This article explores the relationship between course performance, English language proficiency, motivation, and academic language skills in an English medium instruction (EMI) university context. It analyses test and questionnaire data from 146 students from an EMI business program at a Japanese university, and follow-up interviews with seven…

Background: This study investigates how the criterion-referenced (CR) approach has impacted relationships between goals, classroom practices, and student achievement in English education in Japan from 1994 to the present, a period covering three government-mandated administrations of a national curriculum (Course of Study). No study has…

Mobile (m)-learning is motivating to learners to improve foreign language skills, as it offers them a rich, informal, contextual, and ubiquitous learning environment. In this paper I report on the results of two empirical studies that focused on two projects, both of which incorporated e-learning and m-learning, to determine if a blended-learning…

This article reports on an action research case study conducted at a university in Japan, which explored how student identity-development can be made visible in potentially assessable ways through materials design in intercultural communicative competence (ICC)-oriented foreign language education. It suggests that identity-development can be…

Vocabulary is an essential component of language. It is central to reading ability, writing ability and listening ability, and the most important aspect of second-language (L2) knowledge for academic achievement. The aim of this paper is to investigate quantitatively some of the factors that make some L2 words more difficult to learn and retain…

Despite growing concerns about declining scholastic abilities of Japanese students throughout Japan prior to the implementation of the revised Courses of Study in 2002, little empirical evidence was available at that time to support this perceived decline in academic performance. This research describes post-hoc IRT equating of previously…

Although calls for educational reform have been raised in many nations, just how accountable are schools, teachers, or students themselves in Japan for their own language teaching or learning? While the use of course evaluations has come into vogue, many colleges do not assess English majors' linguistic ability in a professional manner, for…