Volume 46, Issue 4

This study is contextualized onto three levels- the macro-level globalized context, the meso-level national context, and the micro-level of school contexts. Under the influence of these different contexts, this study is designed as a phenomenological study with the aim to understand the phenomenon of English learning and using perceptions, investment, and identity constructions of ten English major students in China through semi-structured interviews. In order to fulfill that goal, Darvin and Norton (2015)’s model provides a solid theoretical foundation for the researcher to investigate this critical educational phenomenon. The findings of the study include not only how participants reflect on their English learning experiences at different learning stages, but also how they exert their sense of agency and re-construct their English language identity in new environment. Findings also show the power of native English as a form of capital and the influence of authoritative voices on students’ perceptions and language identity while students enter and transfer their English learning to teaching trajectories. By providing a critical and multi-layered approach, this study demonstrates how Chinese educational system institutionalizes native English and thus shapes English major students in China.

Grounded in a complex and dynamic systems theory (CDST) perspective of L2 learning motivation, this year-long longitudinal study examines evolving motivational dynamics of two intermediate Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) learners at a Sino-US joint-venture university in China during the COVID-19 pandemic. Adopting Higgins’ framework of motivation, this case study focuses on the interplay of learner motivation for value, control, and truth effectiveness and contextual factors in shaping the contrastive motivational trajectories of two CSL learners who displayed discrepancy in the improvement of Mandarin oral proficiency. In particular, the two contextual factors of interest are an Integrated Performance Assessment (IPA) -informed CSL curriculum and COVID-induced remote online learning. We focus on how learners co-adapted with the “here-and-now” manifestations of these contextual factors and how their motivational dynamics and learning behaviors evolved based on multiple interrelated layers of the temporal-spatial context. The findings show that CSL learners’ motivational dynamics were shaped by multiple overlapping and interrelated motivations related to value, control, and truth effectiveness, which emerged out of the contingencies and affordances in the learning context. The learner-context co-adaptations play a significant role in directing relevant motivational dimensions and thereby shaping the overall identity of the whole system. This empirical study contributes to CSL and L2 motivational studies by exploring the applicability of a CDST approach and a global motivational framework to study intermediate CSL learners’ motivational dynamics and how they individually co-adapted with an innovative curricular design and the perturbance during the COVID-19 online teaching and learning process. The paper reflects on the effectiveness and applicability of IPA in an intermediate-level CSL curriculum from a motivational perspective and offers insights into understanding and promoting the complex learner motivation during COVID-19 for language educators.

Data-driven learning (DDL), the direct use of corpus by learners in the second language classroom, has been shown to be effective in improving learners’ acquisition of various English linguistic items (Boulton & Cobb, 2017). However, it is still limited to our knowledge regarding how learners interact with DDL-related materials or tools and how DDL works in the learning/teaching of languages other than English. This study aims to closely examine the cognitive processes of six learners of Chinese in using printed concordance-based materials to learn Chinese resultative constructions. These materials contained adapted complete concordance sentences drawn from the Lancaster Corpus for Mandarin Chinese (McEnery & Xiao, 2004). The results show that in general, learners employed various strategies when scrutinising the concordance lines, particularly cognitive strategies such as summarising and grouping . Differences among individual learners were also found: learners who used more diverse strategies with higher frequencies could successfully infer the regularities, which led to learning gains. The study provides some implications for effective teacher guidance in DDL.

This study compares flipped approach with self-regulated flipped approach on EFL learners’ collocational knowledge. Thirty available EFL students were randomly assigned to two equal experimental groups: flipped and self-regulated flipped. For six weeks, both groups received learning contents outside of class time, and class time was used for interactive activities. However, self-regulating strategies (goal-setting and self-evaluation) were employed to the self-regulated flipped participants to help them schedule their out-of-class time to effectively work on the content before class to interact collaboratively with their peers and teachers in class activities. Three collocation videos were sent to their different WhatsApp groups. A researcher-made test on Adjective + Noun and Verb + Noun collocations served as the pre- and post-test. The time spent on watching collocations was collected through a ‘study log’. The results of a mixed between-within subjects analysis of variance revealed that integrating self-regulation into flipped approach enhanced the students’ collocational knowledge; their planning strategies and using study time also improved. The study has implications for EFL teachers and material developers.

It is controversial whether English inflectional morphemes can be systematically borrowed into written Chinese since English and Chinese are typologically and orthographically different. This paper intends to investigate the borrowing of eight English inflectional morphemes [–’ s (possessive), – (e)s (plural), – ed (past tense, past participle), – ing (present participle), – en (past participle),– s (the 3rd person singular), – er (comparative), and – est (superlative)] into Chinese with a corpus of Chinese newspapers collected from 2005 to 2021. The findings of this study suggest a significant presence of the systematically borrowed English inflectional morphemes into Chinese newspapers in terms of borrowability. Based on the analysis of the linguistic features and frequency distribution of the borrowed morphemes into Chinese newspapers, it can be concluded that the English inflectional morphemes borrowed can be well adapted into Chinese.

The present study adopted a mixed-methods approach to investigate the relationships between EFL (English as a foreign language) learners’ perceived classroom environment (PCE), foreign language learning boredom (FLLB), and English achievement. Two hundred and seventy Chinese high school students participated in a questionnaire survey and 9 students participated in a semistructured interview. The results revealed that: 1) General PCE was negatively correlated with FLLB and positively correlated with achievement. Task orientation was the only component of PCE that significantly related to achievement; all components of PCE except student cohesiveness were significantly related to FLLB; 2) Teacher support, task orientation, and class order negatively influenced FLLB, which negatively influenced English achievement. None of the components of PCE directly influenced English achievement; 3) FLLB fully mediated the influence of teacher support and task orientation on achievement. Responses from the participants triangulated our findings in the quantitative part. According to the research findings, English teachers should adequately support their students and appropriately orient learning tasks to reduce students’ boredom levels and improve their English achievement.

Rapid technological advances and enhanced global cooperation have led to tremendous changes in access to information and new modes of communication and, hence, calls have been made for instantaneous adjustments in education (Fullan, 2007). Despite global access to internet-enhanced modes of communication and up-to-date information on all subjects – including those relating to new and effective approaches to pedagogy – traditional teacher-centered teaching prevails in many EFL contexts. This is the case even though this approach to teaching has been insufficient to address challenges in EFL teaching. This study explores how the teaching beliefs of 12 EFL teachers changed as they learned to teach innovatively and to teach with features of learner-centeredness and L2 interaction. In the context of a MA program capstone course, the teachers were introduced to the essential elements, such as learner-centeredness and L2 interaction, involved in four approaches to teaching innovatively: task-based language teaching, problem-posing, scripting and oral interpretation, and extensive reading. The data analyzed comprised the teachers’ belief reports, written reflections on teaching interactively, interview accounts, and the teacher educator’s observational notes. The results of this study revealed changes in teachers’ beliefs about innovative teaching with the aforementioned features, the influential forces bringing about the change, and teachers’ growing expertise in using and drawing on concepts in teaching practice.