The aim of my study is to research information literacy that university students and school teachers expect to acquire for themselves and to teach their students in Japan. Examining the questionnaire conducted to them, they are willing to acquire skills to identify their task, to read information, and to present the result of task. However, they…

This study investigated how English learners at a university in Japan perceive connections with students in the US through an educational social network platform, called Edmodo. The instructor of English at the Japanese university cooperated with a Japanese language instructor at an American university and they incorporated Edmodo into their…

The purpose of this study is to assess student response to teaching English for written communication in a Japanese university context by using students' own photographs instead of textbooks. Thirty Japanese college freshmen English majors of similar ability studying writing receive monthly assignments to use their own photographs to write about…

The Center for English as a Lingua Franca (CELF), an initiative of a private university in Tokyo, was founded with serious consideration given to the pedagogical implications of the widespread use of English as a lingua franca (ELF). Such deliberation is not yet prevalent among academics and practitioners who should be most affected by ELF…

This paper presents a teacher-led inquiry into learner language awareness and learner perceptions of: oral presentations using first language (L1) support when using a second language (L2); and L2 learner and user identity. The quantitative-based results of this preliminary inquiry represent a source of understanding for the researcher, who later,…

English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) refers to the use of English as a contact language between people who have different first languages, including native English speakers (Jenkins, 2014). "ELF is simultaneously the consequence and the principal language medium of globalizing processes" (Jenkins, Cogo, & Dewey, 2011, p. 303). In…

The purpose of this paper was to explore high-school (grades 10-12) technology teachers' attitudes toward nuclear energy and their implications to technology education. A questionnaire was developed to solicit 323 high-school technology teachers' responses in June 2013 and 132 (or 41%) valid questionnaires returned. Consequently, the following…

Despite the stream of directives about improving students' English communicative ability from the Japanese Education Ministry since 2003 [1-4] significant development has remained elusive. One obstacle to communication (as an individual and a cooperative faculty) is the inflexible "one-size-fits-all" philosophy of commercial textbooks…

This paper was written to clarify misconceptions that East Asian students are somehow less autonomous than learners from other cultural backgrounds. Specifically, based on motivational levels, it examines Japanese university students' perceptions of their responsibility and ability of autonomous English learning and what they can do inside and…

Teachers often raise a question that whether the lecture questionnaires are necessary or not. In this paper, we first show the recent statistical analysis for the official unsigned questionnaire evaluation results took in our faculty. We have found that: (1) the evaluation scores of lectures by students have been rising up year by year, which…

Educational materials of embedded systems are currently used in many educational institutions. However, they have difficulties in arousing the interest of students. One of the reasons is that a poor CPU (central processing unit), which has been loaded in the current materials, cannot execute the multimedia processing. In order to make the…

(Purpose) The purpose of this study was to examine the correlation between certain characteristics of US states and their budgeting systems for higher education (HE), and to derive implications for Japanese HE budgeting policy from the results. (Methodology) The US's State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) conducted a 30-item…

Sex education has always been a controversial topic. Although sex education at schools has improved in general, sex education for mentally retarded pupils still encounters prejudice and conservatism as a result of several misconceptions about the subject. This research was performed in the form of a survey of opinions about sex education in…

Two-year colleges in Japan have traditionally absorbed the major portion of female college entrants due at least partially to long-held gender stereotypes: women are to prepare themselves for marriage and homemaking at a two-year college. Recently, Japanese women began to explore selfhood outside the traditional realm of motherhood and womanhood.…

The purpose of this study was to examine the positive impact of second language learners' cross-cultural awareness in the target language. More specifically, the pedagogical desired outcomes include: (1) exploring how students can increase their motivation in learning a foreign language by engaging in the cross-cultural activity "Sister…