The purpose of this study was to measure the efficiency of a teaching method developed to help Japanese students improve their ability to listen to authentic short English utterances. This teaching method, which is for teacher-led classroom instruction, was developed by incorporating the learning theories of: classical conditioning, operant conditioning and cognitive psychology. 183 college level learners of English took the same pre-test and, at the end of the 6-hour instruction period, two different types of dictation post-test: dictation test A was comprised of utterances chat the students had been taught and dictation test B was comprised of entirely new utterances. Score gains were 53% and 15% for tests A and B respectively. The ratio of 15:53(28%) shows the amount of learning transfer to the ability to listen to new utterances. The subjects were also requested to take a pre- and post-auditory comprehension test (on related topic) with an average recorded gain of 22%. To examine the meaning of this 22% improvement, a control group of 13 learners who had studied a 10-hour course of spoken dialogue comprehension using a multi-media CAI system, took the same auditory comprehension test with an average recorded gain of 37%. The ratio of 22:37(59%) indicates that the teaching method under examination enhances the ability to comprehend spoken dialogues half as much as the multi-media CAI system, even though this is not the primary objective of the teaching method. In conclusion it can be seen that teaching methods that improve the students' ability to comprehend short utterances also enhance their ability to comprehend spoken dialogues.

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The purpose of this study was to explore EFL students' views on four different editing methods: editing based on direct teacher correction, editing based on teacher's uncoded indication of the location of error, editing by peer feedback, and unaided self-editing. One hundred and twenty Japanese high school students rated these methods on a 5-point scale and also gave verbal comments on their advantages and disadvantages. The results indicated that the students perceived editing based on teacher's indication of the location of error the most effective, and direct teacher correction and self-editing the least effective. The students' verbal comments are examined in detail and the advantages and the disadvantages of each editing method are discussed.

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In foreign language learning, the importance of the amount of learner's exposure to the target language has been increasingly emphasized. One of the ways to ensure an ample amount of exposure is through extensive reading programs. However, little research has been done as to the possible effects of those programs on students' curriculum-based achievement. The project reported here is part of our efforts to prove positive effects on the learner's curriculum-based achievement. Kanatani et al. (1990, 1991), which investigated the effects of senior high school reading programs, proved that participation in the 3-4 week reading program played a positive role in the development of reading ability and that the effect became salient after a latent period of approximately 6 months. They also revealed the enduring effect of the reading program that continuously made a larger difference in reading ability between the participants and the non-participants. This present article attempts to prove whether the same type of effects can be observable with the junior high school participants of the program. It also aims at examining whether participation will bring about any changes in the participants' learning strategy and attitudes toward learning of English.

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Classroom observation is one of the most effective ways to train (student) teachers. An observation sheet which contains several criteria for evaluating an observed classroom is helpful for observers or (student) teachers to objectively analyze what actually happens in the classroom to become aware of the advantages and disadvantages of their instruction, and to come up with some clues to improve their own ways of teaching. In this study an observation sheet aimed at evaluating a communicative language classroom was originally developed based on sheets produced earlier by Flanders (1960), Moskowitz (1971), Fanselow (1977, 1987), Nunan (1989) and so forth. The sheet focuses on five aspects in the language classroom: (1) classroom management, (2) material, task and resource, (3) interaction and feedback, (4) individual teacher and (5) lesson preparation. The sheet was subsequently applied to an actual English lesson for tenth graders using the jigsaw listening approach, which is a very effective information gap exercise. It requires learners to communicate and facilitates their involvement in negotiated interaction in the language classroom. The experimental application was conducted to examine the effectiveness of the observation sheet on classroom analysis. The results revealed that the observation sheet developed in this study was of use in evaluating a language classroom focusing on interaction and clarifying the characteristics of the jigsaw listening approach.

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The number of Assistant Language Teachers (ALT) has been increasing for the last several years, and therefore Japanese EFL teachers are having more and more chance to discuss their students' non-standard language production with native teachers. This article reviews Takayama's (1992) study on error perceptions of native and Japanese teachers of EFL in order to make the error evaluation differences between the two much clearer, and then provides lists of which particular erroneous sentences caused the large gaps. Takayama had a set of 15 developmental errors and that of 15 interlingual errors evaluated by 40 native EFL teachers and 40 Japanese counterparts with criteria of intelligibility and pedagogical seriousness. When Takayama made overall comparison of each set of the 15 developmental and 15 interlingual errors, there were no significant gaps between native and Japanese teachers except pedagogical seriousness evaluation of the developmental errors. But when he looked at the teachers' evaluation of each erroneous sentence, he found such great gaps between native and Japanese EFL teachers as intelligibility of the developmental errors and pedagogical seriousness of the interlingual errors. Takayama's study seems to have a methodological weakness concerning his categorization of developmetal/interlingual errors. More sophisticated researches are needed in order to bridge error evaluation gaps between native and Japanese EFL teachers.

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