SELF-EFFICACY OF ENGLISH LISTENING SKILLS IN JAPANESE COLLEGE EFL LEARNERS: QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE ANALYSES

The present study employed both quantitative and qualitative analyses to better understand the causes of unmotivated and distracted behaviors among students. Furthermore, the essential development of a cycle of self-regulated learning (Ambrose et al., 2010) was focused upon to promote better learning strategies and to maintain motivation to study English. Our participants were 200 Miyazaki Municipal University freshmen in Japan. Based upon the quantitative and qualitative analyses, we found that (1) all the students except for advanced students made significant improvements on TOEIC during the first term.; (2) all the students except for intermediate II students made significant improvements on self-efficacy; (3) a positive correlation between English listening skills and self-efficacy was found; (4) the establishment of (new) concrete English study reasons have to be prioritized before English activities targeted to enhance self-efficacy can help Japanese college EFL freshmen sustain their motivation to study English; (5) much more consideration needs to be given to help Japanese college EFL learners understand the importance of study plans to carry out necessary tasks to improve their English listening skills; (6) time management skills to prioritize English study need to be taught to help distracted freshmen set a time to improve their English listening skills; and (7) individualized educational guidance sessions need to be re-implemented in our English curricular activities to help Japanese college EFL freshmen understand the significance of time management skills, and of self-regulated skills.   Article visualizations

HOW TO MOTIVATE DE-MOTIVATED JAPANESE COLLEGE EFL LEARNERS

In Japan, English is a significant part of everyday life. We see English advertising signs all around us, we use English loan-words in Japanese written and spoken communication, and many Japanese songs incorporate English into their lyrics (Aspinall, 2003). On the other hand, it is known to scholars that many Japanese students are de-motivated to study English. Hasegawa (2004) reports that 71% of junior high school students and 77% of senior high school students are not motivated to study English. Among the reasons for de-motivation are the lack of perceived relevance of English learning and the lack of confidence in capabilities. Thus, this present study focuses on the following four areas as tools to help de-motivated students become re-motivated and to enable them to sustain that motivation to study English throughout the 2016 academic year: (1) the four sources of self-efficacy beliefs (Bandura, 1977); (2) the establishment of concrete EFL study reasons for future careers; (3) the development of time management skills; and (4) the understanding of effective self-regulated learning. 210 Japanese college freshmen in four different proficiency groups participated in this study. It was found that when focus was placed on sources of self-efficacy, students in all the proficiency groups were able to significantly improve their English listening skills throughout the academic year, and that students in general were able to sustain relatively high self-efficacy beliefs about their English listening skills. However, a sharp decline was found in the number of students who were able to sustain that motivation during the two-month summer break. It is suggested that ample examples of concrete English study reasons that are associated with students' future careers as well as activities for visualization (Sampson, 2012) might need to be implemented into our pedagogic approach to help our freshmen put their acquired knowledge into action during the summer break.  Article visualizations

The scope of sublime: Longinus " On the Sublime'

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Thermal Behavior and Dust Explosion Characteristics of Spent Coffee Grounds and Jatropha as Biodiesel Feedstock

PresentationThis work examined the minimum explosion limit (MEL), minimum ignition energy (MIE), cohesion, dispersibility, decomposition temperature (Td) and burning rates of spent coffee ground (SCG), jatropha kernel (JK) and jatropha shell (JS) were studied. The MIE values of oily SCG containing 21.3 wt% and oil-extracted SCG were 35 and 120 g m-3 , respectively. Moreover, cohesion of oily SCG and oil-extracted SCG were high level and low level, respectively. It was found that MIE of oily SCG containing 21.3wt% of oil was low although high cohesion. While oil-extracted jatropha kernels and shells had MEL values of 45 and 110 g m-3 , respectively. However, Oily JK containing 60.7 wt% of oil was not exploded reason for high cohesion and no form dust cloud. The MIE values of untreated SCG, oil-extracted SCG, oil-extracted JK and JS were found to be >3000, >3000, 1515, and >3000 mJ, respectively. These biomasses were needed high energy ignition for explosion. Burning rates of JK and JS were 0.21 and 0.04 mm s-1, respectively, these values were very slow compared with cellulose used as a reference materials was 0.67 mm s-1. Besides SCG were not capable of ignition. The Td of both untreated SCG and oil-extracted SCG were 240 and 241 °C while the Td of untreated JK (60.7wt% oil), oil-extracted JK, and JS were 195, 189, and 233 ̊C indicating that the ignition temperature is influenced by oil content. Consequently, the results demonstrate that oily solid biomasses such as SCG and jatropha are associated with a high risk of fire, dust explosion, and related incident

Expression of the CCCH-tandem zinc finger protein gene OsTZF5 under a stress-inducible promoter mitigates the effect of drought stress on rice grain yield under field conditions

Increasing drought resistance without sacrificing grain yield remains an ongoing challenge in crop improvement. In this study, we report that Oryza sativa CCCH‐tandem zinc finger protein 5 (OsTZF5) can confer drought resistance and increase grain yield in transgenic rice plants. Expression of OsTZF5 was induced by abscisic acid, dehydration and cold stress. Upon stress, OsTZF5‐GFP localized to the cytoplasm and cytoplasmic foci. Transgenic rice plants overexpressing OsTZF5 under the constitutive maize ubiquitin promoter exhibited improved survival under drought but also growth retardation. By introducing OsTZF5 behind the stress‐responsive OsNAC6 promoter in two commercial upland cultivars, Curinga and NERICA4, we obtained transgenic plants that showed no growth retardation. Moreover, these plants exhibited significantly increased grain yield compared to non‐transgenic cultivars in different confined field drought environments. Physiological analysis indicated that OsTZF5 promoted both drought tolerance and drought avoidance. Collectively, our results provide strong evidence that OsTZF5 is a useful biotechnological tool to minimize yield losses in rice grown under drought conditions

Comparative Analysis of Plastic Flow and Grain Refinement in Pure Aluminium Subjected to Simple Shear-Based Severe Plastic Deformation Processing

In the present work, effects of loading scheme and strain reversal on structure and hardness evolution have been studied by using high pressure torsion (HPT) and twist extrusion (TE) techniques. High purity aluminium (99.99%) was processed at room temperature up to a maximum total equivalent strain of ε[max] ≈ 8 by TE, and HPT in monotonic and reversal deformation modes with strain increment Δε[max] = 1. Minimum subgrain sizes reached in this study were 1.6 µm for TE and 1.1 µm for HPT. It was revealed that microstructural change with straining was a common consequence of severe plastic deformation (SPD) processing and was not affected significantly by the loading scheme. Among the SPD methods used in this study, HPT in monotonic regime produced the smallest grain size, while the most homogeneous microstructure was obtained by TE due to specific vortex-like flow field imposed by the tool geometry