About
45
Publications
32,980
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
928
Citations
Introduction
New book out this year on washback featuring ground-breaking chapters by leading authors:
Washback research in language assessment: fundamentals and contexts.
https://www.routledge.com/Washback-Research-in-Language-Assessment-Fundamentals-and-Contexts/Allen/p/book/9781032751016
Current institution
Additional affiliations
April 2009 - March 2024
Position
- Professor (Associate)
Description
- Teaching academic speaking and writing courses, and content-based English courses for undergraduates.
March 2013 - September 2014
Position
- Distance Learning Tutor
Description
- Teaching on MA Distance Learning Module on Psycholinguistics
Education
October 2013 - October 2013
September 2006 - August 2007
September 1998 - August 2001
Publications
Publications (45)
100 words) The English Speaking Achievement Test for Japanese Junior High School Students (ESAT-J) was introduced to contribute to levelling up public English education in Tokyo in 2022. Critics, however, have made claims in the mass media against the use of the test and stakeholder groups have called for its cancellation. This paper presents an an...
The use of four-skills language exams to support the achievement of curriculum goals in Japan is an under-researched yet critical topic. This study focuses on washback from the Cambridge B1 Preliminary and B2 First exams, which were used as fixed-point tests at a senior high school. A mixed-methods approach was adopted, utilizing data from teachers...
English private tutoring (EPT) in Japan is well established and comes in a variety of forms, notably those found at juku (cram schools) and yobikō (preparatory schools). Although EPT serves a variety of functions in Japanese society, one of its key roles is to help high-school students prepare for high-stakes university entrance exams. In this chap...
Although there is abundant evidence for the use of first-language (L1) knowledge by bilinguals when using a second language (L2), investigation into the impact of L1 knowledge in large-scale L2 language assessments and discussion of how such impact may be controlled has received little attention in the language assessment literature. This study exa...
Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions
Few studies have investigated different-script cognate effects in language assessment contexts. This paper examines the impact of Japanese cognates in a test of English receptive lexical knowledge that is widely used for placement purposes in second language learning contexts. Specifically, the present...
Once Japanese students enter university, the computer keyboard becomes a frequently used mode of writing. However, it is not clear whether the choice between handwriting and keyboarding has cognitive consequences (but see Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014, for a handwriting advantage in learning). In this study, we investigated how readers’ handwriting/k...
Research into high-stakes English tests in Japan has typically focused on entrance examinations to university while few studies have investigated those for high school. In this study, a content analysis was conducted of 24 prefectural English entrance examinations for public high schools administered in 2022. We focused on the language skills and s...
When inferring the meaning of unknown words in a second language, learners make use of a variety of cues including the cross-linguistic formal similarities of loanwords and cognates. However, because learners do not always recognize these cross-linguistic relationships, cognate strategy training has been recommended. The present study investigated...
Washback research in language education aims to demonstrate, explain, and ultimately predict, the impact of tests on teaching and learning in educational contexts. A recent review in the international arena (Cheng et al., 2015) has revealed a rapidly growing field of empirical washback research, yet only two studies were identified as occurring in...
For second-language learners, the use of formulaic language can benefit processing. Previous studies have explored the development of a ‘processing advantage’ for lexical bundles and investigated whether learning materials can be optimized via repetition or enhancement in order to facilitate it. However, studies have tended to consider these factor...
A robust finding in psycholinguistics is that cognates and loanwords, which are words that typically share some degree of form and meaning across languages, provide the second language learner with benefits in language use when compared to words that do not share form and meaning across languages. This cognate effect has been shown to exist for Jap...
A robust finding in psycholinguistics is that cognates and loanwords, which are words that typically share some degree of form and meaning across languages, provide the second language learner with benefits in language use when compared to words that do not share form and meaning across languages. This cognate effect has been shown to exist for Jap...
This article describes a recent education reform initiative concerning English education in Japan, specifically the proposed introduction of four-skills tests as part of the university entrance admissions process. The first aim is to summarize, in English, some of the key issues and events concerning the reform. To this end, background information...
Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions
Bilingual lexical processing is non-selective, which allows for activation of the non-target language, even when reading in a different script. However, while the influence of cross-script L1 lexical knowledge has been demonstrated in isolated word reading, it is unknown whether it survives in more nat...
This article presents a history of Shiken since it was first published in 1997 until 2019, followed by suggestions for areas of future research in assessment to which the publication may be well suited to contribute. In the historical overview, data is presented about the following: the origins, titles, editors, and distribution; the article types;...
An interview with Yuko Goto Butler
Japanese loanwords are mainly derived from English. These loanwords provide a considerable first-language (L1) resource that may assist in second-language (L2) vocabulary learning and instruction. However, given the huge number of loanwords, it is often difficult to determine whether an English word has a loanword equivalent and whether the loanwor...
Loanwords in Japanese that share form and meaning with English words are referred to as Japanese-English cognates (e.g., ラジオ /radӡio/ "radio") and are of fundamental concern for researchers concerned with vocabulary learning and instruction. This concern is reflected in the growing body of research into Japanese-English cognates in applied linguist...
This study investigates Japanese high school students’ attitudes toward English proficiency tests, specifically the Test of English for Academic Purposes (TEAP) and university entrance examinations. Three rounds of interviews with five highly motivated learners at a prestigious high school were held over a period of 1.5 years. The interviews focuse...
Cross-linguistic lexical similarity in the form of cognates and loanwords has been shown to positively impact second language learning and use, as well as performance on tests of lexical knowledge, even when the learners’ languages differ in script. The present study utilizes Japanese cognate frequency, as an indication of cognate knowledge, to pre...
The present study investigates the consequential validity of the TEAP test from the perspective of washback on learning. Forty-six high school English learners took the TEAP test and completed a pre- and post-test survey examining their language learning and test preparation behaviors and perceptions regarding TEAP. Five of these participants were...
Research has demonstrated that cognates are processed and acquired more readily than noncognates regardless of whether the languages share a common script or etymological background (e. g., Japanese and English). Very little research, however, has focused on the prevalence and frequency of cognates in orthographically distinct languages. Using Japa...
The present study investigated 190 first-year Japanese undergraduates’ performance on the IELTS test and the factors that influenced this performance. Participants took two IELTS tests and completed a survey about their language learning history during pre-tertiary and tertiary education and about their preparation for the IELTS test. Nineteen stud...
While psycholinguistic studies of first language (L1) reading have identified multiple factors that predict the speed of lexical access, there are few studies investigating whether such factors influence second language (L2) reading. For usage-based models of acquisition and processing, two lexical factors that are believed to be crucial in L2 read...
Background: This study investigated the consequential validity of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) Academic exam, specifically focusing on washback upon learners' test preparation strategies and score gain, and the mediating factors influencing washback when learners in an EFL context are not enrolled in test preparation co...
Peer feedback is widely used in second and foreign language writing contexts. While second language (L2) proficiency is likely to be an important factor in determining peers’ ability to give and utilize feedback, its contribution has been relatively under-researched. In the present study, 54 undergraduates in a foreign language writing context gave...
Peer feedback is a potentially beneficial yet highly complex process that can be influenced by a variety of social, historical and cultural factors. Here, we focus on learner proficiency and learners' perceptions of their own and their peer's proficiency, in addition to other factors, and we describe how these factors may influence the quantity and...
University English entrance exams are commonplace in Japan and competition for entrance to high-ranking institutions is fierce. Given the high-stakes nature of such exams, high school leavers typically attend exam preparation courses at juku cram schools. Juku are part of the shadow education sector, which has a huge presence in the East Asian regi...
Many studies have reported that first language (L1) translation primes speed responses to second language (L2) targets, whereas L2 translation primes generally do not speed up responses to L1 targets in lexical decision. According to the Sense Model (Finkbeiner, Forster, Nicol & Nakamura, 2004) this asymmetry is due to the proportion of senses acti...
Formal and semantic overlap across languages plays an important role in bilingual language processing systems. In the present study, Japanese (first language; L1)–English (second language; L2) bilinguals rated 193 Japanese–English word pairs, including cognates and noncognates, in terms of phonological and semantic similarity. We show that the degr...
Even in languages that do not share script, bilinguals process cognates faster than matched noncognates in a range of tasks. The current research more fully explores what underpins the cognate 'advantage' in different script bilinguals (Japanese-English). To do this, instead of the more traditional binary cognate/noncognate distinction, the current...
Target items used in Experiment 1 (depicted in pictures from [27]–[28]; 27 cognates, 27 noncognates).
(DOCX)
Target items and matched nonwords used in Experiment 2 (60 cognates, 60 noncognates, 120 nonwords).
(DOCX)
Past research has shown that peer feedback in a second language (L2) context is benefi cial to students. However, there is relatively information about the type of feedback that learners give and to what degree this is incorporated as revisions. The present study focuses primarily on two aspects of the revision process: the suggested revisions made...
The present thesis is devoted to the analysis of how cognates are processed and represented in the minds of Japanese-English bilinguals. Cognates are an interesting and important category of words in languages as they are distinguished by their similarity across languages, which includes both formal and semantic features. This thesis presents the m...
Texts are routinely simplified to make them more comprehensible for second language learners. However, the effects of simplification upon the linguistic features of texts remain largely unexplored. Here we examine the effects of one type of text simplification: intuitive text simplification. We use the computational tool, Coh-Metrix, to examine lin...
While there is much pedagogically-oriented research on the aca- demic written genre of research articles (RAs) and their part- genres (e.g. introductions), there has been little focus on aca- demic shorter communications. In this paper, we examine a corpus of short research articles (SRAs) from the journal Nature’s Brief Communications series by pe...
Texts are routinely simplified for language learners with authors relying on a variety of approaches and materials to assist them in making the texts more comprehensible. Readability measures are one such tool that authors can use when evaluating text comprehensibility. This study compares the Coh-Metrix Second Language (L2) Reading Index, a readab...
Lexical bundles are empirically derived formulaic units of lan- guage which are register-specific and perform a variety of dis- course functions. Because these units of language contribute to the linguistic make up of specific registers, they can be important indicators for determining the success of language users within these discourse communitie...
The aim of the current research is to investigate the effects of textual modification upon the distribution of specific linguistic features of news texts when authors adopt an intuitive approach to simplification. The research focuses on the distribution and use of relative clauses (RCs) across three levels of simplification. The analysis of news t...
