Learning a foreign language can be challenging. If the learning environment is compulsory, motivation can also contribute to the struggles. Mindfulness, a psychological construct, is a robust topic in the academic literature. Mindfulness is a mindset that views the world from multiple perspectives, reorganizing what is perceived, focusing on the present moment and keeping open to new ideas (Langer, 1997). Moreover, mindfulness is claimed to increase interest and academic outcomes. Therefore, the construct was employed in this research to validate these claims and to contribute to second language education. This study was designed to fill several gaps in the second language acquisition (SLA) literature. First, the construct of mindfulness has not been explored in SLA as a mindset to engage students in learning. Second, the construct of interest has not been investigated in SLA in tandem with mindfulness. Lastly, mindfulness has never been employed with motivated or unmotivated high school students in the compulsory education system in Japan. The following research hypotheses and research question were investigated: (a) The treatment group receiving the mindful tasks will outperform the comparison group receiving normal foreign language instruction on vocabulary learning and reading comprehension measures; (b) The treatment group receiving mindful tasks would be more engaged, interested, and like English more than before. Increased interest will lead to improvements in language performance; and, (c) To what extent do mindful practices assist low-achieving proficiency high school students in enhancing their abilities? The participants were students attending a private high school in Japan. Both the treatment and comparison groups included 45 female and 34 male students, respectively, for a total of 79 participants. A Rasch analysis was utilized to confirm the validity and reliability of the mindfulness and interest questionnaires and to transform the raw scores into equal interval measures. MANOVA, ANOVA and Pearson correlation coefficient data were analyzed to ascertain differences between groups and within groups for all tests and constructs measured. The results indicated that mindfulness was not a significant influence on improved outcomes in language performance for the treatment group, although the descriptive statistics did show small gains in the hypothesized direction. The dependent variables included the mindfulness and interest questionnaires, as well as vocabulary and reading comprehension questions. The independent variable was the mindfulness tasks. The dependent variables were vocabulary and reading comprehension measures. The results of the MANOVA were the treatment effect was not significant, F(2,81) = .397, p < .67, η2 = .01. The results of the ANOVA were the treatment effect was not significant, F(1,82) = .82, p < .77, η2 =. 001. There was also no significant correlation between increased mindfulness and increased interest. Out of the six factors, all except for sensitivity to new contexts, showed negative relationships. The only positive relationship was not significant. Lastly, a one-way repeated measures ANOVA showed no improvement for the low-proficiency treatment group, ∧= .30, F(2,18) = 1.30, p < .30, η2 = .13, over time. The effect of mindfulness on improved language performance outcomes might have been influenced by the following: shallow levels of processing, lack of clear goals for the participants, unclear task design protocols, working memory issues and environmental restraints. A lack of correlation between increases in mindfulness and interest gains might have been attributable by the compulsory nature of the course, time constraints and the lack of perceived utility of the tasks by the part pants. Lastly, the reason for the lack of improvement for the low-achieving proficiency participants might not be an issue of proficiency, because both the low- and high-achieving participants of the treatment condition did not improve. Overall, these findings suggest that mindfulness is more nuanced and more complex than originally expected. / Teaching & Learning

This dissertation is a combination of two manuscripts. By using autoethnography in manuscript one, this study first reflects on my learning English as a foreign language journey and the influences that brought to my life. The seven stories in this study cover many aspects of foreign language education, including teaching contents, teaching methods, and teacher preparation. Through the lens of autoethnography, I will further explore factors that influence foreign language education. Through detailed analysis, I discover language learning is not isolated. Foreign language teaching and learning will be influenced by economy, politics, cultures, and society. Based on these findings, I ask many thought-provoking questions on foreign language education, such as teaching contents and teaching methods. Manuscript two is traditional qualitative research using ethnographic methods. I use in-depth interviews to explore teachers' beliefs and practices of one supervisor and three foreign language teachers. I first present findings on their beliefs and practices in foreign language teaching and learning, including changes and challenges in the division's language education and foreign language teachers' beliefs and practices and their alignment with the ACTFL Standards. I will also use the ACTFL Standards as a lens to analyze how their beliefs and practices match with the 5Cs: Communication, cultures, connections, comparisons, communities. Finally, I will provide suggestions for future similar studies. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation is a combination of two manuscripts. Manuscript one reflects on the author's journey learning English as a foreign language and the influences that had brought to her life. The seven stories in this study cover many aspects in foreign language education, including teaching content, teaching methods, and teachers' preparation. The author further explores the causes and other related factors in foreign language education. Through detailed analysis, the author discovers language learning is not isolated. Foreign language teaching and learning will be influenced by economy, politics, cultures, and society. Manuscript two is traditional qualitative research using ethnographic methods. The author uses interviews to explore teachings beliefs and practices of one supervisor and three foreign language teachers. She provides suggestions for future studies.

Beginning in April 2020, the Japanese government continued its English education language policy reform by introducing foreign language instruction as an academic subject for Grade 5 and Grade 6 students. The purpose of this study was to investigate how stakeholders across the education system have contended with policy creation, policy interpretation, and policy appropriation in public elementary school classrooms. Using a conceptual framework of ethnography of language policy and open systems theory, this multiple case study was designed to investigate policy as text, policy as discourse, and policy as classroom practice. In order to achieve these aims I used qualitative methods of data collection that included content analysis of policy documents, and interviews with national policymakers, educational authorities from local Boards of Education, school principals, and classroom teachers. In addition, observations of English lessons at three public elementary schools within the same prefecture were analyzed to understand how the schools approached policy implementation and how close did the teachers’ appropriation of EFL lessons correspond with the goals of the 2020 Course of Study. The 2020 Elementary School Course of Study established English as an academic subject for students in Grades 5 and 6. An analysis of the policy documents revealed positive changes in the realignment of the purpose and aims of education from elementary school through high school. In addition, the 2020 Course of Study introduces an updated assessment framework for teaching and learning across all subjects for elementary school, junior high school and high school. However, how English is conceptualized and integrated into the national curriculum appears in places not to match some of the new aims of the 2020 Course of Study and uses ambivalent terms, such as language activities with little guidance for teachers on how to teach English. The interviews with participants provided insights from various stakeholders on their beliefs and experiences towards educational language policy creation, transmission, and implementation. A total of 72 interviews were conducted for this study. National-level policymakers and advisors spoke of the politics during policy formulation. In addition, discursive struggles between conservative and progress views of education and foreign language education also influenced policymakers’ objectives. A discourse of expertise, which restricted agency and voice for certain participants, also emerged from the interview data. All of these points and others created a situation where policy implementation took on a form of bricolage. During the 17 months of field work at the three participating schools, 58 lessons were observed, recorded, and analyzed. The findings from the classroom observations revealed that each school’s approach to implementing English as a subject in Grades 5 and 6 changed each year. Teachers had difficulties navigating shifting discourses towards English lessons, along with understanding new and ambiguous terminology towards teaching practices and assessment. The findings showed that teachers were generally meeting the goals of the 2020 English Course of Study; however, the teaching of reading and listening were problematic for many teachers. The discussion section comprises implications for future policy creation and implementation, classroom pedagogy, and the theoretical implications. The intended audience for this investigation includes stakeholders interested in applied linguistics, language policy and planning, comparative education, and Japanese studies. This study contributes to the research on educational language policy and our understanding that policy is more than declaring and seeking particular outcomes, but a consistently evolving process with conflicting discourses and ideologies. This study adds to our understanding how the structure of Japan’s education system and the social organization of the schools can enable and inhibit certain stakeholders positioned across the education system. Lastly, this study contributes to our understanding of what it means to be an English teacher in Japan’s public elementary school schools. / Applied Linguistics

This study is a longitudinal study that investigated the development of English oral proficiency—complexity, accuracy, and fluency—under the pre-task and on-line planning conditions with task repetition among Japanese high school students. This study is unique because it is longitudinal and includes qualitative data. The participants were 15 Japanese high school students whose English proficiency level is categorized as low proficiency. Narrative tasks, post-task questionnaires, journals, and interviews were used in this study. In the narrative tasks, they were asked to describe a four-picture story three times with two minutes planning time, when they were allowed to listen to an ALT (assistant language teacher) tell the story and take notes. They completed a post-task questionnaire and a journal after completing the task. Interviews were conducted two times to further investigate their questionnaire responses and what they wrote in their journal entries. The results showed that low proficiency learners increased oral fluency, syntactic complexity, lexical complexity, and syntactic accuracy through repeating the same task within a single session, and syntactic complexity and lexical complexity through repeating the same type of task during the academic year. The aural input between the first, second, and third performance can lead them to draw their attention to form-meaning connections, resulting in increased oral performance. In addition, low and intermediate beginners benefited in increasing oral fluency, syntactic complexity, and syntactic accuracy, while high beginners benefited in improving oral fluency and lexical complexity under pre-task and on-line planning conditions with repetition during the academic year. The study suggests that the combined use of pre-task planning, on-line planning, and task repetition have a cumulative effect and can facilitate the development of oral fluency, syntactic complexity, lexical complexity, and syntactic accuracy for low proficiency high school learns of English. If learners are given the opportunity to plan before and during task performance with repetition, and to make the condition that draws their attention to both form and meaning, it is the most effective strategy to improve oral fluency, syntactic complexity, lexical complexity, and syntactic accuracy in task-based teaching in the classrooms. / Language Arts

by Mo Ping-kui. / Includes bibliographical references / Thesis (M.Ph.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1986

In recent years, foreign language program evaluation has gained greater attention among language educators, program administrators, and evaluators. Increased demands for demonstrated program performance, often motivated by external forces, such as accreditation pressures and decisions regarding the allocation of funding, have led to heightened focus on foreign language program evaluation practices, methodologies, and results. Despite this increased attention, there are few published evaluation studies within the field of foreign language learning that have examined foreign language program effectiveness over time. This longitudinal study was designed to quantitatively investigate the performance of one Japanese university English for Academic Purposes (EAP) program over the 20-year span of the program’s existence. Quantitative evaluation methodologies and advanced statistical procedures were utilized to examine changes in student English proficiency, as measured by the Institutional Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL ITP) and English achievement, as measured by four semesters of EAP course grades, as students progressed through the two-year program. Twenty cohorts of students (cohort n-sizes ranging from approximately 250 to 550 students) were included in this study. The comprehensive data set included three repeated-measures of the TOEFL ITP and four English achievement grade point averages (GPAs) for each of the 20 cohorts. The research questions for this expansive longitudinal study addressed two levels of inquiry. First, at the program-global level, this study sought to investigate patterns of English proficiency change within and between cohorts across the life of the program, and the extent that programmatic events and external influences might have impacted those patterns. For this investigation, TOEFL ITP results for three proficiency domains—listening, grammar, and reading—were chronologically charted for the 20 cohorts and time-series analyses were conducted. The results indicated that all cohorts demonstrated significant gains in the three proficiency domains by the end of the two-year program. However, the overall trends across the program’s 20-year history revealed gradual negative trajectories for grammar and reading proficiency. Events that were hypothesized to have influenced proficiency patterns were tested, including (a) the addition of a new department specialization, (b) changes to department admissions, (c) the entrance of students who experienced new national reforms at the secondary education level, and (d) department expansion. While listening proficiency patterns were unaffected, grammar and reading proficiency trends were negatively impacted by the start of the new specialization and changes to admissions procedures. The entrance of students who had experienced secondary educational changes had an initial negative impact on the grammar trend, but positive grammar and reading proficiency trends emerged from that point onward. It was speculated that these events, as well as larger population trends impacting Japanese universities, led to gradual shifts in program student demographics, which contributed to the observed changes in proficiency patterns. Also of interest was an examination of the concept of English achievement coherence—or the extent that student English achievement, as measured by English course grade point averages (GPAs)—can be used to assess course interrelatedness. English course GPA data was used to statistically derive three rival achievement coherence metrics. These metrics were then tested separately, using hierarchical linear modeling techniques, to examine the extent that achievement coherence might serve to mediate any proficiency variation observed across the 20 cohorts. There were no significant findings for two of the metrics tested, while the third metric was found to have a significant negative effect for reading proficiency. This finding directly contradicted the hypothesized outcome that a greater amount of coherence would serve to facilitate proficiency development. Given the significant negative reading trend that emerged across the life of the program, this result might suggest that larger influences affecting student demographic changes could outweigh any potential facilitative effects of coherence on proficiency outcomes. Following the program-global analyses, the second level of inquiry was at the cohort-specific level. Individual cohorts that had demonstrated comparatively high and low listening and reading proficiency gains were selected for follow-up analyses. The aim was to examine if differences in coherence at the cohort level might account for the contrastive proficiency gains attained. For each target cohort, a recursive path model, including the program’s 16 English courses and final proficiency outcome, was tested to examine English achievement interrelatedness and contributions to the final proficiency outcome. A greater number of significant paths and larger final model R2 coefficient would suggest more coherence. Additionally, for each target cohort, grade residuals analyses using linear regression methods were conducted to investigate grading consistency at the course level. A greater number of outlying grade cases could indicate that the course assessment schemes were not followed, which would suggest less cohort coherence. The results of these analyses for the pairs of contrastive listening gain and reading gain cohorts were compared, but no significant differences were found. While these analytical methods were determined to be useful for ongoing formative evaluation processes, the resulting measures were likely too broad to capture any meaningful differences in coherence between cohorts at the program-global level. / Teaching & Learning

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

The purpose of this report is to inform foreign language (FL) educators about students with learning disabilities (LD) so that instruction can better serve their needs. It applies this to Spanish FL education in the United States, examining reading performance due to the role of reading in academic success and the prevalence of reading LD. The report outlines reading models and the cognitive processes within these approaches to explain how students read. With this understanding, the report examines LD, focusing on the role of phonemic awareness in L1 and FL reading. It analyzes reading instruction in English and Spanish in order to evaluate existing FL strategies and propose new interventions. From this report, educators should gain an understanding of how LD in reading impacts FL and how reading could be better addressed in the Spanish FL classroom. / text

This paper examines the use of humor in the foreign language classroom. Humor is an essential part of culture and a sociolinguistic phenomenon that speaks to the uniqueness of a language and culture. Thus, I argue that an application of humor as an educational objective as well as an educational strategy in the foreign language classroom is valuable in order to lower learners' anxiety and to foster language learning through an increase in culture and humor competences and critical thinking skills. First, I define humor and explore its linguistic functions as well as psychological features and effects that need to be understood to make humor an integral part of a foreign language learning setting. My theoretical research is primarily based on Raskin's Semantic Sript-based Theory of Humor and general theories of incongruity and ambiguity. I further illustrate the effects of using humor in the classroom with psychological research and Krashen's affective filter theory. I then relate the effects of humor to the National Standards of Foreign Language Learning (1996). Eventually in a case study I demonstrate how parodies, as a specific type of humor, can be implemented in the foreign language environment. This is done through the examination of the German film parody "Sieben Zwerge" and it supports my argument that humor deserves an autonomous place in foreign language education as an educational objective and strategy. Finally, I discuss pedagogical recommendations. This paper explores the opportunities and effects of an incorporation of humor in the foreign language classroom. / text

<p>Instructors of English as Second Language (ESL) at a private community college had raised concerns regarding Hispanic ESL students not developing sufficient English proficiency. The purpose of this single exploratory case study was to explore the phenomenon brought forward by ESL instructors and share the results with the ESL program and the college. The conceptual framework for this qualitative study was based on the classroom learning motivation theory suggesting that the environment in which a student is learning a new language also plays a major role in second language learning. Data collection was conducted through 3 ESL classroom observations and interviews with 15 community college students. A focus group with 7 different students was used to understand Hispanic ESL students? perspectives about their experience in the college-wide ESL program and issues students face in the ESL program. Data analysis consisted of thematic content analysis, constant comparison, and concurrent data collection and analysis until concept saturation occurred. The findings were that Hispanic ESL students were satisfied with the ESL program. Data triangulation formed 4 themes: students would like to use technology in the classroom, more instances for in-class conversation, to be corrected when they mispronounce a word, and have instructors who spoke Spanish. The recommendations include the creation of a policy to institutionalize professional development to help ESL teachers become aware of the issues that Hispanic ESL students face in the classroom in order to help students achieve English proficiency. This case study served as an example for other institutions to take the initiative learn how Hispanic ESL students perceive ESL instruction and filled the gap in research regarding Hispanic ESL students? perception of ESL programs.