News: Eight research teams receive Outstanding Publication Awards

Eight research groups have been nominated and selected to receive Outstanding Publication Awards,in recognition of their significant contributions to the Journal of Environmental Sciences（JES）through their scholarly publications.

某研究型专科医院临床研究人才队伍建设的实践与探讨

目的以某三级甲等专科医院构建临床研究队伍为例,探索适合研究型专科医院临床研究队伍建设的有效方式。方法回顾性分析某三级甲等眼耳鼻喉专科医院临床研究队伍的建设工作,从设立临床研究队伍的背景、组建过程、取得的成效等总结经验、发现存在的问题并提出完善建议。结果医院为临床研究队伍提供了高水平的科研平台和保障措施,临床研究队伍的建设已初具规模。近年来,临床研究队伍在论文发表、基金申请、临床试验、专利项目等方面取得了明显进步,但在临床研究队伍的梯队建设、研究型医师与专职研究人员职称评定和绩效考核等方面还存在一些困境。结论临床研究队伍的建立健全有效地提升了医院的临床研究能力,为医药产业发展提供了强有力的支撑,在一定程度上可以为研究型专科医院的人才队伍建设提供参考。

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.