Cognition-Based Interactive Phases and Strategies in Teaching Academic Reading

Academic English reading requires deeper cognitive involvement in addition to language proficiency and plays a vital role in moulding a critical mindset. However, cognitive progress is seldom targeted in classroom teaching. This study proposed a teaching method of three reading phases in terms of cognitive mechanism and communicative teaching approach.Ninety university freshmen of non-English major participated in the study, who were taking the course of Academic English Reading in the 2nd semester. The data were collected from self-report Research Skills Assessment twice and semi-structured interview, and analyzed with paired sample t test and Pearson correlation. The results showed that 1） “critical thinking”, “organizing ideas”, and “finding information” were believed to improve significantly at the end of the course; 2） reading skill was associated with writing skill and the sense of “big picture” in self perception; 3） the cognition-based interactive reading instruction was acknowledged to be conducive to academic reading. It complements Academic English reading pedagogy by juxtaposing the need for both individual cognition and group interaction in classroom teaching.

Establishing distinctive theories and methods of design science rooted in Chinese traditional culture

The human social development saw the formation of five unique civilizations,with the latter forming their own distinctive cultures.China’s traditional culture is its most fundamental ideological weapon for solving problems.The Chinese are good at comprehensive thinking,dialectical thinking,and systematic analysis.These ideological weapons can solve the problems of formal science and technology and create scientific and technological achievements on par with global advanced scale.Ancient China is filled with original scientific and technological achievements,which strongly prove ancient China’s possession of its own science and technology different from that of Western Renaissance.Therefore,a comprehensive understanding of science,technology,experience,and intuition is necessary.The long-held superstition regarding the West,the lack of confidence,self-denial,blind imitation of ideas,and shackles must be thrown away.Only then can we take the road toward an authentic Chinese creative design as we learn from others.

The Dialectic of Cross-Cultural Learning:What I Learned from Chinese Fellows

This brief article summarizes my positive impression of the Chinese scholars over the last fourteen years in the Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies(SPURS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In particular, I highlight the fellows' intellectual humility and passion for continuous learning from others. The fellows are, however, very comprehensive in the way they analyze all aspects of design problems and quite bold in their design imagination, compared to United States' graduate students who are more cautious to propose any radical change in urban form. Surprisingly, the Chinese fellows rarely address social equity issues in project design and do not usually worry about project implementation challenges, perhaps because they assume that such issues are to be addressed by policy makers at higher levels. In contrast, the U.S. students frequently raise issues of social equity but are hesitant to propose radical changes because of limited power of public planning institutions in the United States. Such contrasts in design thinking is ideal for comparative and critical analysis which has enriched the SPURS program.