Exposure to Letters A or F before tests affects performance

March 12, 2010

Seeing the letter A before an exam can improve a student's exam result while exposure to the letter F may make a student more likely to fail. This finding is published in the British Journal of Educational Psychology in March 2010.

The study, carried out by Dr Keith Ciani and Dr Ken Sheldon at the University of Missouri, USA, investigated whether exposing students to the letters A or F before a test affected how they performed, and a significant correlation was found. Dr Keith Ciani said: "These findings suggest that exposure to letters A and F, even without any explicit reference to success or failure, significantly affected the students' performance on the tests .... We believe that the meanings inherent in the evaluative letters were enough to influence their performance through the motivational state that they produced. Exposure to the letter A made the students non-consciously approach the task with the aim to succeed, while exposure to letter F made the students non-consciously want to avoid failure. Research suggests that when people approach tasks with the desire to succeed they perform better than when striving to avoid failure.'

Click here for the research paper.

Will international school students be subsidized?

March 11, 2010

The government aims to make public high schools free and give a subsidy of ¥120,000 per student to families with children at private high schools. It is still not clear whether this will include students at international schools. The government has talked about providing subsidies as long as the school curriculum is equivalent to the curriculum at public high schools, but it is not clear how similar the curriculums need to be.

Some of those who are opposed to subsidizing students at North Korean high schools have pointed out that textbooks at these schools do not mention the abduction of Japanese citizens to North Korea. If so, does that mean that international schools would also need to follow government textbook guidelines? Prime Minister Hatoyama has said that the decision on which students to subsidize should be based on fair and objective guidelines, but what those guidelines are is not clear. There is likely to be a heated debate on this issue over the next few months.

The Japan Times reports that subsidies will not make much difference to families with children attending international schools where lessons are taught in English because the fees are so high and ¥120,000 a year will not reduce them by a significant percentage, but the subsidy will make a significant difference to families with children attending international schools where lessons are taught in other languages.

If you want to enroll in a Birmingham MA starting this April, it's best to apply now.

March 10, 2010

The University of Birmingham MA in Teaching English as a Foreign/Second Language and the MA in Applied Linguistics start in April and October each year. There is still time to apply for the April start, but you will need to get your application in very soon.

These MAs are considered to be the most prestigious and internationally-recognized of the MAs through British universities that are available in Japan by distance learning. They have also been the most popular MAs among teachers in Japan for the last 15 years, so a lot of university teachers and others in key positions in ELT in Japan are Birmingham graduates.

For more information on the MAs click here. To ask questions, send an e-mail to Christine Watson, who supervises the MAs in Japan, by clicking here.