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2007a.テレビニュース英語の音声と文法の特徴 『英語授業実践学の展開―斎藤栄二教授御退職記念論文集』103-115 東京：三省堂

Summary
It is said that speech style in English varies greatly depending upon the formality level of the speech situation. The speaking style in casual conversation may be quite different from that used by a TV newscaster, for instance. In this paper, some phonetic and grammatical characteristics observed in TV news English will be analyzed. Examined in this study are 120 news stories compiled for a series of textbooks for Japanese EFL learners. From the phonetic point of view it was found that prosody in broadcast English was relatively stable, characterized by short tone units of three to five words in length. It was also discovered that some phonetic phenomena typically observed in casual speech such as the flapped ‘t’ sound and the linking of neighboring sounds were also found in TV news English. From the grammatical and stylistic point of view, many incomplete sentences with no be-verbs were found, especially at the beginning of the news. It was suggested that such telegraphic sentences are used to effectively convey important information about the news stories by deleting less important grammatical words like be-verbs, relative pronouns and conjunctions.

2007b.The effect of pause on the listening process of Japanese EFL learners. Language Education & Technology, 44, 187-204. （Co-authored with Sugai, K., & Kanzaki, K.：Third author）

Summary
In order to survey the effects of pause on EFL learners' listening comprehension, two experiments were conducted. The purpose of Experiment 1 is to examine the influence of the following three parameters: (1) The grammatical complexity of the sentence; (2) the location of silent pauses; and (3) the frequency of pauses within the sentence. The results of the experiment show the following effects of pause on listening comprehension: (1) Listeners achieved higher scores when listening to sentences with one pause, two pauses, and no pause, respectively. (2) The shortest sentence (7 syllables in length) with no pause inserted was the hardest to perceive for the EFL listeners. That is, sentence length does not seem to have much effect on perception. (3) The score of sentences which have longer subjects (noun phrase +propositional phrase) was lower than in other sentences with different grammatical constructions. (4) The listening score increasedfor words immediately followed by a pause. The purpose of Experiment 2 is to analyze the effects that pause length have on Japanese EFL learners' listening performance. The result shows that pause length does not affect the overall listening process except for in cases of a certain sentence type. The above findings lead us to conclude that one pause in a sentence of 9 to 14 syllables in length facilitates learner s listening process regardless with the length of each pause.

2009.The interplay of classroom anxiety, intrinsic motivation and gender in the Japanese EFL context.『関西大学外国語教育研究』17, 41-64.

Summary
Two social psychological constructs that have received much attention from applied linguists interested in the psychological dynamics of language learning are language learning anxiety and motivation. Although much research has been conducted focusing on one or the other of these constructs in past decades, interrelationships between the two have not been fully explored. When EFL teaching methods are undergoing drastic changes at Japanese schools, it is ever more important to pay attention to learners’ affective variables and their interrelations, as learners’ psychology mirrors the effectiveness of teaching. Another aspect that has not been investigated fully is gender differences in anxiety and motivation. The purpose of this study is to investigate the interrelationship between language anxiety and motivation as they are experienced by Japanese learners of English, as well as gender differences observed among them. Besides, as Dornyei, (2005) notes, there is an overall uncertainty about the construct of language learning anxiety ―whether it is a motivational component, a personality trait, or situation-specific emotional reactions. To investigate the relationships between anxiety and motivational constructs will help clarify the nature of both language anxiety and language learning motivation as psychological constructs.

2009.The effects of pronunciation practice with animated materials：Focusing on English prosody. Language Education & Technology, 46, 41-60. （Co-authored with Sonobe, H., & Ueda, M.：Third author）

Summary
It has often been suggested that prosody, encompassing rhythm, accent and intonation, contributes greatly to the production of natural-sounding English and furthermore, that these suprasegmental elements play an important role in successful communication. Japanese EFL learners, influenced by the mora-timed rhythm of their mother tongue, tend to use Japanese rhythmic patterns when they speak English. This study attempts to demonstrate how the authors' original animated Web materials focusing on English rhythm enabled students to improve their English pronunciation. From our experiment, carried out once a week for five weeks in a CALL classroom, some positive effects of rhythmic pronunciation practice were found on the learners' pronunciation. Clear correlations among the speech duration, pitch ranges, and naturalness of the English produced by Japanese EFL learners were also found.

2012.社会安全学部におけるTutorial English の試行的実施にかかる報告1 ）～アンケート結果を中心に～ 『社会安全学研究』2, 127-138. （山本英一，土田昭司，小澤守，高橋智幸，越山健治，佐々木保幸，池永直樹との共著：第６執筆者）

Summary
This paper summarizes participants' evaluations of the Tutorial English course offered by Waseda University International Corporation, as a part of a pilot English program being considered by the Faculty of Safety Science, and implemented from February 21 to March 5, 2011. The first part presents the results for the Tutorial English course in particular, with the second part showing those for learning in orthodox English courses. Both sets of results were obtained by means of questionnaires administered to the students participating.