Volume 41, Issue 1

This study investigated seven learner variables (i.e., age, motivation, perception of the difficulty of the Chinese language, self-perceived achievement, self-perceived language learning ability, self-expectation in the Chinese class, and perception of the importance of the Chinese language) as potential predictors of Chinese language learning anxiety. Correlation analyses showed that all seven variables were significantly correlated with anxiety level in isolation. Perception of the difficulty of the Chinese language and age were found to have positive relationships with anxiety, whereas the remaining five variables were reported to have negative relationships. Multiple regression analysis revealed that all the variables except self-expectation in the Chinese class and perception of the importance of the Chinese language contributed significantly to the prediction of Chinese language learning anxiety when examined simultaneously. The five significant predictors altogether explained 34.7% of the variance in anxiety. Perception of the difficulty of the Chinese language was found to be the best predictor and self-perceived achievement the second-best predictor, followed by self-perceived foreign language learning ability, age, and motivation.

This study investigated the assessment skills of secondary EFL teachers through analyzing the quality of test items on a municipal English examination for eighth graders in a city located in northern China. Data included students’answers to test items as well as a post-test questionnaire and teachers’ responses to semi-structured interviews. It was found that overall, the test functioned satisfactorily, with most items moderately easy yet discriminating, and high internal consistency and strong correlations among subscale scores. However, item analysis and content review of the test identified some items with incorrect or multiple keys, which may result from a combination of EFL teachers’ inadequate language proficiency and their attempts to write attractive distractors.

Based on Bhatia’s multi-dimensional analytical framework for discourse analysis, we explore key issues involved in genres construction such as private intention, manipulation of generic value and interdiscursive strategies. Two prefaces and two book reviews by expert linguists were collected and analyzed at great length from both text-internal and text-external perspectives. Meanwhile, four professionals from relevant disciplines were interviewed for their insights into the issues investigated. Through examining textual features, covert interdiscursivity and narrative accounts of the professional writers, the following findings are generated. 1) Generic variation occurs within and between the two genres due to expert writers’ intentional manipulation of generic value. 2) Interdiscursive strategies like “genre embedding”, “genre bending” and “genre mixing” are exploited by expert writers to achieve their particular private intention. Specifically, preface genre can be presented, to some extent, as a research article mixed with some promotional flavor, and features of research article genre, promotional genre and introductory genre are found mixed in the review genre. 3) Representations of the preface and book review genres such as linguistic feature, move structure and interdiscursivity are ultimately affected by generic value, authors’ private intention, professional practice and disciplinary culture. The findings have important implications for ESP/EAP writing practitioners and learners.

Brain mechanism of metaphor processing has always been a focus in Neurolinguistics. This study approaches bilinguals’ metaphor semantic representation mechanism with Chinese bilinguals with different levels of second language proficiency by means of ERP (Event-related Potentials) technology. The experiment results showed that: 1) Both hemispheres collaborate in metaphor processing with the left hemisphere serving a leading semantic recognition role. The left hemisphere is more sensitive to first language input, while the right hemisphere is more active to second language input. 2) Compared with Chinese learners of higher proficiency in L2, learners of lower proficiency tend to adopt more Chinese neural mechanism in processing English metaphors. 3) When learners process metaphors, the neural mechanism difference of learners of higher proficiency is smaller than that of those of lower proficiency. The higher the second language proficiency, the higher the degree of common representation of Chinese and English metaphor.

Job burnout is a synthetic syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment. It has a time-linked and situation-specific nature by developing gradually and fluctuating with changes of environmental contributors. In this study, four related diary entries were analyzed narratively, written by a polytechnic teacher teaching English for General Purposes (EGP) in a semester, to verify the possible work-related situational factors causing job burnout of EGP teachers in the Chinese context. The results revealed ten environmental burnout elements, including overload, severity of students’ problem, lacking supervisors’ support, limited job autonomy, a stern hierarchical organizational system, and opaque operating rules. We interpreted the results in terms of teacher professional development and proposed that enhancing EGP teachers’ professional identity and revaluing the EGP course in polytechnics were the basic ways to mitigate burnout and improve English teachers’ professional development.

The ability to employ the language as a communicational tool often serves as a measure of one’s speaking success in the language learning class. This research sought to investigate the effect of learners’ autonomous textbook selection on the speaking ability of Iranian English as foreign language (EFL) learners. Moreover, finding and analyzing factors considered by the learners in selecting the textbooks were another aim of this research. Sixty Iranian intermediate EFL learners from the Simin Language Institute in Ramsar, Mazandaran, Iran, were selected as the participants of the study based on their scores on Oxford Placement Test. This test determines the level of the students’ English proficiency. These participants were randomly assigned into the control and experimental groups. An interview procedure was run as their pretest. The experimental group studied from their selected books, besides the researcher’s teaching in the class. After 16 sessions, a posttest, the same as the pretest, was run as well. The quantitative results indicated the superior performance of the experimental group over the control group. Furthermore, an analysis of the Litz’s (2000) questionnaire shows that learners considered criteria such as practical considerations, layout and design, activities, skills, language type, subject and content of the selected books.