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Much of academic publishing research is conducted with professors and with postgraduate students majoring in science. There is less published research on how EFL postgraduate students specializing in applied linguistics reflect on their publishing activities. Little is known about what challenges these students face in writing journal papers and how they perceive support provided by their universities with regard to publishing. The present study fills this gap by investigating six Hong Kong postgraduate students to understand their challenges in publishing refereed journal papers and their perception of institutional support for research publication. The interview data highlight that lack of motivation and lack of confidence are challenges faced by the interviewees in writing journal papers. Despite the fact that Hong Kong universities provided support to help doctoral students develop research publication, the majority of the interviewees had not fully benefited from such existing support. It is concluded that lack of confidence could be attributed to the students' non-native English speaker status and insufficient formal instruction in academic writing, while lack of motivation could be explored with reference to the socio-cultural context in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professor Diane Larsen-Freeman has been an enduring and highly influential contributor to the field of applied linguistics, English language teaching, in general, and especially grammar teaching. She has inspired many thousands of language teachers, student-teachers and academicians in applied linguistics. Her research in Second Language Acquisition and her later research interest in introducing complex systems to the field of applied linguistics has had a great impact on research in applied linguistics. The book she co-authored with Cameron put a completely different perspective on language and language studies. Her book on teaching approaches also attracted thousands of readers who specialize in language teaching. The video made on different teaching methods covered in the book is also a good demonstration helping learners identify the features of different methods. What's more, her coinage of the word "grammaring" and the concept of form-meaning-use she advocated in the book series Grammar Dimensions has shed light on people's understanding of grammar and grammar teaching, thus transforming the way of teaching grammar. Her numerous publications of influential books and papers have great impact on researchers and language teachers in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On an annual basis, China's "Two Sessions" draw researchers' attention to the study of interpreting that comes along. However, the related research mostly focuses on interpreting strategies and skills, and rarely involves the interpreter who produces the interpreting. This paper collects both of two interpreters' texts at the press conferences of the "Two Sessions" from 2010 to 2020 to build a parallel corpus. By comparing their interpreting, with the speeches of the leaders of the White House as a comparable corpus, the study seeks to probe into the similarities and differences between the interpreting styles of two interpreters from the linguistic perspective. It is found that when interpreting, the interpreter Sun has richer vocabulary and a higher lexical density than the interpreter Zhang. The interpreting style of Sun is closer to the written style, while Zhang's style is more colloquial. Compared with the transcripts of the U.S. press conference, the linguistic features of Zhang's interpreting is more similar to those in the comparable corpus in vocabulary richness, word length and readability. Therefore, Zhang's interpreting might be more likely to be intelligible and acceptable to English speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's information technology development is rapid; the organic combination of science and technology and education has promoted the reform of the education system; the education platform supplemented by mobile devices provides students with a new learning mode; student learning is no longer limited by the traditional education system; and learners can use mobile terminals for online learning, self-control learning steps, arrange learning time, and be able to combine their own deficiencies to strengthen learning content. Therefore, this paper discusses the design of English education teaching system in the Internet of Things technology environment, in order to provide students with a good learning environment and improve students' English integration strength. This paper analyzes the research status of mobile learning at home and abroad, expounds the construction principles of mobile English learning system, and designs and studies the overall structure and functional modules of the system. The application of the system can replace the traditional English learning method and can enable students to improve their English ability through mobile devices. In view of the problems of poor teaching effect and high energy consumption in the traditional Internet of Things education platform, this paper puts forward a teaching effect evaluation method of Internet of Things education platform based on long-term memory network. By analyzing the current situation of the Internet of Things education platform, including its development and structure, this paper constructs the evaluation model of the combination of long-term memory neural network model and gray model and realizes the evaluation of the teaching effect of the Internet of Things education platform. Finally, through the study of the model, the teaching effect of the Internet of Things education platform is evaluated. The experimental results show that when the method is used to evaluate the teaching effect, the operating energy consumption accounts for 84% of the total energy consumption of the system, which proves the effectiveness of the method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the ideology of monolingualism prevails in traditional English language classroom teaching, it is gradually failing to meet the current dynamic landscape of socio-linguistic and socio-cultural diversity. Translanguaging has created more spaces for students to use their varied linguistic and multimodal repertoires to express themselves and enhance learning in actual classroom practices. This paper aims to explore students' perceptions and practices of translanguaging at a university located in southeast China. Data were collected via semistructured interviews and reflective journals. The study employed qualitative content analysis to investigate the ways in which the establishment of a translanguaging space might facilitate students' access to linguistic and epistemic equity. The paper ends with suggestions and implications regarding the importance of raising students' awareness of translanguaging as a means to embrace all languages, meaning-making resources, and previous knowledge for equitable English language education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the expanding use of English around the world, it is important to understand various stakeholders' attitudes towards it from a Global Englishes (GE) perspective. The GE perspective has challenged native speakerism and recognized the multilingual nature of the English language. In particular, a GE perspective leads to the sustainable development of a language from both sociolinguistic and ecolinguistic perspectives. Echoing the diversity and complexity of the English language use and teaching, this paper investigates senior high school students' attitudes towards the local variety of English in China, and unpacks their negotiation and construction of identity through their English-language learning journey. Through a series of interviews, this study found that the students still perceive English as a school subject, and see themselves as perennial learners of English. As the GE perspective was not widely recognized, and that students have not developed their awareness of the global use of English, several implications of teaching English from the GE paradigm, from curriculum design and teaching materials, are provided to increase the awareness of the global use of English. This paper also highlights the importance of viewing the development of English from an ecolinguistic perspective for the sustainable development of the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

English has increasingly become an essential second language as well as a language for international communication. However, there is little research that examines the dimensions of mobile learning for both researchers and instructional designers and focuses on effective uses of the latest mobile learning technologies for education. There have been no reviews of research on mobile English learning. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the research on Mobile English Language Learning (MELL) material to initiate an evidence-based discussion on the usage of mobile learning in English language education. Findings from existing literature show that studying and reviewing mobile learning leads to a deeper understanding of its effect and possibilities with respect to learning the English language. Additionally, findings also indicate that when it comes to English language skills, vocabulary is the most-used skill, and the most common problem that studies mention is that of motivation. Further studies need to investigate other terms and keywords that reflect on the use of mobile learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of the public good of higher education is closely related to the political, social and educational cultures in which higher education is embedded. It varies across contexts. However, widely used notions of the 'public' aspects of higher education, including the concepts of economic public goods and private goods, conventionally assume Anglo-American state/society/university assemblages. Anglo-American (and more generally, Western) discourses and terms are dominant in scholarship on public policy and higher education. This creates obstacles and lacunae in comparative studies, and employing solely Anglo-American notions can be especially problematic in non-Anglo-American contexts. This paper attempts to move beyond the conventional approach by conducting a lexical-based comparison of the Chinese and Anglo-American approaches to the public aspects of higher education. It identifies and explores key concepts of the public good of higher education in both the Chinese and English languages, establishing similarities and differences. The comparison contributes to a more balanced understanding of the public roles of higher education, illuminates new aspects of 'public', and may facilitate mutual understanding between scholars and between the Chinese and Anglo-American higher education systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been an interest in using visual input in multimodal applications for language learning. However, the effects of visual input in listening materials remain to be discussed. Past literature has shown no unified answer to the effects of video input in improving listening comprehension scores. Since there are many proposals for the diversified reform of English teaching methods, it is worth examining whether using traditional audio listening only or using different video inputs can bring more significant benefits to students. The subjects of this study are 30 non-English majors in Chinese universities. This paper applied the quantitative research method, testing students' performance using different listening visual inputs (content, context, and audio only) and different listening text types (monologue and dialogue). Data were analysed using the two-way repeated measures within groups ANOVA. The interaction effects and the main effect of variables on listening performance were examined to explore the impact of visual input and text types on English listening comprehension. The following conclusions are drawn from the data analysis: (1) The interaction effect shows that video and text types significantly affect students' listening scores. Videos that contain authentic listening scenes and content elements are beneficial to promote listening comprehension as they support students' interpretation and understanding of what they hear, and (2) It was noted that grouping students by listening proficiency and examining their cultural background would expand the study in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, English teachers usually take a three-step approach to grammar teaching, namely, the presentation—practice—production principle (3P Principle). This method consists of both “morphology” and “syntax.” It adopts the traditional mode of grammar teaching, including knowledge presentation, grammar exercises, and grammatical competence production, which will inevitably lead to time consumption and low efficiency in grammar learning. This study is about cultivating English majors’ grammatical competence through the theoretical mode of grammar teaching. The research results show that the theoretical mode of grammar teaching helps cultivate learners’ grammatical competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the research output on English language education in China published in 24 international journals from 2001 to 2006 and delineates the nature of this corpus of research. The review covers research in the following areas: the linguistic situations and culture of learning in China in relation to English language education, language policy and planning, developments in English curricula and teaching methodologies and the impact of these developments on the learning of English in bilingual and multilingual circumstances, as well as the professional development of English teachers in China. The paper also identifies the gaps that future research needs to address, such as the dynamic nature of the Chinese culture of learning, the recognition of Chinese English as a variety of English, and teaching and learning in settings including non-elite colleges, secondary and primary schools, and schools for ethnic minorities. It is hoped that this stock of research informs the efforts in similar contexts to adjust national policies and curricula to contextual complexity at a macro level and encourage practitioners to have ingenious responses to their given curricula at a local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been papers published in the Chinese mainland or Taiwan or outside of China exploring the relationship between intercultural communication studies and English teaching in China. The present study, applying historicism, points out that these papers, though informative, are far from adequate for lack of equal importance attached to journal papers and books, and to some events of historic significance. The objective of the present study is, therefore, to make up for some missing links in these papers. A rhetorical approach out of various perspectives on ICS is called for so that teachers and students of ICS in China would be better informed to realize effective intercultural communication in English. To this end, this paper first points out that to trace the origin of the relationship between language and culture is a bit far-fetched, for no one could possibly pin down exactly when the relationship was perceived between culture and FLE in general and English teaching in particular. Then a more comprehensive account is made of the development of ICS in China for English Teaching. Third, some barriers in furthering ICS for English teaching in China are clarified as well as their causes. Fourth and finally, a rhetorical approach is suggested to ICS both for descriptions of cultural differences and evaluations of cultural elements that comprise a given culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper outlines the important role of cross-cultural competence in foreign language training and its role in the process of internationalization of higher education in the countries of Asian region. As foreign language proficiency remained a distinctive feature of social class, foreign language communication skills acquired special importance with increasing pace of internationalization of higher education. Under globalization foreign language proficiency has become one of the main requirements for academic mobility. Special attention is paid to English as the language of cross-cultural communication and necessary component of internationalization. As English is the language for education in universities all over the world, scholars and scientists consider that encouraging the use of English in teaching makes it easier for non-English speaking specialists to fulfill their study abroad. The experience of Asian countries is of great value to scientists as these countries are interested in increasing the number of foreign students in Asian educational establishments as well as studying Asian students abroad. China is put in the center of the authors’ attention as it has acquired the status of a main exporter of higher education due to Chinese students’ interest in oversea courses. The analysis of peculiarities of foreign language training in different countries has been conducted in the article. In non-English-speaking countries English is taught as an additional language or is used as a medium of instruction in education to make non-English speakers’ participation in the process of internationalization possible. The authors have analyzed the main problems and difficulties in foreign language training, stresses the importance of cross-cultural competence for brining up tolerance for representatives from different cultures and awareness of cultural differences between nations as main condition for effective communication. There are some difficulties in students’ attempt to develop adequate English proficiency to learn other subjects’ content through English. On the other hand, cross-cultural communication skills enhance efficiency of teaching as a teacher should be aware of his students’ culture and some traditions. The paper highlights the fact that one of the important factors, influencing foreign language training, is understanding not only linguistic, grammar, phonological differences such as differences in the structure of native and target languages, but cultural values and behavior patterns of verbal and nonverbal communication according to national cultures as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the enactment of critical literacy pedagogy in secondary English language teaching in the face of globalisation. This qualitative case study signals that global citizenship education (GCE) and English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching can converge through offering equitable and globally contextualised learning opportunities. The overarching themes presented here challenge the dominance of instrumentalist orientations of EFL education in mainland China today while mobilising pedagogical choices that affirm students' local and lived experiences in relation to international socio‐political issues. Findings provide EFL educators nuanced insights into how critical global literacies are extended through critical understandings of literacies, interconnections from a personal to a global level, and opportunities for social actions on multicultural issues, thus fostering globally competent and bilingual learners who critically engage with the contested terrain of an increasingly globalised world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines university students' perceptions towards different English accent varieties and their non-unitary and conflicting identity (re)construction responding the changing configuration of English in China. Findings from interviews and diaries indicate that the participants' perceptions appear to be under the substantial influence of the different identities they intend to assume. The incompatibility existing in their different identities leads to identity conflicts and attitude schizophrenia. The article proposes a revision of the ongoing teaching paradigm in order to project the current spread and development of English and to attend to the genuine linguistic demands and identity appeals of English language learners in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tries to analyze the present status of phonics teaching in Mainland China by using documentary research method through sorting out all the essays about phonics teaching in CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure) according to their research contents and research methods. The data collected shows that Phonics, Pinyin and IPA are mainly discussed topics, especially different roles of them in English teaching. Unfortunately, misconceptions about phonics do appear in some of those essays collected, while localization of phonics is emerging. This paper seems to shed light on a general overview of English phonics teaching in Mainland China for English teachers and researchers and cope up with the difficult points and conflicts to provide improvement for phonics teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macau is a small Special Autonomous Region (SAR) of China, located on the Pearl River Delta, adjacent to Hong Kong. Unlike Hong Kong, its colonial heritage is Portuguese, rather than British. Macau’s official languages are Portuguese and Standard Chinese and the most widely spoken local language is Cantonese. With the influx of gaming finance into the city, English has also come to a role of increasing prominence. There are also substantial number of Filipinos working in the city who speak Tagalog as a first language in many cases. As a small state with a highly fluid linguistic situation, Macau can provide insights into how languages rise and fall in use and status. Macau can also be a useful tool for re-evaluating such concepts as linguistic imperialism and the concentric circles model of World Englishes. As well as evaluating the existing literature, this paper presents the results of a questionnaire survey into language attitudes amongst students at Macau Polytechnic Institute. The results reveal that students attach a higher status to English than Portuguese, despite the latter being the former colonial and current official language. Evidence, however, indicates that Portuguese is likely to continue to be important as a distinguishing feature of Macau SAR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last two years, English language teaching at the level of basic education in China has been changing very fast due to the new Standard Curriculum. The paper takes a school in the northwest of China as an example, illustrating the process of implementing the Curriculum, summarizing the work the school has done, the problems encountered and arguing for the need to manage the change. The paper also gives some suggestions in conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the growing internationalization of higher education and talents cultivation, EAP has been debated extensively in recent years in China with respect to its form, content and function in the system of college English. Under these new circumstances, a research-oriented polytechnic university in Beijing has launched an EAP course for the science and engineering students since 2013 based on its discipline strengths, talents cultivation goals and students' needs analysis. This paper first introduces the course design in detail, and then investigates its feasibility and effectiveness, with empirical data analyses indicating that this course could considerably promote students' basic language skills and academic communicative competence, activate their intrinsic motivation and help them prepare for the future academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, globalization has already changed the whole world than anyone could imagine. China adopts an open mind to the change for globalization, and spares no effort to participate in international economic cooperation, which means more opportunities for Chinese students to study and work abroad. Therefore, it is not necessary but a must to cultivate college students' intercultural communication competence. This paper is to conduct a survey in Sichuan University of Arts and Science, involving 180 non-English Major freshmen. By the combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis, this paper is to discuss the problems existing in the process of cultivating college students' intercultural communication competence, such as: insufficient output of students' language competence, and inadequate input of culture knowledge, and probe into the reasons for those problems. Meanwhile, this paper also put forward some solutions about how to cultivate college students' intercultural communication competency with the perspective of output--driven, Input--enabled Hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informatization is one of the most important characteristics of the current era, Internet (including mobile Internet, called network for short in this paper) is an important medium of information dissemination, and its rapid development speed and penetration rate make the classroom life and extracurricular life of contemporary English major college students inseparable from network. Through the online questionnaire and field research for the influence of network on the extracurricular learning and life of English major college students in some universities in Chengdu, Leshan, Mianyang, Nanchong, and other regions in Sichuan, this paper makes a thorough analysis on the problems found, probes into the influence of network on the extracurricular study and life of English major college students and the consequence, and discusses how to use network to guide, serve and manage the extracurricular learning and life of English major college students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a mixed methods, grounded theory study of two teams of American teachers who taught 1125 Chinese teachers of English over two years in intensive fourteen-day professional development workshops. Through the use of ethnographic, grounded theory, and mixed methods, the paper will illuminate the paradigm shift from didactic teaching to a student-centred, active learning environment seen through a socio-cultural linguistic, constructivist lens. In contrasting the unique collectivist, authoritarian cultural context of the Peoples' Republic of China with the United States' recognised sense of ethnocentricism, its societal norms and standards, recognition is given to the outsiderinsider dialogical and ontological insights with regard to changes in indigenous identity. Pedagogical and methodological practices will be examined in this light. Of all participants in two summers of professional development, it was found that 97.75 percent reacted favourably to the shift from teacher-centred dispenser of information to an active, studentcentred perspective. In the process, Chinese teachers became more confident in their skills and in a dispassionate fashion, compared and contrasted two pedagogical paradigms, and mutative senses of their identity. 2.25 percent felt there was little benefit in moving paradigms given their country's emphasis on test scores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive Diagnostic Computerized Adaptive Testing (CD-CAT) is an innovative development in psychological and educational measurement. The CDCAT is designed to select items sequentially during the process of assessment to provide accurate information about examinees' cognitive strengths and weaknesses. This paper introduces the development and implementation of a web based CD-CAT program for a large-scale English test in China, the Level 2 English Achievement. The paper is organized as follows. First, the main components of the CD-CAT design will be introduced, such as identification of attributes, Q-matrix formation, choice of CD model, item bank and calibration, item selection strategy, the parameter estimation, and design of CAT delivery system. Next, a study investigating an adequacy of model fitting for a large-scale pretest is described. This is followed by a classification accuracy study using the item parameters calibrated from the pretest. An ensuing section presents the results of a field CD-CAT test with 582 students in Beijing. A validity study of the computer-generated diagnostic results was also conducted. The final section discusses directions for future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The IMO-SMCP - Standard Marine Communication Phrases, the use of which is required under STCW 78/95, was made known to Chinese Maritime institutions about the same time it came into being, and was duly introduced right after it was adopted by IMO around year 2001. Almost a decade has passed since, but knowledge and circulation of SMCP have been small and received success befitting the size. Its implementation in China has not been satisfactory according to industrial standards. This paper reviews how SMCP is going on currently, and how well it has fared in China. The authors probe the problems incurred in the course and analyze courses for the unsatisfactory implementation. In the paper, the knowledge of the international regulations referring to SMCP and the importance of using SMCP in China maritime institutions is emphasized and viable suggestions and proposals for proper remedies are offered. The authors finally conclude: It‟s high time SMCP got well underway in China, with the consideration to the international safety of lives and properties at sea and the clean ocean environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic positions vary greatly as regards attitudes towards and expectations of global English around the world. In this paper, I focus on the English language learning context in China and use data collected during the period when Beijing was preparing for and hosting the 2008 Olympic Games (2006-2008) to examine how English and the study of English are perceived and accessed by learners engaged in teaching and learning English outside formal educational institutions, namely, Olympic community English classes and English corners. In particular, I will explore, via interviews and group discussions, the reasons underlying learners' voluntary choice of English learning; their perceptions of the status of English relative to Chinese in a globalizing context, the potential influence English imposes on Chinese language and culture, and the significance of English to Chinese society. My research findings show that my informants associate English (learning) with multiple benefits to life and career; they express a strong confidence that English will not be a threat to the Chinese language and culture and they claim that English is useful to the development of China both now and in the long run. In this paper, I posit that my informants' opinions reflect a view of the social world from a particular historical, economic or political perspective or several perspectives combined and I relate their positions on the global spread of English in China to issues of language ideologies. I believe that the nonlinguistic socio-economic, social-historical and socio-political factors exert a crucial role in the emergence of dominant ideologies. Hence, besides presenting and interpreting the prevailing English language ideologies as captured in the discourse of my research respondents, in the last part of the paper, I will explore the possible social, cultural and political factors which caused the ideologies of language to emerge and the implications borne out by these ideologies in the context of China's ongoing globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A word, even when considered monosemic, generally has a cluster of meanings, depending on the mental representation of the referent by the speaker/writer or listener/reader. The variation is even more noticeable across cultures. This paper investigates the different ways in which cultural knowledge helps in the interpretation of English lexical items. After a brief review of the traditional World Englishes structural perspective, the paper analyses the various ways in which the schema helps in the construction of lexical meaning: it helps to decode the denotative meaning of some words with possible multiple interpretations; to perceive the referential boundaries; to understand the connotative meaning; to modulate meaning, demoting some features and promoting others; to understand the physical elements which contribute to the mental representation of some words; to perceive the bodily movements and other paralinguistic elements which contribute to the construction of the meaning of some words; to perceive the salience of a word within a cultural community; to perceive and predict collocates; to perceive cultural assumptions; to perceive political politeness and taboos; to distinguish transactional language from interactional language, and so on. The study is shown to have implications for lexicography and for English Language teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With China's rising role in the global economic market, both local and international employers seek graduates with well-developed communication skills in at least one additional language to complement their specific knowledge and abilities. University graduates are taught English for Specific Purposes (ESP) within their particular disciplines. This article reflects on the first author's action research, using student presentations as a pedagogical practice with first year postgraduate students not majoring in English in a Chinese university. The authors propose that ESP pedagogy needs to progress beyond the monological Chinese Confucian model of education to a dialogic, inclusive, and hospitable model of the classroom as an imagined third space where creative, critical thinking is encouraged. This research aims to contribute to Chinese ESP pedagogy, to inform international educators of developments in the education of graduates for internationalized business practice, and to contribute to the global discourse on ESP pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-stakes tests have been employed widely to engineer curriculum innovation, or achieve intended washback in education. But our understanding of the role of high-stakes tests as an agent for change is limited due to the small number of empirical studies available on this issue. This paper reports on a washback study which focuses on the writing task in the National Matriculation English Test (NMET) in China and describes both its actual and its anticipated effects on secondary school teaching. Participants in the study consisted of an extensive sample of the NMET stake-holders, comprising test constructors, teachers, and students. Data collection instruments included interviews, classroom observations, and questionnaires. The results show that although writing was practised in schools, it was not taught in the way intended by the test constructors. The communicative features of the NMET writing task were not observed in the school practice that prepared students for this task. Both teachers and learners neglected the communicative context of writing while emphasizing the testing situation and the assumed preferences of the markers. This urge to raise scores in a real test situation suggests that high-stakes tests are not an efficient agent for change despite their crucial role in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The College English Test (CET), designed in accordance with the requirements of the National College English Teaching Syllabus and as a result of the need for China's reform and its open-door policy in the 1980s, is the world's largest language test administered nationwide. Owing to its scientific approach, consistent marking, rigorous administration and comparable scores, the CET, now well-established as a large-scale standardised EFL test, is held in high esteem by language testers and teachers inside and outside China and well received by the public. This paper begins with a review of the CET from the perspective of its development, score interpretation and test validation. The paper moves on to an in-depth analysis of the test content, test format, and candidates' performances on each component with a view to presenting readers with an overview of the proficiency of the CET test-takers. The paper then discusses the issue of reform of the CET as a response to the pressing social need for college and university graduates with a stronger communicative competence in English. After a brief analysis of the challenges facing the CET, the paper concludes with a section on the way forward for the CET to meet the ever-changing needs of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges the stereotypical portrayal of English Language teachers in China by analysing the pedagogy of a 'traditional' secondary school teacher, Mr Yang. The paper starts by distinguishing between 'pedagogy'--the teacher's personal construction of beliefs and practices about teaching and learning -- and 'methodology' -- a generalized set of procedures underpinned by a theoretical rationale. The study then examines what happens to Mr Yang's pedagogy when the state promotes a new methodology that seems to be in conflict with aspects of his pedagogy. Analysis of curriculum documents and interviews with key participants establish the promoted methodology, while interviews, documentary analysis and lesson observations are used to study Mr Yang's pedagogy. The paper then describes how Mr Yang reconciles his pedagogy with the innovative methodology in a context constrained by examination requirements and the pressure of time. The paper shows that the portrayal of English Language teachers in the literature as transmitters of grammatical knowledge, bound by textbooks, fails to capture the dynamic nature of pedagogy as a personal construct forged by the interplay of beliefs, experiences and practice, and contextual factors operating at the micro-level (the chalkface) and at the macro-level (state policy). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the influence of male peer proportion on a student's academic performance. The sex ratio at 10–14 was 117.16 in 2011, and it has increased to 119.1 in 2019. The sex ratio imbalance at 10–14 tends to expand. This paper uses China Education Panel Survey (CEPS) 2013–14 and 2014–15. Considering the selection bias, this paper restricts the sample to schools that satisfy randomly-assignment conditions. The results highlight that students with a high proportion of male classmates have a lower performance in Mathematics and English but not Chinese. To explain these effects, this paper uses three channels to interpret: (1) cognitive ability, (2) learning effort, and (3) the quality of the classroom environment. It provides implications for policymakers and school administrators to take precautions in advance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The correlation between motivational beliefs and foreign language learning has been widely explored. However, there has been little investigation of this link among learners with different foreign language levels. Based on expectancy-value theory (EVT), this research examined the association between motivational beliefs and English achievement of 11,854 Chinese secondary students. Data were collected using students' self-reported English self-efficacy, intrinsic value, utility value, and English achievement test. The results of ANOVA showed that self-efficacy, intrinsic value, and utility value of high-achieving English learners were significantly higher than that of medium-achieving ones, followed by low-achieving ones. Multiple regression analysis demonstrated that after controlling for socioeconomic status and gender, intrinsic value was most correlated with high- and medium-achieving learners' English achievement, followed by self-efficacy, while utility value was not significantly associated with English achievement of the two groups. In addition, utility value was most strongly related with low-achieving learners' English achievement, followed by intrinsic value, but self-efficacy was not positively linked with their English achievement. These findings not only extend EVT and validate the situative perspective of motivation research, but also have practical implications for foreign language education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The management of change has long been recognised to be a complex and challenging process. The literature has revealed few success stories and many examples of curriculum innovations being adopted haif-heartedly or not at all. Set against the increasing world globalisation of which education is a part, the cultural aspects of innovations are being increasingly discussed in recent years. This paper focuses on the cultural dimensions of a major curriculum reform in Hong Kong, the Target-Oriented Curriculum (TOC) initiative. The main principles of TOC and its early implementation are discussed. A number of the main features of TOC are analysed with particular reference to their cultural appropriateness for the Hong Kong context. The thesis underlying the paper is that cultural issues need to be more carefully considered in the policy and adoption stages of the innovation process. In English Language teaching, it may be necessary to reflect more deeply on the suitability of the export of Western-based learner-centred, communicative or task-based approaches to other milieux where such approaches may not be commensurate with the local cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a classroom-based investigation into a tertiary English-medium instruction (EMI) programme in China, with a focus on subject teachers' perceptions and practices in EMI and students' motivation and needs in English learning. Given a lacuna in existing EMI research, it examined how EMI instruction was delivered by subject teachers and how English learning should be facilitated through adjunct ESP courses when participants' English proficiency was inadequate. Data were obtained from nine classroom observations, three post-observation interviews and a questionnaire survey. Findings show that effective instruction was maintained via deploying pragmatic strategies, yet the goal of promoting English attainment was underachieved, as language teaching was not overtly heeded. Subject teachers' perceptions of EMI undermined prospective students' linguistic gains. The immediate educational context also contributed to students' English learning motivation and needs. Our findings suggest increasing access to ESP provision that is fine-tuned to the language issues in genuine EMI classrooms is crucial. Collaboration between subject and language specialists is beneficial to students' learning of both the subject knowledge and the language skills. ESP practitioners thus need to consider students' communicative needs in their disciplines and address the limitations of the current EMI practices in tertiary education in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated Chinese secondary school English language teachers’ grading decision making, focusing on the factors they considered and types of assessment they used for grading. A questionnaire was issued to 350 secondary school English language teachers in China. Descriptive analyses of the questionnaire data showed that these teachers of English considered achievement and non-achievement factors in grading, placing greater weight on non-achievement factors, such as effort, homework, and study habits, and that they used multiple types of assessment, including performance and project-based assessment, teacher self-developed assessment, as well as paper and pencil tests for grading. MANOVA results suggested that both internal and external factors, such as the grade level teachers teach, the assessment training they have received, and their class size affect different aspects of their grading decision making. Multiple regression results further showed a significant relationship between the factors teachers considered and the types of assessment they used for grading. This study contributes to the understanding of the classroom English language teachers’ grading decision making in general and especially in the Chinese context and has significant implications for teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper critically reviews current situation of College English Language education in Mainland China. It firstly briefed the history of College English language education which reveals that its development is intertwined with China's political situation and language policies. It then commented on the problems concerning curriculum, assessment, English teachers and their teaching methodologies, and teaching materials and textbooks of current College English language education. These problems indicate that current College English language education in China has failed to meet the need for a good English proficiency at the national and individual levels. Based on the review, this paper proposed that an individualised curriculum, which takes into account the rules of language teaching and learning and Chinese characteristics, and an English as the Medium of Instruction (EMI) education, be advocated in the Chinese EFL context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There exists a phenomenon of pronunciation confusion of [n] with [l], which appears among the College English learners who come from the provinces along the Yangzi River regions in China and speak their hometown dialects. And something alike happens to the other dialect speakers from the south of China, who could hardly distinguish [f] from [h], or to the Zhuang dialect speakers who could hardly distinguish the aspirated sounds from the non-aspirated ones. These college students usually unintentionally transfer these confused pronunciation of their hometown dialects to English pronunciation and make pronunciation confusion when they speak and read aloud English, which is called mother tongue interference. What's more, this phenomenon also occurs among some teachers who are from these dialect regions. This paper has discussed and analyzed the causes of these mispronunciations phonologically, and then points out some solutions to help both College English teachers and students to realize and overcome their problems. Also, this paper suggests that: first, some knowledge of phonology is necessary to tell phones apart from phonemes; second, as a College English teacher, he or she should learn something about the phonetic features of the students' dialects so as to predict what mistakes these learners would probably make when speaking and reading English; third, helping learners with their pronunciation correction practice is an essential part of the teacher's job, and use of learning strategies, group activities and self-directed learning or autonomous learning ideas and so on is much helpful to guide the classroom teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher development has been a focus of innovation in China's English as a foreign language (EFL) instruction with much attention given to teachers' professional promotion, which is aimed at rendering students' enhancement in learning. With the emphasis on facilitating learner autonomy and lifelong education in recent reform efforts, it has become significant that students should try to self-control their learning and become more active thinkers and problem-solvers. To ensure learner-centered EFL instruction, teachers have to highlight the development of students' independence and autonomy by re-orienting their roles from knowledge disseminators to organizers, partners, consultants, and facilitators. As such, the current paper raises concerns about the review of secondary school EFL teacher roles in China from the perspective of social constructivism which encourages language teachers to interact with their students and help them to apply the language themselves instead of only providing them with the language knowledge. At this point, language teachers are really mediators rather than knowledge-givers. Hopefully, this review paper would contribute to the shift of today's EFL teacher roles in China from disseminators or knowledge-givers to mediators of students' language learning for the further sake of providing reference evidence for policy makers, curriculum developers, and educators in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, school-based assessment (SBA) has been incorporated into the English Language subject of a traditional high-stakes public examination, the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination. As reactions from various stakeholder groups have been mixed, it was necessary to review this new practice. This paper reports on a study of 33 English language teachers who have been frontline SBA assessors. The study aimed to better understand (1) teacher-assessors’ perceptions of the English SBA, (2) their professional development needs in relation to implementing SBA, (3) their perceptions of how students could benefit from SBA and (4) the pressing issues arising from the SBA implementation. The study found that, while many participants agreed that SBA could be beneficial to students’ English learning, there was much room for improvement in all four aspects investigated. In particular, some problems identified at the very beginning of the implementation of the English SBA have still persisted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Formative assessment is increasingly being implemented through policy initiatives in Chinese educational contexts. As an approach to assessment, formative assessment derives many of its key principles from Western contexts, notably through the work of scholars in the UK, the USA and Australia. The question for this paper is the ways that formative assessment has been interpreted in the teaching of College English in Chinese Higher Education. The paper reports on a research study that utilised a sociocultural perspective on learning and assessment to analyse how two Chinese universities – an urban-based Key University and a regional-based Non-Key University – interpreted and enacted a China Ministry of Education policy on formative assessment in College English teaching. Of particular interest for the research were the ways in which the sociocultural conditions of the Chinese context mediated understanding of Western principles and led to their adaptation. The findings from the two universities identified some consistency in localised interpretations of formative assessment which included emphases on process and student participation. The differences related to the specific sociocultural conditions contextualising each university including geographical location, socioeconomic status, and teacher and student roles, expectations and beliefs about English. The findings illustrate the sociocultural tensions in interpreting, adapting and enacting formative assessment in Chinese College English classes and the consequent challenges to and questions about retaining the spirit of formative assessment as it was originally conceptualised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a ubiquitous yet under-studied area of language pedagogy, namely materials usage. It explores teachers' enactment of curriculum materials by focusing on English language education (ELE) teachers' use of prescribed textbooks to plan and deliver lessons at the tertiary level in Mainland China. A qualitative multi-case study involving three Chinese ELE teachers represents the design for this study. The interactive patterns of teachers' enactment at the pre-lesson phase were generated along with four domains of influential factors. The implications for materials development and professional development are also addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study confers certain psychological factors that may affect the learning process of the students such as self-construal, demotivation, and disengagement. Nevertheless, extensive work has been accomplished on the theme of individuals' motivation and engagement within numerous domains across the world. How self-construal (SC), demotivation (DM), and disengagement (DE) may affect students' learning process (SLP) got far less reflection by the investigators. Therefore, this study attempts to validate the relationships between self-construal and students' English learning process with the moderation of two factors, that is, demotivation and disengagement based on a theory of reasoned action. Data were carefully accumulated between September 2022 and November 2022 by targeting 783 students who were trying to learn English within the Chinese market. We currently applied structural modeling to confirm the proposed connections along with the validation process using the SmartPls tool. It is found that SC has a positive connection with SLP. Second, the results proved the insignificant role of both moderating variables such as DM and DE between the relationships of SC and SLP, respectively. This study provides insights into new understandings about motivations along with riveting findings for those individuals or students who were disconnected or demotivated to learn English. Moreover, the study equips numerous fascinating applications for English learners along with future potentials for researchers showing current deficiencies of the work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mean dependency distance (MDD) and mean hierarchical distance (MHD) are two linguistic measures used in dependency syntax studies to investigate the syntactic features of compositions written by English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. However, their applicability and validity in differentiating proficiency levels and genre effects among Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) learners remain unknown. This study uses a longitudinal dataset that tracks 110 Chinese JFL learners over 12 months and examines their syntactic development as well as the effects of genres. The results indicate that both MDD and MHD effectively capture developmental and genre effects; moreover, both measures show significantly higher values in argumentative writing than narrative writing. However, the extent of genre effects over time is not the same in MDD and MHD. The findings provide new insights into the developmental characteristics of JFL learners' interlanguage and may contribute to evaluating syntactic complexity and developing automatic evaluation systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lexical complexity has been a key consideration of teaching preparation in determining grade appropriateness of teaching materials. However, the lack of quantified and defined standards for benchmarking lexical complexity has made it difficult for teachers when adapting source texts to target learners. This study has assessed quantitative differences in lexical complexity of exemplar texts at different points of schooling using a range of lexical diversity and sophistication features. The data consists of 2,372 texts from popular curriculum packages adopted from 1 to 12 grades of the English curriculum in China. One-way ANOVAs revealed significant differences in 16 out of 17 lexical complexity indices among different grades. Subsequent post hoc tests identified three lexical diversity features and four sophistication features that helped to differentiate exemplar texts across these 12 grades. These findings on the nature and role of lexical complexity have yielded new insights into the establishment of grade-level benchmarks for material preparation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which analyzes research on the Web-based educational tests in college English writing teaching in China from 2000 to 2009. The bibliometric study was based on papers taken from 10 Chinese journals of English language teaching. The article analyzes the effectiveness of the research and discusses implications for future development.

This paper presents a case study of a group of Chinese ESL learners in China, who study English by immersing themselves regularly and rigorously in English television drama. A self-directed learning pedagogy has been developed and discussed, which seems to have signposted an effective and economic way for ESL learners to improve linguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence beyond the language classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following rapid social development and educational policy orientation in China, higher institutions are developing new optional courses in English. One of these courses is interpreting for non-English majors (IFNEM), which requires a needs analysis (NA) at the beginning. However, few studies have been found on the NA of an IFNEM, empirical ones in particular. In the limited empirical research, merely sophomore students' needs were surveyed through a single questionnaire, leaving many practical issues to be further explored. To advance the current body of research, the authors of this paper designed a complex structured questionnaire based on Hutchinson and Waters's Framework for Analyzing Learning Needs, delivered it to 104 freshmen and 52 junior students and conducted follow-up interviews with eight of them who had given typical answers in this questionnaire. Such issues were investigated as students' motivation for taking an IFNEM, their anticipated goals and objectives of the course, course entry requirements (if there should be any), selection of teaching content and materials and teaching environments. Results showed that the students highly approved of establishing an IFNEM for mainly Surface Motivation and wished for no entry requirements; however, limited by their current English proficiency, they aimed to improve both interpreting skills and English listening and speaking abilities. This study attempts to offer insights into the curriculum design of IFNEM and other optional courses in English for higher institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we shall explore academic writing in the framework of academic literacy development among Hong Kong university ESL learners of language and education programs. We shall also discuss discipline-specific academic writing in terms of the continuum comprising academic writing in science, social science and humanities and the implications for developing academic writing skills of Hong Kong ESL learners. In particular, we shall discuss in detail a number of issues regarding academic writing in the disciplines of language and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to explore the issue of learning English as an International Language (EIL) in China, especially with regards to the cultural power it holds. It proposes a Freirian approach to English as Foreign Language (EFL) pedagogy when training non-native EFL teachers to understand the ways critical English education can empower teachers and their own students. It also provides a description to show how a Freirian approach of critical pedagogy can be applied to EFL teaching in Chinese classroom. Then it presents a pedagogical framework encompassing the necessary critical mindset in which Chinese teachers of EFL can begin to conceive their own "best practices" with technology--a framework that is based upon teaching needs, goals, students, and classrooms, rather than the external pressure and an already complex curriculum. To maximize technology's benefits, Chinese teachers must develop a heightened, critical view of technology to determine its potential pedagogy for the classroom. Absent from the literature, however , are measured directions for how EFL teachers might develop technology literacy themselves, as well as specific plans for how they might begin to critically assess the potential that technology holds for them in enhancing their English language arts or methods instruction. So this article aims to ill this gap by providing practical strategies for Chinese EFL teachers and educators to develop a critical approach and pedagogical framework for technology integration; finally it explains some case studies in critical pedagogy which combined technology with teaching in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the results of a qualitative study that explored the experiences of one group of pre-service English language teachers in Hong Kong as they undertook an action research project as part of their undergraduate teacher training programme. Grounded in a theory of teacher identity construction as both practice and discourse, the paper examines how participation in an action research project by one group of pre-service English language teachers in Hong Kong shaped their experiences of becoming teachers. The study indicates that as teacher researchers, the trainee teachers contested previously held perceptions about their engagement in teaching, their images of teachers and teaching, as well as their alignment with some aspects of contemporary educational discourse. Implications for teacher education and future research are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]