Volume 46, Issue 3

English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ professional development has been attached much importance with the advent of the National English Curriculum Standards (NECS in short) for Senior High Schools as it initiates the shift from knowledge-skill-oriented education to competence-oriented education. As an effective way for teachers’ professional development, collaborative action research community is introduced in this study to provide teachers with opportunities for mutual engagement, meaning negotiation, and a shared repertoire. Four senior high school EFL teachers from four different schools were studied in a collaborative action research community to explore how teachers from diversified backgrounds achieve mutual learning for their professional development. With data collected from observation, interviews, and journals, the study reveals that diversity and partiality help maintain mutual engagement in the community of practice. Meaning negotiation and mutual accountability in a joint enterprise contribute to the coherence of the community. Moreover, the participative activity of online and offline group discussion and the common topic of thinking visualization were treated as sources of a shared repertoire, an essential indication of a harmonious community. In this case, this study extrapolates how the collaborative action research community achieves harmony to support teachers’ professional development in action research.

In the last three decades, Professional learning communities (PLCs) have spread rapidly in different countries and contexts. While much is known about PLCs’ potential to enhance teachers’ professional learning, less is known about factors influencing teachers’ sustained participation and the process concerning how PLC was built at an early stage, especially in higher education in China. This study, conducted at the School of Foreign Languages in a key teacher education university in China, examined 17 university EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers’ perceptions of the value of academic salon-based PLC and the factors influencing their participation. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews, the results showed that most participants embraced and appreciated the significant role of salon-based PLC in breaking a sense of isolation, enriching general knowledge in research and publication, and enhancing beliefs of the significance of research in professional development. However, how salons were implemented hindered teachers’ sustained participation. Factors at the individual level (i. e., low motivation, heavy workload, etc.) and the institutional level (i.e., non-collaborative culture, hierarchy, etc.) also exerted great influence on teachers’ sustained engagement. Implications for university teachers’ development in the context of PLCs were discussed.

Research-practice nexus has been an ideal for higher education. However, research mentoring has been underexplored in both formal and informal formats. This study aimed to examine the effects of one-year-long informal research mentoring conducted by an experienced EFL teacher educator for three teaching-focused EFL teachers from three different universities. It found that the informal research mentoring generated three positive effects. It fueled the mentees’ research interest, raised their awareness of self-discipline and stress-coping strategies, and kindled their enthusiasm for constructing a collegial environment in their working contexts. Meanwhile, limitations also emerged associated with the mentees’ limited research engagement and productivity owing to personal and contextual factors as well as the problems with the informal mentoring relationships. Implications of the study are drawn to improve faculty research mentoring processes and outcomes.

This study investigated the knowledge domain of second language acquisition (SLA) research in 2009-2019. It selected about a decade of studies in the SLA knowledge domain and applied an available data analysis tool CiteSpace to show a picture of SLA research. The 11-year period of studies was retrieved from the Web of Science database, totally 4, 660 bibliographic records. By employing the embedded algorithm analyzing literature in CiteSpace, the present study found the factors influencing SLA and statistical models were critical aspects in L2 research, and research topics were conducted in psychological, neuroscience, linguistic, and language teaching frameworks. Additionally, research patterns in the SLA domain have become more diversified, and empirical studies of cognitive science have gradually taken a dominant position in recent years. Spikes of increased numbers of detected papers in the period of 2009-2019 showed research focus and methodology would possibly continue to be interdisciplinary in future research.

In the context of globalization, multilingual learning and teaching have become more and more popular in China. The phenomenon of cross-linguistic influence is more complex in L3 acquisition than in L2 acquisition. Does the previously learned L2 affect L3 acquisition? From the perspective of trilingual acquisition, the English and French national test proficiency scores of 112 French major students in Chinese universities were selected as the research data to explore the potential relationship between English (L2) proficiency and French (L3) learning. The research results showed a positive correlation between English and French proficiency among Chinese learners, and a predictable equation was established through regression analysis. In addition, the study reveals that a threshold level of English (L2) is essential to generate a significant correlation. The threshold level is roughly equivalent to the level of IELTS 5.5. According to the results, the analogical teaching method is advocated.

Many researchers have identified learning strategies that university students adopt to overcome difficulties in programs taught in English, among which translation is a potentially helpful one. This study explores Chinese undergraduate students’ perceptions of translation as a learning strategy when learning content in the English-medium instruction (EMI) context. Although a number of studies have investigated translation used by learners in second or foreign language acquisition, those studies were rare in the EMI context of tertiary education, particularly in China. By focusing on students’ perspectives, this study provides an insight into how translation is used to assist academic learning in EMI context and highlights its effectiveness. Data consisted of semistructured interviews with 14 volunteer Chinese undergraduates of various majors. It is found that most of the participants resorted to translation to deal with language-related problems, especially in English reading and writing activities. They usually translated utilizing various machine translators, which did not always have a fulfilling effect on students’ learning. Although the majority considered translation helpful for academic learning, it might not be the preferred solution to subject-related confusion for Chinese undergraduate students learning in the EMI context.

Since the documentary A Bite of China (i. e. Shejian shang de Zhongguo ( 《舌尖上的中国》), where shejian shang literally means “on the tip of the tongue”), was broadcast in May 2012, a great number of expressions like shejian shang de Russia/world/Olympics/safety have begun to gradually converge into a novel modifier-head construction Shejian Shang de X , illustrating a typical evolution of modern Chinese.This study aims to analyze the construction’s meaning from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. Our investigation and analysis indicate that (1) Shejian Shang de X differs from the classic Chinese construction PP de X in both semantics and syntax; (2) as a modifier-head construction, Shejian Shang de X shows its variations in the head X’s multiple category options (noun, verb and adjective), therefore extending the scope of nominalization in Chinese and simultaneously triggering the construction’s diversified meanings; (3) the construction’s non-compositionality results mainly from its modifier components shejian and shang and is in general construed metonymically and metaphorically; (4) as a whole, the construction is a double-scope network consisting of two different organizing frames: the frame of shejian (“tip of the tongue”), a body part term and the frame of X, a dynamically changing entity (physical or abstract). The surface semantic incompatibility between the modifier and the head can be solved only by virtue of conceptual blending, producing the novel meaning [X relevant to the function of the tip of the tongue] of the whole construction.

Textbooks may reflect a certain ecosophy through the linguistic elements of the content that significantly influences students’ values. This analysis selected 88 discourses from the reading sections of Communicative English for Chinese Learners (Integrated Course), from Books 1 to 4, designed for undergraduate English majors. Based on Systemic Functional Linguistics, the title and the illustration of the reading sections are analyzed to ascertain whether the ideology they reflect is in accord with the ecosophy, that is, the harmonious coexistence of humans, nature, and the development of society. After conducting a textual analysis, all multimodal discourses that can reflect clear ecosophy conform to this idea. Concerning illustrations, seven of them are at variance with the ecosophy. As for the analysis of the logico-semantic relations between image and text, only three discourses are found at variance with the ecosophy, but in actual pedagogical context, these three discourses aim to arouse the thinking of the audience about people’s inappropriate conduct and arouse their ecological consciousness.