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
Prefixation is a dynamic method of word formation in Bengali. Sometimes prefixes become derivational to create new words, which differ in part-of-speech and meaning from the words with which these are attached. Thus, ...Prefixation is a dynamic method of word formation in Bengali. Sometimes prefixes become derivational to create new words, which differ in part-of-speech and meaning from the words with which these are attached. Thus, prefixation acquires an identity of a morphodynamic process in the language through which new words take birth, while old words change their forms, functions, and meanings to increase lexical stock of Bengali. With reference to a large lexical database of prefixed words obtained from the Bengali corpus （Dash, 2009）, this paper tries to explore the nature and type of morphosemantic processes that occur at the time of prefixation to highlight the patterns of change in forms and meaning of prefixed words. Also, it aims at laying a theoretical foundation about the nature of lexical generativity of prefixes used in formation of words. The application relevance of this study may be attested in descriptive linguistics, applied linguistics, and language technology, since analysis of forms and functions of prefixes supplies necessary information for developing text materials for Bengali language teaching, compiling dictionaries, designing systems for machine learning, and developing databases for machine translation. Indirectly, it ventilates into the nature of complexities embedded in linguistic generativity of the Bengali speakers展开更多
This thesis is intended to give a contrastive study of the notional passive in English and Chinese, not merely analyzing the relationship between notional passive and passive voice, but summarizing the features and st...This thesis is intended to give a contrastive study of the notional passive in English and Chinese, not merely analyzing the relationship between notional passive and passive voice, but summarizing the features and status of the notional passives in English and Chinese, with an aim to cast some light on the main differences between English and Chinese concerning passive, and giving some insights to better understanding and bilingual transference between English and Chinese where the notional passive is involved.展开更多
This study investigates students’attitudes towards classroom code-switching(CS)between Chinese and English,and how such attitudes are influenced by learning motivation and language anxiety,the two focal variables of ...This study investigates students’attitudes towards classroom code-switching(CS)between Chinese and English,and how such attitudes are influenced by learning motivation and language anxiety,the two focal variables of the present study.A total of 550 students from a university in northwest China took part in an online survey.The results of quantitative analyses suggest a division of attitudes towards CS,acknowledging its usefulness but dismissing its symbolic value.Such attitudes can be predicted based on the focal learner characteristics.The implications of the findings are discussed vis-à-vis the social psychology of CS and an optimal use of CS to assist language learning and teaching.展开更多
Schema is known to play an important role in reading comprehension. The schema embodying the learners background knowledge of cultural familiar materials facilitates the understanding of the text （Pritchard, 1990）. ...Schema is known to play an important role in reading comprehension. The schema embodying the learners background knowledge of cultural familiar materials facilitates the understanding of the text （Pritchard, 1990）. Also Steffensen, Joag-Dev, and Anderson （1979） and Nelson （1987） proposed that the schemata embodying background knowledge influenced how well the text would be comprehended. However, Hudson （1982） and Carrell （1984） found there was no significant background effect in advanced level learners. From those studies, it seems that background effect is different at different language proficiency levels. Thus, the present study examines the interaction between background knowledge and language proficiency in reading comprehension. The participants were freshmen of National Chiayi University. They were divided into three language proficiency levels based on the General English Proficiency Test. Four reading comprehension tests were constructed to assess their reading comprehension： cultural familiar/unfamiliar text and topic familiar/unfamiliar text. The results of this study showed that participants had better performance on the culture/topic familiar text than the culture/topic unfamiliar text. Thus the findings suggest that the teacher can use teaching activities, such as pre-reading activities or vocabulary teaching to increase the background knowledge when teaching readings to EFL （English as a foreign language） learners展开更多
When we look through the world history, it can be seen clearly that language has a great role on culture, arts, and social movements, and the translation is an important player in this context. A commonly shared Europ...When we look through the world history, it can be seen clearly that language has a great role on culture, arts, and social movements, and the translation is an important player in this context. A commonly shared European culture together with its values has emerged as a product of such sociolinguistic dynamics. Following these encounters, whether at word borrowing level or morpho-syntactical level, European languages have had positive and/or negative effects on each other and have evolved ever since in this way as they have permeated themselves into culture. From the point of view on translation＇s intermediary role in enabling interaction between cultures throughout the history, the aim of the present study is to problematize the answers to the following questions： What are cultural ramifications that stem from linguistic encounter？ What are the contributions of translated language to acculturation and enculturation processes？ Can the new information through translation produce a culture translation phenomenon？ How the hybrid understanding functions？ Translation itself is a language encounter that makes impact on targeted languages as well as on its source. In this study, the dynamics that form this encounter space as a meta textual phenomenon has been problematized.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Prefixation is a dynamic method of word formation in Bengali. Sometimes prefixes become derivational to create new words, which differ in part-of-speech and meaning from the words with which these are attached. Thus, prefixation acquires an identity of a morphodynamic process in the language through which new words take birth, while old words change their forms, functions, and meanings to increase lexical stock of Bengali. With reference to a large lexical database of prefixed words obtained from the Bengali corpus （Dash, 2009）, this paper tries to explore the nature and type of morphosemantic processes that occur at the time of prefixation to highlight the patterns of change in forms and meaning of prefixed words. Also, it aims at laying a theoretical foundation about the nature of lexical generativity of prefixes used in formation of words. The application relevance of this study may be attested in descriptive linguistics, applied linguistics, and language technology, since analysis of forms and functions of prefixes supplies necessary information for developing text materials for Bengali language teaching, compiling dictionaries, designing systems for machine learning, and developing databases for machine translation. Indirectly, it ventilates into the nature of complexities embedded in linguistic generativity of the Bengali speakers
文摘This thesis is intended to give a contrastive study of the notional passive in English and Chinese, not merely analyzing the relationship between notional passive and passive voice, but summarizing the features and status of the notional passives in English and Chinese, with an aim to cast some light on the main differences between English and Chinese concerning passive, and giving some insights to better understanding and bilingual transference between English and Chinese where the notional passive is involved.
文摘This study investigates students’attitudes towards classroom code-switching(CS)between Chinese and English,and how such attitudes are influenced by learning motivation and language anxiety,the two focal variables of the present study.A total of 550 students from a university in northwest China took part in an online survey.The results of quantitative analyses suggest a division of attitudes towards CS,acknowledging its usefulness but dismissing its symbolic value.Such attitudes can be predicted based on the focal learner characteristics.The implications of the findings are discussed vis-à-vis the social psychology of CS and an optimal use of CS to assist language learning and teaching.
文摘Schema is known to play an important role in reading comprehension. The schema embodying the learners background knowledge of cultural familiar materials facilitates the understanding of the text （Pritchard, 1990）. Also Steffensen, Joag-Dev, and Anderson （1979） and Nelson （1987） proposed that the schemata embodying background knowledge influenced how well the text would be comprehended. However, Hudson （1982） and Carrell （1984） found there was no significant background effect in advanced level learners. From those studies, it seems that background effect is different at different language proficiency levels. Thus, the present study examines the interaction between background knowledge and language proficiency in reading comprehension. The participants were freshmen of National Chiayi University. They were divided into three language proficiency levels based on the General English Proficiency Test. Four reading comprehension tests were constructed to assess their reading comprehension： cultural familiar/unfamiliar text and topic familiar/unfamiliar text. The results of this study showed that participants had better performance on the culture/topic familiar text than the culture/topic unfamiliar text. Thus the findings suggest that the teacher can use teaching activities, such as pre-reading activities or vocabulary teaching to increase the background knowledge when teaching readings to EFL （English as a foreign language） learners
文摘When we look through the world history, it can be seen clearly that language has a great role on culture, arts, and social movements, and the translation is an important player in this context. A commonly shared European culture together with its values has emerged as a product of such sociolinguistic dynamics. Following these encounters, whether at word borrowing level or morpho-syntactical level, European languages have had positive and/or negative effects on each other and have evolved ever since in this way as they have permeated themselves into culture. From the point of view on translation＇s intermediary role in enabling interaction between cultures throughout the history, the aim of the present study is to problematize the answers to the following questions： What are cultural ramifications that stem from linguistic encounter？ What are the contributions of translated language to acculturation and enculturation processes？ Can the new information through translation produce a culture translation phenomenon？ How the hybrid understanding functions？ Translation itself is a language encounter that makes impact on targeted languages as well as on its source. In this study, the dynamics that form this encounter space as a meta textual phenomenon has been problematized.
