著者

笠原 究

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.21, pp.91-100, 2010-03

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The purpose of the study is to investigate whether learning a two-word collocation is superior in retention and retrieval of meaning to learning a single word. The focus is on the effect of a two-word collocation consisting of a known word and a new word for learners, such as school janitor. This study employed 39 high school students. They were asked to remember the Japanese meanings of 20 low-frequency English words, half of which were turned into two-word collocations by attaching high-frequency cues. In short, they tried to remember the Japanese equivalents of 10 single words and 10 two-word collocations. Two types of recall test were conducted. Test 1 presented all the items as single words by removing the cues from the two-word collocations (without the cue condition). Test 2 presented all the items as they were on the list (with the cue condition). Both of the tests were given to the same participants just after the learning phase and one week later. The main results were: (a) two-word collocations showed better retention of meaning than single words and, (b) two-word collocations showed better results in the recall tests with cues in the retrieval phase, whereas the opposite results were obtained without cues in the retrieval phase. Some pedagogical implications were drawn from these findings.

著者

深澤 清治 前田 啓朗 鬼田 崇作 山内 優佳 辰己 明子

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.26, pp.125-140, 2015-03-31

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The purpose of the present research is to examine how quickly and accurately Japanese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners can make appropriateness judgments for second language (L2) requests. Previous studies in interlanguage pragmatics are limited in that they did not distinguish between types of pragmatic inappropriateness and also in that they used only offline measurement through questionnaires. The present study therefore distinguishes two types of pragmatic inappropriateness in L2 utterances (under-polite and over-polite) and measures the reaction time of learners' appropriateness judgments. The participants were 45 Japanese university students; they were asked to judge whether the presented L2 requests were appropriate or not in the situation, as quickly and accurately as possible. Six appropriate requests, five under-polite requests, and five over-polite requests were judged. Further, the degree of inappropriateness in under- and over-polite requests was manipulated from slightly inappropriate to very inappropriate. As a result, it was found that speed and accuracy of appropriateness judgments depend on the degree of (in)appropriateness of requests. In particular, extremely over-polite utterances were difficult for L2 learners to process.

著者

飯村 英樹

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.22, pp.361-376, 2011-03-31

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This paper presents an analysis of whether performance in multiple-choice (MC) listening tests is influenced by the way in which questions and options are presented. We developed four test formats and analyzed the performance of our study participants-219 Japanese university students-having taken different formats of the tests. The results of the study demonstrated that the way in which questions were presented significantly affected test-taker performance-listeners performed better when questions were presented in writing rather than verbally. The second part of this study examined which characteristics of a test item (text, question, and options) were related to item difficulty in the context of our different test formats. Our results indicated that text-related variables (infrequent vocabulary, lexical diversity, word familiarity, grammatical complexity, text length, and speaker's role) were significantly correlated with item difficulty regardless of which test format was used and that task-processing variables (explicitness of question, necessary information, and lexical overlap between text and questions) were significantly correlated with specific formats. The implications of these findings on test validity are discussed.

著者

赤松 信彦 田中 貴子

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.19, pp.81-90, 2008-03

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This study examined Japanese university students' knowledge of English articles. Specifically, the study investigated (a) Japanese university students' knowledge (i.e., accuracy) in their usage of English articles, (b) their meta-cognitive knowledge (i.e., confidence) in their usage of English articles, (c) the relationships between accuracy and confidence, and (d) the relationships between English proficiency and accuracy. Results showed that Japanese university students' knowledge varied in accuracy among the three types of articles: definite, indefinite, and no articles. Definite-articles were most properly used, while the accuracy in the usage of no articles was the lowest. It was also found that accuracy in the use of English articles was correlated with English proficiency and confidence. These results appear to suggest that (a) Japanese university students with higher English proficiency had more accurate knowledge in their usage of English articles, and (b) they used English articles with accurate meta-cognitive knowledge to a certain extent.

著者

草薙 邦広 山下 淳子

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.24, pp.205-220, 2013-03-31

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The present study investigated effects of agreement type and morphosyntactic regularity on L1-Japanese learners' acquisition of explicit and implicit grammatical knowledge of the English plural morpheme. We adopted a timed grammaticality judgment task (TGJT) to measure implicit knowledge and an untimed grammaticality judgment task (GJT) for explicit knowledge in order to observe differences between learning difficulties in each type of knowledge. Twenty six participants completed the two tasks, and the scores were submitted to a three-way ANOVA (task types, agreement types, and morphosyntactic regularity). Only the main effect of morphological regularity was statistically significant in TGJT, while the interaction between agreement type and morphosyntactic regularity was observed in GJT. This result indicated that the two linguistic factors affect the acquisition of explicit and implicit knowledge in different ways.

著者

吉村 雅仁 後藤 美知子

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.6, pp.111-121, 1995-07

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This paper reports the results of an investigation into the intonational influence on politeness judgements of requesting forms in English and Japanese through a questionnaire survey. The result confirmed the hypotheses which were presented in our last article that (1) intonation has a greater influence on politeness judgements in English than in Japanese and (2) the rising tone has a tendency to be perceived as more polite than the falling tone in English, but such a tendency is not observed in Japanese. Moreover, the uniformity of the informant-group enabled us to demonstrate the relative tendency of English male/female and elder/younger group concerning the perception of intonation. The female and the younger group tended to distinguish between the rising and falling tones more clearly than the opposite group in informal situations. This tendency was not found in the Japanese group.

著者

廣森 友人

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.20, pp.281-290, 2009-03

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The English Education Center at Ehime University has been carrying out a series of studies in order to establish achievement goals and standards for evaluating achievement in General Education English classes. Based on preliminary questionnaires given to instructors and students, we have created tentative "Can-Do Lists" (benchmarks for evaluating English language proficiency) for four language skills. This paper, focusing especially on the benchmark of the writing skill, reports the current attempt to elaborate and validate the "Can-Do Lists", and suggests some effective ways to make good use of them. Although there has conventionally been a strong need for learning support that is based on achievement goals, this paper takes a specific perspective that provides effective guidance for that purpose.

著者

卯城 祐司 土方 裕子 清水 真紀 院南 洋 笠原 究 下田 彰子 溝下 肇 佐藤 臨太郎

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.16, pp.71-80, 2005-03

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A translation test is one of the most common reading test methods in Japan, although its reliability and validity have been quite controversial. This study investigated the reliability and validity of translation tests as a measure of reading comprehension in Japanese university entrance examinations, with a particular focus on two research questions: (a) In terms of reliability, what types of translation materials cause difference in rating severity? (b) In terms of validity, what types of sentence can make great differences between translation and comprehension tasks? In order to examine the first research question, four experienced teachers scored English-to-Japanese translations made by 102 university students. Results showed that rating divergence is attributable to raters' different points of scoring (holistic vs. partial), and raters' leniency for inappropriate Japanese expressions or careless mistakes. The second research question was examined by administering 18 sets of translation and reading comprehension tasks to the same participants as above. Results showed that 4 out of 18 English sentences used in Japanese university entrance examinations were considered to be inappropriate as materials for translation tasks when examinees' reading comprehension was intended to be measured.

著者

平井 明代 藤田 亮子 伊藤 牧子 大木 俊英

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.24, pp.31-45, 2013-03-31

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In 2006, an English listening test was added to the National Center Test for University Admissions (NCT) in Japan. We investigated whether including the Center listening test on the NCT has had positive washback on students' listening skills and attitudes toward studying listening. In Study 1, test scores of university freshmen dating back to 2002 were analyzed to investigate the improvement in students' listening skills. In Study 2, a questionnaire survey was conducted to investigate students' motivational aspects. The results revealed three findings. First, the test scores did not show a marked improvement in listening skills after the Center listening test was introduced. Second, the Center listening test might influence students in different majors to a different degree. Third, the majority of students favored the introduction of the Center listening test, and most were encouraged to study listening and felt their preparation had a positive effect on their score.

著者

森本 由子

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.19, pp.211-220, 2008-03

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The aim of this study was to investigate whether attractive distractors differed by proficiency level in the multiple-choice sentential gap-filling test. In each item, apart from one correct choice, three distractors were prepared: a distractor which had a paradigmatic relationship with the correct answer, a distractor which had a syntagmatic relationship with a word in the context, and a distractor which had no relationship with either the correct answer or the context. The result of a chi-square analysis demonstrated that the lower group was attracted more to distractors with no relationship, but the upper group was likely to select syntagmatically-related distractors. In terms of distractors with paradigmatic relationship, there was no difference among proficiency groups, which was supported by low discriminability of paradigmatically-related distractors. These results provided an implication that using distractors with a syntagmatic relationship with the context or with no relationship makes tests more effective.

著者

水本 篤 浦野 研 前田 啓朗

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.25, pp.33-48, 2014-03-31

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This study reviewed three representative aspects (themes, methods, and outcomes) of the published articles in ARELE, volumes 1 to 24. The review of 450 ARELE articles revealed the following results: (a) the 24 ARELE volumes could be divided into two periods (the first 12 and the second 12); (b) articles in each period have characteristic words to represent the themes peculiar to the period; (c) research themes have shifted from teaching to learning, with reading, vocabulary, assessment/testing, and motivation coming to the forefront; (d) articles are predominantly empirical studies, targeting learners at secondary and tertiary levels, and hypothesis generating, with a quantitative approach, while intervention studies are not common; (e) medium strength of effect size was obtained with a meta-analytical approach; (f) the effect size decreases toward more recent volumes, which may be a sign of theoretical refinement; (g) the statistical power of most studies is lower than it should be. A number of suggestions are offered for improving the quality of future research practice.

著者

板垣 信哉 杉山 恵 久保田 佳克

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.14, pp.31-40, 2003-03

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This paper reports the results of analyses of learner metatalk about Japanese language, English language, and English grammar while attempting to perform two types of "output-oriented" grammar exercises. Subjects were asked to write down their "retrospective reports" on how they performed the exercises. The data was then analyzed on the basis of the theoretical framework of the Output Hypothesis (Swain, 1985, 1998). It was found that the type and amount of metatalk were largely dependent on the type of grammar exercises and the English proficiency level of subjects. The results are also discussed in reference to grammar teaching as well as the three language learning functions of output; "noticing," "hypothesis-testing," and "metatalk."

著者

森田 光宏

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.21, pp.1-10, 2010-03

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The purpose of the present study is to investigate how Japanese learners of English store and process derived words in their mental lexicon. L1 research in word recognition has given rise to three hypotheses. The affix stripping hypothesis claims that derived words are accessed by their component morphemes, while the full listing hypothesis claims that they are accessed as full forms. Hybrid hypotheses such as the Meta Model claim that the lexical properties of suffixes determine how derived words are processed. Our data show that Japanese learners of English with larger vocabulary sizes tend to decompose highly productive, semantically and phonologically transparent Level 2 suffixes, but not less productive, semantically and phonologically opaque Level 1 suffixes. On the other hand, the learners with smaller vocabulary sizes tend to process both kinds of suffixes by the Decompose Route. It is argued that the learners may have not acquired the meanings and phonology of the derived words with the less semantically and phonologically transparent suffixes. These results support hybrid hypotheses, even for L2 learners.

著者

小島 ますみ

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.21, pp.151-160, 2010-03

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This study investigated the significance of the effects of word-recognition speed, accuracy, and automaticity on three different English-reading proficiency groups: two groups of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners and one group of native English speakers. In addition, whether the effects of word-recognition speed, accuracy, and automaticity varied according to word frequency levels was examined. Automaticity of word recognition was measured in terms of the coefficient of variation of reaction times (CV_<RT>), proposed by Segalowitz and Segalowitz (1993). Overall results showed that word-recognition accuracy and speed had significant effects in differentiating among the three reading proficiency groups, while moderate effects were observed for word-recognition automaticity on them. In other words, the more proficient a person becomes in reading, the more quickly, accurately, and automatically he or she can recognize words. Interestingly, the effects of word-recognition accuracy and speed grew larger when word frequency decreased, while such changes were not observed for word-recognition automaticity. These results suggest that learners need to recognize words with a wider range of frequency--not only accurately but also rapidly and automatically.

著者

前田 啓朗

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.19, pp.253-262, 2008-03

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This paper reports the practice of English language teaching for the first year university students in a listening class, intending to cooperate classroom teaching and individualized learning. A Web-Based Training (WBT) system is involved in order to overcome some problems which will be easily observed in the classroom teaching. Since each learner has different aptitudes, a certain instruction may be effective for some but ineffective for the others. It is true that instructions should be flexible so as to balance out the students' aptitudes. However, as far as a teacher controls the lessons, there still would be some difficulties for students to commit themselves to learning. Therefore, the present courses are planned to utilize the WBT system, named Gyuto-e, for the purpose of involving students into self-learning. Three kinds of questionnaires, which investigate learner beliefs, learning motivations, and vocabulary learning strategies, are conducted in the beginning and the end of the course. A hierarchical cluster analysis reveals the fact that the TOEIC test scores show there seem to be the positive tendencies compared with the students in other classes as well as that there are successful and unsuccessful learners who seem to show some particular tendencies of learner factors.

著者

卯城 祐司 土方 裕子 清水 真紀 中川 知佳子 古賀 功 大野 真澄 梅原 愛

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.18, pp.31-40, 2007-03

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A recall test is useful in that the test score is not affected by question items; however, this test is frequently criticized as being simply a memory test that does not measure pure reading comprehension. Although retrieval cues are sometimes provided to readers in order to decrease the effects of the memory load, it is unclear how these cues are related to the ideas recalled. The aim of this study is to examine what types of retrieval cues can promote recall performance of Japanese EFL learners. In Experiment 1, we investigated the relationship between learners' L2 reading proficiency and the importance level of recalled ideas. In Experiment 2, we examined the effects of cue types on recall tests. In addition, the results of three types of recall tests - free recall, recall with main cues, and recall with detailed cues - were compared in order to elucidate the validity of cued recall tests. The results showed that retrieval cues did not promote recall performance. Moreover, we found that cued recall tests had lower correlations with L2 reading proficiency scores than free recall tests, which indicates that retrieval cues reduced the concurrent validity.

著者

卯城 祐司 甲斐 あかり 中川 知佳子 渡邊 芙裕美 星野 由子 清水 遥

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.20, pp.11-20, 2009-03

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The effects of reading perspective on summarization have not been investigated in previous studies even though many researchers have confirmed its influence on reading processes and comprehension. Through two experiments, the present study examined how EFL learners' perspective in reading affects their summary writing processes, including importance rating and application of macrorules. Experiment 1 showed that reading perspective influenced the reader's evaluation of information importance, whereas it had no significant effect on the selection of information to be included in summaries - a result which might have been caused by the lenient restriction on summary length. Hence, in Experiment 2, the effects of reading perspective were re-examined with a shorter summary task. Contrary to Experiment 1, the results revealed the significant influence of reading perspective on the selection of information as well as on the application of two other macrorules: generalization and construction. These findings suggest the importance of providing reading perspective in summary writing as well as the possibility that summary length influences the application of macrorules.

著者

長谷川 佑介

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.23, pp.201-216, 2012-03

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To develop vocabulary skills, it is necessary for language learners to know how words are used in context. However, past studies have rarely investigated how learners mentally establish the relationship between lexical items and contexts. To examine whether and how they retain contextual information in relation to the lexical items, an experiment was conducted with 46 university students. They incidentally learned 10 pseudowords in a glossed context and were asked to recall as much contextual information as they could. As a result, the participants incidentally constructed the word-context association for 42% of the items, but the rate was reduced to 20% after a one-month delay. The data were further analyzed in terms of two contextual variables: context informativeness and imageability. It was found that word-context connections were significantly affected by the interaction between the two variables. The result suggested that when the learners were asked to recall contextual information, they depended on mental imagery aroused from context if the presented context had less informativeness. Thus, it was revealed that learners constructed word-context association through reading under the influence of the two textual factors. The research findings suggest teachers constantly provide students with contextual input that is sufficiently imageable and/or informative.

著者

高田 智子

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.23, pp.73-87, 2012-03

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The CEFR-J, a framework of reference for Japanese EFL learners based on the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), was publicized in the form of a temporary version in 2010 (Tono, 2010). The next research phase is two-fold: the validation of the can-do descriptors and the exploration of the possibility of its implementation. The present study focuses on the latter, estimating the readiness for the implementation of the CEFR-J in junior high schools (JHSs) in Japan. A survey was conducted to examine whether the 30 language tasks stated as Al descriptors in the CEFR-J were experienced by 447 JHS students. The results show that over 50% of the participants said that they had experienced 28 out of 30 activities, suggesting that the current pedagogical practice in JHSs is relatively compatible with the learner-centered, action-oriented approach, which is one of the tenets of the CEFR. On the other hand, results also revealed that a few language tasks students actually did in class were not perceived as having been experienced, suggesting that raising students' awareness as language users may be one of the key issues in the integration of the educational philosophy of the CEFR.

著者

卯城 祐司 中川 知佳子 森本 由子 土方 裕子 渡邊 芙裕美 甲斐 あかり

出版者

全国英語教育学会

雑誌

ARELE : annual review of English language education in Japan (ISSN:13448560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.19, pp.201-210, 2008-03

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There has been much research conducted to compare open-ended and multiple-choice tests from the viewpoints of construct and difficulty. However, almost no studies have examined the effects of question types in relation to test formats. Through two experiments, this study investigated how question types influence the difficulty of these two test formats. The results of Experiment 1 showed that question types affected item difficulty in open-ended tests; more specifically, thematic questions were the most difficult, followed by inference questions, and paraphrase questions were the easiest. In contrast, the result of Experiment 2, in which the same tests were conducted in the multiple-choice test format, revealed that item difficulty did not differ significantly by question type. In addition, we found that predictability of the results of the multiple-choice test was low compared to the open-ended test. Comparison of these two experiments suggested the importance of choice in the multiple-choice test. Close examination of choices indicated that overlap of words in correct choices and the text influenced the item difficulty.