under ten minutes. This meant that fewer than twenty
questions were to be asked, and that the majority would be
semi-structured so respondents could simply click on an
appropriate answer, and yet have a chance to fill in further
or alternate information if desired. For comparative
purposes it was decided to use much of the taxonomy of
English tasks of the previous small-scale surveys done in
previous research and reported in [14, 15].
The result was a set of seventeen questions. The first
fifteen questions listed English-language tasks or
responsibilities, beginning with reading of various types
of documents, then moving to writing, then asking about
listening and speaking tasks. Each of the fifteen questions
offered a set of clickable answers about frequency of the
task, ranging from “Everyday” to “Never,” and offered
additional space for writing in an alternate answer in the
“Other” category. The sixteenth question asked about
language testing in the workplace, specifically what type
of standardized English test, if any, is used in selecting
new employees or measuring proficiency of current
employees. The seventeenth (final) question asked for a
freely written response giving opinions about English
classes at the university as experienced by the alumni
when they were students. To improve the response rate
and decrease the burden on respondents, the survey was
written in Japanese. A free Japanese online survey tool
called Shitsumonkun was chosen as the vehicle for the
survey, and the questions were uploaded and formatted on
Shitsumonkun.