This study was an investigation into the aural and written receptive knowledge of the English semantics of English lexis that is loanwords in the Japanese language and the predictive strength of the variables of semantic distance, concreteness/abstractness, polysemy, phonological distance, number of syllables, number of phonemes, number of letters, part of speech (POS), English Frequency, and frequency in Japanese in relation to accurate semantic knowledge. The participants (N = 215) were first- and second-year, non-English majors at a large university in Western Japan. The participants were from 10 intact English classes focused on reading, writing, and communication skills. Data were collected using eight instruments: the Listening Vocabulary Levels Test, Aural Loanword Test, Aural Non-Loanword Test, New Vocabulary Levels Test, Written Loanword Test, Written Non-Loanword Test, and Japanese Loanword Frequency Rating Task. Additionally, data were collected from five Japanese L1 speakers highly proficient at English on the Semantic Distance Rating Task. The data were first analyzed using the Rasch dichotomous model to examine instrument reliability and validity as well as to transform the data into Rasch person ability estimates and Rasch item ability estimates. Pearson correlations were used to determine the strength of the relationship between loanwords and non-loanwords. Repeated-measures ANOVA—with follow up t-tests were used to determine the differences between the four semantic tests: the Aural Loanword Test, the Aural Non-Loanword Test, the Written Loanword Test, and the Written Non-Loanword Test. Four multiple linear regression analyses were conducted using the predictor variables semantic distance, concreteness/abstractness, phonological distance, number of syllables, number of phonemes, number of letters, part of speech, English Frequency, and frequency in Japanese. The results of the Pearson analyses showed strong correlations between the aural and written loanword and non-loanword measures. This finding indicated that the participants’ knowledge of loanwords was relatively equivalent to their knowledge of non-loanwords. The results of the comparison between aural and written loanword knowledge showed that written knowledge of loanwords was greater than aural knowledge of loanwords. Further comparisons between the loanword and non-loanword tests showed that receptive aural non-loanword knowledge was greater than aural loanword knowledge, and that written non-loanword knowledge was greater than written loanword knowledge. These comparisons showed that English semantic knowledge of loanwords was less accurate than that of non-loanwords, which implied that the accurate acquisition of English semantic knowledge of loanwords was impeded by Japanese L1 lexical knowledge. The results of the multiple regressions indicated that the only substantial predictor of lexical acquisition for both loanwords and non-loanwords in both modalities (aural and written) was English Frequency. Although the effect size of English frequency was substantial, it was less so on the aural and written loanword measures. This finding implied that English linguistic gains of repeated exposure were most likely muted by entrenched L1 semantic knowledge. Overall, the results showed that loanwords are generally acquired with greater difficulty than non-loanwords and that they should not always be considered a form of receptive knowledge of English lexis. / Applied Linguistics

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This critical multi-case study involves a group of migrant eikaiwa (English conversation) school teachers in Japan. The purpose of the study was to investigate the teachers’ positions and treatment in the commercial English language teaching (ELT) sector and their adaptation to their work environment and the host country, through applying the concepts of capital, habitus, and field. The issues of who should be employed as teachers, to whom learners should be exposed to as model language users, and whose English should be taught that are problematized in this study have implications beyond the commercial ELT industry. This study also sheds light on the eikaiwa industry’s practices, in particular regarding teacher recruitment and marketing. The study is timely because the impact of this industry has grown significantly as the formal educational sector has increased the outsourcing of ELT courses to the commercial sector in recent years. Teachers from private language academies have been dispatched to high schools and universities, which has blurred the line between the commercial sector and formal educational institutions. The core cases investigated in the study were six multilingual native and nonnative English-speaking migrant teachers from diverse national, ethnic, and socio-cultural backgrounds. For triangulation purposes, data were collected not only in individual interviews and emails exchanged with the six core participants, but also from interviews and emails with 10 managers and private language academy owners, 13 teachers who were noncore participants, and from eikaiwa job postings. Managers and school owners, mainly male native English speakers, were included for their perspectives and insights into the sector, in particular, staffing decisions and marketing, to which most teachers were not privy. Data analysis draws on Bourdieusian “thinking tools” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 160), with the focus on gains, losses, and conversions of different types of capital and manifestations and transformations of teachers’ habitus in new fields. Capital here refers to convertible resources that people have access to, such as educational degrees and social connections. Habitus is one’s “feel for the game” (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 25) that influences an individual’s perceptions and behavior (Bourdieu, 2000, pp. 86-87). The participants’ habitus was a driving force that strongly affected their adaptation to the eikaiwa industry and Japan. However, habitus did not operate independently on its own. It functioned in interplay with capital and the field that rejected some but embraced other teachers. Participants’ English as a first language, Western cultural background, and White race, which were positively evaluated in their ELT contexts in Japan, influenced the way the participants were treated in the industry and resulted in different outcomes for them. The native English-speaking teachers of Asian descent were racially discriminated, but they relatively easily found ELT work because of their nationalities and native English-speaking status. The nonnative English-speaking participants who were also people of color were discriminated against not only based on their race and nationality. They were also discriminated against because of their nonnative English-speaking status. In contrast, White nonnative English-speaking participants were frequently rejected because of their first language and nationality. Due to the insecure nature of contract work and few opportunities for career development in the commercial sector, most participants were unable to build stable careers in ELT. Whereas some had limited success in finding an administrative position within the commercial sector, most participants felt trapped in it, unable to gain substantial convertible capital during their teaching years. The participants’ choices regarding their employment and further migration were partly determined by the stakeholders in the field, and outcomes widely varied for the participants. By the end of the study, two nonnative English-speaking participants left ELT and Japan. Two native English speakers found non-teaching work in Japan. One native and one nonnative English-speaking participant, both female, continued teaching even though their ELT jobs were not their ultimate professional goals. / Teaching & Learning

Japanese who travel outside Japan in their childhood or adolescence, and then return to the Japanese educational system, are referred to in Japan as kikokushijo [帰国子女] or returnee students. In this year-long narrative analysis study I focus on three such students in their first year at a gaikokugo daigaku [(外国語大学) foreign language university] in Japan. My purpose is to explore their life stories, including their experiences abroad as children, their returns, and their choices and experiences in their university education. Data gathering includes multiple, in-depth, semi-structured interviews, field notes based on my own post-interview reflections, classroom experiences and interviews, and written texts in the form of participants’ emails and online social networking posts. Using sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s (1992) primary thinking tools (p. 160) of field, capital, and habitus, I examine to what degree the participants’ perceptions of their lives and life trajectories fit into what they see as possible or appropriate. I consider participants’ views on the promise of realizing themselves as “global citizens” at the foreign language university, their attitudes toward Japan and Japaneseness, and the prospect of going abroad again. I attempt to help fill the gaps of the lack of studies of returnees at foreign language universities, the lack of studies focusing on emergent international studies programs in Japanese universities, as well as a lack of studies examining the perspectives of individual returnees. Employing narrative re-storying, I present the participants’ stories chronologically in consecutive chapters, covering their early youth through their first times abroad, then into their first year in university, following this with a thematic analysis of the stories using Bourdieu’s sociological lens. I found that the participants possessed different social, cultural, and economic capital at each stage, including in their host situations when abroad, and this affected both how they experienced their sojourns, and their re-acclimation after they returned. On enrollment to the foreign language university, they felt the institution served as a sanctuary of sorts from the wider social field of Japan, and a staging ground for a longed-for return to living overseas. The desire to exit the social and wider fields of Japan was common among the three participants. / Teaching & Learning