This paper reports on a questionnaire survey carried out in the first and last classes of a single semester English 'conversation' class at a national uni versity in Japan. While the time frame is obviously limited, the project focuses on changes in attitude to using the Learners' Mother Tongue displayed by students with regards to use by both the teacher and the students themselves. It is my contention that after experience in high school the student is unsure of the rationale for English conversation, and therefore it is interesting to understand students' initial attitudes and to examine if and how attitudes have changed. By the administration of questionnaires it can be seen if learners are more positive towards the teaching approach adopted by their classroom teacher and thus they may become even more prepared to negotiate and use practical effective communicative strategies to overcome language deficiencies. The study will attempt to explain the results and discuss classroom implications.

A new reform movement in Japanese tertiary education has emerged which is more economy centered, more market sensitive, and more influenced by a government shift towards decentralization. With the dramatic decline in the 18 year old population, a buyer's market has led to the introduction of student evaluation of teaching surveys (SETs) partly as a measure student satisfaction. This is not without debate, and this study seeks to understand the perceptions of 22 local and expatriate English language teachers who participated in interviews. They suggest that using SETs as the sole criterion for evaluating teachers is flawed, unsystematic, and does not lead to improvement. Participants suggest the need for a model of "creative evaluation" over the present "creation of confusion." Teachers are unaware of the purpose of the evaluation which is not explained and often are just expected to administer without any consultation or input into the questions. Evaluation should draw distinction between prescriptive, acontextual summative evaluation and collaborative approaches that show the richness and diversity while giving learners as well as faculty more voice.In this study, data collected from interviews with tertiary-sector English language teaching (ELT) instructors working in different institutions in Western Japan suggest that using Student Evaluation of Teaching surveys (SETs) as the sole criterion for evaluating teachers is flawed. Instructors suggest that summative evaluations by students, being simple to collect and analyze, can be the sole criterion for adjunct ELT teacher retention, or as a punitive measure to remove tenure in tertiary establishments with diminishing student roll. But as the importance attached to student feedback increases, ensuring that feedback is collected effectively should be an important priority but there has been an "extraordinary reluctance to clarify,

No abstract

Despite the global importance of English, whether Japanese university students want to study English abroad is unclear. Questionnaire responses from 559 students at a Global B university in Japan show some nuanced views on English related to studying overseas which were linked to perceived ability level, anxiety, and confidence issues. The findings suggest teachers need to decrease anxiety in classrooms, encourage positive images of overseas locations, and shape future expectations of success for learners’ English-learning selves to help them focus their learning. 昨今のグローバル化時代では、英語は当然もっているべきほぼ普遍的な基礎的スキルになっている。とはいえ、実際に日本の大学生は海外留学をしたがっているのだろうか？本研究では、「グローバルB」指定の日本の大学で５５９名の学生を対象にアンケート調査を実施した。その調査は、自己の能力レベル・不安・自信と留学に関して抱く英語に対する考え方を調査したものだ。分析結果から、教師は学生の不安を軽減するような教室の雰囲気作りや、海外留学のイメージを良くし、学習者自身の英語学習がうまくいく期待感を形成させたりする必要があることが示唆できる。

Language learning pedagogy makes many claims about the use of the students' mother tongue (MT) in monolingual classrooms, but only rarely makes any references to what the students in our classrooms themselves believe or feel they need. Tertiary education has to make teaching accountable to the needs of the students, and to recognise that all participants in the classroom have a legitimate interest in educational activity. This paper examines students' beliefs about when the English 'conversation' teacher should use the students' mother tongue, and the findings suggest that students have well defined opinions about the use and usage of the target language (TL). They recognize that communicative lessons with native speakers should be conducted in the TL, while reserving the right to ask about usage through the MT, thus creating a more relaxed, humanistic classroom where they can freely express themselves.