Learning assessments of the First-Year Experience (FYE) at universities have drawn increasing attention. Despite its current popularity, few pieces of literature on the FYE learning assessment exist in Japan. To present a case of FYE in the context of Japan, this paper examines the FYE course called the Vision Planning Seminar (VPS) at the Nagoya…

As young children enter formal schooling, they are at various points along their individual developmental paths toward literacy. Generally, their egocentric speech is becoming more social and they are building their capacity for logical thought and concrete problem-solving. This is a gradual development and teachers can support children's literacy…

Detailed research concerning the issue fluency, specifically relating to pauses, mean length runs, and fluency rates in Japanese EFL learners, is limited. Furthermore, the issue of tracking fluency gains has often been ignored, misunderstood or minimized in EFL educational research. The present study, which is based on six monologues conducted…

This paper briefly outlines the theory and development of Values Clarification and explores its possible applications to English as a foreign language (EFL). The five basic types of Values Clarification exercises are discussed: (1) interviewing, (2) rank-ordering, (3) forced choice, (4) values continuum, and (5) sentence completion. The theory and…