Through the support of this research, my research partners and I have developed a fundamental test of phonemic awareness for use in elementary school English classes in Japanese public schools, and ported that test to a tablet-based web application. We have made the most recent paper available as an open pre-print with the Open Science Foundation’s SocArXiv platform, available at https://osf.io/3xg5n. Further papers are currently being prepared for submission and will be released as public pre-prints. The tests will undergo alpha and beta testing during the 2022-2023 school year. Completion of a working gamified computer adaptive test product is expected by mid 2022.

Through the support of this research, my research partners and I have developed a fundamental test of phonemic awareness for use in elementary school English classes in Japanese public schools. The initial validations for this test are currently under review with international language education journals. We have made the first paper available as an open pre-print with the Open Science Foundation’s SocArXiv platform, available at https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/hdf2s. Further papers are currently being prepared for submission and will be released as public pre-prints. Based on these tests of phonemes, my co-researchers and I are working with programmers to build the front and back-ends of the ICT based test delivery platform. A basic proof of concept version of the software has been developed, and is undergoing further refinement before pilot testing in elementary schools. Completion of a final gamified product is expected by mid 2021. The research was further supported by JSPS Overseas Fellowship Grant S20135.

Teachers of different subjects can effectively motivatetheir students using a combination of cross-subject and subject-specificmethods. In this project, I met with teachers and focused on theirsubject-specific methods of teaching mathematics, Japanese, and English as aforeign language as a follow up to previous survey work.Across subjects, effective teachers provided specificinteractional feedback and worked to make the subject matter comprehensible toindividual students. Less effective teachers often claimed that they did nothave time to provide individualized feedback on learning. In mathematics, specifically identifying ways that studentsstruggled and providing both whole class and individual worked examples ofmethods for solving the mathematics helped motivate students. In Japanese classes, teachers who appealed to individualstudents’ interests in the Japanese language and methods of expression helped toprovide more intrinsic motivation.In English classes, teachers who used English forcomprehensible communication through gestures, interaction, and occasionalgames were more effective at motivating their students.While repeated Kanji writing practice was helpful inimproving students’ Japanese motivation, repeated English penmanship practicewas not useful in improving motivation, suggesting that penmanship notebooksmay have a negative motivational effect.Across English and Japanese classes, students found that teachers who focus mostly on grammar and written communication were not as interesting or motivting.In mathematics classes, teachers who gave tests with lowerfrequency were also likely to have less intrinsically motivated students,indicating that regular low-stakes quizzes may help students’ self-efficacy andmotivation.These findings are now being used as principles fordeveloping a digital learning platform for providing improved student feedback.

In this study, I surveyed junior high school students to test their ability beliefs and achievement in Mathematics, Japanese, and English. Prior research has shown that ability beliefs, including self-efficacy and self-concept, can be powerful predictors of success in school. Using a cross-lag auto-lag design, the results showed that ability beliefs for each subject (Mathematics, Japanese, and English) predicted self-concept in the same subject. Likewise, ability beliefs for each subject predicted achievement in those subjects. Only cross-subject (i.e. Mathmatics -> English, English -> Japanese) predictive relationship was found. A positive ability to use English lead to greater confidence for Japanese, with indirect effects on achievement.Based on these results, I conclude that Japanese junior high school students who had developed a positive self-concept for English at the beginning of their first year of junior high school developed a more positive self-concept for Japanese by the end of that same school year. Based on these results and conclusions, we see that students' early learning of English can have positive effects on their own language confidence and achievement. These results indicate that early foreign language learning has positive long term effects.