While mainstream psychology has made significant advances into the understanding of personality, applied linguistics research has offered a more muted response (Dörnyei and Ryan 2015) despite Bandura (2001:10) declaring that self-efficacy beliefs represent 'the foundation of human agency'. The study documented within this article therefore…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between personality and resilience. The HEXACO personality model was employed; it includes six personality factors: honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. The Bidimensional Resilience Scale, which measures innate and…

In recent decades, English taught programmes have rapidly increased in number throughout Europe and East Asia as universities aim to internationalise their curriculum, which has given rise to an increase in English-medium instruction (EMI). This study aims to compare the teaching experiences at three EMI programmes in The Netherlands, China, and…

This study aims to identify the major characteristics and motivations of foreign faculty at Japanese universities. The study begins with a brief introduction to the literature, research framework and method. In the second section, the study deals with the background and changes in foreign faculty at Japanese universities since 1980. In the third…

In this globalization-focused era, the demand for globalized engineers in the creation of borderless societies is increasing. Despite the initiatives by the Japanese government to promote internalization through increasing the intake of foreign students, the exposures gained by the Japanese students from these programs are minimal. For years,…

This study aims to understand Japanese university students' perceptions of foreign English teachers (FETs) through a two-phased exploratory sequential mixed-methods design. During the initial phase, a quantitative survey was performed with first and second-year Japanese university students (n=377). Despite a lack of precision and a high dispersion…

'Grit' has been identified as an important predictor of success in a number of academic and non-academic domains (Duckworth, A. L., C. Peterson, M. D. Matthews, and D. R. Kelly. 2007. "Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals." "Journal of Personality and Social Psychology" 92: 1087-1101.…

Language is one of the most critical factors in the formation and maintenance of national identities. Situated within the national context of Japan and drawing data from a population of 292 Japanese university students, this study departs with three objectives. First, the study assesses the contribution of Japanese national identity to criterion…

Conventional folk wisdom insists study abroad is an inherently valuable educational experience for young people. While traditional study abroad programs were typically a semester or a full year in duration, short-term study abroad programs of only a couple weeks are now the most common type of sojourn abroad. Problematically, evidence is mounting…

This paper describes a study designed to profile performances of L2 listenership. The writer examines the listenership behavior of 23 Japanese EFL learners, who were all freshmen students at a national university in Japan (16 females and 5 males) at the time the study was conducted, in an attempt to identify some of the features associated with…

Understanding the make-up of gritty L2 students has garnered quite a lot of attention recently. In this descriptive narrative-based study, we looked at the interview data of eight English language learners who recorded high scores on a nine-item grit questionnaire. Specifically, two female university students each from Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand…

This study explored the longitudinal changes of Japanese EFL learners' psychological attributes of unwillingness to speak English in a task-based classroom. Thirty-three university students participated in this study. They engaged in a communicative task once a week for two semesters. They completed a questionnaire examining the psychological…

This article examines personality and participation in an online intercultural exchange (OIE) between 57 university students in Japan (n = 28) and Taiwan (n = 29). The two-month OIE used Facebook (FB) as the medium of communication. During the online exchange, participants communicated linguistically using English as their common language and…

The metrics of self-efficacy and self-assessment were surveyed and analysed in order to examine the effectiveness of note taking instruction on emotional aspects of participants during a blended learning course. The changes of emotional aspects due to student's individual characteristics were also analysed. Participants were surveyed twice during…

This study analyzes the conversational styles of two dyads who engaged in a semester-long, video-mediated telecollaboration between Japan and America. While one dyad expressed the greatest satisfaction and developed the autonomy to continue the project beyond the curricular requirement, the other dyad expressed the greatest frustration, requiring…