Thomas Lockley

• Professor (Associate) at Nihon University College of Law

On 12 November 1588 two young Japanese men, known to posterity only by their English names Christopher and Cosmus, arrived in London with Thomas Cavendish, who had just completed the third known circumnavigation of the globe. Sources described them as intelligent and literate in Japanese, but also able to speak English, and hence they were consulte...

This article uses the conceptual framework of second language willingness to communicate (L2 WTC), and in particular the contributory construct of international posture (IP; Yashima, 2002), to report on a content and language integrated learning (CLIL) course taught in the Japanese university context. The research follows up an exploratory, small-s...

This study attempts to build on the little work that has been done so far on empirically and systematically researching what language and culture exchange (LCE) in the classroom between students of different foreign languages means to those students. It describes the context and method used to build such an exchange and after reviewing relevant lit...

The seeming dearth of computer literacy skills amongst Japanese university students has caused much academic interest recently (see for example Lockley, JALT CALL J, 7(1):93–103, 2011a; Williams, Stud Humanit Cult, 14:78–91, 2011; Taynton, Teach English Technol, 12(1):3–19, 2012). One thing all these studies have concluded though is that students a...

Speaking self-perceived communication competence (SPCC) is a construct with many potential implications for foreign language learning, but one that has been little studied. SPCC itself is a major predictive factor in willingness to communicate, a construct which has been widely conceptualised and researched. This study (N = 103) used a repeated mea...

In 2003, the Japanese Ministry of Education (MEXT) introduced potentially far reaching reforms to EFL curricula in high schools entitled "The National Action Plan to Cultivate 'Japanese with English Abilities'" (the Action Plan). However, given the failure of previous attempts at reform, there was some doubt as to whether the Action Plan would meet...

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) can play a key role in self-access learning and the organization of self-access centres (SACs) (Reinders & Lázaro, 2007). The generation of young people currently at university has been labeled “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001), yet it would seem that many of these “natives” in Japan seem to lack the...

It has been observed that many students seemingly lack information and communication technology (ICT) skills when entering university. is paper looks at the experience young Japanese people have had of using technology, in particular ICT, prior to entering university. The data was collected by means of a questionnaire (N = 105) and found that stude...