Language Transfer in Chinese EFL Writing

Language transfer has been a key issue in applied linguistics, second language acquisition, and language teaching for at least a century. Within the last few decades, however, its importance has been reassessed several times. The paper focuses on the phenomena of language transfer in Chinese EFL writing, expecting to provide implications for Chinese English learners and teachers.

How to Motivate Students in Second Language Writing

Writing competence is considered as the most difficult output ability for an EFL （English as a Foreign Language） learner to master. This paper offers valuable suggestion for second language learners when considering affective variables in Chinese context. Motivation, especially intrinsic motivation plays an increasingly important role in L2 （Second Language） pre-writing, online writing and post-writing processes; besides, with the hope of this awareness it will help teacher to decide greater language learning tasks, and help students achieve better performances in writing.

Fluctuations and Directions in Teaching Second Language Writing

The research literature on teaching writing in a L2 （second language） has inspired L2 writing teachers with various sorts of activities in the last few decades and scholars have highlighted multiple aspects of L2 writing on which L2 writing teachers should focus. This paper presents a chronological sketch of the main approaches and trends in teaching and researching L2 writing around the world. It summarizes the components of L2 writing addressed in these approaches and enumerates the dimensions of L2 writing stressed in different approaches including language structure, text functions, themes and topics, creative expression, composing processes, content, genre, and context of writing. Referring to the types of knowledge that need to be imparted to L2 writers, the paper exemplifies teaching activities that can enrich L2 writing classes. The theme that emerges from the discussion is that varied pedagogical implications of the research literature will not be confusing for L2 writing teachers, if they broaden their vision of L2 writing to extend a social view to all dimensions of forms, processes, audiences and L2 writers Teaching L2 writing is presented as the teaching of social individuals using socially-mediated processes to produce socially-meaningful texts for socially-aligned audiences

A Review of Studies: Technology-mediated Peer Feedback on Learners' Motivation in Second Language Writing Course

Increasing studies are focusing on the efficacy of applying technology in the second language writing course.This paper intends to review studies exploring impacts on learners'motivation by using technology-facilitated peer feedback.

The Effectiveness and Issues of Using Feedback in Second Language Writing

Based on the description of feedback in the literature and the classification of feedback by different scholars,this paper discusses the efficiency and possible issues of the teachers’use of different feedback in the teaching of second language writing.Through interviews with experienced English majors,this paper further demonstrates the importance of teachers'use of feedback in second language writing teaching.At the end of the paper,the author also shows that the combination of different feedback according to specific situations in teaching can better promote the writing proficiency of second language learners.

Fostering Chinese National Unity:Advocating the National Common Language and Writing System for Heightened Community Awareness

The promotion of the national common language and writing system stands as a cornerstone in cultivating a sense of community among the Chinese nation.The national common language and writing system,serving as a potent vehicle for cultural dissemination and linguistic communication,acts as a crucial bridge fostering unity,mutual support,cultural exchange,and cohesion among diverse ethnic groups.Its widespread promotion not only reinforces the cohesion of the Chinese nation but also plays a pivotal role in fortifying national and cultural identity.The advocacy and dissemination of the national common language and writing system contribute significantly to enhancing the sense of community within the Chinese nation.This concerted effort serves as an internal driving force,creating a positive feedback loop that strengthens both national identity and the cultural bonds shared by the Chinese people.The reciprocal relationship between the promotion and popularization of the national common language and writing system reinforces a mutual sense of assistance and reciprocity.This bidirectional dynamic propels a synergistic interplay,fostering a beneficial cycle in the promotion and widespread adoption of the national common language and writing system.In essence,the promotion and popularization of the national common language and writing system not only contribute to its advancement but also serve to deepen the sense of community within the Chinese nation.This reciprocal interaction between the two elements establishes a robust foundation for nurturing a strong and cohesive Chinese community.

The Process-based Approach in English Writing Class

English writing is gaining high attention and emphasis in our college syllabus. It is a complicated process of written communication. In the process, the four basic skills—speaking, reading, listening and writing are organically integrated together. This paper is about the process-based approach in English writing class and its aim to emphasize the importance of process-based approach to writing. There are four parts in this paper. I start with a brief introduction to the importance of writing. Next, I will introduce my practice in English writing class. Then I will comment on the process approach and then make a little revision.

Private Topic or Public One： On Topic Sentence Quality

Topic effect on L2 writing has long been an issue of controversy. This study was carried out to investigate the influence of topic type on the quality of topic sentence. The participants, 150 college students at three different proficiency levels, were asked to write both on a private topic and a public topic. The results show that the participants on the whole wrote better on the public topic, and their proficiencies can be differentiated by the quality of their topic sentences. The public topic was conducive to the production of complete English discourse structures, as well as the generation of informative and predictive topic sentences. Moreover, the results also reveal the dynamic nature of contrastive rhetoric

You Blog： An Exploratory Study of EFL Students＇ Blogging Experience in the Thai-Japanese Weblog Exchange Project

Weblogs, writing logs on the web, have been popularly used as an instructional tool to facilitate, reading and writing instructions in ESL （English as a Second Language）/EFL （English as a Foreign Language） classrooms. This study employed weblogs to support the writing process of Thai EFL students and provided an opportunity for them to participate in a Thai-Japanese weblog exchange project. The results showed that student bloggers： （1） enjoyed blogging due to their perceived reading and writing incentives, the exchange of cultural knowledge, and networking; and （2） employed the writing process to complete their written assignments. Findings suggest that weblogs can foster EFL learners＇ motivation, development of reading and writing skills, and development of cultural knowledge, and facilitate their writing process via cyberspace.

Forms vs. Contents： A Perspective View to the Evaluation of Learner＇s Errors in Written Discourse

This paper analyses the experiment carried out by Peter S. Green and Karlheinz Hecht about criteria towards error-analysis in writing. In order to define what a good writing is, it further investigates the relation between accuracy and communicative effectiveness by examining the difference between Chinese teachers and English teachers＇ rating two university students＇ written works to find out the EFL learners＇ dilemma. By comparing the evaluation in written works from both non-native teachers and native teachers, it emphasizes the importance of composition teachers＇ role in providing feedback to their students, and proper suggestions have been given out to solve the problems of motivation in EFL learners.

The Level of Accuracy and Grammatical Complexity in Written Texts by Chinese Students

The influence of the first language(L1)on the acquisition of a second language(L2)is inevitable.In addition,when L1 and L2 do not belong to the same language family,a negative influence,i.e.,an interference,will occur.The current study aims to investigate the level of accuracy and grammar complexity in texts written by Chinese upper secondary school students from the perspective of language transfer.It involves an analysis of a small corpus comprising 54 texts with the use of the terminable unit(T-unit)measure.The finding shows that the Chinese writers produced a text with only a few error-free T-units largely due to the syntactical transfer from Chinese to English.With regard to grammatical complexity,subordinate clauses are frequent in the corpus but relative clauses are rare.

Effects of FonF Feedback on Learners' Cognitive Processing of Language Errors

In order to analyze the learners＇ cognitive process under the teacher＇s focus-on-form feedback on second language writing, this study carried out an simulation experiment to investigate learners＇ correction rates and confidence levels according to three major variables： feedback modes, error types and treatment orders. The results show that： （1） treatments of ＂Code＂ and ＂Underline＂ both had their advantages and disadvantages under different situations; （2） different types of errors are sensitive to different feedback modes; （3） orders of treatment may influence learners＇ perception of instructor＇s intention; and （4） learners＇ confidence level may record the cognitive level of the target language and correlate with the correct rate. Finally, it is suggested to pay more attention to the interactive mechanism of feedback effect and to apply more diversified treatments under various situations in practice.

DISCOURSE COMPETENCE VS. COGNITIVE ABILITY: DO SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS WRITE THE WAY THEY THINK?

This is a replication of Tyler and Bro's study (1992) on the effect of discourse level phenomena on audience perception of comprehensibility. 53 Chinese students of English and 10 native English speakers were taken as informants to a questionnaire, in which orders of ideas, discourse miscues and other types of errors (e.g. cohesion and redundant ideas, etc.) were used as variables to see whether they could affect the comprehensibility of texts. Strong resemblances were found between the two groups. Order of ideas (i.e. deductive or inductive) seems not to have affected text comprehensibility much, but the interactive cumulating miscues at the discourse level played an important role in discourse comprehension. As disparities are found between what nonnative speakers do and how they react to what they have done, the paper discusses whether people think the way they write, and if linguistic competence correlates with cognitive ability. The paper suggests that knowing and doing are two aspects of learning; teachers of English, therefore, have to understand the perplexities second language learners face and try to help them write as effectively as possible in the target language.

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.