This paper employs quantitative research to analyze the use of tense and aspect in quotations when citing preceding research and the correlation between forms of quotation and tense/aspect. The results reveal that a quotation that ends with —te iru takes on a logical relationship with the argument within which it is embedded. However, a quotation that ends with —ta is used when a time series of statements is generated. In addition, specific forms of tense and aspect are used with specific forms of quotations. A sentence that ends with —te iru is used with the following forms: 1) a quotation that focuses on the contents without the use of to plus an indirect quotation, 2) a quotation that focuses on the author with the use of to plus an indirect quotation, and 3) a quotation that focuses on the author without the use of to plus an indirect quotation. A sentence that ends with —ta is used with a quotation that focuses on author without the use of to plus an indirect quotation.

The care worker trainees under current Economic Partnership Agreements must pass a State Examination for Certified Care Workers within four years to continue working in Japan, but they have only one opportunity to take the examination because applicants are required to have at least three years of nursing-care experience in Japan. Additionally, as often mentioned, the Japanese language, especially kanji, used in the examinations is a huge barrier for the trainees and there is a need for Japanese language learning support designed to focus on kanji used in the examinations. This paper examines necessary kanji knowledge for the examinations by analyzing the frequency and trends of kanji used in the examination over the last eight years and the kanji introduced in kanji textbooks specialized for nursing care. The results indicate that with a knowledge of 550-600 kanji from the textbooks and the list of the kanji most frequently used in the examination, one can cover approximately 90% of the kanji used in the examination.

This study aims to reveal the motivation of Japanese language students in Ukraine. Although Ukraine is an environment that has very little cultural or economic exchange with Japan, Japanese language is quite popular as a college major. Motivation (i.e. will) to learn is considered to significantly affect the success or failure of L2 learning. Motivation will be shaped by the influence of social context. Learners of Japanese in Ukraine have notably high goals (for example, to study in Japan or to find employment with Japanese companies) at the beginning of their studies, but many of them are unable to maintain this motivation until graduation.

While the environments of Japanese language learning tend to be very different from those used in Gardner and Lambert (1972), most previous studies on Japanese language learning were based on variations of Gardner and Lambert's scale. The originality of the present study is that its scale is based on free descriptions from Ukrainian students. The scale includes eleven new items that were not used in any previous studies.

The purpose of this study is to investigate motivation among Japanese language students. This research examined 180 students from five universities in Ukraine. The results of the factor analysis show that students in higher academic years have different motivations than first- or second-year students.

In numerous works, instrumental motivation and integrative motivation are thought to be conflicting factors, and possession of one factor is often considered to be sufficient. However, this research shows that the correlation between first- and second-year students' work-based motivation and culture-based motivation is positive; in fact, that possession of one factor is often connected to possession of the other.

Training in the skill of requesting clarification as a communication strategy was conducted in an intermediate conversation class, including 1) study of prepared materials called "Let's master requests for clarification", 2) advance instructions and follow-up interviews before and after conversation with native speakers in real situations, and 3) completion of a metacognitive training sheet. The educational effect of this practice was evaluated by comparing conversations with native speakers before and after the training program. By comparing changes in the learners' consciousness of use and the number of uses of requests for clarification between two conversation partners, it was revealed that half of the learners became able to use this skill consciously in conversation after the training, and not before the training. It was also found that the learners were able to use requests for clarification in qualitatively more preferable ways and therefore the exchange of conversation became more active in the post-training conversations. However, this practice also showed room for improvement in the educational materials and the study method of the materials, the instruction method for immediately before conversation, and the instruction method in follow-up interviews.

When Japanese people evaluate letters of apology written by learners of Japanese, they are likely to use different evaluation schemas (i.e., evaluation criteria and evaluation methods). In order to grasp the diversity of evaluation schemas, the author of this paper administered a questionnaire that inquired about the evaluation criteria used by the evaluators, and classified them into four categories based on the results. The procedure for categorization was as follows.

A total of 155 evaluators were asked to read 10 1etters of apology written by learners and to rank them from 1 (most agreeable) to 10 (most disagreeable). Thereafter, they answered a questionnaire inquiring about the degree to which they had used the evaluation criteria shown in the questionnaire when ranking the letters (22 criteria, 7 degrees).

A factor analysis performed on the responses yielded the following four factors: linguistic forms, coherence, attitude of the writer, and rich expression.

A cluster analysis was then carried out on the evaluators' scores for the above factors. The analysis results indicated that the 155 evaluators could be classified into the following four types: form-focused, near-to-mean, attitude-not-focused, and form-not-focused.