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Acquisition Activities in Intensive Reading (1998)
Xu Zhenghua
If we, the foreign language teachers, can provide or create a life-like situation in which our students are exposed to adequate foreign language inputs, and motivate the students to use the foreign language while teaching them the language concepts, the students will greatly improve their communicative competence. The following example will demonstrate this. Our students have learned to answer the question, "You are not a student, are you?" either by "No, I am not," or "Yes, I am." They know consciously that if they want to give a negative answer, the whole sentence should be in the negative form and vice versa. However, when they are asked such a question in their daily life, they will sometimes utter the wrong answer, saying, "Yes, I am not" or "No, I am." This example illustrates that knowing about a language is far from enough. (Forum)

English Corner and EFL Extracurricular Writing (1998)
Huang Jing
English is learned as a foreign language (EFL) in China. For decades, the teaching of writing at the tertiary level has been product-centered. The emphasis is on "style, organization, and correctness" (Hairston 1982). Writing topics are assigned by teachers and the composing process is linear. Although teachers "complain and brag about how much time they spend meticulously marking each paper," they feel frustrated to see that "many of their students improve so little despite their time and effort (Hairston 1982)." The situation is quite similar in my college. The writing course is run in the second year for both two-year and four-year English majors. Every time the writing teacher assigns a topic, students shout, showing anxiety and dissatisfaction. They complain that they learn no "real things" in the writing class because isolated skills taught cannot help them write fluently and communicate effectively. They "don't feel like writing anything demanded by teachers." (Forum)

Factors to Consider: Developing Adult EFL Students' Speaking Abilities (1997)
Kang Shumin
Learning to speak a foreign language requires more than knowing its grammatical and semantic rules. Learners must also acquire the knowledge of how native speakers use the language in the context of structured interpersonal exchange, in which many factors interact. Therefore, it is difficult for EFL learners, especially adults, to speak the target language fluently and appropriately. In order to provide effective guidance in developing competent speakers of English, it is necessary to examine the factors affecting adult learners' oral communication, components underlying speaking proficiency, and specific skills or strategies used in communication. This paper explores these aspects so that teachers can more effectively help adult learners develop their abilities to communicate in the target language. (Forum)

New Bottles, Old Wine: Communicative Language Teaching in China (1997)
Leng Hui
As the country with the largest English learning population in the world, China is deeply involved in Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). However, due to economic, administrative, cultural, and population constraints, and the academic abilities of classroom teachers, China has to work to adapt CLT to local conditions. Modified varieties of CLT might suit the present conditions for the time being, but they are far from scientific, since, as practiced in the classroom, they are not usually selected on the basis of academic research. If the current situation is not reoriented, or if the constraining factors are not overcome, traditional, non-communicative approaches are likely to return under other guises. Nevertheless, motivated classroom teachers are the potential key to overcoming the existing constraining factors if they are equipped with applicable linguistic and psychological theories and useful methods through stimulating teacher training courses. (Forum)

The Ripple Effect: Word Meaning Expansion and its Application in Teaching Vocabulary (1996)
Mu Fengying
When taking on a new class each academic year, I habitually ask my students what they expect to learn in my course. Vocabulary is among their numerous answers. One of the headaches of Chinese students in acquiring English vocabulary is the phenomenon of polysemy, words having more than one meaning. This feature cannot be effectively treated through translation or explanation. Translation attempts to provide an L1 equivalent but falls short in addressing a word's manifold meanings, collocations, and usages. It fosters the idea that there is a simple one-to-one relationship between the two languages when in reality, this is not the case. Explanation or paraphrasing can be clumsy, failing to make meaning explicit and understandable. (Forum)

Misconceptions: Clarifying the Concept of Control (1996)
Zuo Biao
In the domain of second language teaching, the word "control" has a somewhat negative implication and often has been associated with classroom activities considered as old-fashioned, teacher-centered or non- communicative. Such phenomena are becoming more and more common: A second language teacher may feel guilty if his/her lessons are described as "controlled". Some teachers who have successfully conducted effective classes with obvious overall maneuvering will strongly disown the label of "control"; other teachers who have taken real measures to loosen control over their classes to the total neglect of the students' participation will happily claim the title of "communicative". Many teachers are confused with the concept and hesitate to act. Some of them attack "control" only verbally while continuing to put it into practice.

Why has so much confusion about "control" appeared? Is there any logical conflict or inherent mutual exclusion between "control" and "communication"? Do activities in the Second Language Teaching (SLT) classroom need to be controlled after all? If so, how and in what aspects should control be exercised? These are the questions which I want to deal with in this paper with the expectation of eliciting more valuable discussions. (Forum)

On the Causal Mechanism of Hyperbole (1995)
Liu Baiyi & Xiao Aili
Hyperbole and lies are very similar in outward appearance, both being the result of exaggeration. Because they are so similar yet so different language phenomena, honest people may hesitate to employ an exaggeration to achieve the powerful rhetorical effect of hyperbole for fear of being considered to be telling a lie. Their concern is justified. (Forum)

Making Mini-Speeches and Editing "Magazines"- Two Ways to Develop Productive Language Skills (1995)
Jiashu Wang
We often find our senior-level students of EFL rather weak in productive language skills. Though they have majored in English for three or four years at the university, have a good foundation in English grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation, and have little difficulty comprehending authentic English through listening or reading, a considerable number of our students cannot speak or write fluently in the language. This made us realize with regret that linguistic competence does not necessarily lead to communicative performance, and receptive language skills do not directly result in communicative competence. (Forum)