The presenter will share a teaching experience using a formative assessment module with large classes in presentation class. The formative model mainly consists of individual presentations, group presentations, pre-recorded videos, and group poster presentations. Each task of the module was graded based on the presentation outline, design of PowerPoint and poster, presentation skills, etc. By applying the formative module, the study found that the students increased their confidence in speaking and improved their presentation skills.

Very few would question the efficacy of extensive listening in building students’ L2 listening fluency and proficiency. In this poster presentation, the researchers present an extensive listening pilot program and study in which a group of university students listened to graded readers over a semester. The researchers will also present the results of the study and suggestions for alterations to the program and future research.

An overview of a preliminary stage in a proposed study of activities using synonyms in a reading class to improve the vocabulary of low-proficiency learners (average and mean TOEIC scores of 340). The poster will show examples of activities, student output and as well as data collected. The presenter hopes to share insights with other educators to foster improved vocabulary teaching practices.

The phonics program started at an elementary school in Kumano, Mie in 2019 as a pilot project. When the first group of students matriculated to the secondary level in 2020, the Jolly Phonics approach, which was designed for younger learners, was modified to fit the junior high students’ language abilities and intellectual levels. Teaching phonics in English and phonics exercises are some of the modifications employed as part of the junior high school format.

EFL university students are often crippled by their writing anxiety, making it difficult for them to accomplish a myriad of academic writing requirements in English. Understanding the types and levels of students’ writing anxiety would help EFL teachers improve their pedagogical approaches in making students confidently write right.

This corpus-based study examines lexical bundles and their functions observed in Taiwanese college English majors’ essays. Three corpora of academic essays were established based on the students’ writing fluency levels. An online instrument, N-Gram Extractor (Lextutor), was used to identify 2- to 6-word lexical bundles. The results showed the intermediate-fluency-level students used more lexical bundles, whereas the lower-fluency-level students hardly produced any. Stance bundles were found to be the most used function types.

Loanwords, or gairaigo, continue to capture the attention of teachers, researchers, and the general public. Yet how useful, really, are loanwords for Japanese learners of English? In this presentation I will reflect on a three-year project investigating the potential of loanwords for lexical inferencing. I will describe my findings from recent empirical studies investigating whether simply raising learners’ awareness of loanwords can increase the accuracy of their guesses about the meaning of unknown English words.

Japanese university students are often required to perform free writing activities in their English language classes in an attempt to encourage confidence in writing in English. This poster will explain the free writing activities used in the authors’ courses, provide quantitative and qualitative data describing the participants’ writing activities, and discuss the students’ reflection on their free writing experiences. Attendees will receive ideas for effectively employing free writing in their English language classes.

Profanity, dirty words, swear words, foul language. All describing a group of words not used lightly. Yet, many use them frequently in successful, positive interactions. So-called bad words have an image problem, but does that extend to Japanese learners? What about learners at a Christian women’s university, where youth, gender, and educational setting may each contribute to perceived image of language. Findings of a study on attitudes of profanity with such learners will be presented.

The interactional skills of Japanese university students were examined using conversation analysis (CA). Data was gathered from teacher-fronted interaction and student-student group discussion. Results showed that students used a more diverse array of interactional skills when the teacher was not involved. This poster presentation will demonstrate how an equal power speech exchange system can be an enabling environment for developing interactional competence.

This presentation reports on findings from a mixed-methods research study with 40 beginner-level university students to explore the effects of asynchronous and synchronous online peer feedback (AOPF and SOPF) on their lexical diversity in writing based on data collected from students’ cause-and-effect essay drafts and their feedback comments. Findings illustrated that AOPF provided students with more opportunities to negotiate with others and had a more positive influence on their lexical diversity than SOPF.

Extensive reading (ER) research provides evidence for gains in fluency, vocabulary, and motivation. Practitioner reflections show that ER is underpinned largely by Krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis and a whole-word approach. However, what about learners for whom ER is not working? To introduce a new perspective, this presentation highlights three fundamentals—the science of how we read, individual differences, and bottom-up reading processes—and invites a query into the future of ER and reading research.

Helping Matters is an ESP textbook for social welfare students. It introduces relevant topics in realistic situations to prepare future social workers who may be called upon to help foreigners in a professional setting. We will talk about why we decided to write this book, its development and how the book can be used in your classroom.

This presentation will introduce an action research project designed to improve students’ productive vocabulary accuracy conducted with intermediate-level Japanese university students. We implemented two weeks of receptive and productive vocabulary interventions for one textbook unit. Through carrying out quantitative surveys, semi-structured interviews, and speaking test transcriptions, the results of this project indicated a marked improvement in student productive vocabulary accuracy.

In Zoom online English lessons, the researcher-teacher conducted explicit instruction in reading strategies by using two web cameras: one showing the teacher’s face, and the other showing her hand and explicitly showing where she was pointing in an English text. This presentation examines how beginner-level university students perceived the online explicit strategy instruction by using two cameras and how it influenced their English reading.

In Thailand, implementing an extensive reading program (ERP) at a university level is relatively new, especially with the integration of an online library. After two semesters of the ERP implementation at a large public university in Bangkok, a study has been conducted to investigate freshmen’s attitudes toward extensive reading, and experiences in reading graded readers online on Xreading.com. Students’ feedback will shed light on what needs to be done to improve the ERP.

Many Japanese students struggle with confidence when speaking English. Flipgrid is a website that allows students to submit audio and video reports as well as view other submissions. At a university with non-English majors, this study, with a control and a test group, was made to find out if use of the Flipgrid website helped students increase the length of oral responses on oral examinations during the course of one semester.

This workshop will explore what “reading” really means in the IELTS reading test. It will look at the purpose of this test, and how to develop the most appropriate and useful skills and strategies for dealing with the questions efficiently and effectively.

This study investigated the effect of an authentic practice: using smartphones in L2 on vocabulary acquisition and learning motivation. Participants who had changed their smartphone system language to English and used them in L2 for a one-week period were found to improve their vocabulary knowledge and learning motivation, which indicated the potential of using smartphones in L2 as an effective language learning approach.

This study examined the effects of form-focused instruction on the development of grammatical accuracy in speaking production over time. Approximately 100 Japanese university students did a weekly cartoon narration task in English for seven weeks. Participants were divided into one comparison and two experimental groups where experimental group participants received grammar interventions before speaking narrations. Three participants were chosen from each group and the trajectory of changes in their grammatical accuracy were examined.

Gaining mastery of the English tense-aspect system remains challenging for university ESL learners. They may have academic writing needs and a need for proficiency given work-related purposes. We developed shortcuts that reflect the shared conceptualizations of the main tense-aspect grammar rules, based on ontological structures of time and happenings. These have allowed students to efficiently understand the main workings of the system, and to facilitate appropriate use of the English tenses while developing self-correction skills.

The forum, divided into three parts, will first showcase the Listening SIG. This will include outlining our communication, events, and publication initiatives. The second part will consist of a guest speaker presenting recent research conducted in the area of listening. The third part will be convened as an annual general meeting and then a panel discussion for both SIG members and guests to share their own experiences and accounts of research developments.

Regarding Japanese pronunciation of English, while errors at the phoneme level allow full understanding by native English speakers, prosodic errors greatly reduce comprehensibility (Yamane, 2007), necessitating improvement of prosody such as intonation. This study attempts to enable effective pronunciation teaching in the field of education by describing in detail the actual pronunciation of English intonation by Japanese speakers and by providing an explanation for this based on the Japanese intonation system.

Presenters discuss the international debut of a new series from Atama-ii Books. The series, aimed at college and university students, features top quality art, highly engaging romance-oriented plots, and an inclusive race/age/gender-neutral second-person perspective. Attendees will receive a free digital book and stand to win one of three complete sets of the Atama-ii Multi-path series (each a 9,350 yen value). The new series is available on Xreading, and coming soon to print.

This presentation describes a tool in the form of a pronunciation practice guide aimed at helping Japanese students in healthcare disciplines improve their ability to pronounce English medical terms more intelligibly. A test trial of the guide conducted on 87 nursing and medical technology majors demonstrated a remarkable increase in their intelligibility. The presenter describes the main features of the guide and its trial procedures, and recommends its use in medical English classrooms across Japan.

English Clinic is a person-to-person tutoring program designed to provide the opportunity for oral communication experience for students in an English program at a university. This presentation will provide a brief description of English Clinic, argue for its necessity, give an analysis of program efficacy, and give recommendations for development. The aim is to improve the program and help guide other institutions by providing insights in how tutoring clinics can be implemented successfully.

Most of our students find it necessary to engage in casual conversations, either now or at some time in the future. How do these casual conversations work? What is their purpose? Is there more to casual conversation than simple chit chat? In this presentation I will provide a framework for understanding storytelling in casual conversation from a genre point of view, and I will suggest some ideas for the language classroom.

Tackling a graduation thesis in English is a huge challenge for undergraduate students in Japan. It is easy for seminar students, for example, to feel overwhelmed. Emphasizing surveys and interviews as means of collecting data can get the research process started and help students understand the goal of creating knowledge. This presentation will cover materials appropriate for students who will benefit from consideration of writing their research in English.

Reaching a 95% vocabulary comprehension level is essential for university English as a medium of instruction courses, TOEFL or IELTS, or overseas study. To meet this challenge, the presenters created an online program of 23 lessons combining the headwords of the UWL, EAP, AWL, and NAWL word lists into a 1,850-word core. This open-source series of 23 lessons utilizes free online Quizlet cards and gamification to motivate students, assess learning, and give feedback on progress.

The purpose of this presentation is to explore the efficacy and effectiveness of self, peer, and teacher assessment of discussions from both student and teacher perspectives. This research centers around the use of check sheets of discussion function phrases which were used to measure individual students’ input and participation in a small group discussion. Students were asked to reflect on each type of assessment, and their participant observations were compared with those of the author.

To increase exposure to authentic English among students at our Japanese elementary school, we implemented an audio-assisted extensive reading program. In this workshop, we will share our experiences in growing this program over several years, including both successes and shortcomings. From the initial stages of development to evaluation of impact, we will offer candid and practical tips for administering a reading program that is age-appropriate for young learners of English as a foreign language.

The presenter will report the results of a genre-based research to compare essays for TOEFL Independent Writing Task and IELTS Writing Task 2. For analysis, 31 model essays have been selected from three publications: the Official Guide to the TOEFL iBT Test 6th Edition, Official TOEFL iBT Tests Volume 2, and Cambridge IELTS Practice Tests. The presenter will suggest useful essay structures and linguistic features of quality essays for the two tasks respectively.

This presentation will describe ways to teach conversation online. It will focus on how the researcher utilised the textbook Discover Conversation and Microsoft Teams to implement a one-semester conversation skills course for university students. It will provide an overview of the Discover Conversation methodology, the activities and assessment that were employed, and feedback from students who undertook the course.

This workshop shall attempt to bridge the gap that exists between teaching Core English skills and teaching IELTS test skills. We will analyse the language learning techniques that can facilitate the systematic development of the students’ abilities, especially speaking and writing skills, which may be crucial in obtaining their desired IELTS scores.

Academic writing is a challenging subject to teach as well as to take. One way to support students and teachers in this process is by establishing a writing tutorial system. This presentation will share experiences of students, tutors, teachers, and coordinators as members of a virtual community of practice that provides newcomers the support they need and experienced writers a chance to share their expertise.

This workshop will discuss teachers’ experiences of managing students’ expectations around their needs for specific IELTS scores, and strategies for convincing students to improve their English before taking IELTS. Resources to help with this, and alternatives to IELTS preparation for students with lower language levels will be considered. Finally, the presenter and participants will examine and discuss ways to adapt two short IELTS course descriptions prepared by the IELTS partners for students at B2 level.

The Moodle item feedback option was used to deliver two types of Japanese feedback, generic and explicit, for performance on multiple-choice items testing knowledge of participles, and comparatives and superlatives. Participants at two institutions, in experimental and control groups, received either the generic feedback (“try harder”) or the explicit explanation of why their selection was incorrect. Pre- and post-tests were used to measure gains. Results and implications will be provided and discussed.

This study explores L2 writers’ felt sense of writing in English as perceived by Japanese students. The results showed that the participants’ emotions regarding writing demonstrated the complexities of expressing themselves in English due to the differences in word meaning, usage, and styles. Although the participants’ emotions regarding writing made them insecure about writing in English, their emotions showed the importance of performing writing and achieving their academic goals through writing practices.

To estimate the necessary amount of words in reading to push students’ English level into the next stage, data for six years (2014-2019) were analyzed to find the threshold value of words that causes changes in TOEIC Bridge test scores. The result implies that the amount of reading around 500,000 words plays a critical role in advancing to the next language level.

With benefits to motivation, reading fluency, learner autonomy and vocabulary knowledge development, extensive reading (ER) is now a common component of university English courses. However, the crucial question of exactly how much ER is required to generate discernible improvement remains largely unanswered. This question is addressed through a year-long study of data on the number of words read by 160 university undergraduates and the gains they made on pre- and post-course vocabulary tests.

This research focuses on one Japanese middle school student’s reading and interpretation of the nonfiction picture book Lotte’s Magical Paper Puppets: The Woman Behind the First Animated Film. The purpose was to see if the visual text would help the student understand the vocabulary in the written text. It also focused on her interpretations of the visual text and recall ability for both visual and written texts.

Translanguaging often appears in English as a medium of instruction students’ notes, as multilingual students employ their language resources to take notes during lectures. This presentation shares analysis of 500+ sets of student notes and survey results and presents models of translanguaging in notetaking. Attendees will gain insights into notetaking and appreciation for the benefits of translanguaging practices in academic listening. Practical tips for teaching notetaking and assessing note content will be proposed.