Reflections on the Cultural Ecology of University Classrooms in the Perspective of Postmodernism

The cultural ecology of university classroom has been influenced by postmodernism and has shown complex and variable characteristics.Specifically speaking,it tends to be both conflicting and interactive in terms of subject relations in the classroom,fragmented and diversified in terms of classroom teaching,and redundant and dynamic in terms of classroom assessment.In order to further harmonize and develop the cultural ecology of university classrooms,it is necessary to expand the space for communication and interaction between teachers and students,improve the overall professional quality of faculty members,and perfect the management and assessment system for university teachers and students.

Analysis and numerical simulation of indoor thermal environments in some university classrooms

In order to study the indoor thermal environments in university classrooms in Tianjin,a field study and a questionnaire survey for a main teaching building are carried out.First,the thermal sensations of participants in the typical classrooms are studied by 180 questionnaires.Then,based on the measured data,the temperature changes in the classrooms during a year are simulated by the DeST software.The results show that the indoor thermal environments in the northern classrooms on the first floor are better than those in other classrooms.And the measurement results accord with the simulation results.These results can be used as a reference for the study of the indoor thermal environments in other seasons.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COMFORT PERCEPTIONS AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN UNIVERSITY CLASSROOM BUILDINGS

This paper presents preliminary data on a series of building comfort experiments conducted in the field.We performed physical in-situ measurements and solicited responses from 409(184 female;225 male)university students in six different classrooms at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst during three seasons(fall,winter and spring).Our questions focused on student perception of comfort in varied environmental(temperature and humidity,and air speed)conditions.We collected records of student academic performance in the classes,correlating their comfort perceptions to their test scores.Statistical analysis of classroom environ-mental variables,thermal satisfaction,and student scores suggest that by enhancing thermal comfort,we can improve academic performance.

Supplementary role of multimedia teaching to college English reading

With the application of modem information technology in education, particularly after multimedia network technology enters teaching field of education, the content of education, the content and the means of education has undergone great changes.In order to develop complex English talent, we designed a teaching model of English reading as a means of multimedia assisted teaching through collaborative, exploratory, autonomous interactive teaching, which can fully exercise and develop students＇ language skills, improving English quality of teaching.It has changed the traditional teaching model which is constrined bye teacher-centered, textbook-centered, classroom-centered. Multimedia Assisted English reading can give students the greatest degree of autonomy, and pay more attention to students＇ learning ability to play the main role in the cognitive, reflectting the idea of quality education, meetting the requirements of the times.

Discussion on Network Classroom Teaching of the Meteorology and Climatology in Common Colleges and Universities

Most of the content of the course Meteorology and Climatology in common colleges and universities is what students are interested in,and most students have been exposed to or understood many contents.When studying this part of the content,students often show varying degrees of interest.Of course,each student s own situation is different.In classroom teaching,teachers should comprehensively consider various factors.Especially in the network classroom teaching situation,teachers should combine the learning content to use multi platform teaching in the teaching,students performance to flexibly carry out interaction between teachers and students,and students own situation to pay attention to individualized cultivation.

The effect of classroom wall color on learning performance: A virtual reality experiment

The wall color has the certain impact on the learning performance of college students in the classroom.To find the suitable wall color to improve the learning performance,this study used the virtual reality(VR)technology to build five virtual classrooms with yellow,red,white,blue,and green walls,while the subjective evaluation and objective physiological indicators of college students were collected.The subjective survey showed the cold-colored walls such as blue and green had the highest levels of relaxation and pleasure,while the warm-colored walls such as yellow and red had the better attention and learning performance.And the white-walled classroom had the lowest subjective evaluation and the worst learning performance,but the white wall was widely used in the present class room.Physiological test results showed the yellow wall had the higher HRV-nLF/nHF and low-β&high-βfrequencies in the FP2 channel in the frontal,but the white wall had the lowest scores.Moreover,the correlation analysis had confirmed electroencephalography(EEG)and electrocardiogram(ECG)indicators could be employed to evaluate the learning performance.These findings provide an effective reference for the spatial design of university classrooms and a basis for the study of physiological indicators.

Appraisal of the Production-Oriented Approach： An Introduction

The production-oriented approach （POA） has been developed over a decade. It is driven by the need to improve English classroom instruction for university students in China （Wen, 2016）. It is also motivated by the aspiration to enhance the quality of foreign language education in other similar pedagogical contexts outside China. A volume of research has been done by Wen Qiufang and her research team, to formulate the theory of POA and to test its effectiveness in classroom pedagogy （e.g. Wen, 2016, 2015; Yang, 2015; Zhang, 2015）. At the moment, the POA is still at an early stage of theory building and almost all empirical research is done in the Chinese context. In order to improve the quality of this theory and to make it intelligible to the international academic community, a one-day symposium was held in Beijing Foreign Studies University on May 15, 2017. The symposium was entitled ＇The first international forum on innovative foreign language education in China： Appraisal of the POA＇. In the forum, leading experts in applied linguistics were invited to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the POA and the directions for its future development. The symposium was the first attempt for the POA research team to discuss its latest work with international scholars. This Viewpoint section collects the responses of four experts who participated in the symposium, listed in alphabetical order. The collection of articles covers three topics related to the POA： its pedagogical application, its use for teacher training, and its research. Alister Cumming is Professor Emeritus and the former Head of the Centre for Educational Research on Languages and Literacies, University of Toronto, Canada. His article focuses primarily on POA research as an exemplary case of design-based research. Rod Ellis is Research Professor in the School of Education at Curtin University, Australia. He discusses POA in terms of pedagogy, teacher training and research, with both critiques and constructive suggestions. Paul Kei Matsuda is Professor of English and Director of Second Language Writing at Arizona State University, the writed states. He responds to POA from the perspective of an expert researcher and teacher of L2 writing. Charlene Polio is Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Linguistics ＆ Germanic, Slavic, Asian ＆ African Languages atMichigan State University, the writed states. She conceptualises POA as a useful method to address some issues in pre-service teacher development. Overall, the articles in this section are insightful and reader-friendly. They are not only useful for the development of POA in particular, but may also be valuable to a broad range of researchers as they touch upon pertaining issues, as well as emerging topics, in the field of applied linguistics. We therefore find it necessary to make them accessible to a wide readership.