Item response theory (IRT) makes it possible to compare the academic achievement obtained from different versions of tests on a common scale. There have been few studies to compare scores from large-scale academic achievement tests administered in schools using IRT in Japan. Therefore, in order to compare scores on a common scale, two kinds of research were undertaken for English achievement tests administered in the past (Saida, 2003; Saida and Hattori, 2004). The purpose of this research was to investigate trends of English achievement at one high school selected from the previous two studies. The English IRT scale scores of 6498 high school students attending the school from 1995 to 2002 were investigated in terms of courses and grade levels. In addition, the trends in English achievement from first to third grade levels were examined. This research found that the overall trends in English achievement at this high school declined, mirroring the general prefectural decline (Saida, 2003). The present study demonstrates the advantages of applying IRT in tracking trends in academic achievement and for school assessment.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of phrasal listening practice on Japanese college students' listening comprehension. The subjects were 48 Japanese nursing college students who participated in the five sets of the phrasal listening practice. Before and after the participation, listening comprehension tests were conducted to examine the improvement in listening skills. The subjects were categorized into three groups^ the higher group (N=12), the middle group (N=23), and the lower group (N=13). The results showed that significant progress between the pre-test and the post-test was observed in each group although there was no significant difference between the middle and lower group in the post-test. According to the survey by a questionnaire, 75% of the higher group and 69.2% of the lower group students found the efficacy of the phrasal listening practice while the positive response by the middle group students remained at 52.2%. These findings suggest that the phrasal listening practice could be both possible and desirable for the improvement of listening skills of Japanese college students and that further research in the appropriateness of speech rate on listening materials and the relationship between pauses and segmentation would be desirable.

View full abstract

This study examines the effectiveness of a task, by comparing how a closed task and a more open task affect high school students' grammar acquisition. An experimental study was conducted with high school students of relatively low-level English proficiency. As a closed task, play-acting was chosen. As an open task, a skeleton dialogue and interview were chosen. In the play-acting task, students memorized a model dialogue to have a conversation. In the skeleton dialogue task, students filled in blanks with their own words and continued free conversation, while in the interview task, they were required to interview their classmates and have free conversation. The results showed that both types of task were effective for grammar acquisition, and it was revealed that the closed task was more effective than the open tasks. However, students were more communicative in the open tasks. Potential explanations of the findings were also discussed.

View full abstract

Written output produced by twelve junior high school students exposed to English in elementary school were descriptively analyzed at two times in their first year from the perspective of grammatical development. The results showed a wide difference in grammatical development among the participants, indicating that some learners benefit from the exposure to English in elementary school whereas others do not. Three higher achievers in the first term also excelled in the third term, and three lower achievers in the first term also maintained their status. However, six learners in between in the first term went in different directions in the third term, one showing improvement, four remaining middle achievers, and the other showing deterioration. The results were interpreted along with their scores of language learning aptitude tests as well as by the comments provided by their junior high school teacher. The results suggest that aptitude, attitude, and the first language ability can be variables as important as, or more important than, the age of the initial exposure to English.

View full abstract

The study examined the relation between estimated vocabulary size and listening and reading proficiency in Japanese senior high school students. A newly developed vocabulary size estimation test with four levels: i.e., 1,000- to 4,000-word level groups was used for 2nd year students (N=120). All subjects took a proficiency test twice, and their listening and reading proficiency was tested. Their vocabulary and grammar knowledge was also tested. Changes in these were also examined within subjects. The grand mean for vocabulary size for the subjects was 2062.06. Two proficiency tests administered in July and the following February showed statistically significant increases in vocabulary scores but decreases in listening scores. These reflected the national average. There was, however, no significant difference in scores in reading, grammar, and overall. The results also showed that there was a weak correlation between estimated vocabulary size and listening and reading proficiency: i.e., r =.26-.50 and r =.26-.50 respectively. There were many cases where the correlation was the highest at the 1,000-word level. The study concludes that as listening and reading proficiency cannot be well explained by the vocabulary size only. Educators should teach their students how to listen to and read English, giving them as many chances as possible to function in English. Educators should focus on vocabulary size, especially high-frequency words.

View full abstract

Studies on error feedback in L2 writing instructions have provided mostly positive evidence for improvement of accuracy over time. Compared to direct correction of students' errors, indirect feedback is expected to provide students with more opportunities to consider their errors and self-edit their writings. One issue which has not been sufficiently investigated is what type of error feedback has greater power to help students self-edit. Another issue is the different effect of the feedback on different types of grammatical errors. This experimental study investigated 76 beginning to lower-intermediate EFL students' self-editing abilities across two feedback conditions and five grammatical error categories. Examined feedback conditions differed in their explicitness: (1) indicating errors with codes of the above five error categories; (2) indicating errors by underlining them but with no error-category mark. The five error categories were: (1) verbs; (2) noun endings; (3) articles and other determinants; (4) word choice; and (5) sentence structure. The findings were: (1) there was no significant difference between the effects of the two feedback types, but (2) there were significant differences in correctly self-edited error ratios among those five error types. The study suggests that teachers should use different types of feedback according to the error types.

View full abstract

This paper intends to investigate to what extent Japanese elementary school pupils know English letters and words receptively, and to compare with the data obtained in the previous study in 2001. The previous study showed that pupils had many opportunities to encounter English words and alphabets, and they had quite large knowledge of them. Based upon these results, the author emphasized the possibility to introduce receptive aspects into a new English curriculum at elementary school. This replication study was designed to investigate how pupils' receptive knowledge of English words and letters had changed for the past three years, and what kind of pedagogical implications we can obtain from the data. The result showed that pupils increased about 40% of their receptive knowledge, and that the ratio of correct answers to the word-decision task has improved from 70% to 85%. According to these data it would be reasonable to suggest that the English curriculum for elementary school could include teaching literacy by making the most of pupils' receptive knowledge in English.

View full abstract

The present study aims to investigate any effects of the experience of English in elementaiy school on the students' English phonological production abilities. The data was collected from 149 seventh graders in a junior high school after they had completed eight months of English classes. 93 students came from the attached elementary school where they had English classes one period per week for the year preceding entering junior high school. The remaining 56 subjects came from other elementary schools and have various backgrounds of English study. All subjects were required to read a short passage they had already studied in their class textbook and their utterances were recorded. Three raters evaluated the phonological production abilities holistically on a 5 point scale. Comparisons verified that there was no significant difference in the students' pronunciation abilities due to differences in English experience in elementary school.

View full abstract

In order to acquire better communicative competence in English, one of the proposals commonly made is to build a larger vocabulary. However, through our teaching experiences, we know that one of the problems that may impede vocabulary learning is the existence of polysemous words. The present study aims to examine how providing learners with two types of cues facilitates guessing and learning abstract, figurative senses of polysemous words. The cue types compared are (1) core sense vs. non-core sense (When guessing and learning abstract senses, provided cues are either located on the core meaning side with a more concrete meaning, or non-core meaning side, with a more abstract, figurative sense, leading to different effects.), and (2) closer sense vs. further sense (When guessing and learning abstract senses, the compared cues are located closer or further to the abstract sense, leading to different effect.). The results show that (1) guessing and learning of abstract senses were enhanced when learners were initially given core sense cues rather than non-core sense cues; (2) being given closer sense cues or further sense cues did not affect the score of a guessing test, a short term retention test, or a long-term retention test. Further explanation will be given in the discussion section.

View full abstract

English relational expressions may be hard for Japanese learners to acquire for they follow the governing noun. The control group were asked first to make a noun phrase containing a relative clause (e.g.'the Italian food he cooks") and then to embed it as part of a sentence, (e.g. "The Italian food he cooks got customers.") The experimental group were asked to insert a given relative clause (e.g."he got" ) into a given matrix sentence (e.g.'The money caused troubles.") to make a complete complex sentence (e.g.'The money he got caused troubles."). In the second posttest, delayed effect occurred exclusively in the experimental group. How does the matrix structure (SVO) work as constraints on the noun phrase structure?

View full abstract