Data-driven platforms with rich data and learning analytics applications provide immense opportunities to support collaborative learning such as algorithmic group formation systems based on learning logs. However, teachers can still get overwhelmed since they have to manually set the parameters to create groups and it takes time to understand the…

This volume highlights unique features of L2 teachers' motivation, autonomy and career development in Far East counties (including Japan, South Korea and China), using diverse methodological research approaches incorporating both quantitative and qualitative paradigms. While much of current research focuses on students' psychology, this volume…

This volume includes three sections of the 2021 NORDSCI international conference proceedings: (1) Education and Educational Research; (2) Language and Linguistics; and (3) Sociology and Healthcare. Education and Educational Research includes 15 papers covering the full spectrum of education, including history, sociology and economy of education,…

Both the popular media and professional literature are filled with suggestions on how to improve reading, but the one approach that always works is rarely mentioned: provide readers with a supply of interesting and comprehensible books. Instead, people are given advice that is dead wrong as a means of improving reading (e.g., roller skating and…

This annotated bibliography, a project undertaken by graduate students enrolled in a comparative reading course at Northern Illinois University, supplements and updated E. Malmquist's annotated bibliography, "Handbook on Comparative Reading." The bibliography contains 188 annotations drawn from a range of articles, chapters, and texts…

A required reading course for first-year English majors at Hokusei Junior College (Japan) is described. The course is intended to teach students to survey a text, read through it, form an opinion about its content, and skim portions that are less important. At the same time, students are encouraged to guess at the meaning of unknown vocabulary,…

Some problems facing Japanese learners reading English as a Second Language at the college level are discussed, based on classroom experience with first- and fourth-year English majors. In one group of tasks, students were asked to respond to an open-ended question, perform a reading comprehension exercise, and find specific constructions in…

This paper describes a reading course for the first year of college for Japanese high school graduates. The course has been taught in large classes and utilizes extensive individualization of homework assignments at a level of difficulty that all students can cope with. The course provides students with strategies that will free them from…

A study investigated how asking students to evaluate a poem-reading task stimulated their autonomy as learners. Subjects were 51 Japanese university students of English. During one 90-minute class period, students were given a brief poem with pre-reading, reading, and post-reading tasks. The poem, entitled "40-Love," had ambiguous…

An individualized approach to second language reading instruction in a large class is described. First, characteristics of the large class as a teaching and learning environment are examined, and the instructional advantages of individualizing assignments are noted. Two forms of reading materials used with first-year college students are then…

What lessons can be learned from relevant research in vocabulary- and language-learning strategy training as well as from comparative studies on learning Oriental languages, which could have helpful applications to language learners from Kanji-background countries? Could both mnemonic and semantic field keyword approaches help these learners by…

This article summarizes software which can help to enhance both local and specific reading skills (often done through what is known as intensive reading) and global or general reading skills (known as extensive reading). Although the use of computerized bilingual dictionaries (CBDs) and translation websites of various types does not appear to…

Investigates how accurately learners can assess their understanding of words and whether this accuracy is influenced by the learners' culture, gender, and lexical knowledge. Subjects were university students of English in China, Israel, and Japan. A mismatch between the objective and perceived understanding of a reading task was related to the…

This workshop text encourages the use of literature in a student-centered curriculum of English as a second language (ESL). The first section discusses the role of the teacher in the student-centered approach and outlines the reasons for using English-language literature in the Japanese university ESL course. The second section emphasizes the…

It is sometimes difficult to motivate Japanese students to learn English because it is not connected with their everyday life or interests. One method found to be effective at the college level in Japan is to teach students about other cultures in English by preparing slide programs with narration, vocabulary lists, and exercises, supported by…