests with higher reliability and to avoid the creation of less discriminable items. (2) Difficult items tended to be less discriminable and items with lower discrimination indices tended to be more difficult. (3) The reliability coefficients of Test A were higher than those of Test B every year. (4) Test B had more items with lower discrimination indices. (5) When teachers attempted to design more difficult tests, they tended to create tests that were beyond the level of the students.

抄録全体を表示

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influences of Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) on English learners at university in Japan when CAI is introduced into one of the formal English classes. In CAI, students learn English through the materials provided via software, which is completely different from the traditional and conventional instruction styles at universities in Japan: i.e. lecture, Enshu, and seminar styles. We need to know whether or not a new instruction style in a formal class at university brings about positive effects to students' English learning and how it affects the students. In this paper, first, the course design for the CAI will be depicted, which was adopted in one of formal English classes at university. Then, we will describe how the CAI class was actually perceived from the teacher's viewpoint; we will also show how it was seen indeed from the students' viewpoints, using the results of a questionnaire on a CAI class style, which was given to the students. Finally, we will show the total amount of learning-time for which each student learned English through computers in the CAI class and outside the CAI class in the form of as preparation, review, or homework, so that we can see whether the CAI class motivates the students to study English for themselves, making use of a Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) system.

抄録全体を表示

This study is a part of an attempt to find evidential differences among Japanese English learners at different proficiency levels. In the present study, the focus is put on verbs, especially their classes, functions, and semantic roles. This study differs from the traditional interlanguage analyses in the respect that it uses a spoken learner corpus, which is drawing more and more attention as a new-type of output data in the second language acquisition (SLA) research field. The corpus data was composed of seven subcorpora according to the learners' proficiency levels, and every verb which appeared in the data was put into a certain category. The analyses were made exploring the following two questions: (1) How are the verb classes and their functions distributed according to the learner levels?, and (2) How are the semantic domains distributed according to these levels? The findings imply that the use of auxiliary verbs, especially primary verbs as auxiliaries, reflects learners' high proficiency. Using verbs from three semantic domains, Facilitation/Causation, Simple occurrence, and Aspectual, might be also the sign that learners have progressed beyond elementary levels.

抄録全体を表示

The purpose of this study is to investigate the developmental features of pauses in spoken performance by Japanese EFL junior high school students. The subjects were 90 Japanese junior high school students who had never been in a foreign country for more than one month. According to their English results in the second term of the ninth grade, they were categorized into three groups: the higher group (N=30), the middle group (N=30), and the lower group (N=30). The spoken data was collected from their six interviews by AET from the third term of the seventh grade to the second term of the ninth grade. The number of unfilled pauses, native-like filled pauses, Japanese filled pauses, and all the pauses were calculated respectively. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures was conducted in each group. The subjects and the material are the same as that of Kosuge (2003). The number of unfilled pauses and the number of Japanese pauses seemed to decrease as a whole. Only the number of native-like pauses increased. Consequently the number of all the pauses did not change a lot. Some of the subjects seemed to utter more native-like fillers as they spoke more fluently.

抄録全体を表示

Earlier studies have established that the use of frequency of occurrence is effective in extracting specialized vocabulary from a corpus. What would happen if, rather than relying on solely frequency, a range of various statistical tools were used? In this study, eight individual and one 'F_<cum>' combination statistical analyses were evaluated for effectiveness in producing specialized vocabulary by comparing extracted lists to existing specialized vocabulary control lists. It was found that the 'F_<cum>' combination of measures created the most comparable data followed in effectiveness by the Dice coefficient. It was determined that all these measures were effective tools in producing beneficial specialized vocabulary, and that each measure created a unique list with regard to frequency, word length, type of word, and school textbook vocabulary coverage. While the use of frequency alone as a determiner of specialized vocabulary from a corpus is effective, the application of statistical tools provides even greater effectiveness in extracting various types of specialized lists which can be targeted to students' vocabulary or proficiency levels.

抄録全体を表示

The present study aims to consider (1) how one current conceptualization of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation based on the self-determination theory might be adapted for Japanese EFL learners, and (2) how these aspects might relate to the motivational orientations traditionally identified by various researchers in social psychology. It is argued that by combining the constructs of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation described in Deci and Ryan's (1985) self-determination theory with intergroup constructs discussed by Gardner (1985) and Clement and Kruidenier (1983), a more complete understanding of the development of particular orientations and their role in language learning motivation can be achieved (Noels, 2001: 43). Although the results of Clement and Kruidenier's study indicate that four orientations are common to all groups, the present research is made through the following investigations; (1) to Find out which orientations are the most important to L2 learning among Japanese EFL learners, (2) to examine the relation between motivational orientations like integrative orientation and self-determination constructs, and (3) to verify for the degree of overlap among the variables of the test batteries by Gardner (1985; see also Gardner, Tremblay, and Masgoret, 1997). These results are discussed with respect to the influence of the Japanese EFL context on orientations and in terms of their implications for further studies.

抄録全体を表示

Self-monitoring is one of metacognitive strategies, through which learners control their own learning. This study examines the effect of intensive reading aloud program encouraging its participants to use the strategy on their English proficiency. Twenty Japanese English-major university students voluntarily join the program in order to achieve a goal of reading five sets of English stories aloud ISO times within one month. During this period the participants record their oral reading twenty times so that they can monitor their own oral performance. Two reading aloud tasks and TOEIC tests conducted before and after the participation are used to measure the students' improvement in English. The analyzed data suggest that significant score gains are shown in both reading and listening parts of TOEIC while no significant progress is observed in oral performance.

抄録全体を表示