This study examined argumentative essays in English written by Japanese university students to specify the particular weaknesses of their argumentation and to suggest what aspects need to be emphasized in the English composition classroom. The students' essays were analyzed in terms of the effect of five argumentative components: (a) claim clarity, (b) reason strength, (c) rebuttal strength, (d) development, and (e) language. The results showed that building sufficient detail of evidence supporting a claim with reasons and then backing up the reasons with warrants - often presented a significant hurdle for the students. The results also indicated that, contrary to previous research into Japanese students' writing, the students had no trouble taking a position initially and developing deductive reasoning. Pedagogical implications are discussed with respect to contrastive rhetoric and educational factors affecting how Japanese students write in English.

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The purpose of this study is to investigate the developmental features of errors in spoken performance by Japanese EFL junior high school students. The subjects are the same as in Kosuge (2003, 2004), that is, 90 Japanese junior high school students. None of the students have spent more than a month in a foreign country. The students were categorized into three groups of 30 each, according to their English results in the second term of the ninth grade. The spoken data was collected from six face-to-face interviews which were conducted by an ALT from the third term of the seventh grade to the second term of the ninth grade. Grammatical errors in the data were identified and corrected by a second ALT. 'The error rate (error AS-units per AS-unit)' and 'the means of the number of errors' were used to analyze the data. Also each error was categorized to examine what type of error occured. The error rate and the number of errors decreased the most in the first term of the ninth grade. Many errors in articles, prepositions, pronouns, noun plural forms, and the tense were found in the data.

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To be competitive in our present internationalized world, Japanese college students need to acquire adequate writing skills to prepare themselves for real situations; writing reports and papers. For this reason, it is essential that they have a basic understanding of paragraph writing structuring. Instructions on writing that Japanese students have received up to high school level, however, are mainly short composition exercises and sentence level translations from Japanese into English. In one approach to teach English writing, we introduced a movie related to the students' special field to raise their motivation and to promote the understanding of various discourse modes such as narratives, problem solving, contrast and personal opinion. Our main focus was to investigate: 1. Whether movie-based writing instruction is effective in improving the students' writing skills. 2. Whether there are any differences in progress among students of different English writing skills. Although the questionnaire result suggested that the students received the instruction favorably, there is some room for improvement as to the presentation of the movie material.

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Research was conducted to estimate the vocabulary size of first year high school students and to investigate the relationship between the vocabulary size estimates and their vocabulary strategies use. A vocabulary test was developed from JACET 8000 using 4000 words. The test consisted of 100 items. The average vocabulary size of 3 1 1 first year high school students was 1673 words. The reliability coefficient of the test was 0.86. A questionnaire was created to examine the use of vocabulary strategies. The questionnaire consisted of 23 items and was given to the same students. As a result of exploratory factor analysis, three factors were extracted: organization, repetition, and image strategies as shown in the preceding research. The students were divided into three groups based on their vocabulary size estimates. Relationships between vocabulary size estimates and vocabulary strategy use were investigated using structure equation modeling. It was found that vocabulary size estimates correlated with vocabulary strategy use. It was also found that differing vocabulary size estimates each had their own use of a particular or combination of vocabulary learning strategies. Students were informed of their vocabulary size estimates and their use of vocabulary learning strategies to assist them in their vocabulary learning.

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The present study explores multiple variables that may influence the Japanese rhetorical organization preference assumed to interfere into L2 writing. This two-part quantitative study compares contrasting groups of subjects, such as Japanese and American university students, in order to investigate variables such as text genre, gender, sub-culture, and writing instruction as factors that influence the rhetorical preference. The study revealed that (1) The prominence of the narrative text genre in Japan promoted by educational practices may be a variable that determine rhetorical preference (2) As regards the expository text genre that is not culturalhy prominent, the preferenre is determined by an individual preference; one which may be shared among the members of a sub-culture (3) Gender is not a particular variable that determined the rhetorical preference (4) Explicit writing instruction is a strong variable that determines the preference of the rhetorical organization. Japanese subjects without explicit writing instruction prefer the same inductive rhetorical organization pattern in L1 and L2. Subjects with writing instruction learn to select the rhetorical pattern that meets audience expectation in that culture.

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The author has been investigating the influences of Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI) on English learners at university in Japan, when the CAI is introduced into one of the formal English classes. In the 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. The purpose of this study is to investigate how many points will be increased in TOEIC IP scores of the university students who took the CAI, so that the most important one among educational effects of the CAI should be examined. Students who took the CAI were regarded as members of an experimental group; students who did not take the CAI were considered members of a control group. Both groups took TOEIC IP twice, when they were freshmen (April, 2003) and sophomores (December, 2004). The progress in TOEIC IP scores was compared among the two groups. It was found that students who took the CAI (the experimental group) made statistically significantly larger progress in TOEIC IP scores than students who did not take the CAI (the control group) by approximately 45 points.

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This is a longitudinal study that aims at investigating Japanese junior high school students' knowledge about English phrase structures and the process of its development based on Eigo Test-ho (Kanatani et al. 1994). About 150 subjects had joined in this study for over 2 years. They took eight grammar tests which consisted of questions about: 1) noun phrases with several modification structures, 2) to infinitive phrases, and 3) gerund phrases. We watched over their growth in the accuracy rates and tried to figure out any tendencies in the process. The obtained results were interesting and informative. We found that fairly a long period of time is needed for learners to acquire these phrase structures. Some possible factors to interfere with learners' acquisition, such as other grammatical items or question types, were also identified. We have a strong belief that accumulating such information about learners' knowledge will provide us of a better idea in teaching and assessing our students.

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According to a recent government survey, 92.1% of elementary schools in Japan have introduced English classes by 2004. One major controversy over English education in elementary schools is how effective it is in Japan's EFL context, as distinct from an ESL context such as that in Singapore. This study addresses a lack of objective data by providing actual empirical evidence on the effectiveness of English language instruction at the elementary school level. In the school years of 2003 and 2004, 1,466 elementary school students from two different schools (School 'A' and School 'B') were given English proficiency tests. School 'A' provides English instruction at school and School 'B' does not The test scores show that students in School 'A' outperformed those at School 'B'. hi addition, all students were divided into four groups: (1) students who had English instruction both at school and outside of school; (2) students who had English instruction only at school; (3) students who had instruction only outside of school; and (4) students who did not have any English instruction. Test scores among these groups were compared and the statistical data show that students in Group (1) outperformed students in the other three groups, and students in Groups (2) and (3) outperformed students in Group (4). Furthermore, the results outlined how the English ability of students for each of the four groups improves year by year. The authors believe that the data obtained from this study will provide the basis for a fruitful discussion on English education in elementary schools in Japan.

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