The purpose of this study is to investigate and confirm the factors which generate enjoyment of learning English in classroom settings. The author scrutinized the previous studies that referred to the elements of the enjoyment. 1094 students in junior high schools, high schools and universities were selected. Five factors were abstracted through explorative factor analysis: (1) the enjoyment of participation and expression, (2) the enjoyment of gaining knowledge about English language and its culture, (3) the enjoyment of learning English from non-textbook materials, (4) the enjoyment of gaining proficiency, and (5) the enjoyment of learning English in various ways. The model was then examined through confirmative factor analysis. To evaluate the model fit, a set of fit indexes was examined. Although the chi-square value was significant, fit indexes were satisfactory; the goodness of fit index (GFI) and the comparative fit index (CFI) were over .9 and the root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA) was below .05. Based on the data analyzed, several suggestions about how to distribute enjoyment through appropriate factors throughout teaching procedures were proposed.

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The present study explored how university students as a trainee English teacher think they can make use of generative grammar theory in English classroom teaching. As the Universal Grammar (UG) research develops in more abstract and sophisticated ways, the application of this theory to teaching seems more unrealistic. Moreover, in the previous studies, the educational perspectives on the potential use of this grammar theory have been derived mostly from UG or Second Language Acquisition researchers. In contrast, this study was conducted with the 43 third-year university students who were learning standard theory of generative grammar mainly, and who were going to teach English in a teaching practice setting in about one year. They were asked to write freely about, from teachers' point of view, how they would like to apply the theory to their English pedagogy. The freely written data reveal that their ideas showed a relatively positive attitude toward the application and that they were qualitatively different from the ones from the previous studies. Especially, it should be noted that about one third of the respondents came up with affective factors, such as motivating students to study English and having more confidence in teaching.

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The present study examined whether learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) could gain incidental word knowledge through independent reading (i.e., without instructions such as lexical inferencing while reading) by examining the effects of contextual constraints on lexical processing. A total of 38 participants read 16 contextual sentences in four conditions: strongly constraining sentences with or without a free written recall task, and weakly constraining sentences with or without the same task. The overall results of the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale indicated that the initial gains in word knowledge started at the level of word recognition, although they were relatively slight. Additionally, the verbal comprehension contributed to vocabulary development. The empirical evidence also supported that the effects of the contextual constraints on incidental learning differed between high proficiency and low proficiency L2 learners.

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This study investigated whether Japanese learners of English use auditory priming to facilitate spoken-word processing, and whether factors including word familiarity, English ability and language types - Japanese and English - influence the priming effects. Twenty-five participants listened to spoken words in the study phase; then, in the test phase, they were presented with previously studied and unstudied auditory words, and were asked to repeat them as quickly as possible. Results revealed that previously presented spoken-words were processed faster (the priming effect), but the above factors did not influence the priming effects. It was suggested that second language learners obtain acoustic and/or phonetic information from a single exposure to auditory words, and then store it to create robust auditory priming effects.

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The purpose of this study is to investigate the changes of the writing proficiencies that occur in participants of a three-week overseas program making use of a STEP test and an essay writing. In order to observe the differences in their essays written before and after the program, not only T-units and Error-free T-units (EFTs) but also "Global-error-free T-units (GEFTs)" (Kimura, 2011) were utilized. The scores of writing section in STEP test significantly increased. Regarding the writing proficiency, their fluency considerably improved, but no progress was shown in accuracy. Aiming to find the affective factors that influenced such changes, a Willingness to Communicate (WTC) scale questionnaire was implemented. Results showed that the participants' WTC scores did not necessarily correlate to their language performances and that those who showed lower WTC scores before the program tended to demonstrate higher improvements in their scores. Another finding was that the significantly different two groups in WTC scores before the program became homogeneous ones after the program, probably because those of the lower group went up through their experiences they had in the overseas country.

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The purpose of the current research is to discuss how junior high school students collaboratively learned English grammar, including sentence patterns involving different combinations of subject, verb, object and/or complement and the passive voice, through whole class discussions. The study begins with the teacher's reflections on the way in which she had taught grammar over the past 25 years and then moves on to a description of her teaching philosophy and an examination of discourse data. The protocols were analyzed based on Vygotsky's concept of the "zone of proximal development", and reference was also made to the teacher interview data and written comments as she later made on the discourse transcripts. The findings suggest that: (1) as time went by, the quality of both the collaborative dialogue among students and the teacher's utterances changed; (2) students could learn English through horizontal interactions among their peers; and (3) the teacher realized the usefulness of collaborative dialogue.

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This is a practical report on teaching paragraph writing to Japanese junior high school students. Teaching paragraph writing to junior high school students is not yet so widespread. This practical research was an attempt to teach paragraph writing to third-year students in a local junior high school. There were 32 participants and the treatment sessions consisted of 12 class meetings in which the structure of a paragraph, the use of transition words, how to generate ideas and how to write an outline were taught step by step. A pretest and a posttest were carried out and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The quantitative analysis revealed that the participants increased the number of words, sentences and transition words; the qualitative analysis that included writing sample analysis and students' reflections revealed that the participants improved their ability to express their ideas more logically in the posttest and that they were more motivated to express their ideas in writing than before. Teaching paragraph writing to junior high school students, although not practiced very much yet, is appropriate and necessary considering Japan's recent educational slogan of promoting "thinking, judgment, and expressive abilities" which is emphasized in the new Course of Study.

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