Many of the textbooks that teachers use in language classes contain some kind of model dialog for students to practice. These dialogs are usually also available in audio form. Beyond having students simply either listen to or read these conversations aloud, what are the best ways to utilize this section of the chapter?

This study used many-faceted Rasch measurement to investigate the difficulty of graded readers using a 3-item survey. Book difficulty was compared with Kyoto Level, Yomiyasusa Level, Lexile Level, book length, mean sentence length, and mean word frequency. Word frequency and Kyoto Level were found to be ineffective in predicting students’ perceptions of book difficulty. Book length was found to be highly predictive of perceived book difficulty, with the Yomiyasusa Levels predicting 68% of variance, while the Lexile measure of mean sentence length was moderately predictive, with 40% of variance explained. These results show that current headword levelling of graded readers is ineffective and that publishers’ book levels do not provide useful guidance in selection of books to read. It is therefore recommended that students use book length as their primary consideration in choosing books and that reading recommendations and purchasing decisions be based on Yomiyasusa Levels rather than publishers' levels.

This study used many-faceted Rasch measurement to research peer assessment in EFL writing classes, following previous research which reported acceptance of the pedagogical benefits by students of attention paid to a rubric during peer assessment. Pre and post treatment writing was compared on two rubrics, one targeting specific instructional items, the second intended to measure general academic writing. Students used the instructional rubric to conduct peer assessment, but were not exposed to the secondary rubric. Substantively and statistically significant gains were observed on the instructional rubric but not on the secondary rubric, providing evidence of learning by assessing. Response patterns suggested holistic rating by peer raters, resulting in effective rank ordering of overall performances but an inability to provide formative feedback, supporting the view that the mechanism of learning was awareness arising from learning by assessing.

This paper describes the in-progress development of a Testing Module for an open-source audience response system called MOARS. This module allows teachers to collect multiple choice test responses from students using mobile devices such as iPod Touch. The module includes test item analysis features for classroom teachers.

The presenter taught online classes through Zoom with class sizes of 40 (General English for university first-year students, and Oral English for university second-year students). Students very rarely turned on their cameras in class, a story that this presenter has heard often from many teachers. Aside from some limited success with Zoom polls and text answers in Zoom chat, student participation was difficult to elicit. The presenter felt that the classes were not going very well, and considered the classes to be far below the quality of in-person classes. However, students’ own written responses in Japanese on anonymous, university-wide class evaluation surveys at mid- and end-of-term paint a surprisingly different picture of their experiences in the presenter’s classes. The presenter will share summaries of what the students valued in these online classes, and how the students’ descriptions of some of the class activities contradict the presenters’ own negative self-evaluation of the same activities, forcing the presenter to view the success embedded into what was self-evaluated as mediocre if not an outright failure.

Paragraph organization is a serious challenge for many of our Japanese students. To help raise students' awareness of what a "good" paragraph should look like, the presenter created a series of online quizzes for students to do. In this presentation, the presenter will demonstrate how to create an online, self-correcting multiple-choice quiz through Google Forms with randomization of the question order and option order.

Many of the presenter's students seemed to approach presentations as recitations of reports. They would read aloud, focusing exclusively on content, while completely ignoring aspects of performance and slide design which would have made their speeches more interesting and accessible to their audience. In response, awareness-raising activities and demonstrations were created to scaffold the students towards giving more engaging presentations. This interactive poster presentation will highlight some of these, such as matching photos of gestures with underlined sections from sample speeches, and peer-assessment rubrics which incorporate photos to illustrate (rather than simply describe) each rubric item.