Analysis of Common Grammatical“Errors”in Learner English of China's Mainland

By examining twenty TOEFL mock writings from Shenzhen high school students,this paper attempts to have a further analysis on learner English in China with regard to its common grammatical"errors"and their possible underlying causes.Some common grammatical errors include misuse of past tense,word class,existential structure,and also topic comment sentence,most of which are due to transfer of Chinese.

Entangled relationship:Chinese parents’involvement in young learners’English tests

Young learners’English(YLE)tests have become increasingly prevalent among and important to Chinese English learners and their parents.In China,parents are actively involved in their children’s education and test-taking decisions,and their participation has given rise to a series of social impacts.Although parent involvement has received increasing public and academic attention in newspaper and scholarly articles,there exists no thorough analysis of current research on parents’roles in young learners’test-taking.To address this gap,we systemically analyzed Chinese newspaper articles and academic articles between 2011 and 2021 to elicit Chinese parents’roles in YLE test-taking.Our thematic analysis of the literature identifies the ways in which parents influence their children’s test-taking experiences,and how the tests affect this influence.Specifically,our results elicit 1)parents’engagement in YLE testing;2)parents’understanding of the intended uses of YLE tests;3)parents’perception and consequences of their involvement in YLE testing;and 4)parents’backgrounds.This analysis reveals the popularity of YLE tests among young learners and their parents in China and public concern over test-related issues.It also broadens our understanding of YLE testing impact and suggests future potential research directions.

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.

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.

China's English Learners' Verbal Phrase Acquisition Research Based on the Corpus——“at last”and“in the end”as an Example

This study is a comparative research based on corpus. This article compares China's English learners with English na?tive speakers about the use of "at last" and "in the end" from three aspects: frequency of use, location, semantic prosody. The study shows that the use of the two words are greatly different between China's English learners and English native speakers. In addition, this study discusses about causes of obvious differences and teaching enlightenments.

On Promoting the Slow Learners' Learning in English Class

Nowadays, the actualities of slow learners in English class are not satisfying in China. Confronted with such kind of situation, as language teachers, how to promote the slow students' learning, is one of the biggest problems in our teaching. The paper focuses on the features of slow learners, e.g., little or improper motivation, debilitative anxiety, introversion, inhibition, etc. and the roles the slow learners play in English class, and some of the writer's personal suggestions for promoting their learning in English class as well.

A Review of the Effectiveness of Web-based Course with College English Learners' Autonomous Learning

The paper is a literature review, aiming to examine the effectiveness of web-based college English learning which mainly focuses on learners' autonomous learning. Previous studies indicate that the web-based learning can improve learners' autonomous learning, as well as some problems found in their findings. Therefore, this paper first gives a summary and critique of research studies on the web-based autonomous learning and some factors influencing learners' autonomous learning ability;then, areas that deserve further study are also indicated.

Experiment of Adopting the Learner Blog in CALL-based Practical English Writing Course

The learner blog is adopted in the instruction of CALL-based Practical English Writing course for A-level non-Eng lish major sophomores in our school in the spring this year.After examining how the program is implemented in detail,sugges tions are provided for future instructors in this related program.To ensure the program a good start,it is advisable for instructors to set aside a certain time to help each student to create a blog account in the beginning.Besides,it is requisite to provide stu dents with blogs titles with elaborate design and with the evaluation and further comment of the blog in the course of face-toface communication.Using of blogs in CALL-based Practical English Course is helpful in improving students'writing quality,in gearing up self-introspection for participants,in creating cooperative learning community,in fostering autonomous learning and cooperative learning,in building up communicative channels between students and instructors and among students themselves.

An Empirical Study on Classroom Learning Anxiety of Secondary Vocational English Learners in Content-based Instruction

This research aims to study the relationship between content-based instruction and secondary vocational English learners.Two classes in one secondary vocational school were chosen as participants.The result shows that CBI teaching has a negative correlation with English learning anxiety and has an impact on alleviating students' anxiety.

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.

Enlightenments for Young Learners English teaching in the Perspective of Maslow’s Theory

Children are the center of young learner's English teaching. Their motivation and interest are capable of guiding them English learning effectively. Only when the young learners are motivated and stimulated can they learn English well in an active and harmonious atmosphere. This paper first analyses the factors causing the lack of learning motivation of young English learners. Then, based on Maslow's theory, the author puts forward some effective teaching methods and strategies, hoping to be helpful to motivate the young learners to learn English.

A Contrastive Study of Semantic Prosody between English Native Speak ers and Chinese English Learners——Case Study of “Avoid”

In this paper,the author uses data-driven and contrastive interlanguage analysis approach,applying AntConc 3.2.1 as the tool,to make a comparison between corpus FLOB and CLEC on the using of the word "avoid".The result shows that the se mantic prosodic tendency between the two communities is in great similarities but also have differences.Through comparison and analysis,the author finds the hidden reason and summarizes how to improve.

Re-exploring Challenges and Strategies of English Learning for Chinese English-Learners

Chinese English-learners always face many challenges when they try to acquire English language,not only in China's Mainland,but in Chinese communities overseas.Despite the prevalent challenge,such as cultural differences,the present paper tries to re-explore and refine these challenges and strategies,analyze the specific factors,such as age,accent,and thinking difference by using cognitive perspective and sociocultural perspective.To enhance English teaching and learning,it also makes deep discussions and provides some suggestions for future use.

A Brief Analysis of Inefficiency and Time-consuming in English Learning for Chinese Learners

Nowadays it is common to see inefficiency and time-consuming in English learning for Chinese learners. This paper makes a brief analysis of this phenomenon from two major aspects: internal factors and external factors. The former includes age factor, affective factor, efforts and gift and the mode of thinking. The latter includes linguistic factor, sociocultural factor and the examination system. And then some practical strategies are given on the basis of the Critical Period Hypothesis, considering affective factor, making enough efforts and taking advantage of gift, adapting to different modes of thinking, Krashen's Input Hypothesis, the Whorfian Hypothesis and perfecting the examination system in order to improve the phenomenon.

The Production of the Sequence -UI- by Francophone Learners of English

This paper considers the renderings of the sequence -UI- by Cameroonian, Gabonese, and native French users learning English with the view to finding out whether French users speaking different L 1s pronounce this sequence in different or similar ways. The data were recordings of items containing -UI- and the contrastive method of analysis was used. It was found that this sequence is rendered in two ways by the learners. Besides, different L2 French-speaking learners tend to pronounce it in the same ways and so do L2 and L1 French-speaking learners. It can therefore be hypothesised that Francophone speakers tend to draw more from French when they speak English than from their respective L 1s.

Differences in the Motivation of Teenage Learners of English in A Chinese Language Context

This paper aims to explore motivational variations in different teenage English learner groups in Chinese context.Drawing on L2 Motivational Self System as the theoretical framework,combining You and Dornyei’s research with my professional teaching experience,this paper found that students who learn English for the purpose of passing the exam,ought-to L2self dimension is the highest,with L2 learning experience and ideal L2 self following behind.Students who tend to live or study abroad,ideal L2 self is the best predictor,followed by L2 learning experience and ought-to L2 self.This indicates that teachers should improve teaching methods,apply motivational strategies in the classroom,and encourage and help students to use selfmotivating strategies to motivate themselves.

The Features and Patterns of Revision Process in English Learners＇ Writing

Revision is an important part of writing process but it often baffles the researchers due to the difficulties in recording the revision process of students. Based on a self-made questionnaire and the online record of the revision process, this study describes the English learners＇ revision behaviors and process in their second semester of a two-year writing course. The analysis indicates that the English learners hold a positive attitude towards revision and but passive in resorting to outside sources for help. The source of the feedback has a great influence on their motivation of revision. On the other hand, although they use all types of revision operations, they concentrate on surface changes and simple operations.

Teaching Writing to Adult English Language Learners： Lessons From the Field

For the past several decades, it has been clear that the ability to write texts for academic and professional purposes （＂academic writing＂ in this article） is key to the success of adults in U.S. society--in school, in university courses, on tests that they need to take to progress through learning and into work, and in the workforce. Academic writing has specific features and involves approaches that are different from much of the writing that is done with adult learners, particularly those learning English as an additional language （e.g., described in reviews by Hinkel, 2015; Leki, Cumming, ＆ Silva, 2008; and a survey by Rosenfeld, Courtney, ＆ Fowles, 2004）. However, a recent survey of adult educators, conducted by the authors, found that academic writing has not been a focus in many adult education programs, and teachers receive limited professional development in this area and instructional support in implementing it. This article describes the importance of academic writing at all levels of adult education, the key features of academic writing, and the current state of writing instruction in adult education programs. It then describes the motivation for, design, and outcomes of a survey of and interviews with adult educators across the country on their preparation for and instructional practices with academic writing （conducted in 2014 and 2015）. Finally, it describes approaches that can be used in adult education programs to meet the writing proficiency needs of students at all levels and next steps that the adult education field might take.

On L2 English Learners’Formulaic Language Use and Spoken English Fluency

This study explored the distribution of three types of English formulaic language, which involves four categories in L1 Chinese L2 English learners’ speaking performance. In addition, it investigated the relationship between the English learners’ use of formulaic language and their spoken English fluency. A CCA(canonical correlation analysis) was conducted to examine the correlations between two sets of fluency variables(dependent variables) and linguistic variables of English formulaic language use(independent variables). The fluency variable set consists of:(1)temporal indices such as SR(speech rate), AR(articulation rate), MLR(mean length of run), and PTR(phonation time ratio);(2) linguistic variables of English formulaic language like F2 R(twoword formulaic sequences/run ratio, B3 R(three-word lexical bundles/run ratio), and B4 R(fourword lexical bundles/run ratio). These are calculated according to the frequency of the English formulaic language in the speech samples of the participants(n = 86) across three academic levels.The results indicate that the learners’ spoken English fluency is highly related to their use of English formulaic language. Its limitations and future research directions are also discussed.