Volume 34, Issue 3 - Classroom Research

This paper describes a course designed to help Chinese undergraduate English-majors acquire competence in English research article (RA) writing. Such competence comprises three components: 1) discourse structure of an RA; 2) scientific thinking and reasoning; and 3) academic language. Participants were from one intact class of 28 senior English majors at a university in Shanghai. This course was experimental and designed to develop a scheme for teaching RA writing to the senior students in China. Students' RA writings throughout the semester were collected as the main data. Findings show that discourse knowledge, scientific thinking , and linguistic structure can be learned and transferred using these mediating tools: 1) the exemplars of sample RAs; 2) teacher's demonstration and feedback through mini-training sessions; and 3) analysis of genre and norms of RAs. The process-centered, theme-oriented and inquiry-based pedagogy adopted in the course may shed some light on English RA writing teaching practices to Chinese EFL learners. 本文描述了一门旨在帮肋中国英语专业本科生提高英语学术论文写作能力的课程｡英语学术论文写作能力包括三个组成部分：1）学术论文的语篇结构；2）科学思维；3）学术语言｡来自上海某大学一个大四英语专业班的28名学生于2009-2010年第一学期参加了实验｡该课程是由一名教授原创设计并执教的一门实验性课程，目的是通过系统指导学生学习学术专题､训练学生的学术研究能力来发展他们的学术英语写作能力｡通过分析学生们的一个学期的学术写作的作业，发现在中介工具的作用下，语篇知识､科学思维和语言结构可以在课堂教学中学习到，并迀移到新的学术写作任务中｡这三个中介工具是：1）学术论文范文；2）教师的演示､反馈和课堂专题训练；3）学术论文的文体和规范｡该课程采用的过程为中心､主题导向的探究型教学方法对中国英语学术论文课堂教学有着积极的启示意义｡

This study focused on the effects of the Content-Based Instruction (CBI) for English majors in the Chinese context. A quasi-experiment was conducted in an English teaching institution with tests as data collection instruments. The quantitative study indicates that CBI brings better outcome than Skill-Oriented Instruction (SOI) in developing language knowledge, language skills and disciplinary knowledge, achieving the general objectives of the national curriculum more effectively than the conventional SOI. The findings throw a positive light on the reform of the national curriculum for English as a specialty and the education of English majors in China. 本项研究依托教学改革的准实验研究，运用了测试采集研究数据，重点关注了中国高笹院校英语专业基础阶段内容依托教学改革的实践效果｡实验研究表明，和以语言技能为导向的教学相比，内容依托教学在语言知识教学､语言技能发展和学科知识的传授方面取得了更好的效果，更好地实现了国家大纲规定的总体教学目标｡这项研究结果对我国英语专业教学大纲的改革及英语专业教育的发展具有重要的启示意义｡

College English teachers in China are often confronted with a number of challenges, such as the large class size, limited contact hours, limited linguistic input and output, test-oriented teaching and learning methods, and the lack of professional development opportunities, to name a few. As a result, many university students have gained rich linguistic knowledge and yet are poor in communicative competence. This paper reports a longitudinal, 8-year-long study of an English Enhancement Program in a southeast provincial university which follows a new model of college English teaching at the tertiary level in China. This model is supported by the expanded theoretical framework of communicative competence as both its goal and means, one that encompasses linguistic, pragmatic, discourse, strategic, and intercultural competences. This paper further discusses four implementation domains with concrete innovative strategies that sustain the innovation of the program, namely, 1) innovation in academic design and instruction, 2) a placement and assessment system, 3) faculty support and development, and 4) organizational development capacity. 本文对我国东南部一所省属综合性大学在开展了8年之久的“英语提升计划” 中所采取的英语教学新模式进行了纵向研究｡该模式以培养学生的英语交际能力（即：语言能力､语用能力､语篇能力､交际策略能力和跨文化交际能力）为目标和手段，是语言交际教学法这一理论框架的延伸｡文章从四个方面进一步讨论了实施这一新模式所采取的具体改革措施，即：1）课程设置及课堂教学创新；2）分级考试和评估体系；3）教师职业发展；4）课程建设与发展｡

Using a conversation analysis approach, the present study investigates the teacher-led question-answer sequences of one successful seminar course ( Short Stories and Western Culture ) within the curriculum reform for English majors in Beijing Foreign Studies University, aiming at uncovering an effective way of integrating disciplinary learning with language skills development. The result of the analysis shows that the teacher of the course, who perceives student participation as an indispensable ingredient of his class, often uses more divergent, opinion-seeking questions to initiate discussion and uses four types of expansion question on his turns to promote student participation, namely, probing questions (PQ), clue-giving questions (CQ), elaboration requests (ER), and agreement checks (AC). The study also generates an I-R-(E)-F-FC [ Initiation-Response-(Evaluation)-Follow up-Further Contribution ] model, in which the teacher attempts to promote student participation and guide the construction of students' understanding. 本研究采用会话分析的方法，对北外英语专业课程体系改革中一门比较成功的讨论型专业课（《短篇小说与西方文化》）课堂上的师生问答序列进行分析，旨在探究高年级专业教学与语言技能（口语）训练结合的有效途径。分析结果显示，这门课中教师采用发散式、征求观点类问题引发学生参与，而后又采用四种问题话轮来拓展学生的发言。这四种扩展问题话轮分别是：追问、提供线索式问题、详述请求、同意检验。同时，研究中还总结出一套由引发一回答一（评价）一跟进一进一步发言构成的会话模式。该模式不仅促进了学生参与，同时也有助于教师帮助学生构建对课程内容的理解。

Activity Theory (AT) has its philosophical roots in classical German philosophy, in the works of Marx and Engels, and in the Soviet Russian cultural-historical school of psychology (Engeström, Activity theory and individual and social transformation, Cambridge University Press, 1999). AT and the Activity System (AS) model developed by Engeström are widely used in a variety of fields in social sciences. In this paper, I consider how the AS model and the concept of “object” in particular can be adopted when researching the complexity and dynamics of teaching activity and its outcome on a phonetics course at a university in China. The findings indicate that varied “object” that each individual student is working at during the teaching and learning activities constitutes an important and direct factor leading to differentiated learning outcome in the phonetics course. A thorough examination of the relationship between the components of the AS reveals ways of narrowing the gap between the collective “object” that is constructed publicly and explicitly during the lesson and the individual “object” constructed silently and implicitly by each individual. The author argues that the closer the collective “object” is to the individual ones, the more rewarding a lesson will be to the majority of the students. Thus it is the teachers' responsibility to identify various individual “objects” and to bridge the gap between the collective and individual “objects” in order to improve the quality of classroom teaching and learning. 活动理论（activity theory）是以人类活动尤其是社会文化实践活动为主要研究对象的一种跨学科的理论，目前较为广泛地运用于社会科学各领域。本研究将芬兰学者Engeström提出的活动系统模型，尤其是其中的“客体”概念，用于探究高等师范院校英语专业语音课堂教学，通过分析课堂活动客体的构建过程，反映语音课堂教学复杂性和教学目标的多元化，同时也展示了活动系统模型作为人类文化实践活动（例如：语言教学活动）的理论框架和分析工具的优越性及其广泛的适用范围。

This paper reports a case study designed to understand classroom interactional processes in a Chinese university. The case study focuses on scaffolding in teacher-student interaction as well as the process of shifting the responsibility from the teacher to student. Our first aim was to determine how teacher-student interactions in two oral English classes were distributed, and our second aim was to determine how the two teachers perceive their roles in teacher-student interaction and how their perceptive differences were reflected in teacher-student interaction in their oral English classes. The data were collected through videotaping and an interview. Results show that distribution patterns of teacher-student interactions were mainly different in the two oral English classes, and the role perception differences of the two teachers were partly reflected in their teacher-student interaction. The study suggests that the process of shifting the responsibility from teacher to student is a complex process which demands great efforts from teachers as well as willingness from students. 本文围绕我国大学英语口语课堂教师和学生的互动话语，从社会文化的角度考查两个大学英语口语课堂支架式的师生互动话语的分布特点，以及这些特点与教师角色之间的关系。研究采用课堂录像和教师访谈的方法来采集数据，并对数据进行了分析。研究分析表明两个口语课堂的师生互动话语的分布特点以差异为主，教师在互动过程的角色与这些差异有部分的联系。文章指出教师通过调整自己的话语来帮助学生理解并参与课堂交际是一个复杂的过程。

The theme of this special issue is classroom research. Locating research inside the classroom, rather than in experimental or laboratory settings, is assuming more and more importance in applied linguistics these days, so this special issue is timely. If classrooms are constituted specifically for the purposes of language learning and teaching, then it is reasonable to look there for answers to the questions that we have. This issue contains six empirical investigations into aspects of English language teaching in Chinese college contexts. They provide important insights into substantive issues within those contexts as well as illustrating a range of methods that can be deployed in classroom research. Before turning to a review of the articles, I will address some terminological issues including what we mean when we talk about research, the characteristics of classroom research, and the nature of research paradigms.

Founded on the componential model of reading, Nation's construct of vocabulary breadth test and structuralists' view of syntactic knowledge, this paper attempts to investigate the relative significance of vocabulary breadth and syntactic knowledge in the prediction of Chinese EFL learners' reading comprehension test performance and whether the relative significance is moderated by the learners' different L2 proficiency. An experiment including three tests was carried out with 68 sophomores in Anhui Medical University. The findings show that: 1) there is a positive linear correlation between the learners' performance on a reading comprehension test and their vocabulary breadth and syntactic knowledge, with the multiple r being 0.551; 2) syntactic knowledge outperforms vocabulary breadth in predictive power and emerges as the stronger predictor of reading comprehension test performance; and the relative significance of syntactic knowledge over vocabulary breadth in the prediction of reading comprehension does not change with the EFL learners' L2 proficiency. The findings of this study provide implications for both reading instruction and remediation of learners' reading problems. 基于阅读组合模式的理论框架､Nation提出的词汇广度测试构念和结构语言学家对于句法知识的界定，本文考察了阅读组合模式中构成阅读能力的两个成分——词汇广度和句法知识对二语阅读理解成绩的预测，并试图了解此预测是否受二语水平的调节作用｡受试为68名随机抽取的大学二年级非英语专业本科生｡实验结果表明：1）受试的词汇广度和句法知识都与其阅读理解测试成绩存在线性相关关系：多元相关系数为0.551；2）相比较而言，句法知识对阅读理解测试成绩的预测能力大于词汇广度对其的预测，并且此预测不受学习者二语水平的调节作用｡