Internationalisation of higher education implies the need to prepare students to work in a globalized and culturally diverse environment by developing adequate intercultural competences. The present study focused on the behavioural dimension of intercultural communication competence and investigated whether the short-term experience of working on…

This study compares two leadership styles, emergent leader (EL) and assigned leader (AL), to explore effective leadership in second language (L2) group work. ELs were spontaneously chosen by the group, while ALs were pre-assigned by teachers before the task. The study involved 45 university students, who were divided into seven EL groups (n = 21)…

In Japan, school teachers experience mental health issues, leading to absences or leave from their duties. While extended working hours significantly contribute to this problem, diminished self-esteem has emerged as the primary causal factor. Reduced self-esteem is frequently correlated with diminished self-efficacy across multiple facets of…

Listening is often a challenge for foreign/second language learners. Unlike other language skills, listening requires immediate understanding and processing (Vandergrift, 2004) and background knowledge of the target language culture (Vandergrift, 2007; Walker, 2014). Krashen (1985) argued that language can be acquired with comprehensible input;…

Task-based language teaching research has investigated the impact of planning on task performance, but little has been reported on the processes that take place while planning is undertaken. This study builds on previous planning research by providing a detailed analysis of four Japanese university learners' collaborative pre-task planning (two…

This paper reports on a study of collaborative group work in mathematics. Although collaborative group work is known as one of the important approaches in education, it is still uncertain how group thinking can be measured in various learning contexts. We used the Group Thinking Measure (GTM) test developed by [Wegerif, R., T. Fujita, J. Doney, J.…

Here the author shares his attempt to add, without financial cost, substantive and dynamic international experiences to the secondary social studies teacher education program he facilitates. He provides thick descriptions of (1) the overarching goals of a collaborative, online, international learning project, (2) the curriculum materials he helped…

Self-efficacy is a well-known individual difference variable within second language acquisition research (SLA), shown to have predictive validity in language learning contexts. Collective-efficacy (CE), a group level construct, has remained relatively untouched by researchers despite its potential importance in formal language learning contexts,…

Student engagement in the second language classroom has been the focus of numerous researchers and teachers. Previous studies have shown that there are several dimensions of student engagement, but it is still unclear how they change (or not) over time and consequently how they affect actual task performance. This study investigated the task…

This quasi-experimental study reports on the outcomes of a video-synchronous learning program in which an element of project-based foreign language learning was integrated. The project chosen was to cooperatively create a homepage. American students learning Japanese in the United States and Japanese students learning English in Japan made pairs…

This article critically examines the current state of a cross-cultural distance learning program (CCDLP) for English learning in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context, which has been running since 1998 among four universities in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. The initial purpose of the program was to provide a networked English language…

With the Ministry of Education, Sports, Science and Technology calling for junior and senior high school English classes in Japan to be more communicative and taught in English, teachers need effective tools to help make their classrooms more interactive. Cooperative learning activities have the potential to increase interaction among students and…

This paper discusses the fundamental issue of why small group activities are utilized in the language learning classroom. Although these activities have gained popularity in the field of Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL), supported by a sound theoretical base, few studies have so far examined the reasons why language teachers are…

Motivation is an important topic among language teachers in Japan. Collins and Hunt (2011) observed increases in Japanese university student's motivation as a result of collaborative learning and cooperative learning programs. This paper continues in this line of inquiry through a quantitative study of motivation in the context of computer…

Many studies on intercultural communication introduced how their collaborative projects were conducted. There are also several studies that discuss how intercultural collaborative activities can be integrated into a foreign language curriculum, as well as a big project (the INTENT project) that helps teachers integrate collaborative activities…