This study aims to make logical assumptions on Japanese EFL learners' acquisition of complex noun phrases which include relative clauses and prepositional phrases. I assume that empirical evidence shown in Morimoto (2010) and Kimura, Kanatani and Kobayashi (2010) ascribes analysis as a complex noun phrase to interdependency between semantic constraints and grouping recognition. Grouping recognition is a term that I have coined to refer to 'matomari-no haaku' in Kimura et al. (2010, p.64), in which the hearer groups together one or some words into a unit. On the other hand, semantic constraints are thought of as affecting syntactic analysis (Trueswell et al. 1994). I argue that acquisition of complex noun phrases occurs when semantic constraints have dismissed an (initial) analysis as a simple sentence, and the region covered by the dismissed analysis remains as a unit. In this system, the initial error is necessary for semantic constraints to be activated and the unit left behind by the initial error is necessary for trying a new semantic structure on.

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This study examines the effects of different types of corrective feedback (CF). High school students had five treatment sessions over five months. They wrote essays after they finished each lesson in their English textbook. The experimental and control groups received two different types of CF on their essays: the experimental group received indirect CF with clues, while the control group was provided with direct CF. The pre- and post-tests were administered before and after the five sessions to measure the students' overall writing ability. Their essays were rated in terms of three scoring criteria: Content, Organization and Language Use (grammar). The results of the tests revealed that the experimental group showed significant improvement on the post-test, suggesting that indirect CF engages students in appropriate revising processes.

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The present study's purpose is to investigate the factors that affect reading comprehension during three modes: silent reading, oral reading, and listening-while-reading. These possible factors are perceived task difficulty and familiarity with the reading modes. Eighty-five Japanese EFL high-school students participated in this experiment by answering recall task and questionnaires after reading in each mode. Results of the recall task indicated that silent reading promoted comprehension the best, which corresponds to previous studies. In addition, findings from the factor and multiple regression analyses revealed the characteristics of each reading mode, indicating that task difficulty of each reading mode was important factors in determining comprehension in all three modes. Another factor of the familiarity with each reading mode affected comprehension. The less frequently a particular reading mode was used, the greater the effects of task difficulty were. The unexpected factor of phonological decoding skills was also found out in the results, suggesting the importance of phonological instruction and the repeated use of the reading modes to decrease task difficulty and achieve better reading comprehension.

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The purpose of the current study is to examine relationships between the factors of good teaching practices and enjoyment of learning English in classroom. The authors employed a checklist of good teaching practices from the viewpoint of learners (preferable teaching practices) in a previous study and analyzed its relationships with enjoyment and degree of learners' like and dislike of learning English in covariance structure analysis. The answers of 1459 students (676 junior high school students, 381 high school students, and 402 university students) were collected. The results showed that one variable significantly and directly influenced the level of enjoyment, and a second one seemed to indirectly influence it. Although enjoyment influenced the degree of like and dislike significantly, the factors of good teaching practices did the level of enjoyment and the degree of like and dislike modestly. The authors discussed the results and implications to propose two frameworks of preferable teaching practices in consideration of the level of enjoyment and the degree of like and dislike.

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Usually, words have more than one meaning, causing difficulty in acquiring all meanings of ambiguous words. Polysemous words, however, have semantically related or overlapping senses (hereafter, semantic overlap), which may help to infer and retain an appropriate meaning of these words. This study examines the effects of semantic overlap on inferring and retaining subordinate meanings of polysemous words for Japanese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). A total of 49 Japanese undergraduates attempted to infer and learn the subordinate meanings of 18 target words (nine high and nine low-overlap words) in the lexical inference and recall tasks. The results showed that the degree of semantic overlap affects the inference and retention of subordinate meanings of polysemous words.

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This paper examines Japanese workers' needs to use English for occupational purposes, employing a statistical analysis of several datasets from social surveys based on a random sample of the entire workforce in the country. Although many policy makers, business leaders, and English language teachers often emphasize the occupational importance of English proficiency, there has been little research which precisely estimates how many workers are required to use English in their workplaces. Therefore, a secondary analysis was conducted using five datasets with a random sample: Japanese General Social Surveys (2002, 2003, 2006, and 2010 versions) and Working Person Survey (2000). The results show that (1) less than 10% of the respondents use English in workplace, (2) about 40% feel the needs to use English, and (3) the responses vary widely according to their demographic and occupational factors such as type of job, educational background, and firm size. Based on these findings, the paper discusses the validity of foreign language education policies of the Japanese government.

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This paper reports the results of research into teacher cognition of pre-service teachers who attended the Teacher Training Program for Teaching English to Children established at Kanda University of International Studies in 2005. The research on teacher cognition focuses on the studies of teachers' experiences, beliefs, and knowledge, which are found to reflect on actual teaching in educational settings. Investigating what the student teachers believe, therefore, is of importance as their teaching may impact their future students' motivation and whether or not their learning takes place. This study investigated 31 student teachers who completed the program in 2009 and 2010. The questionnaire was administered to find about their experiences at elementary schools gained through observations and participations of classes. The primary purpose of the survey was to improve the present teacher-training program, but the underlying purpose was to investigate if the student teachers learned the program's purposes and goals of education in addition to the program's philosophy of education.

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This study examined how the explicit instruction about English pronunciation affected the English learning of junior high school students. Five days experimental lessons were conducted for 158 eighth grade students. They were randomly assigned into three groups: 1) explicit instruction with practical training, 2) explicit instruction only, and 3) control group. Participants in the first and the second group were given explicit instruction about the sound of some alphabets. The first group was also given the opportunities to use their acquired knowledge in interpersonal situations. Results showed that the first and the second group not only achieved higher score on the pronunciation and listening test, but became more careful when they pronounce or listen to English words than control group. It was also found that practical training enhanced this tendency. In addition, explicit instruction promoted the use of word learning strategies that put importance on sound.

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This study explores how a junior high school English teacher began teaching in a student-centered way as a result of transforming her questions and consciousness over a period of three and a half years. The paper begins with the teacher's reflections on how she realized the importance of becoming aware of students' perceptions in class during the course of her 26-year teaching career. Classroom discourse and the teacher's written comments about her daily lessons were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed in order to clarify her transformation. The findings suggest that as the number of the teacher's authentic questions increased, her comments became more reflective and likely to focus on the actual facts in classes. The research concludes that as the teacher struggled to escape from several gaps of consciousness ("decalages") in different dimensions, these experiences enabled her to reconstruct her teaching principles as well as her teaching methods.

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This is a practical report on the implementation of Silent Discussion, a reading and writing strategy used in many American middle schools, as a post-reading activity in general English classes for Japanese university freshmen. The purpose of this report is to examine its effectiveness with regard to the following points: (1) whether it facilitates learners' deep interpretation of textbooks; (2) whether it reduces the fear and anxiety some learners have of speaking in front of the whole class; and (3) whether it is enjoyable for learners and stimulates their motivation for learning English through group work activity. At the end of the fall semester, after reading the textbooks, Silent Discussion was conducted in two classes with 34 participants (17 in each class). After the activity, they were administered a questionnaire. The responses showed positive implications for the implementation of Silent Discussion; it is an effective post-reading activity that facilitates learners' active self-expression in English.

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This is a practical report on "remedial English" in a flexible-time (part-time) high school. Nowadays, flexible-time high schools have a diversity of students: those who haven't gone to junior high school adequately, those who have learning disabilities or other developmental disabilities, and those who are non-Japanese. In general, these students are not ready to study in terms of both motivation and basic knowledge. In order to have them motivated and encourage them to learn, instruction with small steps is essential. This report suggests three activities in a remedial class: (1) training of spelling with phonics, (2) visualizing POS, (3) describing grammatical awareness. Moreover, the number of non-Japanese students has been increasing in flexible-time high school recently. Support class for their Japanese language becomes necessary even in high school. This report also introduces supporting activities of Japanese language class in a flexible-time high school.

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This study was conducted to examine the effects of integrated instruction on Japanese students' production of argumentative writing in an EFL context. The instruction was designed to bridge the gap between university-level EFL teachers' emphasis on the written mode of English, and secondary school students' preference for the development of their aural/oral abilities in English under the influence of Communicative Language Teaching. A class of Japanese EFL students participated in the study, writing two argumentative essays as pre- and post-test samples. A semester's worth of integrated EFL instruction was given between these two tests. The students' pre- and post-tests were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. After receiving the instruction, the students were able to write argumentative essays of better quality, support their argumentative position with objective reasons, include objective evidence, draw on credible external knowledge source materials, and cite external materials properly, though they still tended to overly rely on Japanese source materials. The study calls for more attempts to examine different types of integrated instruction in EFL classrooms in Japanese universities.

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