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It is widely recognized that writing conferences benefit second or foreign language writers for the immediacy and the potential to address their needs and provide tailored and individualized support. However, limited attention has been given to the foci and interaction between teacher and student in writing conferences longitudinally. To address this need, this study examined writing conferences between five university English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) students and their instructor in an argumentative writing course over one semester in a key Chinese university. Multiple sources of data were collected, including conferences, students' essay drafts and written reflections, and interviews with the students and the instructor. Data analyses show that the conferences covered a large variety of topics such as varied aspects about argumentative writing, learning habits, and expectations about the course, which were related to English proficiency and English writing ability of each student. Second, the instructor took different approaches to communicate with each student in writing conferences considering their difficulties and needs. Finally, the conferences contribute to a deliberative process critical to the process of learning to write argumentation. The students found conversations with the instructor helpful in their subsequent revisions whereas the instructor gained a better understanding of students' difficulties in writing. This study suggests that more research is needed to examine the role of conferences in EFL writing instruction. This study supports that conferences, as an important aid, will facilitate EFL students in the process of learning to write in English in addition to teacher written feedback and peer review.

Guided by activity theory, this study examines the major contradictions in an English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher professional learning community (PLC) established in China through a university--district--school partnership. Multiple sources of data were collected, including interviews, observations, and documents. Data analyses revealed four levels of contradictions: the primary contradiction between the university researcher and school teachers, the secondary contradiction between imparting theory and teacher learning, the tertiary contradiction between existing practice and new design, and the quaternary contradiction between practical engagement and academic research. The community members took a series of strategic actions, including questioning and observation, analysis and proposal, examination and implementation, and reflection and resolution. The study may offer insights about nurturing language teacher PLCs and overcoming contradictions in similar joint activities.

The rapid development of China's economy has also led to serious environmental problems, which have seriously restricted China's sustainable development. To this end, the Chinese government has continued to explore environmental governance. So, can environmental governance policies promote industrial green transformation, so as to achieve the goal of sustainable development? Will environmental policy competition among local governments have an impact on them? These issues are the focus of this article. Based on the provincial panel data of China from 2006 to 2021, this article empirically analyzes the relationship between environmental governance, local government competition, and industrial green transformation. The results found that there was a "U" type nonlinear relationship between environmental governance and industrial green transformation. On the whole, most regions of China are still in the development stage where environmental governance is not conducive to industrial green transformation. There is competition for environmental governance policies among local governments in China, and the characteristics of "race to the bottom" are more significant. In the East developed areas, there is a more significant "yardstick competition" game state. In the Midwest undeveloped areas, it is manifested as competition for resources by deregulation of the environment, thereby promoting short‐term economic growth. In addition, local protection behaviors negatively regulate the impact of environmental governance on industrial green transformation, that is, inhibiting local industrial green transformation by causing labor market mismatch. This study can provide valuable insights for policymakers aiming to adopt measures to achieve the sustainable development of the economy and environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the annual mean PM2.5 concentration data of 30 provinces and cities in China from 2006 to 2020, this paper constructs a structural model of manufacturing haze pollution, expounds the main mechanisms affecting haze pollution, then statistically decomposes the main factors affecting the change of pollution emissions, and examines the direct and indirect impact paths of the change of haze pollution emissions in China. The study found that (1) the inhibitory effects of latent variables on manufacturing haze pollution is from strong to weak in order: industrial structure upgrading, environmental regulation, trade opening, productivity improvement, and economic scale expansion, while the optimal path for the indirect effect of exogenous latent variables on haze pollution is to rely on environmental regulation and opening up to achieve the improvement of productivity, so as to achieve the purpose of reducing haze pollution. (2) The analysis based on the PVAR model found that industrial structure adjustment is the key factor of haze decline in both the short and long term. Environmental regulation has an obvious effect on haze control in the short term, but in the long run, it still needs to rely on industrial structure adjustment, production efficiency improvement, and trade opening to achieve the goal of reducing haze. (3) There is an inverted U-shaped nonlinear relationship between output scale and environmental regulation. In addition, trade openness has a long-term effect on productivity. Technology spillovers from opening up can reduce haze pollution in the long run by improving productivity. (4) The environmental regulation policy in the central region is characterized by "race to the bottom," while the eastern region shows the characteristic of "race to the top" in the policy game of improving productivity and optimizing the industrial structure. Therefore, haze control requires an appropriate intensity of environmental regulation to reduce the proportion of high pollution and high energy consumption industries. Make full use of the international cooperation platform of the "the Belt and Road Initiative" and the pilot free trade zone to promote substantive cooperation between Chinese enterprises and developed countries in the field of environmental protection technology, increase investment in research and development of clean equipment and cleaner production technology, improve productivity, help China's green manufacturing, and contribute Chinese wisdom and Chinese solutions to global environmental governance and climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The groundwater quality is essential for high quality of life and social development. Thus, the importance and necessity of the accurate and rigorous requirements for contaminated groundwater assessment has increasingly attracted engineers' and researchers' attentions. In order to improve the precision and robustness of the groundwater quality evaluation of domestic waste landfills, based on the variable fuzzy set (VFS) pair and the optimized N.L. Nemerow index, we develop an optimized fuzzy set pair (OFSP) model for groundwater quality assessment. Then, we devise the OFSP model by five key elements of optimized synthesis operator "C", relative difference " u i ′ " , connection degree"ui", optimized N.L. Nemerow index "Pi," and pollution load ratio "Ji", which can achieve the reasonable groundwater quality assessment model, the stable groundwater quality evaluation process, and the convincing evaluation results. Finally, a case study on groundwater quality assessment of various domestic landfills in China is conducted to explore the comprehensive impacts of domestic landfills in different regions and types on groundwater pollution from multiple perspectives, and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed OFSP model. The groundwater quality assessment results of various domestic landfills indicate that the pollution level of groundwater under unregulated domestic landfills in eastern and southern China is the worst. Based on the assessment results of groundwater quality, we compare the groundwater quality levels obtained by various mainstream methods. In line with precision (0.985), correlation (0.934), robustness (0.953), and rationality (0.946), our designed OFSP model has the best performance. In addition, according to the indexes of discrimination (0.217) and versatility (0.837), the designed OFSP model also has a good ability. Results of experiments well prove that the proposed OFSP model could play a good performance on groundwater quality evaluation in domestic landfills, compared with other mainstream models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guided by activity theory, this study examines the major contradictions in an English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher professional learning community (PLC) established in China through a university–district–school partnership. Multiple sources of data were collected, including interviews, observations, and documents. Data analyses revealed four levels of contradictions: the primary contradiction between the university researcher and school teachers, the secondary contradiction between imparting theory and teacher learning, the tertiary contradiction between existing practice and new design, and the quaternary contradiction between practical engagement and academic research. The community members took a series of strategic actions, including questioning and observation, analysis and proposal, examination and implementation, and reflection and resolution. The study may offer insights about nurturing language teacher PLCs and overcoming contradictions in similar joint activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the practice of collective lesson planning involving one expatriate and five local instructors as they taught English argumentative writing at a university in Mainland China. By conceptualizing ‘a teacher group’ as a community of practice (CoP), the study illustrates how the observed collective lesson-planning conferences carried on a local tradition to guide students in taking a morally acceptable stand in their writing and how the more and less experienced teachers worked together toward a shared understanding of how to teach. The participating teachers, with unequal statuses and experiences, not only worked collaboratively to sustain a community coherence of pedagogical practice but also negotiated to develop a diversity of individual practices in the collective lesson-planning conferences. The study suggests that collective lesson planning is more than a ‘joint enterprise’ with ‘mutual engagement’ to achieve a ‘shared repertoire’ but a contact zone of power relationships among members labeled as old-timers or newcomers, expatriate or local teachers. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study examined four experienced teachers' beliefs and practices in teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) writing at a university in China. Multiple sources of data were collected over two semesters, including class observations, interviews, and course materials. All the teachers perceived that they integrated product and process elements of writing in their teaching. However, they varied in their views about the focus and function of prewriting, multiple drafts, teacher written feedback, peer review, and the teacher's role in students' learning to write. Three of the four teachers showed consistency between their beliefs and practices in teaching writing, while the remaining one's practices were in some cases consistent with his beliefs and in other cases contradictory. Variability in beliefs and practices about teaching writing was related to individuals' prior experiences as EFL learners and teachers, their understanding of students' capabilities, self-reflection, and collegial influences. The development of their beliefs and practices in teaching writing paralleled the development of L2 writing theories in the West, mirroring the worldwide spread of English and of professional networks over recent decades. This study indicates that teachers' beliefs and practices need to be explicitly taken into account in designing and implementing development programmes for L2 writing teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the case of surface water pollution, it is important and necessary to accurately assess the level of contaminated water and ensure the safety of drinking water for people in disaster areas during floods. However, for the assessment of the strict requirements of drinking water, traditional assessment methods still have some limitations, such as low precision and rationality. In order to overcome these limitations, in the light of the theory of set pair analysis and variable fuzzy set, we propose an improved variable fuzzy set pair analysis method (IVFSPA), which combines the analysis framework of variable fuzzy set and set pair analysis, and has made some improvements to the fusion architecture. Firstly, we present a novel game theory comprehensive weighting method, in which the objective entropy method and the subjective analytic hierarchy process(AHP) method employed to obtain the reasonable weight. Then, based on the Nemerow index method, we improve the arithmetic form of " P i " (Equation P) to replace the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method. Furthermore, we design a double judgment mode of combining the principle of maximum membership degree with the positive and negative relationship between the standard value and the measured value, which can accurately judge the evaluation level of surface water quality. Finally, to validate and verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, experiments was conducted at the representative river collection sections of Nanking, China, employing water quality data of 14 sampling sections in their rivers in Nanking during the 2017 flood. In terms of performance metcrics of precision and rationality, based on the values of "TP", "NH 3 -N", "Pb", "AS" and "KMnO 4 " of "Ch-lh section/Chuhe gate" are 0.415, 3.77, 0.07, 0.23 and 7.12, respectively, the level of Ch-lh section/Chuhe gate is that the IVFSPA is Class V and the rest are class IV. Results of experiments show that our IVFSPA method can achieve a good performance, compared with other traditional methods.