Implications of the Course of Study Reforms on English Language Teaching in Japanese Secondary Schools: Toward Teaching English as an International Language

Many universities in Japan have been offering the teaching certificate programs to train highly qualified teachers. Even though graduate schools have set up programs for more disciplinary courses for English language teaching (ELT), few have been developed at the undergraduate school level. Thus, pre-service English teachers can only learn about ELT pedagogical issues in English Teaching Methodology courses. Moreover, ELT in Japan still adheres to a principle of English speakers’ norms and aims for native speakers of English for communication partners. Since English has become an international language or a lingua franca in the globalized society, prospective English teachers must recognize the growing importance of English language variations to teach English as an international language. This paper focuses primarily on pedagogical issues to teach in English methodology classes in accordance with the future reforms of the teaching-training program. To do this, discussions include revision of the Communicative Language Teaching approaches and application of World Englishes into ELT at the secondary school level

The effect of metacognitive strategy instruction on L2 learner beliefs and listening skills

This pilot study investigated the effect of semester-long strategy-based instruction on learner beliefs and skills in the processing of aural input by adult learners of English as a second language at metacognitive and procedural levels. The study addressed two frequently encountered learner beliefs thought to impede L2 processing of aural input: The little words aren’t important; intonation is merely decorative. Working on the premise that learner beliefs underpin learner strategies for processing aural input and are reflected in learner productive and receptive skills, pre- and post-instruction instruments measured both learners’ awareness of connected speech processes and the functions of intonation, and their ability to segment a continuous speech stream, and to process utterances for speaker intent. Findings using repeated measures analysis of variance support strategy-based metacognitive training in connected speech and stress and intonation to promote listening skills awareness, aid word segmentation, and facilitate understanding utterance content and intended meaning.Published versio

Facilitating academic words learning: a data-driven approach using a collocation consultation system built from open access research papers

It is essential and beneficial for ESP students to master collocations of a set of core academic words. Corpus analysis tools (e.g. concordancers) have been widely used in facilitating collocation learning, and promising results have been demonstrated in the literature. This paper presents a learner friendly collocation consultation system built from 50,000 open access research papers made available by CORE (https://core.ac.uk/). The research papers are grouped into four disciplines: Arts and Humanities, Physical Sciences, Life Sciences and Social Sciences. From these articles, useful syntactic-based word combinations (e.g., verb+noun, noun+noun, adjective+noun) are extracted, organized by syntactic patterns, sorted by frequency, and linked to their context sentences. Learners can search collocations and look up the usage of an academic word in any of these four disciplines by simply entering the word or selecting it from one of pre-compiled academic word lists. The paper will also show how the system was used in an initial study carried out with 15 international students studying computer science at University of Waikato, New Zealand

Developing listening comprehension competence in Japanese English as a Foreign Language Learners

The purpose of this project is to investigate a model for developing listening comprehension competence on the part of Japanese learners of english as a foreign language, with a view toward promoting practical and communicative english competence

Deconstructing comprehensibility: identifying the linguistic influences on listeners' L2 comprehensibility ratings

Comprehensibility, a major concept in second language (L2) pronunciation research that denotes listeners’ perceptions of how easily they understand L2 speech, is central to interlocutors’ communicative success in real-world contexts. Although comprehensibility has been modeled in several L2 oral proficiency scales—for example, the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or the International English Language Testing System (IELTS)—shortcomings of existing scales (e.g., vague descriptors) reflect limited empirical evidence as to which linguistic aspects influence listeners’ judgments of L2 comprehensibility at different ability levels. To address this gap, a mixed-methods approach was used in the present study to gain a deeper understanding of the linguistic aspects underlying listeners’ L2 comprehensibility ratings. First, speech samples of 40 native French learners of English were analyzed using 19 quantitative speech measures, including segmental, suprasegmental, fluency, lexical, grammatical, and discourse-level variables. These measures were then correlated with 60 native English listeners’ scalar judgments of the speakers’ comprehensibility. Next, three English as a second language (ESL) teachers provided introspective reports on the linguistic aspects of speech that they attended to when judging L2 comprehensibility. Following data triangulation, five speech measures were identified that clearly distinguished between L2 learners at different comprehensibility levels. Lexical richness and fluency measures differentiated between low-level learners; grammatical and discourse-level measures differentiated between high-level learners; and word stress errors discriminated between learners of all levels

Potential of Voice Recording Tools in Language Instruction

One of the most prevailing difficulties I have faced as an English instructor is students’ dependence on teachers even though many language classes have been shifting from teacher-centered to student-centered influenced by the communicative language teaching (CLT) approach. Class evaluations and needs analyses often reveal that many students expect every single one of their errors to be corrected by teachers. Some students even attribute their lack of improvement to not being corrected promptly. Prompt error correction or individualized feedback from teachers may be beneficial for students, but it is unlikely to be feasible for teachers to listen and respond to students individually all the time, especially given constraints such as large numbers of students and limited class time

Interactive Software to Accompany Yookoso: Has it all Been Worthwhile?

In this paper, we describe the development of interactive software to accompany Yookoso (Tohsaku 1999), the textbook in use in the first two years of the Japanese language course at Queensland University of Technology. We begin with a discussion of what is meant by interactivity; we then examine the advantages of using the software in association with the textbook package, as opposed to using the textbook package alone. We also discuss the importance of integrating multimedia materials into the curriculum and the role of the teacher in this model of ‘blended learning’. It is hoped the paper will prove useful to those who are considering implementing or have already implemented a CALL component in their Japanese language program

Fossilization Of L And R Phonemes And Effective Pronunciation Teaching Practices For Adult English Language Students

The research question answered in this paper was, in order to implement effective pronunciation instruction, to what extent does fossilization affect adult learners\u27 ability to acquire another language? The concluding research found that despite adult English learners’ (EL) long exposure to the target language, some ELs find themselves unable to progress in their second language development due to fossilization. Thus, ultimate attainment to achieve native-like comprehensibility becomes difficult, but not impossible. The literature researches the details of fossilization, phonemic awareness, and best approaches for pronunciation instruction in the classroom. The paper includes a complementary curriculum project that comprises /l/ and /r/ phoneme production for adult ELs. The curriculum includes a unit overview complete with lesson plans that emphasize /l/ and /r/ phoneme production through a sequence of phases: Description and Analysis, Listening Discrimination, Controlled Practice and Feedback, Guided Practice and Feedback, and Communicative Practice and Feedback

Teaching Japanese as A Foreign Language with A Cultural Context

This portfolio is a compilation of the author\u27s work during her studies in the Master of Second Language Teaching program at Utah State University. It also includes the author\u27s reflections on her language teaching experience as a graduate instructor. This portfolio is organized into three primary sections. The first section includes the author’s teaching perspectives which include professional environment, teaching philosophy statement, and professional development through teaching observations. The second section consists of two research papers, one on refusal strategies in Japanese, the other on the use of CALL for the development of oral proficiency. The third section contains an annotated bibliography that focuses on corrective feedback