This study aimed to examine university English Communication teachers' self-reports of teacher autonomy in terms of their own freedom to make decisions about the teaching and learning that occurs inside their classroom. Results showed that teacher self-perceptions of both general and curricular autonomy were high. There was some recognition that…

This study measures the perceptions of English language teachers at Japanese universities. It combines the results of online questionnaires on assessment practices and another one on teacher autonomy. Results suggest that according to teachers' self-reports of assessment practices, certain measures of assessment quality are being affected by the…

Within Japanese ELT, private conversation ("eikaiwa") schools are commonly viewed as the bottom rung of the professional ladder. In contrast to "eikaiwa's" marginalized position, language teaching in university is regarded as the pinnacle of the field's professional hierarchy (Nagatomo, 2016). The aim of this paper is to…

Motivation is one of the most popular topics on language teaching and learning. Many studies on language learning focus on students' motivation; however, teachers' motivation is easily overlooked in the area of the applied linguistics field. In this paper, the researcher presents a study to investigate how satisfied English teachers at private…

Literature from education, educational psychology and second language acquisition has consistently found that self-efficacy is a key factor leading to increased language learning success. Students with more self-efficacy are claimed to have higher motivation and to expend more effort in the learning process. On the other hand, those with less…

In this exploratory study, the author examines both students' and teachers' perceptions of Moxtra, a cross-platform cloud collaboration service, as a blended learning tool in a language course. Participants were 242 first-year students studying General English and 8 teachers at the Bunkyo English Communication Centre (BECC) at Hiroshima Bunkyo…

The topic of washback itself and how it applies to oral assessment procedures/contexts is a relevant and important topic for the field of English language teaching, and there have been a number of studies into oral washback in evaluation of students (Khan et al., 2019). Washback effect refers to the impact of testing--whether positive or…

This qualitative study, conducted in Hokkaido, Japan, concerns the investigation of the teacher cognition and practice of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) assessment and the impact of a professional development (PD) program on the participants. The PD program was carried out as a series of seven in-service workshops with five native speakers of…

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…

A survey investigated the attitudes of Japanese university students and their non-Japanese university teachers toward testing and the use of textbooks in their English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classroom. Subjects were 120 students and 13 native English-speaking instructors at 3 Japanese universities. Results reveal a gap in attitudes between the…

Situated in a Japanese university ELT context, this qualitative exploratory interview-based study offers insights into how ten teachers responded to the challenges of transitioning to emergency remote teaching (ERT). The research was conducted to understand the implications of pandemic-instigated educational changes on teaching practices and…

Cultural interference acknowledgement can be difficult to acknowledge. Student acknowledgment of cultural interference has been researched extensively, but teacher acknowledgement has not. The purpose of this multicase study is to examine teacher acknowledgement of cultural interference, to assess if they are aware of it, and to assist educators…

Factors and conditions that facilitate or retard international exchange in education and research at Japanese universities were studied, and Japanese higher education was assessed from the perspective of international openness. The following surveys were conducted: an Institutional Survey on International Exchange Programs in Japanese…

Four surveys conducted in Japan investigated teacher and student attitudes about second language instruction in large classes. The first three surveys, conducted at a university and at secondary and university teacher seminars in three cities, elicited information concerning actual and preferred class size, institutional policies concerning class…

Reaching a reading goal of 150,000 words in a semester is no easy feat for many language learners. To reach this goal, an extensive reading (ER) program needs to invest in and select a format that can best enable this achievement. This preliminary study compares the use of two different extensive reading (ER) formats that employ two learning…