A lack of reading quantity in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classrooms has remained one of the most serious problems faced by teachers of English in Japan. Although the extensive reading (ER) approach is regarded as having... more
A lack of reading quantity in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classrooms has remained one of the most serious problems faced by teachers of English in Japan. Although the extensive reading (ER) approach is regarded as having significant potential in addressing this problem, it is not used in many EFL classrooms. This study investigates the effect of a quasi-extensive reading program on Japanese high school EFL learners' reading comprehension, reading speed, and their perceptions of the program. The participants in ...
Vocabulary is an area that requires foreign language learners to work independently and continuously both in and out of class. In the Japanese EFL setting, for example, more than 97% of the population experiences approximately six years... more
Vocabulary is an area that requires foreign language learners to work independently and continuously both in and out of class. In the Japanese EFL setting, for example, more than 97% of the population experiences approximately six years of English education at secondary school during which time they are required to learn approximately 3,000 words (i.e., lemmas). Given the lexical distance between Japanese and English, this leaves Japanese university EFL learners with a long way to go before they can acquire a sufficient number of words to comprehend authentic texts in English. To help Japanese university EFL learners sustain their vocabulary learning, the researchers have developed Lexinote, an e-portfolio system that allows learners to record and save the target words they encounter online, to search for them in online dictionaries, to practice them in several ways including written and oral rehearsals according to word familiarity (i.e., level of understanding of each lexical item...
This paper reports on the learning framework integrating a web e-portfolio and two mobile applications. It also reports on a preliminary study on how learners used different systems or materials to study for vocabulary tests in a... more
This paper reports on the learning framework integrating a web e-portfolio and two mobile applications. It also reports on a preliminary study on how learners used different systems or materials to study for vocabulary tests in a particular general English course at a Japanese university, and how they recognized the usefulness of each system and material. Participants were 66 Japanese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students from two intact classes who completed a questionnaire survey at the end of the course. The results of the survey revealed that, although the participants generally evaluated the usefulness of the different systems and materials in a similar way, one of the mobile applications was most often used to prepare for the in-class vocabulary tests followed by the e-portfolio and the wordlist.
It can be assumed that native Cebuano speakers who are learning the Japanese language have trouble in differentiating the different Japanese vowels. This is because the Cebuano language has only three vowels: /i/, /a/, and /u/. This study aims to observe the method by which Cebuano native speakers recognize Japanese language vowels. I recorded and analyzed the data of three learners through the word quizzes on which they took dictations. The result shows that some of them find it difficult to differentiate /o/ from /u/ and /e/ from /i/; however, this depends on the abilities of the individuals.
The purpose of this study is to investigate what characterize(s) speech that has different rates. Four subjects read six kinds of text using three kinds of speech rate and I measured the poses duration and calculated the speech rates and articulation rates. The results were as follows: (1) The speech rates decreased when the texts were read slowly, and increased when they were read quickly. (2) Some articulation rates did not decrease or increase, no matter whether the subjects read the texts quickly or slowly. (3) The duration of the poses at the periods (“。”) was shorter when the texts were read quickly, and longer when they were read slowly. (4) As the duration of poses at the commas (“、”) was longer when the texts were read slowly, it did not change when they were read quickly. (5) The subjects almost always inserted poses at the periods, whichever rates were intended, but at the commas they inserted more poses when they read slowly and fewer poses when they read quickly.
