How syntactic processing training affects oral production of elementary level Japanese EFL learners

( Miwa Morishita ),( Tomoko Yamamoto ) 경희대학교 언어연구소 2013 언어연구 Vol.30 No.3

For EFL learners, especially elementary level learners, the initial step in language production is to combine several words into sentences. This study reports the results of classroom research aiming to facilitate oral production of elementary level Japanese EFL learners through syntactic processing training. University freshmen in five English classes which use CALL facilities engaged in a 15-minute training at the beginning of each lesson over a total of ten lessons. The training consisted of two types of tasks rearranging shuffled word groups, based on a hypothesis that such training might lead to better automatized language production. In the first half of the training, the written task, the students looked at four to five shuffled word groups and decided the correct order. In the second half of the training, the spoken task, they listened to three shuffled word groups and orally rearranged them into correct sentences. In working out such tasks, the test takers should access vocabulary in their mental lexicon, remember the shuffled word groups they listened to, and rearrange them into correct sentences, which might impose them a high cognitive load and can lead to automatized language production. The data of 88 students who engaged in such training were compared with those of 29 students who did not at both the pre-test and the post-test stages. It was found that although both the experimental and the control groups significantly increased their scores in the written task, only the experimental group significantly increased their scores in the spoken task. The results show that training as a whole seems to have had a positive effect on the students` oral production.

Question Forms Produced by Japanese EFL Learners in Dialogue Contexts: A Pilot Study for a Syntactic Priming Experiment

( Miwa Morishita ) 국민대학교 어문학연구소 2014 語文學論叢 Vol.33 No.-

Production of wh-questions by Japanese EFL learners: Preliminary classroom data collection

Miwa Morishita,Yasunari Harada 경희대학교 언어정보연구소 2015 언어연구 Vol.32 No.S

High School Course of Study for English set forth by the Japanese Ministry of Education started emphasizing communication and communicative approach around the year 1990. ​In recent years, acquisition of communicative competence has become the most important objective of English language education in Japan as globalization affects diverse aspects of governmental and enterprise sectors of the Japanese society. On the other hand, while asking the right questions at the right time is an integral part of effective oral interactions, Japanese EFL learners experience processing and other difficulties in doing so. First, in classroom situations, students are generally discouraged from asking the teacher, and each other, any direct questions. Second, this leads to a general lack of communicative intelligence among those students in coming up with interesting things to ask. Third, producing English question sentences on the fly poses non-negligible processing difficulties for Japanese EFL learners. In Japanese, question sentences are formed simply by adding the question marker "ka" at the end of a sentence without changing the word order. In contrast, construing and constructing question sentences in English involves a variety of syntactic and morphological processing, resulting in a higher cognitive load compared to corresponding statement sentences. In this study, we will report on the results of one of a series of data collection efforts conducted in 2013, in which Japanese university students with diverse proficiency levels were asked to produce or reproduce English statement sentences and wh-questions based on visually or aurally presented English sentences. The results show that students had more difficulty when they were asked to convert statement sentences into wh-questions than when they were asked to simply reproduce the sentences that were presented. However, their average rates of correct answers improved in the course of investigation, possibly showing implicit learning. (Kobe Gakuin UniversityㆍWaseda University)

Diarrhea-predominant Irritable Bowel Syndrome-like Symptoms in Patients With Quiescent Crohn’s Disease: Comprehensive Analysis of Clinical Features and Intestinal Environment Including the Gut Microbiome, Organic Acids, and Intestinal Permeability

Toshihiko Tomita,Hirokazu Fukui,Daisuke Morishita,Ayako Maeda,Yutaka Makizaki,Yoshiki Tanaka,Hiroshi Ohno,Tadayuki Oshima,Hiroto Miwa 대한소화기 기능성질환∙운동학회 2023 Journal of Neurogastroenterology and Motility (JNM Vol.29 No.1

Background/AimsDiarrhea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome (IBS-D)-like symptoms frequently occur in patients with quiescent Crohn’s disease (CD). To investigate the factors underlying IBS-D-like symptoms in patients with quiescent CD, we performed a comprehensive analysis of the clinical features and intestinal environment in those patients. MethodsWe performed a prospective observational study of 27 patients with quiescent CD (CD activity index [CDAI] ≤ 150; C-reactive protein ≤ 0.3 mg/dL). The presence and severity of IBS-D-like symptoms, health-related quality of life, disease-specific quality of life, and status of depression and anxiety were evaluated. The level of intestinal permeability, fecal calprotectin and organic acids and the profiles of gut microbiome were analyzed. ResultsTwelve of the 27 patients with quiescent CD (44.4%) had IBS-like symptoms, and these patients showed a significantly higher CDAI, IBS severity index and anxiety score than those without. The inflammatory bowel disease questionnaire score was significantly lower in the patients with IBS-D-like symptoms. There were no significant differences in small intestinal/colonic permeability or the levels of organic acids between the patients with and without IBS-D-like symptoms. Fusicatenibacter was significantly less abundant in the patients with IBS-D-like symptoms whereas their fecal calprotectin level was significantly higher (384.8 ± 310.6 mg/kg) than in patients without (161.0 ± 251.0 mg/kg). The receiver operating characteristic curve constructed to predict IBS-D-like symptoms in patients with quiescent CD using the fecal calprotectin level (cutoff, 125 mg/kg) showed a sensitivity and specificity of 73.3% and 91.7%, respectively. ConclusionMinimal inflammation is closely associated with the development of IBS-D-like symptoms in patients with quiescent CD.

Prognosis of biopsy-confirmed metabolic dysfunction- associated steatotic liver disease: A sub-analysis of the CLIONE study

Michihiro Iwaki,Hideki Fujii,Hideki Hayashi,Hidenori Toyoda,Satoshi Oeda,Hideyuki Hyogo,Miwa Kawanaka,Asahiro Morishita,Kensuke Munekage,Kazuhito Kawata,Tsubasa Tsutsumi,Koji Sawada,Tatsuji Maeshiro,H 대한간학회 2024 Clinical and Molecular Hepatology(대한간학회지) Vol.30 No.2

Background/Aims: Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) was recently proposed as an alternative disease concept to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). We aimed to investigate the prognosis of patients with biopsy-confirmed MASLD using data from a multicenter study. Methods: This was a sub-analysis of the Clinical Outcome Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (CLIONE) study that included 1,398 patients with NAFLD. Liver biopsy specimens were pathologically diagnosed and histologically scored using the NASH Clinical Research Network system, the FLIP algorithm, and the SAF score. Patients who met at least one cardiometabolic criterion were diagnosed with MASLD. Results: Approximately 99% of cases (n=1,381) were classified as MASLD. Patients with no cardiometabolic risk (n=17) had a significantly lower BMI than patients with MASLD (20.9 kg/m2 vs. 28.0 kg/m2, P<0.001), in addition to significantly lower levels of inflammation, ballooning, NAFLD activity score, and fibrosis stage based on liver histology. These 17 patients had a median follow-up of 5.9 years, equivalent to 115 person-years, with no deaths, liver-related events, cardiovascular events, or extrahepatic cancers. The results showed that the prognosis for pure MASLD was similar to that for the original CLIONE cohort, with 47 deaths and one patient who underwent orthotopic liver transplantation. The leading cause of death was extrahepatic cancer (n=10), while the leading causes of liver-related death were liver failure (n=9), hepatocellular carcinoma (n=8), and cholangiocarcinoma (n=4). Conclusions: Approximately 99% of NAFLD cases were considered MASLD based on the 2023 liver disease nomenclature. The NAFLD-only group, which is not encompassed by MASLD, had a relatively mild histopathologic severity and a favorable prognosis. Consequently, the prognosis of MASLD is similar to that previously reported for NAFLD.