This article adopts a sociomaterial perspective on ELT materials and illustrates how a mandatory textbook is used as a springboard to create decolonizing relations in the classroom ecology. Sociomaterial perspectives view learning as not the transmission but the emergence of knowledge from embodied relations, which shifts the focus from the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a multimodal approach in which an additional camera was used to deliver online explicit reading strategy instruction. Targeting 20 Japanese beginner-level EFL college students taking online Zoom lessons during one academic semester, two research questions were investigated: (a) To what…

It is generally agreed that first language (L1) morphological awareness, the ability to reflect upon, analyze and manipulate morphemes and morphological structure of words, can transfer and facilitate second language (L2) reading subskill acquisition. However, the facilitative role of L1 morphological awareness is unclear in the literature…

This article reports on the use of an experimental material to enable discrimination between the periphrastic future (PF) and simple future (SF) intended for initial level university students in Japan studying French as a Foreign Language. A dyad was filmed using the material in a task on tense choice in short dialogues modelled on Galperin's…

Twenty-five years have passed since a teaching technique, called shadowing, was introduced in Japanese EFL contexts. Recently, this technique has gradually been recognized around the world. Given that many studies have been published about shadowing, the time is ripe to summarize the results of the studies and to propose how shadowing should be…

This article provides information on an action research project in a low-level EFL setting in Japan. The project aims were to (1) foster spoken communication skills and (2) help students engage with their own learning. The project investigated the applicability of board games as a mediating tool for authentic communication as part of a wider TBLT…

Japanese universities have lately begun to teach academic content in English instead of Japanese. In this article, I examine curricular and ideological issues related to having English as a medium of instruction (EMI) at a Japanese university before examining their links to larger cultural-political forces in Japan, including neoconservative…

Using O'Dowd and Ritter's (2006) Inventory of Reasons for Failed Communication in Telecollaborative Projects as a barometer, this article details the considerations and procedures followed in a task-based, asynchronous email telecollaboration project between EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners in Japan and Chile. In a climate where…

This article presents an overview of action research conducted in an EFL university context, regarding primarily the relationship between individual possible self-images, socially constructed possible self-images, and language-learning motivation. The study used three cycles of action research over the course of one 15-week university semester,…

This study set out to determine if English can be taught effectively to Japanese children through a content-based instruction program that uses vocal music as the content area. A total of 240 children participated in the study. The treatment group at a private elementary school in Tokyo received weekly vocal music lessons taught in English for one…

This longitudinal qualitative study investigates how cultural experiences of staying in Japan may affect attitudes and self-directed learning of kanji among learners of Japanese as a foreign language. Six beginner learners pursued semester-long weekly kanji learning sessions and their diachronic behaviours were observed and recorded for attitudes…

This article examines the applicability of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi's (1871-1944) educational ideas in what Denzin and Lincoln (2005) call the "fractured future," a time marked by human, environmental, and climatic destabilization, and a time in which the social sciences "are normative disciplines always already embedded in issues of…

A study in Japan investigated second language skill loss and maintenance in three groups of English-as-a-Second-Language learners: (1) ninth graders studying basic vocabulary and sentence structures (true beginners); (2) students in the lowest level English class at a technical college, but with some English language skills (false beginners); and…

In the communicative approach, English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners use scripted and unscripted language. In practice, scripted language is typically over-utilized at the expense of unscripted language. This study explores the characteristics of scripted and unscripted language in 11 beginner-level EFL students in a Japanese junior high…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…