My Third Presentation at JASELE

Today, I gave my presentation for the third time at Showa Women University. Presentation's topic was learner's belief and thier relationships with their English proficiency. It was good experience. I have been involved in working in high school, and have not focus on academic things. Thus, it was a great opportunity to get me back to academic stuffs. The experience remotivated me toward studying and researching. Everytime I gave presentation, I was able to receive meaningful feedback. This time, the teacher I respeced gave me insightful and encouraging comments and hints. It was very kind of him to do that. I was thankful to those who gave me those comments and hints. Moreover, I was able to meet other people related to HELES thanks to a broad-minded teacher I respected at what is called 'Konshin-Kai' held at 1st day's evening.
Even if I am busy, it is important to schedule this kind of presentation at the beggining of a school year in advance, and give some efforts to participate them. That was what I learned and keep on doing from now on!

Reference on Belief

Belief
Brown, J. D., Robson, G., & Rosenkjar, P.R. (2001). Personality, motivation, anxiety, strategies, and language proficiency of Japanese students. In Z, Dornyei & R. Schmidt (Eds.), Motivation and second language acquisition. (Technical Report #23, pp. 361-398). Honolulu.

Cantwell, R.H. (1988). The development of beliefs about learning from mid-to-late adolescence. Educational Psychology, 18(1), 27-39.

Dornyei,Z (2001) Teaching and researching motivation London: Pearson Education Ltd.

Horwitz, E.K. (1987). Surveying student beliefs about language learning. In A.

Wenden & J. Rubin (Eds.), Learner Strategies in Language Learning. (pp.119-129). Prentice Hall.

Horwitz, E.K. (1988). The beliefs about language learning of beginning university foreign language students. The Modern Language Journal, 72, 283-294.

Irie, K.(2003). What do we know about the language learning motivation of university students in Japan? Some patterns in survey studies. JALT Journal, 25(1), 86-100.

Kern, R.G.(1995). Students’ and teachers’ beliefs about language learning. Foreign Language Annals, 28, 71-92.

Nakayama, A, Ochiai, M, Inada, K, Mori, M, & Kuramoto, K. (2004). The gap between teachers’ and learners’ beliefs. In K. Bradford-Watts, C. Ikeguchi, & M. Swanson (Eds.), JALT 2004 Conference Proceedings. Tokyo: JALT.

Okazaki, H. (1996). Kyoujuhou no jugyo ga jukousei no motsu gengokakusyuu ni tsuite no kakushin ni oyobosu kouka [Effects of a method course for pre-service teachers on beliefs on language learning. Journal of Japanese Language Teaching, 89, 25-38.

Richardson, V. (1996). The role of attitudes and beliefs in learning to teach. In Sikula, J. (ed.), Handbook of research on teacher education, Second edition. (pp. 102-119). New York: Macmillan.

Schommer, M. (1994). An emerging conceptualization of epistemological beliefs and their role in learning. In R. Garner & P.A. Alexander (Eds.), Beliefs about text and instruction with text. Hillsdale, NJ: Eribaum.

Shimoyama, Y, Isoda, T, & Yamamori, K. (2002). Learner beliefs in language learning in the CALL environment. JALT Journal, 24(2), 155-166.

Suzuki, S.(2004, November). Japanese teachers’ beliefs about learning and teaching. Paper presented at the second international conference of ASIA TEFL. Seoul, South Korea.

Suzuki, S, & Wada, T. (2004, November). Survey on Japanese learners’ beliefs about language learning. Paper presented at the second international conference of ASIA TEFL. Seoul, South Korea.

Takayama.Y (2004) Learner belief strength and English language proficiency of Japanese female university students. Rikkyo University　Journal of Language and the Humanities, 21-35

Weinstein, C.S. (1989). Teacher education: Students’ pre-conceptions of teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 40(2), 53-60.

L2 Motivation articles

Oxfor, R. and Shearin, J. (1994). Language learning motivation: Expanding the theoretical framework. The Modern Language Journal 78(1) Spring 12-28
This articles was not for indicating the result of a research, but for displaying overall summary of L2 motivation research. It address components that make us feel difficult to understand L2 motivation issues, and points out necessities to pay our attention to fruits various psychology brings such as psychology, cognitive, and developmental psychology as well as sociological psychology that has had major impact on L2 motivation literature. A variety of theories are also explained in this article beginning from Piaget and Vygotsky.

Dornyei, Z. (1994). Motivation and motivating in the foreign language classroom. The modern language journal 78(3) Autumn, 273-284

This article also summarizes a variety of issues regarding to L2 motivation from integrative/instrumental motivation through extrinsic/intrinsic motivation self-confidence, to self-determination and proximal goal-setting theory, as well as cognitive psychology theory like self-efficacy, attribution, self-confidence, need for achievement theory. Among the explanation, the part about limitation of social and pragmatic dimensions of L2 motivation clearly indicate the nature of L2 motivation. "the exact nature of the social and pragmatic dimensions of L2 motivation is always dependent on who learns what languages where"(p, 275).

He then categorize those complicated issues into three levels, 1) Language Level (social dimension), 2) Learner Level (personal dimension) and 3) Learning Situation Level (educational dimension). He moreover divide the Learning Situation Level into three subcategories, (1) course-specific, 2) teacher-specific and 3) group-specific motivational components. He ends this article with lots of implication teachers can use based on the results of researches that has been conducted.

His articles are always systematic and express his statements simply. It is be case he is smart of course, but maybe partly because English is his L2.

Dorney, Z. (1990) Conceptualizing Motivation in Foreign-Language learning. Language Learning 40(1) 45-78.

In the research conducted in Hungary, he extracted factors as motivating components for Foreign language learning, that is different from those extracted in the context of second language acquisition (learning). He extracted 1) instrumental motivation, 2) integrative motivation, 3) need for achievement, and 4) attributions about past failures. According to him, 2) was divided into four sub components, and 2) is a bit different typical integrative motivation found in second language acquisition (learning ) context. Moreover, he examined correlation between learners' desired proficiency and the factors, and found out learners who desired high proficiency has integrative motivation, wheres learners who desired limited proficiency has instrumental motivation.

This articles not only indicated intriguing results mentioned above, but also precise data and questionnaire, which is helpful for readers.

Questionnaires I can pass out to students

Recently, I have collected questionnaires I and other teachers can pass out to students to collect data on which we can establish suitable curriculum for our students.

Horwitz E, Horwitz M and Cope J.(1986).Foreign language classroom anxiety. The modern language journal 70(2), 125-132
They came up with scale to measure anxiety in language learning classroom called FLCAS(Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale), arguing anxiety students feel in language learning classroom as "a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process (p,128)".

Oxford R and Nyikos M. (1989). Variables affecting choices of language learning strategies by university students. The modern language journal 73(3), 291-300
They conducted a large scale of research with 1200 participants in a university in U.S. to examine their strategies using SILL(Strategy Inventory for Language Learning), analzed data with ANOVA and found that several background such as (gender, major, years of study, course status, proficiency, and motivation)have some relationships with SILL score(perhaps mean scores of each Factor extracted from Factor Analysis). For example, female tend to use more strategies than male do, or strategy students use is different dependeing on their major. Though they did not examine the data precisely(for example, they did not analyzed interaction effect of like course status and motivation, the analysis itself is interesting!

Brown, J,D, Gordon, R and Rosenkjar P.(2001). Personality, motivation anxiety, strategies, and language proficiency of Japanese students. In X.Dornyei & R.Schmidt (Eds.), Motivation and second languor acquisition. Honolulu.
They also conducted a large scale of research using a variety of measurement like FLACAS, A/MTB, SILL,Y/G Personality Inventory, Michigan test and Cloze test to homogeneous participants (students in TUJ IELP program).Since i have not learned discriminant function analysis, i could not fully understand the data. But they found that anxiety correlated with social extraversion, and high proficiency in Japanese students. That result is different from that in other countries, but it is consistent with some researches conducted in Japan like (Kimura, Nakata and Okumura 2001 JALT journal, anxiety was extracted as a factor to motivate them in high school students, junior college students and science majoring students ).

L2 Motivation Studies articles

Tremblay and Gardner (1995)Expanding the motivation construct in language learning (The Modern Language Journal 79(4) Winter 1995 505-518) expand the construct of motivation in learning language from Gardner's (1985)original construct, adding valence, goal salience, self-efficacy, foreign language dominance, and the like. However, they confirm that original model(Gardner, 1985)explaining the integrative motivation is valid.

Clement, Dornyei, and Noels(1994) Motivation,self-confidence ,and group cohesion in the foreign language classroom (Language learning 44(3) Sptember 1994 417-448) conduct a motivation research at EFL environment (Hungary) and find that integrative orientation(motivation) is rejected as a strong factor to have an effect on students' motivation, and linguistic self confidence and Appraisal of classroom environment turned out to be a big factor to foreign language behavior and competence and vise versa (They refer to correlation with each other, not causal one).

Gardner,R.C.(2001). Public lecture at Temple University Japan is summary of lecture at TUJ. He reviews many researches in L2 learning motivation in terms of concept of past, present, and future. This article is interesting because various personal narrative is inserted and basic figure and data can been seen there. It is also helpful to use it as a sort of compass to pursue motivation research.

Dornyei and Otto (1998)Working papers in applied linguistics, Thames Valley University, London, Vol4, 43-69 criticize the existing construct of L2 motivation due to its reductionist paradigm, tendency to explain learner's action in a static state. In other words, they argue that L2 motivation is more complex and dynamic process. About this issue, Dorneyi (2000) discuss that time is one of the most challenging tasks motivation researchers have to address in order to account for the diachronic nature of motivation.

EIKEN(STEP) Research

I browsed several articles from STEP site. They give me a useful hints for me to find out some interesting topics to implement in secondary level.

The first interesting topic is about Vocabulary. Research about analyzing learners' corpus, and comparing words of textbooks and NRT test such as Center Test, EIKEN, TOEIC, and TOEFL, is what i am now interested in. Dr.Tono's site seems insightful, and Center Test soft data is available here.

The second one is about Reading. Though reading is primal area high school teacher teach, empirical testing about reading seems hard. Some articles from this Eiken Research did not give me reliable info becausae of many many variables they could not control. But WPM(Word Per Minute) and ER(Extensive Reading) is one of what i would like to try and research in high school context.

The third one is about Motivation. At first until recently, i thought motivation is peripheral area for language learning/teaching, and this area is not what language teacher focuse on to research, but it turnds out this area is interesting in terms of first, testing/researching to make a construct of target students motivation, and second, how the result obtained can be applicable to actual teaching. For example Dr.Hiromori's article provides me with hints about the relationships between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. He reevaluate the importance of extrinsic motivation, which is just what i have thought for a long time. His research satisfy both the two needs on motivation research i said above.

The last one is about evaluation/testing. Dr.Yamamori's research about evaluation using Genenarizability Theory is really insightful for me. Generalizability seems to be useful for evaluation of writing activity as we can see at Mr.Yamanishi's article and Ms.Okubo's article.

I would like to keep those interesting topics in mind when teaching English, and adjust those topics into my teaching contexts to come up with helpful research ideas both for me and other researchers/teachers.

L2 motivation in EFL environment

I have been reading several articles about L2 motivation to write short lit review on my paper. Though Dr. Gardner points out integrative motivation as essential component toward L2 learning, Dr. Dornyei argues elements making up of integrative motivation is a bit different from that in ESL environment. Dornyei comments the existence of sort of instrumental orientation generating strong motivation toward L2 learning, but he also asserts that these strong orientation in EFL environment like in Hungary is socially and culturally contextualized. Moreover, he refers to imporance of group dynamics as a factor to help students enthusiastically learn L2 in EFL countries, which encourage us teachers to motivatingly teach English as a foreign language like in Japan.

Motivation researches are hard for me because of many usage of statistical techniques. But it helps me to remember what i learned in stats class in grad school.

Back to Work- Vocabulary /Motivation/ Writing

Back to work.
Though i was feeling relaxed too much after a graduation test, i back to work these days.

Thanks for starting a class on Vocabulary, i begin to read some articles in a reading packet.
1) the vocabulary size for effective conversation in English is a bit larger (3000) than was expected before(2000), 2)Technical vocabulary is not just in vocabulary in Academic Word List or low-frequency vocabulary, but is hidden even in high-frequency vocabulary. 3) Validity and reliability of Nation's Vocabulary Level Test is successfuly confirmed using various stats. Three articles are all include not only professional and academic skills and knowlege to explore, but some implication teachers can elicit.

I woud like to add some lit review about L2 motivation to my body parts of the reseach paper i finished. Though it is hard to take steps to download various articles ( i'm in the middle of accessing the service TUJ offers), i begin to read some articles about L2 motivation. But i cannot see now how the lit review directly connect to "purpose of research" section in my paper. hahaha.

I would like to contribute to a presentation that would be given at Writing Symposium held in Japan this fall. So i begin to read some articles about writing and computer. Though it is tough to read something most of which is new to me, i would deal with it hoping it would be smoother to do that.

The three things will make up of my life academically until i go back to Hokkaido. I'll do my best.