This study examines the ways in which college students in Japan overcame sensitivity to external evaluation and increased their willingness to communicate in English. It is not uncommon for university students in Japan, who are otherwise proficient speakers of English and motivated to learn, fail to exhibit English competency in real communication…

This article examines how healthcare professionals use encouragement. Focusing on GAMBARU ["to try hard"], forty-one scenes were collected from healthcare manga. Each scene of encouragement was analyzed from three perspectives; the contextual background of the communication, the relationship with the patients and the patients' response to the…

The main purposes of this study are: (a) to identify the constructs that may generate communication apprehension and to investigate how they influence communication apprehension and reduce the level of willingness to communicate; and (b) to explore the basic mentality underlying these constructs. The data were obtained from semi-structured…