ヤギ，ケイタ   YAGI, Keita   八木　啓太    所属   国際基督教大学教養学部 リベラルアーツ英語プログラム（ELA）    職種   レクチャラー
発表年月日	2021/03/20
発表テーマ	Exploratory research on successful and less successful learners at an English-Japanese bilingual university in Japan
会議名	AAAL 2021 Virtual Conference
主催者	AAAL (American Association for Applied Linguistics)
学会区分	国際学会
発表形式	ポスター
単独共同区分	共同
開催地名	online
概要	This poster reports on the strategies Japanese students employ and other possible psychological factors involved when improving academic English abilities during their first year at a bilingual university in Tokyo. The research is exploratory in that it explores factors, such as classes, classmates, textbooks, and psychological factors, that may influence how well students learn English. In this university, students enrolled in the English education program take TOEFL ITP as the entrance exam and IELTS as the exit exam. The scores from both tests are converted into CEFR levels, and compared with some other independent variables. Our previous analyses with conventional statistical methods and structural equation modeling found that in general, students improve their English over the first year and that various factors, such as number of classes and overseas study, may influence their improvement to varying degrees. Moving into the next phase, the current research involves conducting interviews with selected participants to explore what other factors may influence students' progress. Participants were chosen from the pools of both successful students who improved their English by at least one CEFR level and less successful students who did not improve in terms of CEFR level. The data from semi-structured interviews were transcribed and analyzed employing open coding. The results indicate that the students studied English in multiple different ways, that various psychological factors and group dynamics are involved, and students’ familiarity with test formats affected the development of their English. This research is funded by the Eiken Foundation in Japan.