Participants
The participants of this study were first-, second-, and third-year students at
Hiroshima University in the 2006 academic year (spanning from April, 2006 through
March, 2007).
There were about 2500 students in each grade, with a total of about
From this population, the students who did not undertake
In addition, since the analysis used
7500 in the three grades.
out-of-class learning of English were excluded2.
two-wave data collected in two TOEIC test occasions (pre- and post-tests), those who
were absent from either of the two test occasions were excluded from the analysis.
Also excluded were those whose pre-test scores were below 200.