This paper suggests that we Japanese are required to really study English as an international language due to the circumstances facing Japan at present. We teachers are responsible for improving the students' ability to use English language as a "weapon" for international communication. During listening comprehension classes 1 have come to conclude that the application of simultaneous interpretation methods is quite effective to improve students' overall listening ability and to enhance their ability to cope with many various kinds of Englishes. Experiments are conducted to test which one of the following three teaching methods: A) Integrative, B) Interactive, C) Conventional will be the most effective in teaching listening in the language laboratory. The TOEFL listening comprehension test is used as a pre - test and a post - test to see how much students could improve their scores in the fifty listening test questions. The results of their statistical analysis are as follows: A Method > B Method > C Method, especially in terms of "gains". The supremacy of A Method over the other two is interpreted in such a way that the teaching Method A, requiring the students to use all five senses, stimulates the brain to be more active. The test results seem to indicate that we can make better use of the language laboratory if we activate the students by giving more engaging tasks.

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Recent studies in psyhcolinguistics and sociolinguistics have suggested that there is a significant relationship between the academic achievement made by students learning a foreign language and their attitudes toward the people and the culture of the country where that language is spoken, This paper will attempt a comprehensive survey based on the results of the questionnaire answered by 117 Japanese and 104 Korean university students majoring in English. The purpose of the study will be to look into and account for the possible similarities and dissimilarities demonstrated by the two national groups. The thirty questions that were included in the questionnaire were concerned about: (A) students' interest in and understanding of English-speaking peoples and their cultures; (B) their attitudes toward English-speaking peoples, and (C) their interest and personal involvement in English studies.

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This paper will demonstrate the effectiveness of language laboratory instruction and radio English programs in improving listening comprehension. The HBF / LLA 1987 Listening Comperhension Tests, which were newly developed by the HBF / LLA Kanto Chapter Project Group were administered to measure the effectiveness of these programs. About 2,000 third-year Japanese junior high school students were given listening comprehension tests in July and November of 1987. They took the two 1987 HBF / LLA Listening Comprehension Tests (Type A in July and Type B in November). The results in July showed that students who had been taught in the language laboratory and / or by listening to English language instructional programs on the radio got significantly better scores than those who had not. The second test, which was given in November, reconfirmed the findings of the first test: students who regularly listened to radio programs over the four-month period scored consistently higher on the second listening test.

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In this paper I would like to introduce a language learning activity I call Conversation Cards, which I have used effectively with lower level, relatively unmotivated college English students. I will describe the activity, discuss its relationship to other types of student-centered language learning activities, and evaluate its effectiveness and limitations.

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