There is widespread concern about declining literacy skills in recent young Japanese. The present study investigated how higher-level reading and writing proficiencies are underpinned by basic literacy skills in Japanese adolescents. From a large database of the most popular literacy exams in Japan, we retrospectively analyzed word- and text-level…

Bansho (Japanese board writing) is becoming an area of interest among researchers and educators as it could serve as an asset to make a searching inquiry into teaching. This study aims to identify the variations of bansho styles in Japanese schools and draws its data from 10 lessons from a primary school in Japan. All lesson observations were…

Children with suspected developmental disabilities often have handwriting difficulties and show problems with motor control of the head and upper limbs, but it has not been examined in detail. The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of motor control in children with suspected developmental disabilities and writing…

Education in Japan has drawn attention widely from overseas, including a quantity of research pointing out that the context of Japan's modernization and its present-day advanced science and technology can be found in the high literacy rates and prevalent education of Japanese society. However, there has been insufficient examination of the effect…

Mobile-learning (m-learning), or mobile-assisted language learning (MALL), has been the object of a great deal of research over the last twenty years. However, empirical work in this area has largely failed to produce generalizable conclusions due to variation in methodology, target feature, and task-type (Burston, 2014, 2015). As schools in Japan…

This study proposes a novel e-learning system that can be used as a comprehensive learning resource for electronic circuits, covering design, theoretical analysis, and circuit construction experiments. The proposed system uses an automated recognition technique for schematic symbols that are handwritten on a touchscreen of a mobile tablet-type…

The author demonstrates a new system useful for reflective learning. Our new system offers an environment that one can use handwriting tablet devices to bookmark symbolic and descriptive feedbacks into simultaneously recorded videos in the environment. If one uses video recording and feedback check sheets in reflective learning sessions, one can…

Despite having studied English for some 33 months, the students at the private junior high school in Japan described in this paper had never before been asked to write original compositions in the language. The researchers undertook a quasi-experimental pilot study in which the 156 (n= 156) participants were each asked to write four compositions,…

A study at the University of Aizu (Japan) investigated characteristics of technical writing assignments composed in English as a second language on computer workstations and by hand. The in-class workstation essays and hand-written essays of 24 students revealed that while all were of similar overall quality, the workstation essays were not as…