Used a children's story and interviews to compare how six-year-olds in three cultures conceptualize learning in their preschool environments. Found that Swedish and Japanese children who did not recall a coherent narrative relied on their own understanding of point of story rather than on words of story, whereas Chinese children looked for key to…

A discussion of the role of the Japanese language in the English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) classroom in Japan presents several arguments in favor of using Japanese, followed by some notes of caution and a call to teachers to reflect on their classroom language use. Arguments for using students' native language (L1) include these: in mixed level…