Background: Variations in the skill profiles of learners have become an important research area in recent years. However, there is a lack of empirical research on this topic in Japan. We conducted three studies to address this gap. Methods: Study 1 investigated the characteristics of the flat and uneven skill profiles of Japanese learners of…

To better understand the relationship between second-language (L2) listening comprehension and metacognitive awareness, we examined the moderating effects of listening tests and learner samples while focusing on aspects of metacognitive awareness. Students of English-as-a-foreign-language at a Japanese university (n = 75; the 2019 cohort) took the…

Children acquire argument structure through distributional evidence, but how does this interacts with event semantics and existing verb knowledge? The current study compares verb learning in adult speakers of Japanese (where lexical causatives span wider semantic categories) and English (where alternation is more restricted). In the Fully…

The New General Service List Test (NGSLT) (Stoeckel & Bennett, 2015) was designed as a diagnostic test to measure students' written receptive vocabulary knowledge. This test battery was developed based upon the New General Service List (NGSL) (Browne, 2013), which makes it appealing to teachers in Japan, and especially those who see vocabulary…

The present study examined whether oral interactive (pair) rehearsals and individual rehearsals promote second language (L2) learners' communication ability. The participants were 60 first-year students from two required English classes at a national university in Japan. One class was designated as 'the compulsory rehearsal' group (CR, n=28); the…

Although an accurate measure of vocabulary size is integral to understanding the proficiency of language learners, the validity of multiple-choice (M/C) vocabulary tests to determine this has been questioned due to users guessing correct answers which inflates scores. In this paper the nature of guessing and partial knowledge used when taking the…

One of the challenges of developing assessments for young language learners is the shortage of evidence-based information about such assessments for languages other than English. In light of this situation, this paper discusses the development of an assessment for young languages learners in the context of Japanese as a second language (JSL). In…

The redesigned four-skills "TOEIC Bridge"® tests were designed to measure the listening, reading, speaking, and writing proficiency of beginning to low--intermediate English learners in the context of everyday life. In this paper, I describe two studies that were conducted to investigate claims about the meaningfulness of redesigned…

The capacity to perceive and meaningfully process foreign or second language (L2) words from the aural modality is a fundamentally important aspect of successful L2 listening. Despite this, the relationships between L2 listening and learners' capacity to process aural input at the lexical level has received relatively little research focus. This…

Despite an emphasis on oral communication in most foreign language classrooms, the resource-intensive nature (i.e. time and manpower) of speaking tests hinder regular oral assessments. A possible solution is the development of a (semi-) automated scoring system. When it is used in conjunction with human raters, the consistency of computers can…

This study investigated the relationship between a metaphor-based approach to teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) and involvement of the brain's right hemisphere. Specifically, it examined learners' understanding of three levels of sureness associated with different expressions in English -- those that are "certain,"…

Benefits for L2 reading through offering learners extensive reading with listening have been found in empirical studies, but those findings may be under-utilized in academic English preparation settings, due to prioritized test practice in response to high-stakes testing for university matriculation. Self-paced extensive reading with listening…

Despite their well-established connections to student motivation and to learning outcomes, attributions, particularly at the task-level, have not garnered much attention in L2 learning research. However, research evidence in educational psychology (e.g., Stajkovic & Sommer, 2000) suggests that L2 task attributions may affect subsequent task…

This article introduces self-regulation features with Partial and Synchronized Caption (PSC) for practicing listening skills and fostering self-paced and autonomous learning. PSC generates a partial caption by focusing on acoustically and lexically difficult words and synchronizes each word's appearance with the speaker's speech. The aim is to…

This study investigated the effects of explicit and implicit discourse marker (DM) instruction on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' speech. Two different teaching methods were used over seven weeks of online English classes at a university in Japan. Participants were split into two groups, and in the first week, a pre-test comprising…