Getting Them Speaking: Classroom Social Factors and Foreign Language Anxiety
This study, which focuses on foreign language anxiety (FLA) experienced by Japanese learners of English in four universities, explores causative agents by looking into the classroom. The research questions aim to explore how FLA is influenced by classroom social factors. The findings of this study show that Japanese EFL learners experience higher levels of FLA as a result of the teacher's age, friendliness, tone of voice, and self-presentation, as evidenced in their dress code. Other FLA predictors for higher anxiety were peer gender, familiarity, laughter, and a quiet class. Language teachers should therefore dress and appear less formal in class to alleviate FLA!
Collected in this chilling volume are some of the famous Japanese mystery writer Edogawa Rampo's best stories—bizarre and blood-curdling expeditions into the fantastic, the perverse, and the strange, in a marvelous homage to Rampo's literary 'mentor', Edgar Allan Poe.
The history of mankind is full of joy and vicissitude, and the history of Japan is no exception. "Man," to paraphrase Leopold von Ranke, "is a creature so good and at the same time so evil, so noble and at the same time so animal-like, so polished and at the same time so uncouth who, while seeking eternity, is bound by the fleeting moment." This book is a narrative of Japanese history as rendered by the Japanese people themselves at the time they lived. It shows their foibles and triumphs with their tears and laughter. There is a thread of common experience that they share with the rest of the world.
On New Year’s Eve, 1941, just three weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were bombing the Philippine capital of Manila, where journalists Mel and Annalee Jacoby had married just a month earlier. The couple had worked in China as members of a tight community of foreign correspondents with close ties to Chinese leaders; if captured by invading Japanese troops, they were certain to be executed. Racing to the docks just before midnight, they barely escaped on a freighter—the beginning of a tumultuous journey that would take them from one island outpost to another.
Although it focuses on Tokyo and Kyoto–the two Japanese cities that most tourists want to visit–Frommer's Easy Guide to Japan also examines the Japanese locations to which most tourists make day-trips or longer excursions from the two must-sees. Enjoying a far more favorable exchange rate than in recent years, the now-moderately-priced Japan is enjoying a major upswing in its incoming tourism, and our experienced author of many previous guidebooks to Japan has made it even easier to enjoy, easier to understand, easier to tour, in a concise "Easy Guide" designed to fit into pocket or purse.
