A quasi-experimental study investigated the effectiveness of inductive and deductive types of instruction in the acquisition of a complex grammatical structure, the passive voice. The participants were two groups (n = 34) of second-year Japanese students from a vocational school who had three treatment lessons designed for each group embedded into…

The study examined the impact of a first language's summarizing skill and second language vocabulary size on summary performances in a second language. A total of 40 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners from a Japanese university with a mixed level of English language proficiency were asked to write a summary in English (i.e., their…

The purpose of this study was to identify the causes of speaking anxiety in highly anxious students, of which their teachers might not have been aware, and solutions to alleviate the problem. Sixteen students from a Japanese language-oriented university participated in an interview survey. The participants' anxiety levels were measured using a…

According to previous studies, Japanese learners of English (JLEs) have a negative perception of their own variety of English along with a strong desire to sound native-like. Language attitudes toward L2 (second language) English accents may affect their active participation in English communication situations. The present study is cross-national…

The present study attempts to identify difficulties that Japanese students encounter with metadiscursive nouns in writing second language (L2) argumentation essays. Metadiscursive nouns are abstract and unspecific nouns which can serve as cohesive markers by retrieving their meanings in the text where they occur. Using a selected number of nouns…

Critical thinking is one of the core objectives of talent training in higher education. Meanwhile, the cultivation of critical thinking skills in foreign language teaching has become more and more urgent, and it has also been written into the national standards for the training of foreign language talents. A good critical thinking includes both a…

The first language (L1) use is vital to developing the quality of second-language (L2) writings. Establishing a clear argument with the logical flow in L2 can be a daunting task for learners with low L2 proficiency. To determine if L1 use is positively related to students' L2 texts, the researcher conducted a comparative study with 77 Japanese L2…

This study applied a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) model to explore how 27 first-year university students in two different English proficiency groups improved their lexicogrammatical choices and metafunctions for writing analytical exposition essays during a 15-week course. To explore how "the teaching learning cycle" influences…

The purpose of this paper is to compare the efficiency of the core schema-based instruction (SBI) in learning English prepositions between two groups that were placed depending on learners' level of English proficiency. The SBI in the present study refers to a way of teaching in which the schematic core meaning of a given lexical item is provided.…

Here is documented investigation to assess the motivational drivers of a group of Japanese, first-year, dental-university students taking part in compulsory EFL classes and to compare those motivational drivers with an investigation into the motivational drivers of a group of Japanese IT students. There was a clear difference between extrinsic and…

The purpose of this study is to determine which is more beneficial to improving learner writing: reviewing peer texts or one's own text. The study took place over one semester at a Japanese university with 51 students enrolled in two writing classes at two proficiency levels. The students at the lower proficiency level reviewed peer texts, while…