SEARCH FOR LANGUAGE UNIVERSALS

In the past three decades,therehas been a renewed interest in lin-guistic universals,as a result ofChomsky’s revolution.Terms like“language universals”,“formal uni-versals”,“substantive universals”arefrequently found in linguistic litera-ture.What exactly is meant by“universals”?How valid are the claims made so far?These are the questions we will try to answer in this paper.

Learner Autonomy in the National English Language Curricula for Chinese Universities 1978-2007:A Historical Analysis

This historical study investigates the concept of learner autonomy in the national English language curricula for Chinese universities.It seeks to understand the meaning of learner autonomy in China and the intentionality of promoting this concept through the curricula from 1978 to 2007.By adopting Quentin Skinner’s intentionalist approach to analyzing the history of ideas,this study conducted a systematic document analysis of three national curricula in relation to their linguistic and practical contexts constituted of 169 Chinese academic articles in total.The study revealed that learner autonomy mainly referred to students’motivation and ability to work hard on their own outside the classroom in the Chinese context.Importing this concept,however,caused ideological confusion and exacerbated the disempowerment of teachers within the dynamics of China’s English language education at the tertiary level.The study raises awareness for borrowing concepts across different cultural contexts and has implications for research,policymaking,teacher development,and pedagogical practice in second language education in China.

Factors Affecting Brand Loyalty of Private Universities: Case Study Guangxi University of Foreign Languages

In recent years,China’s private higher education has developed significantly,and private universities have become one of the“two schools”.However,due to the expansion of the scale of public schools,the limited supply of teachers in private colleges,and the mismatch between the supply and demand of graduate employment,the crisis of students in private colleges and universities has become increasingly serious,and the pressure of survival and competition is increasing.The main purpose of this study is to explore the influence of Guangxi University of Foreign Languages marketing mix and brand awareness on brand loyalty,and to provide recommendations for Guangxi University of Foreign Languages private universities.The researchers will use a quantitative approach to study the effect of two independent variables(marketing mix and brand awareness)on the dependent variable(brand loyalty).A total of 414 questionnaires were distributed to students of Guangxi University of Foreign Languages and analyzed using statistical software SPSS.Perform descriptive statistical analysis to understand the sample of respondents;perform reliability and validity analysis to ensure the reliability and validity of the questionnaire;perform correlation analysis to determine the correlation between independent and dependent variables;and perform regression analysis,to explore the influence and degree of influence of various factors on the brand loyalty of private colleges and universities.Research shows that marketing mix and brand awareness have a significant positive impact on brand loyalty of private universities.Finally,based on the research results,five suggestions are put forward from the perspective of private universities to help private university brands improve customer brand loyalty and their own brand competitiveness.

Talk about Graduate Student of educational teacher expanding the path of employment in the local comprehensive university - An example of Chinese Language and Literature in my school

With the increasing amount of college graduates every year, the employer needs structural contradiction, traditional college graduates employment difficulties. Chinese Language and Literature is as a strong tradition of employment facing unprecedented challenges. Based on the severe employment situation, Teacher Education in Local Comprehensive Universities need to start improving their own quality of graduates, and actively guide the graduates to change jobs ideas, updating the concept of employment, and use existing resources, and actively expand employment channels, and explore new ideas and open up new market, employment path is becoming more diverse to ensure employment stability and sustainable development.

Discussion on Nida's Translation Theory and Applications Through MuLAN

Eugene Nida's Translation Theory has a profound influence both on global and Chinese translation circle.Although this theory is widely used,it also become a controversial topic in a certain extent.Through the movie MuLAN and some applications in useful areas to discuss whether Nida's Translation Theory is still applicable within translating field.

On How Children Acquire Their Mother Tongue -- Explanation of Chomsky＇s Mental Linguistic Theory

Neither structural linguistics nor behaviorist linguistics can explain how children acquire their mother tongue reasonably, so Noam Chomsky founds mental linguistics. According to the theory of the mental linguistics, the essence of language is interior, physical and genetic. Universal Grammar is the foundation of language development and the most essential part of human beings languages.

Punjabi DeConverter for generating Punjabi from Universal Networking Language

DeConverter is core software in a Universal Networking Language(UNL) system.A UNL system has EnConverter and DeConverter as its two major components.EnConverter is used to convert a natural language sentence into an equivalent UNL expression,and DeConverter is used to generate a natural language sentence from an input UNL expression.This paper presents design and development of a Punjabi DeConverter.It describes five phases of the proposed Punjabi DeConverter,i.e.,UNL parser,lexeme selection,morphology generation,function word insertion,and syntactic linearization.This paper also illustrates all these phases of the Punjabi DeConverter with a special focus on syntactic linearization issues of the Punjabi DeConverter.Syntactic linearization is the process of defining arrangements of words in generated output.The algorithms and pseudocodes for implementation of syntactic linearization of a simple UNL graph,a UNL graph with scope nodes and a node having un-traversed parents or multiple parents in a UNL graph have been discussed in this paper.Special cases of syntactic linearization with respect to Punjabi language for UNL relations like 'and','or','fmt','cnt',and 'seq' have also been presented in this paper.This paper also provides implementation results of the proposed Punjabi DeConverter.The DeConverter has been tested on 1000 UNL expressions by considering a Spanish UNL language server and agricultural domain threads developed by Indian Institute of Technology(IIT),Bombay,India,as gold-standards.The proposed system generates 89.0% grammatically correct sentences,92.0% faithful sentences to the original sentences,and has a fluency score of 3.61 and an adequacy score of 3.70 on a 4-point scale.The system is also able to achieve a bilingual evaluation understudy(BLEU) score of 0.72.

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.