The purpose of this study was to measure the efficiency of teaching pronunciation by the "Individual Card Approach" developed by the author. It was hypothesized that (1) this approach is effective in improving learners' pronunciation, and (2) improvement in pronunciation first occurs in the most formal task before it is carried over to less formal tasks, and (3) this approach enhances learners' concern about their pronunciation, and (4) it does not have a negative effect on learners' fluency in free speech. Forty Japanese EFL learners received the treatment by this approach for two months. Accuracy rate of subjects' /r/ was measured before, during, and after the treatment. A questionnaire was conducted to explore changes in subjects' concern about their pronunciation. Hypotheses (1) and (3) were supported, whereas hypotheses (2) and (4) were not confirmed. Implications of these results are discussed.

View full abstract

A series of research ('Kanatani et al. 1991, 1992, 1994) has investigated long-standing effects of 3-4 week extensive reading programs for junior and senior high school students and so far has revealed an increasing gap in achievement between the participants and the non-participants of the senior high school programs. The results of the research studies indicated that the achievement gap turned significantly large after a 6 month 'latent period' and it was steadily enlarged until after 18 months. This present study attempts to examine whether similar long ranged effects are observable between the participants and non- participants of the juior high school programs. Similar positive effects of the junior high school program has already been reported in Kanatani et al. (1994). The gap was found inreasing until after 14 months. The present study trys to examine whether the enduring effects of the program will still be observable even after 17 months from the participation in the program.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine whether direct reading strategy training is applicable to the Japanese lower secondary EFL classroom. One hundred and forty-three eighth graders, divided into an experimental and a control group, received reading instruction with direct strategy training and with no such training respectively. The instruction for both groups covered the same material and the same amount of class^time periods. In the study, any activities other than reading for both groups were strictly controlled in order to know differences of each instructional effect on reading comprehension, in terms of the amount of correct information obtained by the reader from the text, as well as metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. The major finding of the study is that, in the Japanese lower secondary EFL classroom, reading strategy training may improve the amount of correct information obtained by the reader from the text. Another finding of the study is that, in the Japanese lower secondary EFL classroom , reading strategy training may improve readers' metacognitive awareness of confidence and global strategy effectiveness and decrease reader's metacognitive awareness of local strategy effectiveness. Also, it has revealed that there exist correlations between the amount of correct information obtained by the reader from the text and three categories of metacognitive awareness: confidence, local strategy effectiveness, and global strategy effectiveness.

View full abstract