The present study aimed to investigate the effects of the Can-Do statements for speaking English in terms of raising the learners’ consciousness regarding the learning of speaking skills and the teacher’s improvement in classes. About 1,500 Japanese learners of English in eight different junior high schools participated in this study. The Can-Do list was developed in order to encourage a more output-oriented class as well as to raise the students’ consciousness to speak English. The individual evaluations given to the students were designed to produce greater classroom interactions. Thus, the list was used in hopes of producing a washback effect that would increase all the students’ willingness to communicate in English. The data from the questionnaire and oral interviews with teachers conducted after six months using the Can-Do list showed that teachers opting to use the list experienced more active classes. Students’ thoughts and actions for speaking English generally showed improvement and the classes students reacted positively on the evaluations.

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Multiple-choice (MC) is a test format used most widely and frequently in educational tests for measuring the knowledge, comprehension, and skills of students. Despite its practical advantages, it has some serious disadvantages. One of them is that students can select any answer in an MC question, and they may chance upon the correct answer without a clear understanding of the target knowledge that the questions intend to test. Hence, this study aims to examine the validity of different types of MC questions on English grammar to create more appropriate ones. Generally, MC questions have only one correct answer, but this study focuses on those questions that can have one or more answers. Both qualitative and quantitative studies were conducted to compare the two types of MC questions, the ones with single-choice answers and those with one or more answers. The results show that MC questions with one or more answers hold more validity in measuring students’ grammatical knowledge.

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It is clear that cultural understanding is very important in the process of learning through English textbooks at high school. This paper analyzes the top twelve adopted English textbooks at high school approved by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology from the perspective of the intercultural understanding. It elucidates the categories of the cultural materials, the countries the materials deal with, and the purposes of the materials in the textbooks. The result of the research indicates the materials contain various kinds of categories, many materials concerning English-speaking countries and Japan, and many lessons for global understanding. Furthermore, the important fact is that many articles concerning Japan are aimed for understanding their own culture, although the number of lessons related to countries where English is used as the second language is so small.

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The purpose of this paper is to explore the effectiveness of peer feedback on peers’ writing. It is advocated that having students respond to one another on their writing can have many benefits: students can take active roles in their own learning, they have a broader audience for their work, they build critical skills, and they see different approaches other students have taken. On the negative side, however, it is asserted that peers are not trained enough to give clear and helpful comments, and they tend to be uncomfortable with it because of their interest in individual work. While much of peer feedback research has focused on how they revised their first draft, what kind of peer feedback the students produced, and whether the peer feedback has accepted or not, little has been done to examine peer evaluation in L2 writing class. This study investigated how L2 writing students evaluate their peers’ writing. A questionnaire consisted of both open and close-ended questions was administered to 23 first-year university students in General English A writing class. The results of the study show that the majority of students are able to participate actively in learning, gain a clear understanding of their idea, and enhance their ideas by giving evaluation and responding to peers’ writing. The paper ends with a discussion of the implications that arise from the study.

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In 2011, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science, and Technology (henceforth, MEXT) proposed that all the Japanese teachers of English should set achievement goals by establishing CAN-DO statements, based on the current course of study. The purpose of this campaign is to encourage students as learners of English to improve their four skills of communication. According to the survey directed by MEXT (2015a), 58.3 percentages of 5,808 general courses of study in the randomly extracted 3,459 high schools have constructed their own CAN-DO lists. However, a problem should be pointed out that they may have probably made their CAN-DO lists without taking account of language references such as CEFR and, particularly, CEFR-J, because MEXT (2013) has not mentioned the detailed description of the relevance between the language references and CAN-DO list specified by MEXT. This paper reports the results of the CAN-DO consciousness investigation, which 345 students as respondents took at Ehime University Senior High School in July, 2014. The results show the entire CEFR-J achievement A2 level of the students in proficiency will be presumed and suggest that teachers engaged in English language education should introduce the descriptors of CEFR and CEFR-J into CAN-DO list to adequately measure the proficiency level of English communicative skills through the international standard across Europe.

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My goal is to improve communication proficiency by creating a friendly classroom atmosphere and deeping students' understanding of themselves and others. I try to foster self-motivated study habits as well as encourage creativity, and explore how teaching grammar using spoken examples effects students' learning abilities.

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Research into second-language (L2) listening classrooms reveals that L2 listening is all too often ineffectively taught. Learners are rarely given instruction in effective listening strategies. This is because instructors undertaking teacher-training programs are rarely trained in how to teach L2 listening. As a result, learners often mistakenly believe that effective L2 listening requires the comprehension of every word, and in its correct order. However, with only one listen per question on high-stakes tests like the TOEIC, students will ultimately need more productive strategies to deal effectively with listening on the test. This paper aims to introduce effective strategies for L2 listening in general, and for TOEIC listening in particular, advocating that L2 listening for real-world contexts can at least partially be explicated through strategic TOEIC listening practice.

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