The doctoral defence is the oral examination of the doctoral thesis. While it is a major milestone for doctoral candidates, this event is often shrouded in mystery. In this article, I explore the doctoral defence from an international perspective. I have studied the format of the defence based on written testimonies as well as the literature on…

A study was conducted to examine the differences in narrative essays produced by skilled and unskilled EFL student writers. Twenty-six Japanese university students participated in the study. They were told to write a narrative story based on six-frame pictures. The students were classified into two groups, skilled and unskilled, according to the…

This article, with the aim of identifying elements that constitute the characteristics of an academic space within comparative education, analyzes how comparative education has been discussed and practiced in Japan, based on a questionnaire completed by 264 members of the Japan Comparative Education Society and classification of articles published…

The article explores "culture talk" at the outset of first-time encounters between teachers and students of English as a foreign language in the conversation lounge of a Japanese university. It analyses the interactional procedures by which the foreign place of origin of the teacher becomes the topic of conversation following his or her…

Unstructured data in social media is as part of the "big data" spectrum. Unstructured data in Social media can provide useful insights into social phenomena and citizen opinions, both of which are critical to government policy and businesses decisions. Teachers of business intelligence and analytics commonly use quantitative data from…