Reading English newspapers and magazines is an effective way to help the students get the latest information worldwide and improve English levels. The present article first analyzes the features of the English newspap...Reading English newspapers and magazines is an effective way to help the students get the latest information worldwide and improve English levels. The present article first analyzes the features of the English newspapers and magazines and then proposes making good use of them through such classroom activities as discussing the hot issue and role-playing to provide more authentic situations in which the students can have chances to practice four English skills, achieving the ideal teaching result.展开更多
Through analyzing the difference between British lexis and Americanism and the translation teaching status quo related with lexical choices, the author elaborates on translator competence training in the lexical choic...Through analyzing the difference between British lexis and Americanism and the translation teaching status quo related with lexical choices, the author elaborates on translator competence training in the lexical choice of Sino-English translation, and who puts forwards several suggestions on how to facilitate the effective communication between the business persons through naturalizing the lexical choices in Sino-English translation.展开更多
This paper tries to explore the effect of question-generation reading strategy on the reading comprehension of Iranian intermediate EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners. Since the researchers did not have an...This paper tries to explore the effect of question-generation reading strategy on the reading comprehension of Iranian intermediate EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners. Since the researchers did not have any control over randomization of students and it was considered as one of the features of experimental method, this study is not a true experimental method. This method is called Intact Group Study. In this research there were experimental and control groups. The age range of the learners in both groups was between 19 to 22; the age range difference was so limited that we could neglect the difference concem. The number of students in both groups was closely the same. One of these groups received question-generation reading strategy instruction and the other group---control group--did not receive this instruction. Participants in both groups studied a task-based course book called New Interchange 3 by Richards (2005). They studied the last eight units of this book during a whole term. The instruction was the same for both groups except for the reading parts. Participants in experimental group were taught how to generate questions as being linked to the main ideas of the text they were reading. They were also given feedback on the correctness of the questions they generated. Then they answered the follow-up questions However, participants in control group received a traditional method of reading for comprehension; they read the text on their own and answered the follow-up questions. Of course both groups enjoyed a warm-up before reading each text. The statistical independent group T-test of the reading comprehension posttest showed that participants in the experimental group performed better than the students in the control group展开更多
Acoustic terms are useful academic tools to help EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners to perceive pronunciation visually. Pratt is worldewide famous free acoustic professional software applied to the articul...Acoustic terms are useful academic tools to help EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners to perceive pronunciation visually. Pratt is worldewide famous free acoustic professional software applied to the articulation with the help of the graph of ampplitude plotted and spectrogram. The paper will apply the professional acoustic tool Praat to pronunciation pedagogy to facilitate discrimination and articulation and suggests that the program can be adapted for the teaching of pronunciation to Chinese EFL learners.展开更多
This paper examines two postcolonial writings by the Nobel Prize winner Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, The Mimic Men (1969) and In a Free State (1984). In particular, it studies how Naipaul reflects on the histori...This paper examines two postcolonial writings by the Nobel Prize winner Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, The Mimic Men (1969) and In a Free State (1984). In particular, it studies how Naipaul reflects on the historical experiences of national nonsense--the seemingly contradictory existence of transnationality in nationality--and how he manages in his writings to keep an ethical distance from both the colonial empires and the nation-states that came up to replace the colonial empires in the postcolonial world.展开更多
The name, "Bantu", is a classificatory term which refers to a sub-group of the Niger-Congo languages, i.e., the Benue-Congo group of languages, which are spoken extensively in the equatorial and southern part of Afr...The name, "Bantu", is a classificatory term which refers to a sub-group of the Niger-Congo languages, i.e., the Benue-Congo group of languages, which are spoken extensively in the equatorial and southern part of Africa, as well as the family of peoples speaking these languages. As a result of its association with racism during the Apartheid regime in South Africa, the term was heavily politicized and lost its original meaning to acquire racist connotations. In South Africa, the names "African(s)" or "Black(s)" are used as substitutes for the stigmatized name "Bantu(s)" with reference to the Bantu speaking peoples and their languages. This research investigates the use of the words, "Africans" and "Blacks" to assess their suitability as replacements for the word "Bantu". An intensive outline of the classification of the languages of Africa is given to authenticate the basic meaning of these classificatory terms, especially the term "Bantu"展开更多
Research has been done on the effects of text familiarity on reading comprehension. It has been shown that there is no relationship between familiarity with the content of a passage and better comprehension of that pa...Research has been done on the effects of text familiarity on reading comprehension. It has been shown that there is no relationship between familiarity with the content of a passage and better comprehension of that passage through reading it. More specifically, it has been indicated that students perform better on a passage with an unfamiliar content (Carrel, 1983). This study focuses on the effect of text familiarity on summary writing skill of foreign language students. In order to achieve this goal, 60 male and female students participated in this study. Four passages were selected from among reading comprehension TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) texts Two passages were familiar and the other two were unfamiliar. They were given to students for summary writing Through the processes of test administration, each subject was tested on four passages. The subjects performed better on the passage with unfamiliar content.展开更多
C-R (Consciousness-Raising) has been around for some years, and while studies on the effectiveness of C-R have mainly focused on the learning of grammatical features, more attention needs to be paid to the mastery o...C-R (Consciousness-Raising) has been around for some years, and while studies on the effectiveness of C-R have mainly focused on the learning of grammatical features, more attention needs to be paid to the mastery of other language areas. The present study is a small-scale research that explores the impact of C-R technique on the learning of some elements of written business communication. Several intermediate EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners were exposed to models of good business letters and instructed to notice three elements, namely, the rhetorical moves, the grammatical patterns, and the expressions. Afterwards, they were assigned to write letters on their own. Their mistakes were counted and analyzed for the kinds of mistakes in each of the elements above. The result shows that they did very well in arranging the ideas in correct rhetorical moves but made much more mistakes on grammatical features and appropriateness of expressions. The explanation offered to account for this finding concerns the learners' allocation of cognitive capacity to different demands of task complexity. The more complex the task, such as writing in correct grammar or writing appropriate expressions, the less they devote their attention and effort to language formal features. A suggestion concerning focus-on-form activities is then offered to teachers展开更多
ELP (English Language Proficiency) testing is both time-consuming and wasteful if the texts are used merely as tools for assessment. CDA (Critical Discourse Analysis) is an approach that allows for text, processin...ELP (English Language Proficiency) testing is both time-consuming and wasteful if the texts are used merely as tools for assessment. CDA (Critical Discourse Analysis) is an approach that allows for text, processing and social analyses. This paper focuses on the problem-solution discourse pattern in a text selected from the responses of 86 Chinese law school freshmen to a writing test prompt that addressed problems with learning English. The text was compared and contrasted with the response of the same subject as a senior to the identical prompt. The objectives of the CDA were to investigate what constraints were placed on contents, relations and subjects in terms of discourse and to describe, interpret and explain formal features that function to elicit experiential, relational and expressive values simultaneously in the texts. Further analyses of such texts may contribute to ESP (English for Specific Purposes) curriculum and materials development for non-English majors展开更多
This study is about factors that may facilitate students' willingness to speak more in English class. Previous research has shown certain factors would increase class participation from educators' view, while in thi...This study is about factors that may facilitate students' willingness to speak more in English class. Previous research has shown certain factors would increase class participation from educators' view, while in this paper, a survey was designed to find out what students themselves think would motivate them to speak more in class. The survey was given to a group of grade 9 students in a middle school in China. Among the elements that were selected in the survey, the result shows students tend to favor a friendly relationship with the teacher, a warm learning atmosphere, a lively teaching style, and variety interesting learning activities as well as supplemental materials in terms of more verbal participation. The finding reinforces the previous studies on these factors' positive roles in promoting students' motivation to speak more. This paper is expected to serve as a resource for professionals who work in the relevant area and draw more attention from educators, in particular those in the China context, on this topic展开更多
Drama is a powerful tool in language teaching. It develops students' ability to think and improves their communication skills. It raises their self-esteem when they develop confidence through active participation. Dr...Drama is a powerful tool in language teaching. It develops students' ability to think and improves their communication skills. It raises their self-esteem when they develop confidence through active participation. Dramatisation also promotes students' creativity and encourages group cooperation. The paper offers some tips on how to integrate drama activities in the language classroom to make the lesson more meaningful. This paper concludes that students who role-play the characters in a play can better interpret the affective component of the text and gain a better understanding of the key scenes as they enact them through the dramatic form.展开更多
The basic insight of Communicative Language Teaching is that language can be thought of as a tool for communication, and language teaching should be student-centered to cultivate their communicative competence. This p...The basic insight of Communicative Language Teaching is that language can be thought of as a tool for communication, and language teaching should be student-centered to cultivate their communicative competence. This paper explains the main methods in Communicative Language Teaching in college integrated English teaching, and elaborates that the teaching methods and classroom activities of the curriculum should be designed to develop students' communicative capability.展开更多
This study was an attempt to examine the relationship between Iranian EFL (English as Foreign Language) learners' depth of vocabulary knowledge and their lexical inferencing strategy use and success. The participan...This study was an attempt to examine the relationship between Iranian EFL (English as Foreign Language) learners' depth of vocabulary knowledge and their lexical inferencing strategy use and success. The participants in this study were 32 intermediate senior students of Shiraz Azad University majoring in English translation. The Word Associates Test (WAT) (Read, 1993) was used to measure their depth of vocabulary knowledge and lexical inferencing strategy questionnaire which was part of Schmitt (1997), vocabulary learning strategies as well as a reading passage (Haastrup, 1999), cited in Nassaji (2004), were used to determine their lexical inferencing strategy use and success. Results indicate that: (1) Those who have stronger depth of vocabulary knowledge use certain strategies more frequently than those who have weaker depth of vocabulary knowledge; (2) The students with stronger depth of vocabulary knowledge make more effective use of certain types of lexical inferencing strategies. These findings support the importance of depth dimension of vocabulary knowledge and the role it plays in guessing the meaning of unknown words.展开更多
Junior high school students in rural areas constitute a particular group of English learners, for whom English writing is not only important, but also difficult. In order to find out an effective means to help them en...Junior high school students in rural areas constitute a particular group of English learners, for whom English writing is not only important, but also difficult. In order to find out an effective means to help them enhance English writing proficiency. To this end, after carefully analyzing the writing characteristics of this group of English learners, one intact class in Grade 8 of No. 14 junior middle school in Wuwei was given an experimental treatment which required them to imitate the correct examples of expressions provided by their teacher where they used to make errors. Results revealed that students in experimental class outperform their peers in control class significantly.展开更多
The university-industry engagement serves as a cooperation that gives benefit to both parties. The universities and the industries are dependent on each other as the university's role is to produce human capitals to ...The university-industry engagement serves as a cooperation that gives benefit to both parties. The universities and the industries are dependent on each other as the university's role is to produce human capitals to work at the industries, and the industries on the other hand need human capitals to run their business. However, this kind of dependency could raise issues that cause difficulties for both parties if the relationship is not checked and balanced from time to time. The universities should be aware of the industries' changing needs as time changes. Hence the programmes that they offer to their students should take into consideration the industries' needs. This research was to identify the current practices of the university-industry engagement, to appraise the factors contributing to the effectiveness of the university-industry engagement involving UMP (Universiti Malaysia Pahang) and the identified industries, to map the prospects and challenges that UMP faces in the university-industry engagement and to propose the best approaches that the university could engage to provide high class human capitals to work at the industries. This research employed a survey in the form of interviews and expert group discussions. The results show that there is still a mismatch in the university-industry engagement. The representatives from the industries felt that they should be actively involved in the university's activities, especially in teaching, learning and industrial training for students. They had given a few suggestions to be forwarded to the university展开更多
The paper presents new developments in teaching English for business communication to pre-experienced students It presents a short history of changes that have occurred in the teaching methodologies in Europe in the l...The paper presents new developments in teaching English for business communication to pre-experienced students It presents a short history of changes that have occurred in the teaching methodologies in Europe in the last 40 years It shreds some light on the priorities of the last decades and on the ever growing importance of students' needs. It stresses the changes resulting from globalization, new business opportunities and new trends in employment. The changing business environment makes it necessary to improve communicative competence. Recently, the linguistic component of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) courses for pre-experienced students has been increasingly combined with the sociolinguistic and pragmatic components which contribute greatly to good communicative competence. The new approach is much more challenging for business English teachers and requires much higher qualifications, e.g., content knowledge and business skills. In order to increase the effectiveness of ESP courses, we need teaching materials based on corpus studies that could prioritize the highest-frequency business lexis and streamline students' efforts. In the fiercely competitive world of today, students need to concentrate on things that are likely to help them become good business communicators展开更多
In the age of Information technology, online learning environment and its visual and audio applications require new literacy for learners and educators. According to this new literacy perspective, reading comprehensio...In the age of Information technology, online learning environment and its visual and audio applications require new literacy for learners and educators. According to this new literacy perspective, reading comprehension becomes an important issue to study (Cairo, 2003). The present study investigates metacognitive reading strategies used by low-proficient EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners while reading paper-based documents and hypertext documents for general comprehension. The author of the paper tries to find whether these strategies are essentially different from each other. Data were collected from 32 students through SORS (Survey of Reading Strategies) and OSORS (Online Survey of Reading Strategies) questionnaires and from five students through think-aloud protocol The result indicates that some of the metacognitive reading strategies observed in hypertext reading are similar to those used in paper-based reading such as "using reference materials" and "translating from English to Turkish" However, there are few new emerging strategies while some of them are not observed in paper-based reading展开更多
Based on non-English majors' textbooks, this paper discusses the functions of metaphors in titles of texts and places a major emphasis on enlightenment of metaphors in titles on English writing teaching. And through ...Based on non-English majors' textbooks, this paper discusses the functions of metaphors in titles of texts and places a major emphasis on enlightenment of metaphors in titles on English writing teaching. And through analyzing metaphors in titles, it is suggested that in daily writing teaching, teachers should bear the cultivation of students' metaphorical thinking from analyzing titles in mind; teachers also design some writing tasks with metaphors in titles and select textbooks with metaphor-rich texts展开更多
This paper evaluates the lessons that comprise the Japanese Governments English language text for 5th and 6th grade primary school students. The Eigo Note has been formal introducted from April 2011. It is needless to...This paper evaluates the lessons that comprise the Japanese Governments English language text for 5th and 6th grade primary school students. The Eigo Note has been formal introducted from April 2011. It is needless to say that the prime purpose of English textbooks is to help students acquire linguistic knowledge and skills (Yuasa, 2010, p. 154). This assessment was accomplished through the early introduction of the Eigo Note over the 2009-2010 Japanese school year. The assignment of letter grades, A-F, as commonly prescribed in the United States school system, was given to each unit based on the author's past and present teaching experience of over 20 years in the Japanese school system. Concluding remarks contain comments and suggestions for Japanese team teaching in the Eigo Note instructional environment展开更多
文摘Reading English newspapers and magazines is an effective way to help the students get the latest information worldwide and improve English levels. The present article first analyzes the features of the English newspapers and magazines and then proposes making good use of them through such classroom activities as discussing the hot issue and role-playing to provide more authentic situations in which the students can have chances to practice four English skills, achieving the ideal teaching result.
文摘Through analyzing the difference between British lexis and Americanism and the translation teaching status quo related with lexical choices, the author elaborates on translator competence training in the lexical choice of Sino-English translation, and who puts forwards several suggestions on how to facilitate the effective communication between the business persons through naturalizing the lexical choices in Sino-English translation.
文摘This paper tries to explore the effect of question-generation reading strategy on the reading comprehension of Iranian intermediate EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners. Since the researchers did not have any control over randomization of students and it was considered as one of the features of experimental method, this study is not a true experimental method. This method is called Intact Group Study. In this research there were experimental and control groups. The age range of the learners in both groups was between 19 to 22; the age range difference was so limited that we could neglect the difference concem. The number of students in both groups was closely the same. One of these groups received question-generation reading strategy instruction and the other group---control group--did not receive this instruction. Participants in both groups studied a task-based course book called New Interchange 3 by Richards (2005). They studied the last eight units of this book during a whole term. The instruction was the same for both groups except for the reading parts. Participants in experimental group were taught how to generate questions as being linked to the main ideas of the text they were reading. They were also given feedback on the correctness of the questions they generated. Then they answered the follow-up questions However, participants in control group received a traditional method of reading for comprehension; they read the text on their own and answered the follow-up questions. Of course both groups enjoyed a warm-up before reading each text. The statistical independent group T-test of the reading comprehension posttest showed that participants in the experimental group performed better than the students in the control group
文摘Acoustic terms are useful academic tools to help EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners to perceive pronunciation visually. Pratt is worldewide famous free acoustic professional software applied to the articulation with the help of the graph of ampplitude plotted and spectrogram. The paper will apply the professional acoustic tool Praat to pronunciation pedagogy to facilitate discrimination and articulation and suggests that the program can be adapted for the teaching of pronunciation to Chinese EFL learners.
文摘This paper examines two postcolonial writings by the Nobel Prize winner Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, The Mimic Men (1969) and In a Free State (1984). In particular, it studies how Naipaul reflects on the historical experiences of national nonsense--the seemingly contradictory existence of transnationality in nationality--and how he manages in his writings to keep an ethical distance from both the colonial empires and the nation-states that came up to replace the colonial empires in the postcolonial world.
文摘The name, "Bantu", is a classificatory term which refers to a sub-group of the Niger-Congo languages, i.e., the Benue-Congo group of languages, which are spoken extensively in the equatorial and southern part of Africa, as well as the family of peoples speaking these languages. As a result of its association with racism during the Apartheid regime in South Africa, the term was heavily politicized and lost its original meaning to acquire racist connotations. In South Africa, the names "African(s)" or "Black(s)" are used as substitutes for the stigmatized name "Bantu(s)" with reference to the Bantu speaking peoples and their languages. This research investigates the use of the words, "Africans" and "Blacks" to assess their suitability as replacements for the word "Bantu". An intensive outline of the classification of the languages of Africa is given to authenticate the basic meaning of these classificatory terms, especially the term "Bantu"
文摘Research has been done on the effects of text familiarity on reading comprehension. It has been shown that there is no relationship between familiarity with the content of a passage and better comprehension of that passage through reading it. More specifically, it has been indicated that students perform better on a passage with an unfamiliar content (Carrel, 1983). This study focuses on the effect of text familiarity on summary writing skill of foreign language students. In order to achieve this goal, 60 male and female students participated in this study. Four passages were selected from among reading comprehension TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) texts Two passages were familiar and the other two were unfamiliar. They were given to students for summary writing Through the processes of test administration, each subject was tested on four passages. The subjects performed better on the passage with unfamiliar content.
文摘C-R (Consciousness-Raising) has been around for some years, and while studies on the effectiveness of C-R have mainly focused on the learning of grammatical features, more attention needs to be paid to the mastery of other language areas. The present study is a small-scale research that explores the impact of C-R technique on the learning of some elements of written business communication. Several intermediate EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners were exposed to models of good business letters and instructed to notice three elements, namely, the rhetorical moves, the grammatical patterns, and the expressions. Afterwards, they were assigned to write letters on their own. Their mistakes were counted and analyzed for the kinds of mistakes in each of the elements above. The result shows that they did very well in arranging the ideas in correct rhetorical moves but made much more mistakes on grammatical features and appropriateness of expressions. The explanation offered to account for this finding concerns the learners' allocation of cognitive capacity to different demands of task complexity. The more complex the task, such as writing in correct grammar or writing appropriate expressions, the less they devote their attention and effort to language formal features. A suggestion concerning focus-on-form activities is then offered to teachers
文摘ELP (English Language Proficiency) testing is both time-consuming and wasteful if the texts are used merely as tools for assessment. CDA (Critical Discourse Analysis) is an approach that allows for text, processing and social analyses. This paper focuses on the problem-solution discourse pattern in a text selected from the responses of 86 Chinese law school freshmen to a writing test prompt that addressed problems with learning English. The text was compared and contrasted with the response of the same subject as a senior to the identical prompt. The objectives of the CDA were to investigate what constraints were placed on contents, relations and subjects in terms of discourse and to describe, interpret and explain formal features that function to elicit experiential, relational and expressive values simultaneously in the texts. Further analyses of such texts may contribute to ESP (English for Specific Purposes) curriculum and materials development for non-English majors
文摘This study is about factors that may facilitate students' willingness to speak more in English class. Previous research has shown certain factors would increase class participation from educators' view, while in this paper, a survey was designed to find out what students themselves think would motivate them to speak more in class. The survey was given to a group of grade 9 students in a middle school in China. Among the elements that were selected in the survey, the result shows students tend to favor a friendly relationship with the teacher, a warm learning atmosphere, a lively teaching style, and variety interesting learning activities as well as supplemental materials in terms of more verbal participation. The finding reinforces the previous studies on these factors' positive roles in promoting students' motivation to speak more. This paper is expected to serve as a resource for professionals who work in the relevant area and draw more attention from educators, in particular those in the China context, on this topic
文摘Drama is a powerful tool in language teaching. It develops students' ability to think and improves their communication skills. It raises their self-esteem when they develop confidence through active participation. Dramatisation also promotes students' creativity and encourages group cooperation. The paper offers some tips on how to integrate drama activities in the language classroom to make the lesson more meaningful. This paper concludes that students who role-play the characters in a play can better interpret the affective component of the text and gain a better understanding of the key scenes as they enact them through the dramatic form.
文摘The basic insight of Communicative Language Teaching is that language can be thought of as a tool for communication, and language teaching should be student-centered to cultivate their communicative competence. This paper explains the main methods in Communicative Language Teaching in college integrated English teaching, and elaborates that the teaching methods and classroom activities of the curriculum should be designed to develop students' communicative capability.
文摘This study was an attempt to examine the relationship between Iranian EFL (English as Foreign Language) learners' depth of vocabulary knowledge and their lexical inferencing strategy use and success. The participants in this study were 32 intermediate senior students of Shiraz Azad University majoring in English translation. The Word Associates Test (WAT) (Read, 1993) was used to measure their depth of vocabulary knowledge and lexical inferencing strategy questionnaire which was part of Schmitt (1997), vocabulary learning strategies as well as a reading passage (Haastrup, 1999), cited in Nassaji (2004), were used to determine their lexical inferencing strategy use and success. Results indicate that: (1) Those who have stronger depth of vocabulary knowledge use certain strategies more frequently than those who have weaker depth of vocabulary knowledge; (2) The students with stronger depth of vocabulary knowledge make more effective use of certain types of lexical inferencing strategies. These findings support the importance of depth dimension of vocabulary knowledge and the role it plays in guessing the meaning of unknown words.
文摘Junior high school students in rural areas constitute a particular group of English learners, for whom English writing is not only important, but also difficult. In order to find out an effective means to help them enhance English writing proficiency. To this end, after carefully analyzing the writing characteristics of this group of English learners, one intact class in Grade 8 of No. 14 junior middle school in Wuwei was given an experimental treatment which required them to imitate the correct examples of expressions provided by their teacher where they used to make errors. Results revealed that students in experimental class outperform their peers in control class significantly.
文摘The university-industry engagement serves as a cooperation that gives benefit to both parties. The universities and the industries are dependent on each other as the university's role is to produce human capitals to work at the industries, and the industries on the other hand need human capitals to run their business. However, this kind of dependency could raise issues that cause difficulties for both parties if the relationship is not checked and balanced from time to time. The universities should be aware of the industries' changing needs as time changes. Hence the programmes that they offer to their students should take into consideration the industries' needs. This research was to identify the current practices of the university-industry engagement, to appraise the factors contributing to the effectiveness of the university-industry engagement involving UMP (Universiti Malaysia Pahang) and the identified industries, to map the prospects and challenges that UMP faces in the university-industry engagement and to propose the best approaches that the university could engage to provide high class human capitals to work at the industries. This research employed a survey in the form of interviews and expert group discussions. The results show that there is still a mismatch in the university-industry engagement. The representatives from the industries felt that they should be actively involved in the university's activities, especially in teaching, learning and industrial training for students. They had given a few suggestions to be forwarded to the university
文摘The paper presents new developments in teaching English for business communication to pre-experienced students It presents a short history of changes that have occurred in the teaching methodologies in Europe in the last 40 years It shreds some light on the priorities of the last decades and on the ever growing importance of students' needs. It stresses the changes resulting from globalization, new business opportunities and new trends in employment. The changing business environment makes it necessary to improve communicative competence. Recently, the linguistic component of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) courses for pre-experienced students has been increasingly combined with the sociolinguistic and pragmatic components which contribute greatly to good communicative competence. The new approach is much more challenging for business English teachers and requires much higher qualifications, e.g., content knowledge and business skills. In order to increase the effectiveness of ESP courses, we need teaching materials based on corpus studies that could prioritize the highest-frequency business lexis and streamline students' efforts. In the fiercely competitive world of today, students need to concentrate on things that are likely to help them become good business communicators
文摘In the age of Information technology, online learning environment and its visual and audio applications require new literacy for learners and educators. According to this new literacy perspective, reading comprehension becomes an important issue to study (Cairo, 2003). The present study investigates metacognitive reading strategies used by low-proficient EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners while reading paper-based documents and hypertext documents for general comprehension. The author of the paper tries to find whether these strategies are essentially different from each other. Data were collected from 32 students through SORS (Survey of Reading Strategies) and OSORS (Online Survey of Reading Strategies) questionnaires and from five students through think-aloud protocol The result indicates that some of the metacognitive reading strategies observed in hypertext reading are similar to those used in paper-based reading such as "using reference materials" and "translating from English to Turkish" However, there are few new emerging strategies while some of them are not observed in paper-based reading
文摘Based on non-English majors' textbooks, this paper discusses the functions of metaphors in titles of texts and places a major emphasis on enlightenment of metaphors in titles on English writing teaching. And through analyzing metaphors in titles, it is suggested that in daily writing teaching, teachers should bear the cultivation of students' metaphorical thinking from analyzing titles in mind; teachers also design some writing tasks with metaphors in titles and select textbooks with metaphor-rich texts
文摘This paper evaluates the lessons that comprise the Japanese Governments English language text for 5th and 6th grade primary school students. The Eigo Note has been formal introducted from April 2011. It is needless to say that the prime purpose of English textbooks is to help students acquire linguistic knowledge and skills (Yuasa, 2010, p. 154). This assessment was accomplished through the early introduction of the Eigo Note over the 2009-2010 Japanese school year. The assignment of letter grades, A-F, as commonly prescribed in the United States school system, was given to each unit based on the author's past and present teaching experience of over 20 years in the Japanese school system. Concluding remarks contain comments and suggestions for Japanese team teaching in the Eigo Note instructional environment