Relationships Between Chinese EFL Learners’IELTS Band Score and Motivated Strategies for Learning

EFL learners,who study English as a foreign language,often use different learning strategies in the learning process,with positive and negative results in their academic performance.Whether these learning strategies are effective or not are questions to be explored.So,the author examined the relationship between Chinese EFL learners’test results and the use of motivated strategies for learning in English learning.Participants are students who have taken a high-stake standardized English proficiency test:IELTS(International English Language Testing System)with band score obtained.The results show that students’performance on high-stakes assessment is significantly associated with the use of motivated learning strategies like internal value in sharp contrast to test anxiety,which bears no relevance.Interviews are then implemented to candidates with different levels of English proficiency to figure out other related factors contributing to the test results.

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.

Language Transfer Manifested in English Idiom Acquisition by Chinese EFL Learners

Idiom acquisition plays an important role in the process of second language learning and acquisition.Proper understanding of linguistic transfer in terms of English idiom acquisition is helpful for EFL learners to improve the efficiency of learning English and also facilitates the process of English teaching.This study examines the Chinese learner’s language transfer features manifested in their understanding of English idioms which are classified into five different types according to their linguistic forms and conceptual bases.The results suggest that equivalent linguistic forms and equivalent conceptual bases of idioms are helpful to cause positive transfer while different conceptual bases of idioms may result in negative cross-linguistic transfer.This article may contribute to the development of language transfer theory and provide pedagogical implications of how English idioms should be learned by students and taught by English teachers.

Promoting EFL Learner Autonomy

This paper explores some of the key concepts of learner autonomy and considers their implications in Chinese EFL contexts. Starting with some definitions of learner autonomy, the paper puts forward the reasons for promoting it and argues for it to be cultivated in EFL learners. The paper points out proper conditions for learner autonomy and suggests means of implementing it by giving some concrete examples of various activities that teachers can design and organize. The writer hopes that more interest will be aroused and more efforts will be made in developing and promoting learner autonomy in Chinese EFL learning.

English Language Attrition Among EFL Learners in Terms of Writing Skills

This study aims to identify if participants experience attrition in writing skills after two years' nonuse of English.70 participants took the tests of writing.A questionnaire was administered to the 70 participants and it included numerous variables that relate to language attrition such as motivation and social activities.The data collected from the tests and questionnaire were analyzed via SPSS.Cronbach's alpha and Many Facets Rasch Model were used to validate the construct and external reliability.The findings showed that participants experienced an overall statistically significant level of attrition in writing skills.Additionally,the specific skills of pertinence,coherence,clarity but excluding grammar,were seen to experience significant attrition over the two years' period.Participants showed a lower level of positive motivation and less social activities for learning English language during the two years' nonuse than before the two years' nonuse of English and this could have contributed to the writing attrition.

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.

A Discussion of Foreign Language Listening Problems and Their Causes among Intermediate EFL learners in Chinese universities

Listening has been considered as the most important language skill by many researchers but in Chinese context it has been overlooked for years.The Foreign Language(FL)listening problems gradually reveal when students attend to the Listening Course in universities or colleges.This paper at first illustrates the importance of listening in foreign language learning and provides a discussion on the top-down and bottom-up processes with the analysis of Anderson's three-model of language comprehension[9]as well as the factors affecting listening comprehension in Foreign Language in general,aiming at the illustration of the necessity on one of the bottom-up processes-the Spoken Word Recognition(SWR).The analysis of two issued official guiding documents for Chinese university students and the current situation of English listening teaching in Chinese universities are followed,providing a general background on English listening teaching in Chinese context.Three possible foreign language listening problems and their causes are proposed,followed by the pedagogical suggestions to EFL learners who are improving their listening skills and instructors who are advancing their teaching procedures.

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.

Dynamic Assessment of College EFL Learners’Speaking Proficiency:A Case Study

To investigate the impact of dynamic assessment(DA)on the development of speaking skills,a case study was conducted,recruiting a non-English major undergraduate.DA was constructed following the design combining sandwich and cake format with an interactionist approach.To collect data,a profile was designed in accordance with the China’s Standards of English Language Ability(CSE)to record the learner’s changes.A semi-structured interview was conducted to reveal his perspectives on DA.The generated profile with specific mediator-learner’s moves revealed the learner’s microgenetic development in both organizational knowledge and oral expression strategy ability.The thematic analysis of the interview demonstrated the learner’s positive experience with DA,while also unveiling the weak points of DA.Finally,the operational framework for applying interactionist DA in the oral classroom was discussed,and the complementary relationship between DA and traditional teaching and testing practices was highlighted.

A Study of EFL Learners＇ Receptive and Productive Knowledge of SP： With Implications for Vocabulary Teaching

This study attempts to see whether there are any differences between L2 （Second Language） learners＇ receptive and productive knowledge of SP （Semantic Prosody）. SP is defined as the tendency of the use of some words to occur in a certain semantic environment. For example, the verb ＂cause＂ is associated with unpleasant things-death, problem and the like. The study is based on a random sampling of subjects （N = 60） drawn from 180 EFL （English as a Foreign Language） learners taking English classes at different language institutes in Khorramabad, Iran. A test of SP as a task of elicitation was constructed, validated and used to measure the learners＇ knowledge of both productive and receptive SP. A matched t-test was used to compare the mean differences between receptive and productive SP measures. The results showed significant difference between EFL learners＇ knowledge of receptive and productive SP, EFL learners perform better in receptive SP measures than in productive ones. Possible imolications of the findings for teaching vocabularv to EFL learners will be discussed.

How EFL Learners from China and ASEAN Countries Politely Express Disagreement in an English Context:A Comparative Study

This paper aims to make a comparative study of cross-cultural communication upon a special speech act-"disagreement".38 undergraduates from China and 30 undergraduates from ASEAN countries were involved.They responded to the DCT(discourse completion test).Five contexts were selected and detailed descriptions of the scenarios were given.Social distance and gender were selected as the main variants in this study.From the results,we found that both groups of undergraduates generally ten d to use the same politeness strategies according to the same social distance,but gender was a more significant factor in politeness strategies adoption among EFL learners from ASEAN countries.Females tend to use negative strategies more than males do.We can conclude from the results that EFL learners from China and ASEAN countries incline to adopt the same politeness strategies in English context,but females from ASEAN countries are less likely to say“no”directly to express their disagreement compared to their counterpart.Those findings may offer reference to both sides during the pragmatic occasions of communicating.

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.

A Comparative Study on English Pronunciation and Phonology of Chinese EFL Learners

Pronunciation often gets ignored over grammar and vocabulary in EFL programs.However,words stressed incorrectly or with inappropriate pitch or intonation will impede the learner in getting the intended message across.Phonology,then,should be an integral part of any EFL lesson.This paper examines the current situation of English pronunciation of Chinese students and aiming to present a procedural approach for incorporating phonological elements into an EFL syllabus.

An Investigation into the Vocabulary Learning Strategies of Chinese EFL Learners of High,Average,and Low Proficiency Levels

The current research aims to find out the different beliefs held and different vocabulary strategies employed by nonEnglish majors of different proficiency levels. The data were collected through questionnaire and vocabulary tests. Results revealed that the learners at three levels all adopted wide-ranged strategies. But the high level students had greater vocabulary size and were more believed that words should be learnt through use, and they used more extended dictionary strategies, contextual guessing and note-taking strategies. It is encouraging that teachers should integrate explicit strategy instruction into classroom to help low level students achieve better learning results.

A Corpus-based Study on Writer/reader Visibility in English Writing by Chinese EFL Learners

Writer/reader(W/R) visibility is regarded as an important indicator of personal involvement. Previous studies concluded that EFL learners tend to contains more personal involvement than native speakers in their writing, making it resemble spoken language as a result. Therefore, this paper examines the degree of W/R visibility in English writing by university-level Chinese learners to verify the applicability of the previous findings on Chinese learners. Based on the data collected in the corpora CLEC,WECCL and LOCNESS, the results show that Chinese EFL learners have the tendency to employ more features of W/R visibility than native speakers, for example the high use of first or second person reference and words that represent mental process. Besides, the paper also reveals little distinction on W/R visibility between English and non-English majors, suggesting the inefficiency of the writing ability of today's English majors.

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.

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.

How does Role Play Enhance the Speaking Skills of Chinese EFL Learners?

This paper will focus on how role play activity improves Chinese learners English speaking skills.It starts by shortly in⁃troducing the challenges of oral English teaching in China.Then the definition of role play will be demonstrated.Next,a literature review regarding role play teaching in China will be shown.Furthermore,some wise advice and implication about how to organize and implement role play activity in a Chinese class will be discussed.Ultimately,the conclusion will sum up the main points of this paper.

EFL Learners'Attitude Towards Culture and Cultural Learning

Language and culture are complementary,helpful,and inspiring to one another.Especially for foreign language learners,culture is extremely important to understand the social and cultural background of the target language.This study aims to explore foreign language learners?perception towards cultural learning.In order to come to a conclusion,a quantitative method was adopted by distributing questionnaires to 31 Chinese EFL students.From the perspective of Chinese students,culture and cultural learning are crucial in the second language acquisition process.