A Study on the Different Levels of“Attention”in the Processing of English Subjunctive Mood by Chinese Learners

“Attention”is a very vital cognitive mechanism.Cognitive psychology considers“attention”as the focus of mental activity and consciousness on an object.People engage their senses and memory to actively process the object in front of them.Theories of second language acquisition suggest that a large amount of input is the basis for language acquisition.At the same time,what is actively noticed by the learner can be effectively internalized.Thus,“attention”is also a non-linguistic factor that plays a significant role in language acquisition.The subjunctive mood is a major challenge in the teaching of English grammar.Generally speaking,the verbs in a sentence are used to distinguish between subjunctive and declarative sentences.In this paper,experimental utterances were written based on previous research by using verbs that are easy to cause ambiguity and confusion,and then set up the reinforced and non-reinforced attention conditions with different levels of“attention”to investigate whether there are different results and effects on subjects’comprehension of sentences under different levels of“attention”conditions.Under the different levels of“attention”,the subjects were examined to see whether there were different results in comprehension of the sentences and the impact of the different levels of“attention”.It was found that subjects in the reinforced“attention”condition comprehended sentences better,answered questions faster,and answered questions more correctly than subjects in the non-reinforced condition.This study also shed some light on English second language grammar teaching.

The Importance of Learning Chinese Outside Classroom(A Study of Good Chinese Learners at The University of Hong Kong)

This is the author’s second consecutive year of doing the research.As the economy of China is booming,there is a rapid increase in the number of foreign students coming to The University of Hong Kong to learn Chinese.As Chinese is one of the popular subjects for them to choose,in 2019,there are around 1000 foreign students(undergraduates or exchange students)learning Chinese as a foreign language course.A language teacher is a facilitator and an instructor of Chinese learning for foreign students.However,in the real world,there are always some good language learners and some less talented language learners in one classroom.So,what is the secret of the good Chinese learners?What can the language instructors do in order to support good Chinese learners and help the less talented learners to learn Chinese?In the TESOL field,there are a lot of researches have been done by scholars.In the early 1970s,several researchers isolated and defined the concept of good language learner.But in teaching Chinese as a foreign language field,there are relatively fewer researches.So,from January 2017 to May 2019,I conducted a survey about good Chinese learners in CHIN9503 and CHIN9504 classes.The survey consisted of an interview with several questions and the author will discuss the result of a survey and its implications in this paper.This research is done in a macro way rather than micro way.Thus,this holistic research focuses on finding good Chinese learners rather than focusing on learners’individual differences.

Chinese Learners'Realization of Requests in English

Requests are face-threatening in nature and closely related to politeness strategies.The present paper makes an attempt to investigate the realization of requests by the Chinese learners of English to see whether they commit some pragmatic failures in common with other subjects invested,and whether the Chinese learners demonstrate some unique characteristics in realizing requests.

Common Problems in English Pronunciation Among Chinese Learners and Teaching Implications

In the process of learning any languages,pronunciation is an important part of language acquisition because pronunciation may influence a listener’s comprehension of one’s expression.An example is the classical mistake of pronouncing“sink”and“think.”Because Germans cannot pronounce/s/,the rescue worker cannot understand why a man who is“thinking”needs help.In China,English learners are also facing the problems of pronunciation.Gimson,a famous professor of linguistics in Britain,pointed out that when learning a language,one should understand 50%-90%of its grammar and 1%of its vocabulary,but it is necessary to fully master the pronunciation,thus highlighting the importance of pronunciation.[1]However,pronunciation is a difficult part of a second language acquisition.This article analyzes the problems of pronunciation and discuss some methods on how to resolve them.

Intensifier-Verb Collocations in Academic English by Chinese Learners Compared to Native-Speaker Students

It is difficult for L2 English learners in general, and especially Chinese learners of English, to form idiomatic collocations. This article presents a comparison of the use of intensifier-verb collocations in English by native speaker students and Chinese ESL learners, paying particular attention to verbs which collocate with intensifiers. The data consisted of written production from three corpora: two of these are native English corpora: the British Academic Written English(BAWE) Corpus and Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers(MICUSP). The third one is a recently created Chinese Learner English corpus, Ten-thousand English Compositions of Chinese Learners(TECCL).Findings suggest that Chinese learners of English produce significantly more intensifier-verb collocations than native speaker students, but that their English attests a smaller variety of intensifier-verb collocations compared with the native speakers. Moreover, Chinese learners of English use the intensifier-verb collocation types just-verb, only-verb and really-verb very frequently compared with native speaker students. As regards verb collocates, the intensifiers hardly, clearly,well, strongly and deeply collocate with semantically different verbs in native and Chinese learner English. Compared with the patterns in Chinese learner English, the intensifiers in native speaker English collocate with a more stable and restricted set of verb collocates.

Erasable/Inerasable L1 Transfer in Interlanguage Phonology:An Optimality Theory Analysis of/aʊn/and Sentence Stress in Chinese Learners of English

The areas affected by the L1 transfer to L2,such as phonotactics and stress,appear to have different degrees of erasability through training and practice.This paper attempts a theoretical analysis to account for empirical observations of L1 transfer in diphthong-coda coalescence and in sentence stress for Chinese learners of English in an American accent training course.Using the framework and tableau method of Optimality Theory(Prince and Smolensky 1993),the phonological paradigm that views languages’differences as symptomatic of differences in rankings of a set of universal violable constraints,this paper posits the underlying ranking at work in(a)the segmental case where[aŋ]is the observed output for/aʊn/;(b)the suprasegmental case where no stress contrast is observed for a pair of phonologically similar sentences with contrastive stress.It is argued that,in the segmental case,the coalescence of the second vowel of a diphthong with an alveolar nasal coda results from the high ranking of markedness constraints,including Complex Syllable;and in the suprasegmental case,sentence stress is greatly affected by changes in the ranking of the constraint culminativity.Aside from shedding light on the understudied issue of diphthong-coda coalescence,this research also contributes to the discussion of the comparative erasability of L1 transfer for the two areas and demonstrates how a deduction-based theoretical method may actually have practical implications for guiding the design of L2 teaching methodology of English pronunciation as well as for promoting native English speakers’clearer understanding of Chinese learners of English on the global stage.

A Corpus-Based Study on Synonyms in Chinese Learners'English:A Case Study of Affair"and"Event"

Using British National Corpus(BNC)as the reference corpus and Chinese Learner's English Corpus(CLEC)as the observed corpus,this paper attempts to analyze synonyms in Chinese learners5 English based on"event"and tcaffair.?,By comparing the frequency,colligation,collocates,and semantic prosody of the two words in BNC,it is found that"event"and“affaiT”differ from each other in terms of frequency and semantic prosody.The same comparison is made between BNC and CLEC.It is found that Chinese learnersJ English vocabulary is rather small,and there is no significant difference in the semantic prosody of the two words between English native speakers and Chinese English learners except that Chinese English learners have a misunderstanding about"love affair,which may be attributed to their negligence of semantic prosody in the process of learning.

Towards Lessening Learners’Aversive Emotions and Promoting Their Mental Health:Developing and Validating a Measurement of English Speaking Demotivation in the Chinese EFL Context

While a plethora of studies has been conducted to explore demotivation and its impact on mental health in second language(L2)education,scanty research focuses on demotivation in L2 speaking learning.Particularly,little research explores the measures to quantify L2 speaking demotivation.The present two-phase study attempts to develop and validate an English Speaking Demotivation Scale(ESDS).To this end,an independent sample of 207 Chinese tertiary learners of English as a Foreign Language(EFL)participated in the development phase,and another group of 188 Chinese EFL learners was recruited for the validation of the scale.Exploratory Factor Analysis(EFA)and Confirmatory Factor Analysis(CFA)were employed to determine the factor structure of the scale.The EFA results revealed a six-factor solution with Teacher-related Factors in Learning Spoken English(TFLSE),Interest and Valence in Learning Spoken English(IVLSE),Self-efficacy in Learning Spoken English(SELSE),Negative Peer Influence in Learning Spoken English(NPILSE),Undesirable Environment for Learning Spoken English(UELSE),and Negative Influence of Assessment and Learning Materials in speaking class(NIALM).In the validation phase,Confirmatory Factor Analysis(CFA)was performed to validate the internal structure of the scale.The CFA results showed that the model fits the data well.Overall,the ESDS is a robust and trustworthy psychometric tool that could be utilized to examine L2 speaking demotivation.Implications for diminishing EFL learners’demotivation,lessening their aversive emotions and promoting their mental health are also discussed.

A Comparative Study on Verb-Noun Collocation Errors of Chinese EFL Learners with Different Language Proficiency

This study presents a comparative analysis of verb-noun collocation errors made by Chinese EFL learners with different language proficiency.Linguistic data from two sub-corpora of CLEC(Chinese Learner English Corpus,Gui&Yang,1999)consist of the compositions written freely by Chinese senior high school students(ST2)and the 3rd-and 4th-year English majors of Chinese universities(ST6).The study results show that four types of verb-noun collocation errors are frequently made due to incorrect L1 translation,misuse of relative synonyms,misuse of delexical verbs,and misuse of part of speech;the number of errors decreases with the development of language proficiency,especially errors by incorrect L1 translation and relative synonyms.And for both ST2 and ST6 EFL learners,errors resulted from incorrect L1 translation account for nearly a half with the same high-frequency words.It is also found that ST6 learners’competence in collocation and synonym identification doesn’t grow with the increase of their vocabulary,as is shown in the case of overusing delexical verbs in collocation,the same error made by ST2 learners,who have a significantly weaker command of delexical verbs.Implications of the findings are also discussed with the purpose of raising the awareness of collocation pedagogy and enhancing EFL learners’collocation competence.

PROTOTYPIC EFFECTS IN VOCABULARY ACQUISITION: EVIDENCE FROM CHINESE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

This paper is based on the assumption that semantic categories vary from one language to another and prototypes of semantic categories are culture-specific. Prototypicality has its effects in acquisition of second foreign language vocabulary. The author hypothesizes that focal member words and basic level words are acquired earlier than non-focal member words and words on other levels of lexical hierarchies when prototypes of the target language correspond to those of the mother tongue in the same semantic categories. The results of a vocabulary test on beginner, intermediate and advanced learners of English as foreign language confirm the hypothesis. The paper concludes that learning a second foreign language means, to an extent, learning to categorize the worm in a different way, and prototypic effects should be given due attention in vocabulary instruction.

THE TEACHING OF PRONUNCIATION TO CHINESE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

English pronunciation is being unduly neglected or even ignored in some of our colleges anduniversities.Its role and necessity are not yet generally realized,and English phonetic courses areusually left to chance or given no place in our teaching or learning.The result is as Baker(1982,pl)states:‘advanced students find that they can improve all aspects of their proficiency in English excepttheir pronunciation,and mistakes which have been repeated for years are impossible to eradicate.’The long-term solution to this problem,I would suggest,is to have a compulsory phonetic coursebccause an active command of pronunciation will help promote the entire learning process.

The Motivations of Chinese EFL Learners

English is regarded as the international language,which makes it the most popular language to learn around the world.Among the many factors that affect the learning outcomes of English language,motivation is broadly considered as one of the most important ones.This paper presents a general review on types of motivation as well as the factors that are linked to motivation.This paper also touches upon some critical issues that Chinese EFL learners face in terms of motivation in English learning.

On the Teaching Methods to Balance Fluency & Accuracy for Chinese University English Learners

By dividing English learners in Chinese university context into intermediate and advanced level learners, the essay argues that fluency rather than accuracy is needed for most university students. It further discusses some suitable teaching methods in both contexts respectively to balance this pair of objective focus.

A Development Study on the Ordering Distribution of Temporal Adverbial Clauses by Chinese EFL Learners Based on Dependency Treebank

Temporal adverbial clause is an important language structure and exhibits different features in English and Chinese,which brings about difficulties for Chinese EFL learners.Based on the theory of Dependency Grammar,the study attempts to investigate the ordering distribution of temporal adverbial clauses by Chinese EFL learners at the beginning,intermediate and advanced levels.The results show that:1)Chinese EFL learners at different proficiencies tend to precede temporal adverbial clause to main clause.With the increase of proficiency,the postposition of temporal adverbial clauses by learners increases and is approaching to the ordering preference of target language.2)The ordering distribution of subordinators for temporal adverbial clauses by Chinese EFL learners is consistent with native English,showing a tendency of 100%preposition,which ascribes to the high frequency and salience of subordinators in English.3)MDD is one of the significant motivations that cause the preference of prepositional temporal adverbial clauses by Chinese EFL learners.As a kind of natural language,interlanguage has a unique cognitive mechanism which distinguishes from both native and target language.This study provides a more comprehensive theoretical reference for learners at different proficiencies to understand and learn temporal adverbial clauses,as well as data support from empirical research for language teaching.

An Empirical Study on the Effectiveness of Language Learning Strategy Training for Chinese Adult English Learners

This paper explores how to implement effective strategy training for part-time Chinese adult English learners in a tertiary FLT （Foreign Language Teaching） classroom. Through a study of threx~ semesters during which six sessions of learner training workshops and constant, integrated task-based instruction were carried out, empirical evidence was collected via the instrument of questionnaires, interviews, learners＇ regular written reports, and the findings indicate that： （1） The students reported a statistically significant increase of the overaU average frequency of language strategy use over all SILL （The Strategy Inventory for Language Learning） items with 2.95 at the beginning and 3.61 at the end; and （2） Well-organized, explicit, and discrete leaner training workshops combined with frequent, explicit, and integrated task-based strategy instruction are an effective and helpful way to improve learners＇ awareness, selection, and frequency of strategy use, which can further foster learner autonomy.

How Chinese EFL Learners'English Syntactic Proficiency Regresses with Time:An Empirical Study

The study conducted an empirical study to investigate how Chinese EFL learners'English syntactic proficiency regressed with time.It was indicated that:first,Chinese EFL Learners'proficiency levels prior to attrition(PLPAs)were inversely correlated with the degree of attrition.Simply put,learners with higher syntactic proficiency level will suffer less attrition even if the target structures were not used or rehearsed for more than two years.Second,a critical threshold,which roughly equaled to CET-4 level,was proved to exist in the processing of attrition.Chinese EFL Learners above the critical threshold had a significantly better retention than those below this threshold.

Differential effects of teaching approaches on Chinese EFL learners of different writing abilities

To the issue on the superiority and inferiority of the ＂product approach＂ and the ＂process approach＂ writing teaching, an empirical study research of I00 non-English major students has been accomplished to testify the relationship between these different approaches and the different writing levels. The results are the ＂product approach＂ is more helpful to the learners with lower writing level; whereas, the ＂process approach＂ is more effective to ones with higher level. Furthermore, the teaching approach itself cannot affirm the superiority and inferiority, and it would not be at work unless is applied for corresponding learners.

Chinese English Learners＇ Text Reading Strategy Research

Reading strategies are different from identifying the words, but a kind of metacognitive activity based on the monitoring mode. This paper will explore Chinese English learners＇ text reading strategies according to the cognitive process of the reading, hoping for providing some suggestions and references for Chinese college students to learn English well and improve the text reading ability.

Obstacles for Chinese EFL Learners to Improve Speech Intelligibility

As the primary means of communication,speech is an essential aspect for humans to interact and build connections in the social world.Speech intelligibility is critical in social communication;unintelligibility may lead to confusion,misunderstanding,and frustration.Many Chinese learners of English find it challenging to apply English into social interaction and reach mutual intelligibility with international communicators.This article analyzes the obstacles impeding Chinese EFL learners’speech intelligibility development,from the aspects of phonology(segmental and suprasegmental features)and pragmatics.Some strategies are proposed to help Chinese learners ameliorate phonology and pragmatics problems and improve speech intelligibility in English communication.

A Corpus-based Study on the Use of Affixal Negation in Chinese EFL Learners' Writing

This paper reports a comparative study on the use of affixal negation in the writing of Chinese EFL learners based on data collected from a learner corpus,WECCL and a native-speaker corpus,LOCNESS.The findings revealed that the overall frequency of affixal negation used by Chinese students was nearly the same as that of native speakers.And the top three most frequently used negative affixes of the two groups were the same in terms of their rankings and proportion.However,when it comes to individual negative affixes,some were underused while others overused.The reasons behind were explored in the analysis of un-,dis-and in-,the top three most frequently used negative affixes by Chinese EFL learners and native speakers.Pedagogical implications and suggestions for future research were presented at the end of the paper.