Much of the statistical information from the 1980-1981 survey of English teaching in Japanese secondary schools was presented at the 20th Annual convention of the Japan Association of College English Teachers held at Waseda University in Tokyo on November 14th and 15th, 1981. The present paper is a much revised version of one published under the auspices of the Institute of Cultural Sciences of Meiji University [Bowers 1981] and contains comparisons with earlier surveys. The project was financed by a grant from the Institute of Cultural Sciences of Meiji University.

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A general examination of the previous research proved that there was a controversy within this specific field. Some studies show significant correlations between English proficiency and attitudinal/motivational variables, while others show insignificant or almost no correlations. There are, however, only a few studies which have emphasized such points as, the use of attitude scales, measures of English proficiency, and the number of subjects tested. Therefore, in this study the relationship between English proficiency and attitudinal/motivational variables will be investigated by taking these points into consideration. Ninety-seven (7th grade), seventy-six (8th grade), and a hundred-sixteen (10th grade) secondary school students served as the subjects, and the tests administered in this study included a series of attitude/motivation scales and the proficiency scores measured by a cloze test. The statistical results of this study have shown the important roles played by the attitude and motivation concerning English language proficiency.

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This paper looks at some of the practical problems encountered in trying to apply current ideas on course design and listening comprehension. It is based primarily on work done for Professor Morio Kohno of Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, and work done with David Sell of Kyoto University on Modern English, Cycle Two (Seido). Some of these ideas were presented orally at the National LLA Conference in Kobe (July 1983) and have been published in Eigo Kyoiku (1984). This paper presents further developments of the same themes.

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To better understand the effects of supplementary material such as a written explanation or a series of pictures on Japanese student's ability to translate a dialog from English to Japanese, 102 third year high school students and 68 first year English major and 100 first year non-English major college students were divided into five groups and given an English dialog to translate. Some groups were also given a written explanation of the situation in Japanese, or listened to a recorded tape of the dialog. Others were given a series of three pictures of the situation, still others both the pictures and the explanation. Some groups were given the dialog and nothing else. Translations were scored as to situational and meaning accuracy and the results of each group computed. High school students were found to produce unacceptable translations when supplied with just an English dialog but acceptable translations when shown the series of pictures and even better translations when given the explanation and the series of pictures. College English majors, on the other hand, produced better translations when shown the pictures only. College non-English majors demonstrated no significant improvement in any category.

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Among the many aspects of foreign language testing, the test format is one of the most important factors influencing test validity. In some listening comprehesion tests the spoken foreign language is presented as a stimulus and the written foreign language alternatives are presented as a response. Because of recent technological innovations, various kinds of audio-visual aids are now available for use. If we take advantage of these aids, we can explore test formats which are different from present tests. The purpose of this paper is to indicate, through the use of a classifying diagram, the great diversity of foreign-language listening comprehension test formats now in existence and to include possible future test formats using audio-visual aids. The diagram is in the shape of a quadratic prism in which the x axis indicates 26 primary stimulus modalities, the y axis 26 secondary stimulus modalities and the z axis 64 response modalities.

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