Activity report
2009 JAOS Seminar – ‘International Trends Regarding Overseas Language Students’
November 9, 2009
at Tokyo International Forum
For this JAOS-sponsored seminar, JAOS President, Mr. Masaru Yamada, who also chairs FELCA (Federation of Education and Language Consultant Associations), a London-based international association of of about 1,000 study abroad industry organizations, presented the results of a report titled ‘International Trends Regarding Overseas Language Students’, which was based on the combined data gathered from 2,000 language schools by GAELA (Global Alliance of Education and Language Associations), an international organization that represents national language school associations. This cooperative study, which included participating agencies from FELCA and language schools from GAELA, is historically the first survey to be conducted on such an international scale. Being just the first attempt, the results of the investigation were unable to clearly affirm worldwide market trends due to things such as a lack of survey items and sample size. However, the shear amount data does give us a comprehensive overview of inbound and outbound trends in Japan and acts as a tremendous reference for supporting study abroad. In total, 53 participants took part in the seminar.