English textbooks for junior high schools tend to contain many conversational materials dealing with everyday topics. It is often said that literary materials have been gradually excluded from current English education in Japan in accordance with Japan’s recent emphasis on communication abilities. However, some textbooks include such literary materials as O. Henry’s short stories and Arnold Lobel’s picture book for the purpose of English reading. This paper will consider reading passages in English textbooks for junior high schools and make clear their problems, in particular those of literary materials.

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Recently competency in basic social and academic skills has been suggested repeatedly.With that in mind, the author surveyed how much the concept of competency has been introduced into businesses in Japan. With the goal being an improvement in the competency of students, the author used active learning as a means of educational practice. Data was collected during both the first and last classes, and then analyzed.Consequently, positive effects were noted in the category of self-control, even in the short time frame of only two months. In addition, it was confirmed that there is a positive effect on the category of interpersonal relations when the concept of skill cultivation is incorporated into class design. It was also found that there is the possibility that the numbers for these two categories can exceed set criterion values.

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Based on historical Japanese-language data, this paper argues that the development of teiru-forms, the durative aspect forms employed in Modern Japanese, is closely linked to the development of the modern existential verb iru. As noted by Kinsui (1983, 2006), although the modern existential verb iru is a stative verb, the existential verb wiru used in Old Japanese, from which iru partly originated, is considered to be a change-of-stateverb describing the change from a standing to a sitting position. Since wiru is a change-of state verb, iru is considered to have developed not directly from wiru but from its stative counterpart witari (Kinsui, 2006). The historical Japanese-language data discussed in this paper suggest that the development from witari to the existential verb iru deeply affected the grammaticalization of the teiru forms; the establishment of the teiru forms, which acquired a durative aspectual meaning in the modern period of Japanese history, is considered to reflect the emergence of the existential verb iru. Based on the examination of the interdependency of the iru and teiru forms, this study concludes that teiru-forms are derived from the semantic bleaching of iru and the fusion of a biclausal structure, composed of a te-form clause and a main clause whose predicate is iru, into a monoclausal structure.

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There are many cases of household management support for those in need who face a combination of challenges that cannot be addressed by common knowledge and skills. It is necessary to consider the characteristics of those in need, such as a low awareness of issues and insufficient ability to build relationships with others. Therefore, it is effective to solve problems using support methods by adopting a team approach that uses the social work perspective.

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Sozo Kurahashi was the figure who had led the discussions on early childhood care and education of Japan during the Taisho Era and the first half of the Showa Era. His thoughts are marked by an emphasis on young children’s spontaneity and a teacher’s guidance for children to be able to demonstrate it. This article focuses on his thoughts on music education, which also centered on children’s spontaneity. His thinking revolved around two main aspects: being self-motivated to perform a musical piece and children’s original expression. Although the pursuit of a better performance of an existing piece appears to contradict the concept of spontaneity, he claims that children may spontaneously discover the value of musical culture. Therefore, he regards the concept of spontaneity in an integrated manner.

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In Meiji Era Japan, how was Western music received by the general public? In order to get a grasp of the general picture and come as close to the truth as possible, a comprehensive investigation of articles relating to Western music in local city newspapers was conducted. Articles, announcements of instruments, and musical scores as well as announcements with illustrations of musical instruments and performers drawn in them (medicine, watches, etc.) from the Kyushu Nichinichi Shimbun (which was launched in 1888) were investigated, They were then listed chronologically by period.

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The table of contents for 18 installments of Gohei Ishimaru’s family magazine Danran were introduced previously in parts 1, 2 and 4 of this series of papers. This paper introduces Midori Kato, who is the author of the magazine "Seitou"

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