Form Explanation in Modification of Listening Input in L2 Vocabulary Learning

The effectiveness of vocabulary explanation as modifications of listening input - explicit (EE) and implicit (IE) - were investigated in contrast to unmodified (baseline, BL) condition. One hundred and nine university students from Japan listened to two texts, which included different vocabulary elaborations for 12 items. Students listened three times to each text. After each listening, they indicatec the meanings of the items. Four weeks later, a delayed posttest was administered. Positive effects of multiple listenings were found in vocabulary learning from listening input. As hypothesized, the EE condition resulted in significant superiority over the other two on the immediate posttests. However, IE was not significantly better than the BL. The findings suggested that the IE mostly remained unnoticed during the listening. On the delayed posttest, the score of EE dropped and there was no significant difference among the three conditions, though all conditions resulted in a significant increase from the pretest

Research Forum But I Don't Want to be Rude: On Learning How to Express Anger in the L2

This research investigates pragmatic use of rudeness, focusing on use of rude expressions as a result of anger, and contrasting native and non-native expression of anger. Ten native speakers of English and 10 native speakers of Japanese with advanced English proficiency were presented with five situations in which anger was expected. During interviews, subjects were asked 1) how they would feel in each situation, 2) how they would or would not express their emotions verbally and/or non-verbally, and 3) why they would or would not express themselves in those ways. In general, NSs were more expressive, however, the difference in reactions was smaller than expected. Results confrrm that sources for learning rudeness are limited for NNSs and that the learners have little confidence in its use

Role of Background Knowledge, Information Literacy Skills, and Tasks in an EFL Content Class, Based on Student Evaluations

Following a report on teaching "Seminar in Applied Linguistics," a content-based class for English majors at the University of the Ryukyus, this paper presents the results of a pre-semester questionnaire and student evaluation at the end of the term. Participants included 21 English majors, juniors and seniors, of which 19 students contributed to the pre-semester questionnaire and 16 gave evaluative feedback In the end. The pre-semester results showed that the students lacked the background knowledge and terminologies which were to be introduced in the class. Their knowledge about the text structure of academic journal articles was also found to be fragmentary and few of them had experience in online library search. The course required some English-Japanese translation of a journal article, an active search for an English article of students' individual interest, oral presentation, and a handout preparation on that article in English. In addition, the final assignment involved producing a Japanese manuscript of the article. The end-of-term student evaluation for the class showed that, despite the students' hard work and the teacher's efforts at making the content as comprehensible, organized, and interesting as possible, the main article introduced in class was still too difficult. It was also found that a majority of the students felt the class activities and requirements were useful for them; however, there were a few complaints that the level of the class and requirements were too demanding

Effect of Learning English as a Foreign Language in Japan : A Starting Point, Goal, and What Should Happen In-Between

The purpose of this review article is to argue that English education in Japan needs to be more systematic, based on the communicative and cognitive development of learners in their mother tongue, i.e. Japanese. Since a majority of Japanese learn English sometime after they start acquiring Japanese, we need to make decisions on WHEN and HOW our children begin their learning of English. Because of the recent introduction of English at the elementary school level, supported by "critical period hypothesis," people tend to believe this "starting point" should be as early as possible. However, we must carefully examine and evaluate the effect of such early introduction of a foreign language in a homogeneous linguistic environment like Japan. In this paper, I argue that it is most important to guarantee our children access to more intimate and communicative input in their first language. Studies on bilingualism show that L2 development seldom exceeds that of L1. Therefore, we should have a systematic approach to the starting point and goal in the learning of English if we are to set our achievement goal of English education as "communicatively and intellectually functional in all four skill areas: listening, speaking, reading, and writing." We should not be too worried about the age at which children start learning but rather should have young learners accumulate appropriate and coherent learning experience at each grade level, taking a longitudinal viewpoint

Factors in Incidental Learning of L2 Receptive Vocabulary : Form, Meaning, and Input

This paper intends to summarize critical issues discussed in the literature about incidental vocabulary learning through listening input, with a focus on the form of target items, their meaning, and the characteristics of aural input. As Vidal (2003) points out, research in this area is scarce on second/foreign language learning. This led us to summarize the findings in the areas of reading stories aloud to L1 children and of the effects of phonological short-term memory on vocabulary acquisition. Research findings show that L2 learners tend to have greater difficulty in acquiring bottom-up skills of processing and retaining phonological forms of target vocabulary. Unlike in the L1, abilities such as distinguishing language-specific phonological forms seem to take more time to be established, i.e., to become "automatic." Still, L2 learners often have the advantage of simply needing to learn vocabulary while already possessing knowledge from their L1 of the concepts behind the words, which is not the case for L1 learners. The Abovementioned learner characteristics should be taken into consideration when carrying out "listening activities" with an expectation of learners' incidental vocabulary acquisition. Features which will possibly enhance such learning in the L2 are also suggested in this paper

YouTube as Effective Teaching Materials that Reflect the Reality : Activities with Sesame Street in English Communication Class as a Part of Certified Course

This paper reports the use of Sesame Street videos on YouTube as a promising English teaching material for Japanese elementary school teachers as a part of the in-service certified course for junior high school English teaching license. Since the Course of Study released in 2018 states that English becomes a compulsory subject for 5th and 6 graders at the primary school level in 2020, it has been an urgent and critical mission for all concerned to secure a sufficient number of qualified teachers who are capable of conducting English class to elementary school children. Therefore, the author has been involved in the administration of the certified course that trains in-service teachers and this year, offered a class for English oral communication. Due to the severe influence of COVID-19 pandemic, only three teachers participated in the class; however, the class enjoyed authentic communicative activities even with facial masks and social distancing. The author designed the language activities based on two YouTube movies with the topics of “Heroes in Your Neighborhood” and “Meeting Julia”. The materials were found appropriate as they refer to the real-life situations, i.e., the COVID-19 pandemic and acceptance of various behaviors such as of autism. Under the circumstances, the needs for publicly available online materials, both for teaching and learning, will increase in the future. The current report shows a practical example of such ICT use for a teacher training classroom

MEXTs ''National Survey of English Education Practice" Revisited : An Analysis of 2016 Results and the New Course of Study with a Focus on Okinawa Prefecture

The 2016 results for the National Survey of English Education Practice were released by the Ministry of Education. Science and Technologies (MEXT) on April 5, 2017. Teachers, education administrators, and practitioners in Okinawa examined the survey results with great anticipation since the 2015 results- especially for high school, had been received with great shock. To our relief. the number of high school students who achieved Eiken Grade Pre-2 Level improved significantly; however, junior high students did not meet expectations, and ranked 57 among 47 prefectures and 20 major cities. A reexamination of the survey results shows that there was a remarkable improvement from the previous year, with a lower percentage of unreasonably low Okinawan teacher estimates of student proficiency. This improvement contributed to a higher rank for this year's high school results. As for the junior high school situation, this paper argues that a higher rate of teachers who reach the expected English proficiency (i.e., CEFR B2) would improve the quality of English instruction, and therefore would lead to better student proficiency and thus higher scores. This paper concludes that 1) junior high school teachers' capacity to estimate their students• levels needs to be carefully examined; 2) the results of Eiken STEP tests administered annually by the Okinawa local government should be utilized more effective}y; and 3) teachers' English proficiency at the high school level is essential for implementing the New Course of Study, since it requires that English classes must be taught in English. In addition to the above points, important issues in current language teaching such as CLIL, active learning, and key competencies are introduced

An Analysis on the Results of MEXT's "National Survey of English Education Practice in 2015" with a Focus on Okinawa Prefecture

A public announcement of April 4, 2016, by Ministry of Education, Science and Technologies (MEXT) on the results of National Survey of English Education Practice in 2015 drew much attention of teachers, education administrators and practitioners nation-wide. In Okinawa. the survey results came as a great shock because Okinawan high school students were the worst in achieving Eiken Grade Pre-2 Level while junior high students ranked 41 among 47 prefectures. This paper attempts to reexamine the survey results to identify the weak and strong aspects. if any, of Okinawan students. When compared to the national means, Okinawan teachers' estimation of numbers of students who have reached the proficiency goals (i.e ., Pre-2 for high school and Grade 3 for junior high school level) was found to be remarkably smaller. The comparisons with statistics of prefectures whose population was considered equivalent as well as those with comparable rates of taking and passing Eiken Tests also revealed the same tendency. In conclusion. the author suggests that the modest figures in estimating students' ability be validated with the actual scores of appropriate Eiken results. If Okinawan results be still low after such validation, some drastic measures may have to be taken in order to improve the individual classroom teaching