This study attempts to reveal the implementation and use of attitude appraisal to enhance students’ critical-review writing skills. The students were asked to write a critical review of a journal they had read; however, before they started to write the text, they were introduced to and trained on how to use appraisal items including affect, judgment, and appreciation. The data of this study were thirty-nine students’ critical-review writings, which were analyzed using the appraisal framework suggested by Martin and White (2005). The results of this study reveal that most students were able to give a critical review of the journal they had read. Judgment was the type of appraisal most used by students. It deals with behavior that students admire or criticize, praise or condemn. In addition, it was seen that students’ perceptions of the journal varied based on the use of affect, judgment, and appreciation.

The Japanese government launched their new English language education system for Japanese public elementary schools in the 2020 academic year. In the near future, it is anticipated that English classes will be conducted more by homeroom teachers, who are possibly less experienced in teaching English, due to the limited budget and insufficient number of English language professionals in Japanese public elementary schools. One policy the Japanese government has recently promoted is the application of picture books. The aim of this presentation is to provide a platform that enables those novice teachers to utilize categorization charts that the presenter developed for picture books. The platform expedites the process for selecting appropriate picture books as well as their supplementary materials and creating relevant language-learning activities for English lessons. The presenter also seeks to extend this project involving university students as well as local educators of young learners throughout Japan.

These days, many students need to study academic English before they are at an advanced level. Teachers are expected to help develop academic literacy skills in students who have not yet had the chance to build a strong foundation of English proficiency. This presentation will focus on the classroom realities of effectively teaching lower-proficiency students (< CEFR B2) in time-limited, academic contexts and how teachers meet these challenges. To explore what techniques and approaches teachers use for teaching academic English in high-expectation settings, practices backed by research findings (e.g., corpus-determined academic word lists) were gauged by how much impact and acceptance they had among self-reported academic English teachers working with pre-intermediate and intermediate level learners. Quantitative data was used to see what experienced teachers do in the classroom to help learners be academic users of English while a deductive reasoning approach was used to examine why certain classroom techniques pervade.

Soliloquizing has been identified as oral fluency training practice in Chinese after-school settings. Nevertheless, the actual potency of soliloquizing has not been established; in particular, whether soliloquizing is effective in promoting EFL learners’ fluency in spontaneous speech has yet to be validated. This study set out to establish the efficacy of soliloquizing in promoting spontaneous speaking fluency and to explore its optimal implementation setting(s). 31 EFL undergraduates were randomly assigned to four soliloquizing conditions, which differed in terms of time-pressure and restriction of filler words. To examine participants’ gains under the four soliloquizing conditions, their pruned speech rates before and after the treatment were cross-compared. Additionally, questionnaires and interviews were administered to these participants to probe their experience with soliloquizing. Analysis showed that soliloquizing effectively enhanced the participants’ affect and fluency gains, albeit to different extents under different implementation conditions.

Language learning apps are increasingly important study tools. With millions of learners worldwide, Duolingo is one of the most popular such apps. A 2012 study by Vesselinov and Grego stated that beginning learners of Spanish gained the equivalent of a semester's worth of study in 34 hours of Duolingo use. Can Japanese university students make the same gains in English? This study tested 75 first-year students with the TOEIC Bridge test, a common standardized test, before and after 14 weeks of Duolingo use. A linear regression found that the app provided only a tiny average increase to TOEIC scores, indicating that it is not highly effective. Possible reasons for this result, discrepancies between this and other studies, and suggestions for further research will be discussed.