This study examines concepts surrounding the quality of afterschool programs in Japan and related challenges using qualitative and quantitative methods. A content analysis of government guidelines for afterschool programs provided by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and…

The constructive feedback on the author's article has helped him to expand his knowledge on the topic. He would like to clarify here that the purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of extensive reading on the development of Japanese high school learners' linguistic knowledge and reading abilities. The findings revealed that the…

Simultaneous in-class presentations are well suited to the use of peer evaluation, which also promotes greater involvement of the student audience. The problem for the teacher is how to manage peer evaluation and make it a useful part of the curriculum. PeerEval is a mobile application that allows students to anonymously evaluate presentations in…

This paper describes the initial findings of an exploratory research project investigating the use of the cooperative digital puzzle game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes as a means to facilitate Second Language Acquisition (SLA). A qualitative case study approach was taken to closely examine the linguistic interaction between three L2 learners of…

This reflective essay is written based on the author's experience as a study abroad program visiting resident director in Japan during the 2019-2020 academic year. As the resident director, the author served as the front line of communication and support for the international students on this program during an unprecedented crisis that impacted…

"Manga" are graphic novels that are considered to have the potential to effectively convey concepts and engage readers. The efficacy of "manga" has been validated for chemical safety education to students in three universities in Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand. Students were asked to examine a photo to identify hazards and…

Online vocabulary learning tools have been gaining popularity in EFL classrooms. Although a considerable number of research papers have showed its effectiveness, the amount of research on learner progress in terms of productive skills is scarce. Little is also known about what types of learners make progress after using these tools. This is…

This study is based on the belief that inquiry-based learning should be made an integral part of any student's learning, especially at university level. To find out the students' perceptions toward library user education, 426 questionnaire surveys have been collected from the Peking University (PKU), China and the University of Tsukuba (UT),…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of an educational intervention to increase vegetable consumption by university students. Design/methodology/approach: This study is an open, parallel randomized controlled trial for 25 weeks. University students aged 18-24 years were divided into an intervention group (n=52) and a…

The application of online authentic language data has played an increasingly important role in language teaching. These include freely available online corpora such as the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English. However, students are easily overwhelmed by the enormous amount of incomplete sentences (concordance…

While the use of intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) has exploded in recent years, little is known about their use to promote English as a foreign language (EFL) development. Thus, this study addresses this gap in the literature by examining the in-class use of the IPA, Alexa, among second language (L2) English students to support improvements…

In recent years, Yokohama City, Japan, has seen substantial efforts to address socio-environmental issues. One such effort is the G-30 program, which has helped reduce garbage waste production by 43 percent in 2010, since 2001. The eco-picture diary, an environmental education project, has been identified as contributing to the success of G-30.…

This study compares two instructional methodologies: extensive reading plus output activity and intensive reading plus grammar-translation with regard to improvement of non-English major EFL learners' reading comprehension and fluency development in a Japanese junior college. It identifies the minimum number of words an individual should read for…

Shadow education has been studied in areas such as comparative education, educational policy, sociology of education, education and economics, and lifelong education, but mainstream Anglophone curriculum studies have largely ignored this phenomenon. We argue that shadow education should be considered as an emerging (and significant) focus of…

The purpose of this study is twofold: to assess the acceptance and usefulness of Nagoya University Small Private Online Courses, which is an online end-of-life care educational program through popular social media designed to supplement traditional end-of-life care education among healthcare professionals and to get constructive feedback with the…