English Magazines = Motivation + Improved EFL Writing Skill (2004)
Yuewu Wang
Teaching
English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing is a headache for many teachers;
they spend considerable time correcting their students’ compositions
only to find their corrections and comments ignored. Despite teachers’
hard work, many students’ written English remains non-idiomatic,
poorly organized, insufficiently developed, grammatically awkward, devoid
of sentence structure variety, and weak in vocabulary usage. One important
reason for all this is that learners have not been helped to become motivated,
involved in their own learning, or self-sufficient. The fact is, students
will not devote their efforts to learning a foreign language if they do
not have a need or desire to learn it. However, when students are duly
motivated, they will become involved in learning a foreign language and
will learn it autonomously. (Forum)
Understanding
Professional Challenges Faced by Chinese Teachers of English
(2004)
Liying Cheng & Hong Wang
Drawing on work in general education, second/foreign language teacher
education has begun to recognize that within its knowledge base, teachers,
apart from the methods and materials they may use, are central to improving
English language teaching. To understand the professional development
of teachers in the English as a foreign language context, this paper reports
a survey study among 47 in-service secondary teachers of English (Grades
7-12) who were attending a summer professional upgrading program in a
Teacher College in Northern China. The results indicate that the challenges
these teachers face are connected with the unique centralized examination-driven
educational system. The findings also provide an understanding of their
professional development needs and entail implications on second/foreign
language teacher education programs in such a context. (TESL-EJ)
A
Study of People-Run Tertiary Education in South and West China
(2004)
Yongyang Wang & Margaret Secombe
Chinese People-Run tertiary education institutions have grown dramatically
in recent years. This paper aims to discuss the government deregulation
policy and its impact on private tertiary education in China since the
1980s, particularly on south and west China, Gui Zhou province. Three
colleges have been selected respectively from economically developed area,
Guangdong province, and comparative undeveloped province, Gui Zhou. Three
hundred and eight questionnaires have been examined in order to portrait
the status quo of private tertiary education in south and west China.
(International
Education Journal)
CLT
in China: Frustrations, Misconceptions, and Clarifications
(2004)
Lanlin Zhang
This essay is a study of the communicative language-teaching (CLT) situation
in mainland China. It presents some frustrations and misconceptions demonstrated
by educational practitioners and researchers. These problems are then
analyzed in light of communicative language teaching (CLT) and communicative
competence theories. The essay concludes with some clarifications and
suggestions for CLT in mainland China. (Hwa
Kang Journal of TEFL)
SECOND
LANGUAGE CYBER RHETORIC: A STUDY OF CHINESE L2 WRITERS IN AN ONLINE USENET
GROUP
(2004)
Joel Bloch
It has been argued that the expectations of traditional L2 writing classroom
can be problematic for Chinese students, particularly in the area of argumentation
and critical thinking. On the other hand, writing on the Internet has
been shown to be substantially different in ways that may liberate the
students from the constraints of the classroom. This argument, however,
has typically focused on American writers, ignoring how cyberspace is
being appropriated by those outside of the Western tradition of rhetoric.
In this study, I examine how Chinese writers use the Internet as an alternative
writing space to produce a rhetoric that incorporates traditional Chinese
rhetorical forms expressed in English. The study focuses on how a group
of Chinese writers respond on the Internet to a television segment accusing
the Chinese government of planting spies. I found that the Chinese writers
use the Internet to build a collective response to the television show
using a variety of rhetorical strategies, even to the point of forcing
the television network to meet with them. By situating their arguments
in the tradition of Chinese rhetoric, I found that these alternative forms
of writing found in cyberspace are affected by the traditions of Chinese
rhetoric. (Language Learning & Technology)
Non-public
Collegiate Education in Modern People's Republic of China (2004)
Richard B. Rosecky, Louise W. Smith & Yongfang Li
How does a country undergo the extremely rapid change necessary to go
from an emerging country to a major world power in a few short years?
The answer is through education. While the world reads about the many
economic changes taking place in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC),
an equally fundamental change is occurring in its educational structure.
Evolution in its worldview has moved China from the classic Marxism/Mao
dicta to a more pragmatic educational approach, one that includes non-public
education. By drawing upon a) interviews with the founders on a modern
Chinese non-public university, b) the perspective of educational development
in the PRC, and c) a detailed analysis of the process of founding a private
institution of higher learning in China, this paper analyses and discusses
factors which have allowed such a radical shift in educational policy
without causing social upheaval. (International
Education Journal)
Adapting
Textbook Activities for Communicative Teaching and Cooperative Learning
(2003)
Anson Yang & Chan-Piu Cheung
In
English language teaching, communicative language teaching (CLT) and cooperative
learning (CL) share a common characteristic: in a meaningful task students
are asked to exchange information among themselves in small groups and/or
with the teacher. This kind of student collaboration has two benefits.
First, the whole class actively participates in a task at the same time
and students can then compare their findings when the task is over; and
second, the meaningful task is rehearsed in class for later use in real
communication outside the classroom. In some ELT settings, Hong Kong for
example, many obstacles have deterred secondary school English teachers
from using either CLT or CL in their classes. These include large class
size, lack of training in communicative and cooperative techniques, and
mistaking any group work for communicative teaching and cooperative learning.
One obstacle that most schools cannot overcome is the extensive language
syllabus prescribed by the textbook. Actually, each level of a textbook
is often a set of texts, which may include an all-in-one textbook, listening
tapes, a grammar book, and a short story book. In theory, teachers have
to follow the rationale and sequence of each chapter; but in reality,
for a variety of reasons, teachers skip items in the textbooks. (Forum)
The
Changing Classroom: A More International Feel
(Teaching English in Japan to Chinese Students) (2003)
John Nevara
Go to any EFL classroom in the United States or England, and it is clear
that people from all over the world are studying English. All these students,
however, come from various backgrounds, have different mother tongues,
and can be generally said to have different struggles in acquiring English.
For many years, the mixing of non-native speakers from various parts of
the world into one EFL classroom occurred only in English-speaking nations,
or in a few isolated cases within non-English speaking nations. The trend
in Japan in recent years, however, has been towards a more mixed EFL classroom.
This trend has both plusses and minuses, but it has become important for
many teachers, at least at the university level, to realize that they
can no longer teach to one population. (The
Asian EFL Journal)
Teaching
Weak Forms (2003)
Liang Wenxia
The
use of the weak form is a common feature of spoken English; however, in
my teaching experience I've found that few Chinese students actually use
it when speaking English. One possible reason could be that they have
never been taught weak forms, therefore, they don't have any idea what
the weak form is and they do not use it in their speech. There are at
least three reasons why teachers do not teach weak forms. First, teachers
themselves don't know the weak forms very well. Second, even if they have
some knowledge of weak forms, they don't know how to teach them. After
all, it's easier to teach individual sounds, such as vowels and consonants,
than weak forms. Although there are many materials for teaching segmentals,
materials for teaching weak forms are not readily available. Third, teachers'
prejudices may prevent them from teaching weak forms. They may hold the
view that weak forms are not as important as phonemes, so they don't want
to take the trouble to teach them. (Forum)
Motivating
Students by Modifying Evaluation Methods (2003)
Mu Fengying
A foreign language learner's motivation can be influenced by many factors:
social, psychological, educational, and economical, to name a few. In
spite of the complicated situation, teachers can still do a lot to motivate
their students by being observant, understanding, informed, and tactful.
By reflecting on 20 years of foreign language teaching experience, plus
observing my colleagues' and students' behavior, and reading professional
literature of foreign language teaching, I came to realize that one of
the things that we can do to greatly motivate our students is to modify
our evaluation methods. (Forum)
New
wine in an old bottle: innovative EFL classrooms in China
(2003)
Zhou Jin
In recent years, certain unconventional EFL classrooms employing Dodson's
(1963) bilingual method have appeared to be popular in China. Initiated
in England in the 1960s, Dodson's bilingual method advocates teachers'
using learners' mother tongue (L1) in the initial phases of foreign language
instruction (L2). Developed on the basis of Dodson's model, the bilingual
method practised in early EFL classrooms in China is notably different
from its prototype in the use of bilingual English-Chinese textbooks,
as, in the original model, teaching materials are monolingual in the foreign
language (L2) only. This unique combination of both an old teaching methodology
of the bilingual method together with the use of the bilingual English-Chinese
text seems to fit very well within China's EFL situation and at the same
time, echoes the increasingly positive research reports in the literature
on using mother tongue (L1) in second/foreign language (L2) classrooms.
(IATEFL Voices)
Tutorials:
A Way of Building Community in the Classroom
(2003)
Kirsten Schaetzel & Chan Ho
When
teaching a foreign or second language, we want our students to be able
to use the language communicatively to express their ideas in speech and
writing and to understand what they are hearing and reading. As teachers,
we all know that there are optimal conditions for a learner to acquire
the target language. (Forum)
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