Volume 39, Issue 2

This article reports a study of the effects of inference training and text repetition on Chinese university students’ performance of two listening information-transfer tasks that provided built-in measures of their comprehension and opportunities for the acquisition of ten unknown target words embedded in the listening texts. One group just listened to the text once, a second group three times, while the third listened three times and received inference-training support. The results showed that text repetition had a positive effect on both comprehension and vocabulary acquisition. However, the inference-training had no additional effect. The study lends support to the findings of previous studies which have shown that repeated opportunities to process oral input have a positive effect on listening comprehension and extends these studies by showing that it also facilitates incidental vocabulary acquisition.

Successful language learning entails two levels of competence: adequate control of the grammatical system of the target language and ability to effectively communicate in pragmatic contexts. Espoused by the mantra of much inculcated communicative orientation in English language teaching and learning, the divination points to pedagogical trends which essentially jettison grammar instruction in the classroom. However, language is not merely a tool of communication but an instrument of social control, political power, and economic mobility, all of which require not only skills to “get your message across” by whatever means, but more importantly, the accurate use of and facility with language that has been codified and assessed formally by standardized tests. This paper critically examines the role of grammatical accuracy and its relation to communication in terms of social and academic functions of English and advocates a revival of currently penurious grammar instruction. Examples from both native and nonnative speakers of English are used to illustrate the interface between grammar and social and political dimensions of communication through language.

The present study investigated the effects of English songs on morphological development— inflection, derivation, and compound words. Fifty Chinese EFL students were involved in this study. Two tests were administered to each learner immediately before and after the study. Results from the pre-tests revealed that all three groups with different vocabulary sizes brought some morphological knowledge to the study. The findings exhibited some evidence to support the fact that teaching through English songs can lead to the development of learner’s receptivity to morphology. However, exposure to the song was insufficient to develop productive knowledge in most of the learners. The study also revealed that groups with smaller vocabulary tended to achieve lower scores than groups with larger vocabulary. Based on these results and previous findings, pedagogical implications were made.

The involvement of rule-based computation is the focus of the past tense debate. The present masked priming study contributed to the debate by investigating how Chinese EFL learners processed regular English past tense forms. The results show that, for the past tense forms of relatively high frequency, at the early stage of processing, the highly proficient group can make use of morphological rule to decompose regular past tense forms. The lower proficiency level group, however, cannot decompose past tense forms. It is suggested that surface form frequency of past tense inflections and foreign language proficiency are the two factors that affect the way complex words are processed. Our data supports the dual-route model of Declarative-Procedural memory in the past tense debate.

It has been debated whether preference for subject-extracted relative clauses in language processing is a universal rule, with evidence from both first and second language acquisition studies. But very few studies focus on learners of Chinese as a second language. The current research studied Chinese subject/object-extracted relative clauses processing among the learners of Chinese as a second language by a self-paced reading experiment. The results demonstrate a faster and more accurate processing of subject-extracted relative clauses in both subject and object modifying conditions, adding more evidence to the universal preference for the subject-extracted relative clauses. Both Frequency-Based Accounts and Memory-Based Accounts are discussed related to the current findings.

In a case study investigating Chinese EFL university majors’ perceptions of a portfolio-based writing assessment (PBWA) project, English majors were sampled to find out whether the portfolio method made them more interested in writing and/or improved their writing process and writing strategies. Four sophomores were chosen from among an experimental group at a local university in China. Analysis of data from student journals, interviews and reflective essays showed that taking part in portfolio writing empowered them to take charge of their own learning and motivated them to write better. The students welcomed PBWA as a fairer assessment tool than timed, one-shot essay tests. They held more interest in English writing, improved their writing strategies and shifted their attention from products of writing to process of writing and, thus, preferred scores from PBWA as a more satisfactory indicator of their writing ability.

This paper attempts to make a contrastive cross-cultural study of a special speech act— “disagreement.” Participants are 35 American undergraduates and 42 Chinese undergraduates respectively with the data eliciting technique—DCT (discourse completion test). Findings show that Chinese undergraduates tend to use different politeness strategies according to different social distance and social power while American undergraduates prefer to use positive politeness strategy most followed by negative politeness strategy, regardless of social distance and social power. The results of the study reveal cultural differences between the U.S. and China that lead to the distribution of diverse politeness strategies and also offer insights into what Chinese EFL learners are struggling with during their development of interlanguage pragmatic competence.