The availability of user-friendly coding software is increasing, yet teachers might hesitate to use this technology to develop for educational needs. This paper discusses studies related to technology for educational uses and introduces an evaluation application being developed. Through questionnaires by student users and open-ended discussion by…

This study explores the role voice microblogging-based activities play in developing learners' spoken production skills. The study involved 33 low-intermediate level university students majoring in English at a private university in Japan. The voice microblogging application used in the study was Bubbly, a cross-platform social networking…

This practical paper discusses the effect of explicit instruction to raise Japanese EFL learners' pragmatic awareness using online discourse completion tasks. The five-part tasks developed by the authors use American TV drama scenes depicting particular speech acts and include explicit instruction in these speech acts. 46 Japanese EFL college…

Recent studies of learner interaction in virtual worlds have tended to select basic tasks involving open-ended communication. There is evidence that such tasks are supportive of language acquisition, however it may also be beneficial to consider more complex tasks. Research in task-based learning has identified features such as non-linguistic…

The use of social networking systems has enabled communication to occur around the globe almost instantly, with news about various events being spread around the world as they happen. There has also been much interest in the benefits and disadvantages the use of such social networking systems may bring for education. This paper reports on the use…

This study explores asynchronous online discussions as a learning strategy for Japanese EFL students from various perspectives. A text analysis of learner posts and replies was performed to determine the quantity, quality, and accuracy of the written language produced. Student participation rates during all four online exchanges were measured to…

This study investigates how native-speaker English teachers working at Japanese universities use the Internet in their classes. In 2008, 50 instructors completed a survey about their teaching-related use of the Internet; another group of 50 was polled in 2012. The respondents were asked about their teaching situations, whether they used…