This seminar will be conducted by 3-hour online Zoom sessions for four days: Saturday, June 21, Sunday, June 22, Saturday, June 28 and Sunday, June 29 from 18:00 to 21:00 (JST). Students taking this seminar for credit must attend all four days. Students can add/drop this seminar course by 22:00 on Saturday, June 21.

The pre sign-up (or course registration for those who are taking this seminar for credit) is required for anybody attending the public session on Saturday, June 21 from 18:00 to 21:00. The sign-up process must be completed through the "Distinguished Lecturer Series Seminar Sign-Up Form" that is available on TUJ Grad Ed website. The sign-up deadline is Friday, June 20 at 12:00. The public session Zoom link will be provided to those people who completed the online sign-up (or course registration) process by 18:00 on Friday, June 20. The zoom link for the remaining sessions will be provided to the creditors and auditors between 13:00 to 14:00 on Sunday, June 22.

This lecture series introduces key topics in L2 speaking and listening, with an emphasis on both theoretical insights and practical implications.

Focusing on the speaking component, we will first examine how speakers’ use of phonology and lexicogrammar affects intelligibility, while also considering how listeners vary in their ability to understand the same L2 speech. Within this interactive framework, we will discuss the types of training that research has shown to be effective. Next, we will explore the listening component related to the underlying mechanisms (top-down vs. bottom-up processing), different types of knowledge (declarative vs. automatized), speaker variation (native vs. non-native voices), and modality effects (audio with vs. without visuals) on successful comprehension.

The latter half of the module shifts focus to a rapidly growing area of research—the interplay between learner individual differences and their impact on speaking and listening development. We will examine how L2 learners differ in their perceptual-cognitive abilities (i.e., aptitude) and sociopsychological orientations (i.e., motivation, emotion, and personality). Then, we will explore the latest research on how learners adopt different strategies in tackling L2 speaking and listening and how instructional approaches can be optimized to support these processes.

Throughout the lectures, the lecturer will introduce both classic and recent studies, as well as his team’s extensive work on these topics.