Thus there was a time and space limitationแThe use of
TOEIC-style questions,in these commercial systems,do not adequately
cover the required business English,are not context-based(Shibata,2005), and do not consider intercultural communication,which have been observed to be essential in English education for EFL students(Inoue,2007).
These situations have created a barrier between the business
English that students learn in the F2F classes,and the English available
on the commercial drill-and-practice system,and the required English
essential for working in the business organizations(Koike,2008). Additionally some of these commercial English drill-and-practice systems prevent adequate comprehension because they do not consider students’ socio-cultural background,which has been found to improve schema.
This has also led to difficulty in understanding the listening practice
because of many unknown words,which can easily lead students to guess
work(Iimura,2010). These problems could also be attributed to the lack
of English instructors capable of understanding the fundamental problems
of English learning in Japan vis-a-vis the instructional design of these
commercial systems,as noted by(Reeder et al 2004). These situations
underpin the need to establish a new curriculum(Shibata,2005),especially
for Japanese commerce students in order to empower them with more
business English as they engage in the TOEIC drilling practice. There-
fore this paper focuses on how a drill-based E-learning English content
can be constructed for EFL students,and discusses the effects of the
content on learning within different cohorts. In particular the following
questions were addressed:
i. Can drill-based E-learning English content that incorporates the
Japanese social-cultural context and the business English taught in
F2F classes improve Japanese students’TOEIC scores?
ii. What are some of the motivation and demoralizing factors that affect
learning in an environment that uses such content?