This study takes a holistic view of flow and anti-flow experiences as interactive subsystems in blended English as a foreign language learning and examines the dynamic complex construct in the field of instructed second language acquisition. We first rephrased the 22-item Classroom Flow Questionnaire to better reflect the context of blended EFL learning. The modified CFQ was then administered to 661 first language Chinese EFL learners. A final 14-item Foreign Language Flow Scale was developed based (...) on results from a series of reliability and validity tests. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis results have demonstrated that foreign language learning flow is a three-dimensional construct involving Enjoyment, Boredom, and Anxiety, thus conceptualizing and validating flow as a continuum with both positive and negative ends. Moreover, participants reported that they experienced the lowest degree of enjoyment, while with respect to the negative flow, they almost experienced similar degree of boredom and anxiety. The present study contributes to the development of the conceptual framework for flow in ISLA as well as constructive pedagogical implications for L2 researchers and educators. Suggestions for future research are also provided. (shrink)

The “dynamic turn” in the field of second language acquisition catalyzed scholarly devotion to the complex dynamic relationships between learner and teacher variables and various academic emotions. As such, the present study examined the varying effects of the aforementioned variables on the constructs of positive and negative flow, and determined their strongest predictors, respectively. This study used a mixed-method approach to collect data from 607 Chinese English-as-a-Foreign-Language learners. In stage one of the research, the researcher first assessed (...) the participants’ levels of positive flow and negative flow in a blended learning context, then performed Pearson correlation analysis to confirm a significant, but weak positive relationship between positive flow and negative flow. Then, significant difference tests were run to determine the varied effects of those variables on flow. Finally, two multiple regression analyses were conducted to identify five predictors of positive flow, with the biggest contribution coming from learners’ attitudes toward the foreign language, and three predictors of negative flow, with the learners’ major accounting for the majority of variance. In the second stage of the research, a qualitative corpus was constructed, based on accounts of classroom experiences from 71 participants of the total sample, and further illustrated the quantitative findings. Pedagogical implications for educational psychologists and teachers of second and/or foreign languages are addressed. (shrink)

English uses the horizontal spatial metaphors to express time (e.g., the good days ahead of us). Chinese also uses the vertical metaphors (e.g., 'the month above' to mean last month). Do Chinese speakers, then, think about time in a different way than English speakers? Boroditsky [Boroditsky, L. (2001). Does language shape thought? Mandarin and English speakers' conceptions of time. Cognitive Psychology, 43(1), 1-22] claimed that they do, and went on to conclude that 'language is a powerful (...) tool in shaping habitual thought about abstract domains' (such as time). By estimating the frequency of usage, we found that Chinese speakers actually use the horizontal spatial metaphors more often than the vertical metaphors. This offered no logical ground for Boroditsky's claim. We were also unable to replicate her experiments in four different attempts. We conclude that Chinese speakers do not think about time in a different way than English speakers just because Chinese also uses the vertical spatial metaphors to express time. (shrink)

Irregular self-selection is a demonstration of active involvement in interaction. English as a foreign language learners’ talk-in-interaction is one of such cases. Yet, little research has explored when, how, and why learners implement this action. The aim of this article is to address these issues in Chinese postgraduate EFL learners’ conversations from the perspective of multimodal interaction. To this end, we provide descriptive statistics and use multimodal conversation analysis to investigate the detailed process of irregular self-selection. The results (...) show the interactional sensitivity of learners, and all the successful irregular self-selection can be divided into the following three types: turn interruption, turn competition TC), and turn holding abortion. Learners implement this action by using multimodal resources, including lexis, syntax, pitch reset, intensity enhancement, gaze, and so forth. However, their body movements lack diversity, causing behaviors to be constrained and inactive. The main purpose of irregular self-selection is to provide knowledge that contributes to topical development. This study reveals that Chinese postgraduate EFL learners are interactionally competent members. They are able to achieve communicative goals but in a low diversity of body movements. The findings help to understand the detailed process of speakership claiming in EFL learners’ conversations. (shrink)

The early Sino-Western contact was through the way in which religion and language interact to produce language contact. However, research on this contact is relatively limited to date, particularly in the realm of English language materials. In fact, there is a paucity of research on Western religions in English Language Teaching textbooks. By applying corpus linguistics as a tool and the Critical Discourse Analysis as the theoretical framework, this manuscript critically investigates the significant semantic domains in (...) ten English language textbook series that are officially approved and are widely used in Chinese universities. The findings suggest that various Western religious beliefs, which are the highly unusual topics in previous Chinese ELT textbooks, are represented in the textbook corpus. The results also show that when presenting the views and attitudes toward Western religious beliefs, these textbooks have adopted an eclectic approach to the material selection. Surprisingly, positive semantic prosody surrounding the concept of religion is evident and no consistent negative authorial stance toward religion is captured. Atheism has been assumed to be in the center of Chinese intellectual traditions and the essence of the Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party. Interestingly, the findings from this study provide a new understanding of Chinese foreign language textbooks in the new era, and its addition to the literature on the study of ELT textbooks, as well as its development worldwide. (shrink)

Previous studies have offered a rationale for engaging students in small-group student talk for the planning of L2 individual writing. To further investigate whether such talk effectively promotes the quality of argument in the context of Chinese tertiary EFL learners’ argumentative writing and whether such effects could be retained, the current study adopted a quasi-experimental design with a pretest, a posttest, and a delayed posttest in two intact EFL classes. The performance of the intervention group and the comparison group (...) were scrutinized to examine the effects of the intervention. The analytic scores on six components of the writing task and the holistic writing scores cumulated of all these components were measured to see the immediate and sustained effects. Significant changes of the holistic scores in both the immediate posttest and the delayed posttest indicated that such small-group student talk enabled students in the treatment class to achieve better performance in the overall quality of argumentation compared with those in the comparison class. Statistical analyses revealed immediate and sustained effects of small-group student talk on the quality of counterargument claim, counterargument data, and rebuttal claim. Counterargument claim was the only element in which students in both classes made significant improvement, but the treatment class demonstrated a larger effect size. No discernible differences were found either between or within the treatment class and the comparison class with respect to the quality of claim, data, and rebuttal data across tests. Possible explanations concerning the findings and limitations of the study were discussed. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two legal languages such as the legal English developed by the European Union institutions and the legal Chinese of Mainland China, to study whether the mental representations and the embodied simulation created by the conceptual metaphors for the same Western concept, right, differ in any significant ways. By analysing the data contained in two large corpora, this study has found that, despite the common origin of the concept right in the two legal languages, they conceptualise (...) it in a significantly different fashion. Finally, the findings of this study are read through the theoretical framework proposed for this special issue—hybridity and the Third Space. While it is somewhat straightforward to conceive of Euro English as a hybrid language, owing to the multilingual and supranational setting where it is used, this study has found that the Chinese legal language, too, is a hybrid language exhibiting linguistic features that intersect different belief systems. (shrink)

Foreign language anxiety has been identified as a crucial affective factor in language learning. Similar to the situation in language classes, university students in interpretation classes are required to perform in a foreign language when their language skills are inadequate. Investigations are needed to determine the specific impact of FLA on interpretation learning. This study investigated the effects of the specific interpretation classroom FLA on interpretation learning and dependency distance as an indicator of learners’ cognitive (...) load. The participants were 49 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in English–Chinese interpretation classes at a university in Hong Kong. The results showed a significant negative correlation between ICFLA levels and consecutive interpretation achievement scores. ICFLA was also negatively correlated with DD in consecutive interpretations. Four factors underlying ICFLA were identified. The findings of this study would provide useful insights for researchers and educators to understand the nature and effect of FLA in different settings. (shrink)

Considering the significant contribution of teachers’ professional triumph in the prosperity of students, the current study aims to investigate the existence of any relationship among three factors influencing teachers’ success: immunity, mindfulness, and engagement. Furthermore, we attempt to investigate whether English as a foreign language teachers’ immunity and mindfulness can predict their work engagement. To this end, a Likert-scale questionnaire including items on teacher immunity, mindfulness, and work engagement was distributed to 582 EFL teachers in China through the WeChat (...) application by employing a convenient sampling. To analyze the collected data, the Spearman Rho correlation index and linear multiple regression analysis are employed. The findings are that there does exist an indication of a direct relationship among EFL teachers’ immunity, mindfulness, and work engagement. Also, it is found that immunity and mindfulness can predict EFL teachers’ work engagement. The current study’s findings support the necessity of training language teachers to cope with the EFL context adversities. (shrink)

This article reports on a study that took a Dynamic Systems Theory perspective to second language motivational self system. More specifically, it investigated the influence of an Intensive English Reading course based on the Production-Oriented Approach upon the L2MSS of Chinese university English majorsfrom the DST perspective. To this end, two intact classes composed of 50 students were assigned into experimental group and control group, who responded to an L2MSS scale before and after the one-semester intervention. Eight and (...) five students were respectively selected using the purposive sampling method from the experimental and control groups for follow-up semi-structured interviews. The quantitative results revealed that the overall and dimensional levels of L2MSS were significantly strengthened over time in the EG while kept stable in the CG. The qualitative results suggested that the enhanced Ideal L2 Self of the participants stemmed from an attractor basin that was deepened by a number of attractors encompassing Output Tasks and Peer Performance. The interview results also showed that the increased L2 Learning Experience of the participants pertained to an attractor basin that was consolidated by an array of attractors containing Output Tasks, Teacher Guidance, Group Discussion, and Peer Assessment. The findings indicated that the attractors at the subjective and social dimensions in the POA-based course collectively worked together to cause changes in L2MSS among the participants. The implications for intervening L2 motivation from a POA approach in English as a Foreign Language classrooms were discussed. (shrink)

Job satisfaction, resilience, and teacher well-being, as the three major psychological variables emotioncy- based education, have received special attention among English as a foreign language researchers. To pursue the line of this inquiry, this particular study aimed to investigate the relationship between Chinese EFL teachers’ job satisfaction, resilience, and their well-being. To conduct the study, 343 Chinese EFL teachers with different academic qualifications, various academic degrees, and different majors voluntarily participated in this study. The results of the (...) study showed that job satisfaction and resilience could jointly predict 56.4 of the variance in psychological well-being. Both variables were the significant predictors of well-being, while job satisfaction was a better predictor, uniquely explaining 29.6 of well-being’s variance. Based on the findings, some pedagogical implication for administrators, educational institutions, and EFL teachers were discussed in the article. (shrink)

This study explores the relationship between language and thought in similarity judgments by testing how monolingual children who speak languages with partial typological differences in motion description respond to visual motion event stimuli. Participants were either Chinese- or English-speaking, 3-year-olds, 8-year-olds and adults who judged the similarity between caused motion scenes in a match-to-sample task. The results suggest, first of all, that the two younger groups of 3-year-olds are predominantly path-oriented, irrespective of language, as evidenced by their (...) significantly longer fixation on path-match videos rather than manner-match videos in a preferential looking scheme. Using categorical measurement of overt choices, older children and adults also showed a shared tendency of being more path-oriented. However, the analysis using continuous measurement of reaction time revealed significant variations in spatial cognition that can be related to linguistic differences: English speakers tended to be more manner-oriented while Chinese speakers were equally manner- and path-oriented. On the whole, our findings indicate a likelihood that children’s non-linguistic thought is similar prior to internalising the lexicalisation pattern of motion events in their native languages, but shows divergences after such habitual use, thus suggesting that the pattern of non-linguistic thought may be linked, among other things, to linguistic structure. (shrink)

Given the significance of teachers’ professional success in the adequacy of education, exploring the determinants of this variable appears crucial. To address this need, this inquiry inspected the role of well-being and emotion regulation in Chinese EFL teachers’ professional success. For this purpose, 357 Chinese EFL teachers were selected to answer three pre-designed questionnaires. Structural equation modeling using Smart-PLS was implemented to analyze teacher participants’ responses. The structural model revealed a strong, favorable connection between well-being, emotion regulation, and (...) professional success. The model also demonstrated that both well-being and emotion regulation were highly influential in Chinese EFL teachers’ professional success. The potential implications for EFL teachers, teacher educators, and educational authorities are further discussed. (shrink)

This study investigates the use of musical intelligence to improve the English pronunciation of Chinese third level students. It is relevant for a human-centred systems engineering approach to cross-cultural interaction. Language learning is important as valid communication can help interactions and cultural understanding between countries, this also may benefit international stability. There are natural barriers between the English and Chinese language which are reflected in teaching approaches. The teaching of English in Chinese classrooms is removed (...) from real-world English learning environments. The academic environments and approaches focus on the learning of grammar, spelling and writing with little real-life conversation and interaction with native English speakers. English language learning in China is from a more academic perspective rather than practical utilisation. Correct pronunciation and accent is therefore diminished. This study demonstrates that a musical intelligence e-Learning approach can benefit Chinese English language students. (shrink)

Speakers of different languages (e.g., English vs. Turkish) show a binary split in how they package and order components of a motion event in speech and co‐speech gesture but not in silent gesture. In this study, we focused on Mandarin Chinese, a language that does not follow the binary split in its expression of motion in speech, and asked whether adult Chinese speakers would follow the language‐specific speech patterns in co‐speech but not silent gesture, thus showing (...) a pattern akin to Turkish and English adult speakers in their description of animated motion events. Our results provided evidence for this pattern, with Chinese—as well as English and Turkish—speakers following language‐specific patterns in speech and co‐speech gesture but not in silent gesture. Our results provide support for the “thinking‐for‐speaking” account, namely that language influences thought only during online, but not offline, production of speech. (shrink)

This study examines the metaphoric meanings in English and Chinese and explores the similar patterns and variations. With specific reference to metaphors with human bodies and animals, the study analyzes the cultural conceptions behind the metaphors and discovers that the interpretation of metaphorical meanings lies in the different cultural values and attitudes. The awareness of metaphor usages in different languages may contribute to smooth intercultural communication.

Within the context of China, this study seeks to examine the relationship between English language proficiency, the native dialect of the learner, and the learner’s reason, or motivation for learning English. English language proficiency can be an important vehicle for accessing high quality higher education, for interacting with non-Chinese, and for enhancing employment and career opportunities Data was gathered through an online survey with 985 usable responses recorded. Respondents included a distribution of speakers from five of the (...) major distinct dialects of China. The analysis provides empirical evidence of a diversity of propensities and motivations for English language acquisition among learners from different regions and native dialects. Access to international higher education as a type of motivation is found to have a moderating effect on English proficiency. Other findings suggest that learners in regions with more historic exposure to foreign interaction are more likely to be motivated for social reasons, those from regions with export focused commerce will be motivated for business related reasons. The results of this study may be of interest to policy makers, linguists, educators, and those with an interest in socioeconomic sustainability through language acquisition and education as a method of socioeconomic mobility. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine the link between English foreign language teacher’s professional identity and employee success via mediating role of critical thinking. Further, we examined the moderating role of leader motivational language between employee professional identity and critical thing and also indirect effect on employee success via critical thinking. We collected data from Chinese MNC’s school by using time lagged study design. We used hierarchical linear regression for direct hypotheses and Hayes PROCESS model’s (...) for mediation, moderation, and mediation moderation analysis. The results show that there is positive relation between employee’s professional identity and teacher’s success. Further, critical thinking mediates the link between professional identity and employee success. The results of the moderated mediation analysis show that critical thinking mediated the interaction of employee’s professional identity and leader’s motivational language on teacher’s success. (shrink)

This book reports on the contrastive-semantic investigation of sadness expressions between English and Chinese, based on two monolingual general corpora and a parallel corpus. The exploration adopts a unique theoretical approach which integrates corpus-linguistic theories on meaning (as a social construct, usage and paraphrase) with a corpus-linguistic lexical model. It employs a new complex but workable methodology which combines computational tools with manual examination to tease meaning out of corpus evidence, to compare and contrast lexical items that do not (...) match up neatly between languages. It looks at sadness expressions both within and across languages in terms of three corpus-linguistic structural categories, i.e. colligation, collocation and semantic association/preference, and paraphrase (both explicit and implicit) to capture their subtle nuances of meaning, disclose the culture-specific conceptualisations encoded in them, and highlight their respective cultural distinctiveness of emotion. By presenting multidisciplinary original work, Sadness Expressions in English and Chinese will be of interest to researchers in corpus linguistics, contrastive lexical semantics, psychology, bilingual lexicography and language pedagogy. (shrink)

This book reports on the contrastive-semantic investigation of sadness expressions between English and Chinese, based on two monolingual general corpora and a parallel corpus. The exploration adopts a unique theoretical approach which integrates corpus-linguistic theories on meaning (as a social construct, usage and paraphrase) with a corpus-linguistic lexical model. It employs a new complex but workable methodology which combines computational tools with manual examination to tease meaning out of corpus evidence, to compare and contrast lexical items that do not (...) match up neatly between languages. It looks at sadness expressions both within and across languages in terms of three corpus-linguistic structural categories, i.e. colligation, collocation and semantic association/preference, and paraphrase (both explicit and implicit) to capture their subtle nuances of meaning, disclose the culture-specific conceptualisations encoded in them, and highlight their respective cultural distinctiveness of emotion. By presenting multidisciplinary original work, Sadness Expressions in English and Chinese will be of interest to researchers in corpus linguistics, contrastive lexical semantics, psychology, bilingual lexicography and language pedagogy. (shrink)

Positive psychology has received increasing attention in the field of education. Therefore, it would be of utmost importance to analyze the relationship between the constructs falling under the category of positive psychology and other constructs to pave the way for both educational authorities and teachers themselves. Reviewing the previous studies, it turned out that there have been no studies to discuss the interplay between teachers’ psychological capital and their job commitment and academic optimism particularly in the context of China. To (...) fill this gap, the current study set out to inspect the function of Chinese English as a Foreign language teachers’ psychological capital in promoting their job commitment and academic optimism. To accomplish this, 316 Chinese teachers were asked to complete “Psychological Capital Scale,” “Job Commitment Scale,” and “Academic Optimism Scale.” The results of regression analyses revealed that Chinese EFL teachers’ psychological capital can strongly predict their job commitment and academic optimism. The conclusion and implications of the results are finally discussed and it is mentioned that both educational authorities and teachers can benefit from this study and make the experience of teaching much more productive. (shrink)

This book is a cognitive semantic study of the Chinese conceptualization of the heart, traditionally seen as the central faculty of cognition. The Chinese word xin, which primarily denotes the heart organ, covers the meanings of both "heart" and "mind" as understood in English, which upholds a heart-head dichotomy. In contrast to the Western dualist view, Chinese takes on a more holistic view that sees the heart as the center of both emotions and thought. The contrast characterizes (...) two cultural traditions that have developed different conceptualizations of person, self, and agent of cognition. The concept of "heart" lies at the core of Chinese thought and medicine, and its importance to Chinese culture is extensively manifested in the Chinese language. Diachronically, this book traces the roots of its conception in ancient Chinese philosophy and traditional Chinese medicine. Along the synchronic dimension, it not only makes a systematic analysis of conventionalized expressions that reflect the underlying cultural models and conceptualizations, as well as underlying conceptual metaphors and metonymies, but also attempts a textual analysis of an essay and a number of poems for their metaphoric and metonymic images and imports contributing to the cultural models and conceptualizations. It also takes up a comparative perspective that sheds light on similarities and differences between Western and Chinese cultures in the understanding of the heart, brain, body, mind, self, and person. The book contributes to the understanding of the embodied nature of human cognition situated in its cultural context, and the relationship between language, culture, and cognition. (shrink)

The present research explored how foreign language listening anxiety affected Chinese university students' English listening test performance and how proficiency and gender mediated the effects of FLLA on the latter. Two different populations from two universities in China answered the 20-item Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale as well as a demographic questionnaire and took an English listening test. Analyses of the collected data revealed the following major findings: Five latent factors underlay the FLLAS, when working alone, FLLA (...) significantly negatively predicted students' English listening test performance, and when working with proficiency and gender, English proficiency level, gender and FLLAS2 significantly predicted students' English listening test performance. These findings confirm the negative effects of FLLA on students' English listening test performance. They also indicate that English proficiency and gender mediate FLLA's effects on the latter, with English proficiency not only directly but also indirectly affecting the latter. (shrink)

More and more tech-savvy learners are expanding the language learning environment with mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL).From the perspective of epistemological philosophy, this paper examines the relevance of the smartphone application effect, receptive vocabulary knowledge, and receptive language ability in the development of English vocabulary knowledge in Chinese college English learners. Fifty-four freshman English learners were divided into two groups. One group used a smartphone app, and the other used traditional memorization methods. The results showed that, (...) first, there was a significant difference in scores between the two groups, and the longer the experimental group used the app, the higher their scores on both long-term and short-term memory tests. Second, there is a high correlation and significant between the short-term and long-term vocabulary memory test scores of the two groups of students and the pre-test and post-test reading and listening scores. Thirdly, the role of motivation in learners' emotional factors may be related to the development of receptive vocabulary knowledge and receptive language skills. It is effective for freshmen of English universities in China to correctly use smartphone applications for vocabulary development. Vocabulary learning based on mobile devices positively impacts learners' emotional factors, so it is related to the increase of motivation. (shrink)

Languages differ systematically in how to encode a motion event. English characteristically expresses manner in verb root and path in verb particle; in Chinese, varied aspects of motion, such as manner, path and cause, can be simultaneously encoded in a verb compound. This study investigates whether typological differences, as such, influence how first and second language learners conceptualise motion events, as suggested by behavioural evidences. Specifically, the performance of Chinese learners of English, at three proficiencies, was compared (...) to that of two groups of monolingual speakers in a triads matching task. The first set of analyses regarding categorisation preferences indicates that participants across groups preferred the path-matched (rather than manner-matched) screens. However, the second set of analyses regarding reaction time suggests, firstly, that English monolingual speakers reacted significantly more quickly in selecting the manner-matched scenes compared with monolingual speakers of Chinese, who tended to use an approximately equal amount of time in making manner- and path-matched decisions, a finding that can arguably be mapped onto the typological difference between the two languages. Secondly, the pattern of response latency in low-level L2 learners looked more like that of monolingual speakers of Chinese. Only at intermediate and advanced levels of acquisition did the behavioural pattern of L2 learners become target-like, thus suggesting language-specific constraints from the L1 at an early stage of acquisition. Overall, our results suggest that motion event cognition may be linked to, among other things, the linguistic structure of motion description in particular languages. (shrink)

English second language learners often experience difficulties in producing native-like English lexical stress. It is unknown which acoustic correlates, such as fundamental frequency (F0), duration, and intensity, are the most problematic for Chinese dialect speakers. The present study investigated the prosodic transfer effects of first language (L1) regional dialects on the production of English stress contrasts. Native English speakers (N = 20) and Chinese learners (N = 60) with different dialect backgrounds (Beijing, Changsha, and Guangzhou dialects) (...) produced the same stimulus including both trochaic and iambic patterns. Results showed that (a) all participants produced the stressed syllable with greater values of F0, duration, and intensity; (b) Native speakers of English employed an exquisite combination of F0, duration, and intensity, while the dialect groups transfer their native prosody into their production of English lexical stress, resulting in the deviation or abnormality of acoustic cues. Results suggest that L1 native dialect background is considered as a potentially influential factor which may transfer in L2 speech encoding and decoding process. (shrink)

This corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis of news reports on air pollution published from 2008 through 2015 by China Daily, China’s largest official English-language newspaper, reveals a significant attitudinal shift around the end of 2011 as regards public awareness of increasing air pollution levels in China and related public criticism. It also constructs a clear image of the increasing determination and resolve of the Chinese central government over the course of this 8-year period to take action to effectively reduce (...) air pollution. This study highlights the submissive role played by the official Chinese press in their reporting on air pollution under the strict censorship system of the Communist Party of China, as well as the socio-political role that international sporting events such as the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games played in raising both public and governmental awareness of environmental issues. (shrink)

The New Curriculum Standards for teaching English introduced major changes in the culture of teaching and learning English in the Peoples Republic of China. Changes have been linked to changing goals for English instruction and a revision of Confucian values in schooling. In this article, we argue that this English curriculum proposes a new role, with new demands, for English-as-foreign-language teachers in the PRC. In order to implement the curriculum reform successfully, teachers involved in the reform are required to (...) have a shared understanding of its nature, purposes and scope. However, little is known about to what extent EFL teachers understand and engage with their new roles. This study examines teachers’ understandings of the new curriculum and of the new, demanding role of teachers implied by the curriculum. This is a mixed methods study involving an analysis of the curriculum document, a survey of EFL teachers and semi-structured interviews with a sample of teachers in the cohort. The findings suggest that many teachers know the content of the curriculum document, but expressed uncertainty about the implications of changes, uncertainty about what a shift to student-centered teaching and learning means and confusion about new professional development demands. The findings of this study have wider implications for EFL teachers, teacher educators, researchers and policy makers in the PRC and similar national contexts. This article highlights that, from an international perspective, introducing new ideas and practices should consider teachers’ existing understanding and experiences of the curriculum as well as the way in which they understand the purposes of the changes, and should promote a shared understanding of policy intentions. (shrink)

Cross-cultural research suggests that East Asians display a holistic attentional bias by paying attention to the entire field and to relationships between objects, whereas Westerners pay attention primarily to salient objects, displaying an analytic attentional bias. The assumption of a universal pan-Asian holistic attentional bias has recently been challenged in experimental research involving Japanese and Chinese participants, which suggests that linguistic factors may contribute to the formation of East Asians' holistic attentional patterns. The present experimental research explores differences in (...) attention and information processing styles between Korean and Chinese speakers, who have been assumed to display the same attentional bias due to cultural commonalities. We hypothesize that the specific structure of the Korean language predisposes speakers to pay more attention to ground information than to figure information, thus leading to a stronger holistic attentional bias compared to Chinese speakers. Findings of the present research comparing different groups of English, Chinese, and Korean speakers provide further evidence for differences in East Asians' holistic attentional bias, which may be due to the influence of language. Furthermore, we also extend prior theorizing by discussing the potential impact of other cultural factors. In line with critical voices calling for more research investigating differences between cultures that are assumed to be culturally similar, we highlight important avenues for future studies exploring the language-culture relationship. (shrink)

The present study examined English use anxiety, motivation, self-efficacy, use of English, and their predictive effects on top university students’ English achievements. Two hundred and twenty-three students of the Top-Notch Students of Basic Disciplines Training Program in a top Chinese university answered a battery of questionnaires, which consisted of the 8-item English Use Anxiety Questionnaire, the 5-item Motivational Self-Talk Questionnaire, the 3-item Self-Efficacy Questionnaire, the 19-item Language Learning Orientations Questionnaire, and a Background Information Questionnaire. Analyses of the data (...) revealed the following major findings: the participants had a low level of extrinsic motivation-introjected regulation, a low-to-medium level of English use anxiety, extrinsic motivation-external regulation, intrinsic motivation-knowledge, and a medium-to-high level of motivational self-talk, self-efficacy, extrinsic motivation-identified regulation, intrinsic motivation-accomplishment, and intrinsic motivation-stimulation, use of English anxiety and language learning orientation were generally significantly negatively correlated with each other, and significantly correlated with other measured variables, UAE and intrinsic motivation-knowledge significantly predicted the participants English achievements, measured both by standardized test scores and self-rated overall English proficiency, and use of English and self-efficacy mediated the effects of English use anxiety and language learning orientations on the participants’ English achievements. These findings further pinpoint the importance of anxiety and motivation in second/foreign language learning. (shrink)

Laurence G. Thompson Chinese Religion in Western Languages. A Comprehensive and Classified Bibliography of Publications in English, French and German through 1980. The Association for Asian Studies Monograph No. XLI, The University of Arizona Press, Tucson 1985. xlix + 302pp. $19.95.

There has been much research into teacher beliefs about teaching and learning as seen in the general teacher education literature. In the field of language teacher education, this line of research has been evolving, with the recent trend being streamlined into “teacher cognition” as a generic or umbrella term. Despite increasing amounts of research output so far, research into foreign language teachers’ cognitions about their own teaching and decision-making is still insufficient, particularly with regard to university-level English-as-a-foreign-language (...) (EFL) teachers in China. Drawing on Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory, this qualitative research focused on EFL teachers’ cognitions about form-focused instruction in Chinese university settings. It intended to discover how teachers’ cognitions changed when they were expected to teach in actual classrooms and what factors contributed to these changes. Data collected from four teacher-participants through semi-structured interviews, classroom observations and follow-up stimulated recall interviews showed participants’ support forfocus-on-forminstruction, which means they not only paid attention to the grammatical form of the language but also to the meaning it is intended to convey. However, data also showed that the teacher-participants shifted fromfocus-on-formtofocus-on-formSinstruction in actual teaching, which suggests that they might have realized the challenges of carrying out teaching activities surroundingfocus-on-formand would like to take an easier approach by only teaching the grammar of the language byfocusing on formS. Such incongruences are interpreted with reference to a plethora of sociocultural factors including traditional Chinese thinking and institutional expectations. The implications of the findings for stakeholders in universities, including faculty members, students, and curriculum developers in similar contexts, are also discussed. (shrink)

This study investigated the possible prosodic transfer influences native regional dialects may have in the perception of English lexical stress by speakers of three Chinese dialects [Beijing (BJ), Changsha (CS), and Guangzhou (GZ)] compared to 20 American English (AE) speakers. F0, duration, intensity, and vowel reduction were manipulated in nonce disyllabic words. Participants performed four-word sequence recall tasks to identify lexical stress location. They performed better with natural sounds than with manipulated words. This study focused on the performance differences (...) in manipulating words. The results showed that all four-group members performed similarly processing F0 condition nonce words. BJ and CS participants were more accurate than GZ participants in duration and vowel reduction cues. Reaction time (RT) suggested that the processing time of acoustic cues differed significantly across language groups. The findings indicate that first language (L1) dialect effect is robust in second language (L2) stress perception tasks. (shrink)

Curriculum reform urges teachers to constantly reflect on existing identities and develop probably whole new identities. Yet, in the wake of the poststructuralist view of identity as a complex matter of the social and the individual, of discourse and practice, and of agency and structure, teacher identity is a process of arguing for themselves and hence ethical and political in nature. Drawing on Foucault’s notion of ethical self-formation and its adoption by Clarke “Diagram for Doing Identity Work” in teacher education (...) research, this 2-year-long case study explores how two Chinese English-as-foreign-language teachers engaged in identity work in a changing curricular landscape. The analysis of narrative frames and semistructured interviews reveals the relations between the relative stable and the evolving elements of teachers’ identity work, and the essential role of teachers’ ethical agency based on reflective and critical responsiveness to the contextual reality and the dynamic power relations during the reform. The findings argue for the importance of nourishing teachers’ reflective identity work and ethical agency during the turbulence of educational change. (shrink)

This paper explores how English language has gradually become a linguistic form of cultural capital in China’s zigzag journey to modernization. It situates English’s status in flux in historical context, with an analysis at both the international and intra-national level. It showcases the necessity to embed cultural capital within Bourdieu’s full framework, and evidences the arbitrary nature of this form of cultural capital for its intimate tie to power and politics. By revealing how English has been officially consecrated as (...) a global lingua franca and then socially recognized for material and symbolic benefits, this paper implicitly problematizes the officially validated cultural hierarchy, argues that the value of a cultural capital is context-dependent, politically and socially constructed, inseparable from the field where it is produced. The present-day English manifests its symbolic power in classification and social stratification, entrenching the already entrenched inequality within and without the national state. (shrink)

Research productivity is an important criterion for the university to assess teachers. Studies about factors that affect teachers’ research productivity are increasing nowadays. It is generally agreed that academics’ research productivity depends on how much mentorship is provided to them and how the current working environment is mediated by their research motivation and self-efficacy. Despite the increasing amount of the literature along this line, we know little about what kinds of situations that Chinese university English as a foreign (...) class='Hi'>language (EFL) teachers are in and how they regard the importance of mentorship and what roles their working environments would play in affecting their research productivity. To fill the research gap, we utilized the snowball method to collect the survey data from 546 Chinese EFL tertiary teachers. The results show that mentorship is not correlated with research productivity while the working environment has a positive direct correlation with it. Both motivation and self-efficacy mediate the working environment and research productivity significantly. Specifically, only extrinsic motivation has a negative mediation influence on teachers’ research productivity; teachers’ intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy play a positive mediation role in affecting their research productivity. (shrink)

The present longitudinal survey study explored changes in and effects of foreign language classroom anxiety and listening anxiety on Chinese undergraduate students’ English proficiency over a semester in the COVID-19 context. A set of 182 matching questionnaires was collected from first-year undergraduate English as a foreign language learners at two time points of a 16-week semester. Analyses of the data revealed the following major findings: the participants experienced high levels of FLCA and FLLA both at the beginning (...) and end of the semester, neither of which changed significantly during the semester, FLCA and FLLA were highly positively related to each other, FLCA and FLLA significantly predicted students’ self-rated proficiency in listening and speaking English, and confidence in using English, efforts and motivation to learn English and interaction with instructors and peers mediated FLCA and FLLA to exert effects on students’ self-perceived proficiency in listening and speaking English. These findings indicate that the learning environment is critical in influencing the levels of and changes in FLCA and listening anxiety and that these two types of foreign language anxiety are serious issues in the pandemic foreign language learning context. (shrink)

Clarifying the effects of biliteracy on cognitive development is important to understanding the role of cognitive development in L2 learning. A substantial body of research has shed light on the cognitive factors contributing to biliteracy development. Yet, not much is known about the effect of the degree of exposure to biliteracy on cognitive functions. To fill this research void, we measured three categories of biliteracy skills jointly and investigated the effects of biliteracy skill performance in these three categories on cognitive (...) skills in Chinese L1 children who were exposed to English as L2 beginning at age 3 or in grade 3. In this cross-sectional study, 10 parallel Chinese and English language, reading, and cognitive–linguistic measures were administered to emerging Chinese–English bilingual children in grade 3 and grade 6. The results revealed that early exposure to Chinese–English biliteracy enhanced cognitive skills but with a cost of a slight delay in performance on Chinese L1 language skills in grade 3. Importantly, the present findings suggest that, in addition to universal and developmental processes, the cumulative effect of early and sustained bi-scriptal exposure enhances working memory and attention in school children. (shrink)

It has been a growing trend in Chinese universities to shift from English for general purposes to English for specific purposes teaching. Against this background, large groups of teachers previously engaged in teaching EGP have become or are becoming ESP teachers, which means a complex process of learning for subject-specific information, transforming teaching practices and constructing new identities. Despite this, very little has been written about the ESP teacher cognition of language teaching or the factors influencing this shift (...) in teaching. This study involved English for Medical Purposes teachers in Chinese universities as participants, and a scale of EMP TC with 31 items was developed on the basis of questionnaire results. Data from exploratory factor analysis revealed six dimensions of the scale, namely, teacher attitude, teacher belief, teacher learning, teacher support, role identification, and teacher practice—that combine to constitute and influence EMP TC. While the identity factor has attracted wide attention in ESP teacher research, other factors have largely been neglected. Thus, this research highlights the importance of more factors in shaping and changing the language teaching cognition of EMP or ESP teachers in large, especially the teacher belief factor. In addition, results of independent samples t-tests indicated significant difference in EMP teacher learning in terms of gender, differences in EMP teacher attitude and teacher support in terms of EMP teaching experience. Suggestions for enhancing EMP TC are offered on the basis of the conclusions of this research. (shrink)