Towards Lessening Learners’Aversive Emotions and Promoting Their Mental Health:Developing and Validating a Measurement of English Speaking Demotivation in the Chinese EFL Context

While a plethora of studies has been conducted to explore demotivation and its impact on mental health in second language(L2)education,scanty research focuses on demotivation in L2 speaking learning.Particularly,little research explores the measures to quantify L2 speaking demotivation.The present two-phase study attempts to develop and validate an English Speaking Demotivation Scale(ESDS).To this end,an independent sample of 207 Chinese tertiary learners of English as a Foreign Language(EFL)participated in the development phase,and another group of 188 Chinese EFL learners was recruited for the validation of the scale.Exploratory Factor Analysis(EFA)and Confirmatory Factor Analysis(CFA)were employed to determine the factor structure of the scale.The EFA results revealed a six-factor solution with Teacher-related Factors in Learning Spoken English(TFLSE),Interest and Valence in Learning Spoken English(IVLSE),Self-efficacy in Learning Spoken English(SELSE),Negative Peer Influence in Learning Spoken English(NPILSE),Undesirable Environment for Learning Spoken English(UELSE),and Negative Influence of Assessment and Learning Materials in speaking class(NIALM).In the validation phase,Confirmatory Factor Analysis(CFA)was performed to validate the internal structure of the scale.The CFA results showed that the model fits the data well.Overall,the ESDS is a robust and trustworthy psychometric tool that could be utilized to examine L2 speaking demotivation.Implications for diminishing EFL learners’demotivation,lessening their aversive emotions and promoting their mental health are also discussed.

A Study on the Different Levels of“Attention”in the Processing of English Subjunctive Mood by Chinese Learners

“Attention”is a very vital cognitive mechanism.Cognitive psychology considers“attention”as the focus of mental activity and consciousness on an object.People engage their senses and memory to actively process the object in front of them.Theories of second language acquisition suggest that a large amount of input is the basis for language acquisition.At the same time,what is actively noticed by the learner can be effectively internalized.Thus,“attention”is also a non-linguistic factor that plays a significant role in language acquisition.The subjunctive mood is a major challenge in the teaching of English grammar.Generally speaking,the verbs in a sentence are used to distinguish between subjunctive and declarative sentences.In this paper,experimental utterances were written based on previous research by using verbs that are easy to cause ambiguity and confusion,and then set up the reinforced and non-reinforced attention conditions with different levels of“attention”to investigate whether there are different results and effects on subjects’comprehension of sentences under different levels of“attention”conditions.Under the different levels of“attention”,the subjects were examined to see whether there were different results in comprehension of the sentences and the impact of the different levels of“attention”.It was found that subjects in the reinforced“attention”condition comprehended sentences better,answered questions faster,and answered questions more correctly than subjects in the non-reinforced condition.This study also shed some light on English second language grammar teaching.

A Comparative Study on Verb-Noun Collocation Errors of Chinese EFL Learners with Different Language Proficiency

This study presents a comparative analysis of verb-noun collocation errors made by Chinese EFL learners with different language proficiency.Linguistic data from two sub-corpora of CLEC(Chinese Learner English Corpus,Gui&Yang,1999)consist of the compositions written freely by Chinese senior high school students(ST2)and the 3rd-and 4th-year English majors of Chinese universities(ST6).The study results show that four types of verb-noun collocation errors are frequently made due to incorrect L1 translation,misuse of relative synonyms,misuse of delexical verbs,and misuse of part of speech;the number of errors decreases with the development of language proficiency,especially errors by incorrect L1 translation and relative synonyms.And for both ST2 and ST6 EFL learners,errors resulted from incorrect L1 translation account for nearly a half with the same high-frequency words.It is also found that ST6 learners’competence in collocation and synonym identification doesn’t grow with the increase of their vocabulary,as is shown in the case of overusing delexical verbs in collocation,the same error made by ST2 learners,who have a significantly weaker command of delexical verbs.Implications of the findings are also discussed with the purpose of raising the awareness of collocation pedagogy and enhancing EFL learners’collocation competence.

A Study on Translation Strategies Used in Metaphor Boxes in Macmillan English-Chinese Dictionary for Advanced Learners

Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners(MEDAL) applied conceptual metaphor theory to practical lexicogra-phy systematically for the first time, namely, setting Metaphor Box. In the wake of MEDAL, Macmillan English-Chinese Dictionary for Advanced Learners was published based on the English blueprint. Due to different experience and thinking ways between Chi-nese and English, it is not easy for users to understand and translate the metaphors boxes without the help of proper translationstrategies. As an authoritative bilingual version for learners, it provided a template of understanding and translating metaphors.Thus, studying its strategies used in translating the metaphors boxes will be helpful for learners to understand and translate meta-phors in language learning. On the basis of strategies suggested by other researchers and case analysis, three main strategies usedin translating the Metaphor Boxes in the dictionary will be proposed.

How to Create a Low-anxiety Environment for Chinese Learners of EFL to Enhance Oral Proficiency in Speaking Lessons

The goal of teaching English speaking is to improve students' communicative efficiency, or make students speak the target language clearly, coherently, accurately and fluently (Xu, 2005). However, in China, a number of students in an English speaking class tend to be passive and reluctant to speak out or be singled out publicly mainly due to their high anxiety, which, of course, becomes a significant constraint on improving their English proficiency. Therefore, how to create a relaxed atmosphere with a sense of security in the English speaking class to alleviate Chinese learners' anxiety and to provide them with as many opportunities as possible to practice speaking English and improve their English proficiency is one of the central tasks for language teachers.his paper will firstly outline my teaching context in China in physical, pedagogical, institutional and personal aspects. This will be followed by the definition and classification of language learning anxiety, and the analysis of various factors contributing to foreign language learners' anxiety as well as some suggestions of how to reduce the learners' anxiety in the oral class according to the current literature. Finally, some applications will be presented in my teaching context in the hope of decreasing Chinese students' anxiety to enhance their English speaking proficiency.

The Evaluation of the Seventh Edition of Oxford Advanced Learner's English-Chinese Dictionary

As one of the most popular English learning tools, the 7th edition of Oxford Advanced Learner's English-Chinese Dictionary aims to provide adequate information to satisfy learners' needs. In this article, this latest edition is examined with re spect to two primary aspects: syntactic and semantic information based on Chan, A.C. and Y. Loong's evaluating criteria of learn er's dictionary. The focus falls on grammatical properties of nouns, verbs and adjectives, valency requirement, definitions, syn onyms and antonyms, collocations, etc. Conclusion suggests that the overall standard of this new dictionary is admirably high in terms of applicability and user-friendliness.

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.

The Motivations of Chinese EFL Learners

English is regarded as the international language,which makes it the most popular language to learn around the world.Among the many factors that affect the learning outcomes of English language,motivation is broadly considered as one of the most important ones.This paper presents a general review on types of motivation as well as the factors that are linked to motivation.This paper also touches upon some critical issues that Chinese EFL learners face in terms of motivation in English learning.

A Discussion of Foreign Language Listening Problems and Their Causes among Intermediate EFL learners in Chinese universities

Listening has been considered as the most important language skill by many researchers but in Chinese context it has been overlooked for years.The Foreign Language(FL)listening problems gradually reveal when students attend to the Listening Course in universities or colleges.This paper at first illustrates the importance of listening in foreign language learning and provides a discussion on the top-down and bottom-up processes with the analysis of Anderson's three-model of language comprehension[9]as well as the factors affecting listening comprehension in Foreign Language in general,aiming at the illustration of the necessity on one of the bottom-up processes-the Spoken Word Recognition(SWR).The analysis of two issued official guiding documents for Chinese university students and the current situation of English listening teaching in Chinese universities are followed,providing a general background on English listening teaching in Chinese context.Three possible foreign language listening problems and their causes are proposed,followed by the pedagogical suggestions to EFL learners who are improving their listening skills and instructors who are advancing their teaching procedures.

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 Influence of Chinese Proficiency and Cultural Background on CFL Learners’Comprehension of Chinese Logogriphs

This study investigates how Chinese logogriphs are comprehended by learners of Chinese as a foreign language(CFL)with different Chinese proficiencies and cultural backgrounds.Eighty-eight CFL learners from four cultures(South Koreans,Southeast Asians,Western Caucasians and Arabs)were divided into two Chinese proficiency groups according to their HSK scores,and 15 L1 Chinese speakers also took part in the experiment as a control group.The participants were asked to write down how they interpreted Chinese logogriphs in questionnaires.An ANOVA analysis was conducted to examine the effects of Chinese proficiency and cultural background on logogriph comprehension.The results indicate that the accuracy of logogriph comprehension and the frequency of adopting logogriph-solving strategies positively correlated with the learners’Chinese proficiency,and that those with higher proficiency used more linguistic and cultural knowledge of the target language.As for cultural influence,Western Caucasians tended to think more visually than the other three cultural groups,and South Koreans and Southeast Asians were better at activating Chinese semantic knowledge.The closer the CFL learners’culture is to Chinese culture,the more similar strategies they adopted to those of L1 Chinese participants.Moreover,the participants’Chinese proficiency and cultural background show an interactive effect on their logogriph comprehension,with the former factor having a greater influence than the latter in this process.

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.

A Development Study on the Ordering Distribution of Temporal Adverbial Clauses by Chinese EFL Learners Based on Dependency Treebank

Temporal adverbial clause is an important language structure and exhibits different features in English and Chinese,which brings about difficulties for Chinese EFL learners.Based on the theory of Dependency Grammar,the study attempts to investigate the ordering distribution of temporal adverbial clauses by Chinese EFL learners at the beginning,intermediate and advanced levels.The results show that:1)Chinese EFL learners at different proficiencies tend to precede temporal adverbial clause to main clause.With the increase of proficiency,the postposition of temporal adverbial clauses by learners increases and is approaching to the ordering preference of target language.2)The ordering distribution of subordinators for temporal adverbial clauses by Chinese EFL learners is consistent with native English,showing a tendency of 100%preposition,which ascribes to the high frequency and salience of subordinators in English.3)MDD is one of the significant motivations that cause the preference of prepositional temporal adverbial clauses by Chinese EFL learners.As a kind of natural language,interlanguage has a unique cognitive mechanism which distinguishes from both native and target language.This study provides a more comprehensive theoretical reference for learners at different proficiencies to understand and learn temporal adverbial clauses,as well as data support from empirical research for language teaching.

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 Corpus-Based Study on the Acquisition of the Modal Adverb Fanzheng by Foreign Learners of Chinese

This study investigates foreign learners＇ acquisition of the Chinese modal adverb fanzheng on the basis of interlanguage corpus. We find that the sentences written by foreign learners of Chinese （hereafter simplified as FLC） with the wordfanzheng are quite similar to those by Chinese native speakers in the distribution of the syntactic categories, semantic types, semantic functions, pragmatic or discourse functions. These characterize basically the wordfanzheng as one of the modal adverbs in such three aspects as syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Most of the FLCs study the basic meanings and typical contexts of the wordfanzheng at primary stage, and later the functions emphasizing reasons, summary or explaining, and then the function of textual cohesion at the intermediate and advanced stage. The main causes of errors reflect that the FLCs are not able to differentiate the usage offanzheng and that of other causal or adversative conjunctions.

An Empirical Study on the Effectiveness of Language Learning Strategy Training for Chinese Adult English Learners

This paper explores how to implement effective strategy training for part-time Chinese adult English learners in a tertiary FLT （Foreign Language Teaching） classroom. Through a study of threx~ semesters during which six sessions of learner training workshops and constant, integrated task-based instruction were carried out, empirical evidence was collected via the instrument of questionnaires, interviews, learners＇ regular written reports, and the findings indicate that： （1） The students reported a statistically significant increase of the overaU average frequency of language strategy use over all SILL （The Strategy Inventory for Language Learning） items with 2.95 at the beginning and 3.61 at the end; and （2） Well-organized, explicit, and discrete leaner training workshops combined with frequent, explicit, and integrated task-based strategy instruction are an effective and helpful way to improve learners＇ awareness, selection, and frequency of strategy use, which can further foster learner autonomy.

A comparative study of differences in writing strategies among Chinese EFL learners, overseas Chinese ESL learners, and Northern American ENL learners

This paper concerns study of learning strategies from language learners. In the light of the types and models of strategies found in the study of ESL （English as a Second Language） learners＇ strategies abroad, the authors have summed up and induced 3 group learners＇ writing strategies stated in their reports, with which they have designed the surveying tool by using factor analysis. And then, the authors use descriptive and 1-way ANOVA （Analysis of Variance） analysis of SPSS16.0 （Statistical Program for Social Science） to examine the differences of strategies used by EFL （English as a Foreign Language） learners in China, overseas Chinese ESL learners in Northern Americas and Northern American ENL （English as a Native Language） learners. It is concluded by he results of the study that ENL and ESL learners are good at using various writing strategies. And there are significant differences in using writing strategies between ENL/ESL learners and EFL learners. The authors also conclude that the differences between ESL group and ENL group are not significant, much less than the ones between ESL group and EFL group. The authors make comparative analysis on the causes to the findings on the aspects of class teaching approaches and language learning surroundings, which bring out implications for teaching of English writing in China.

How Chinese EFL Learners'English Syntactic Proficiency Regresses with Time:An Empirical Study

The study conducted an empirical study to investigate how Chinese EFL learners'English syntactic proficiency regressed with time.It was indicated that:first,Chinese EFL Learners'proficiency levels prior to attrition(PLPAs)were inversely correlated with the degree of attrition.Simply put,learners with higher syntactic proficiency level will suffer less attrition even if the target structures were not used or rehearsed for more than two years.Second,a critical threshold,which roughly equaled to CET-4 level,was proved to exist in the processing of attrition.Chinese EFL Learners above the critical threshold had a significantly better retention than those below this threshold.

Erasable/Inerasable L1 Transfer in Interlanguage Phonology:An Optimality Theory Analysis of/aʊn/and Sentence Stress in Chinese Learners of English

The areas affected by the L1 transfer to L2,such as phonotactics and stress,appear to have different degrees of erasability through training and practice.This paper attempts a theoretical analysis to account for empirical observations of L1 transfer in diphthong-coda coalescence and in sentence stress for Chinese learners of English in an American accent training course.Using the framework and tableau method of Optimality Theory(Prince and Smolensky 1993),the phonological paradigm that views languages’differences as symptomatic of differences in rankings of a set of universal violable constraints,this paper posits the underlying ranking at work in(a)the segmental case where[aŋ]is the observed output for/aʊn/;(b)the suprasegmental case where no stress contrast is observed for a pair of phonologically similar sentences with contrastive stress.It is argued that,in the segmental case,the coalescence of the second vowel of a diphthong with an alveolar nasal coda results from the high ranking of markedness constraints,including Complex Syllable;and in the suprasegmental case,sentence stress is greatly affected by changes in the ranking of the constraint culminativity.Aside from shedding light on the understudied issue of diphthong-coda coalescence,this research also contributes to the discussion of the comparative erasability of L1 transfer for the two areas and demonstrates how a deduction-based theoretical method may actually have practical implications for guiding the design of L2 teaching methodology of English pronunciation as well as for promoting native English speakers’clearer understanding of Chinese learners of English on the global stage.