The Emotional Approach of Foreign Vowel Acquisition Within the Example of British English Vowels

The aim of the article is to present results of research that was performed with 97 Polish students of the second and third year of English Philology. The purpose of the research is to examine how conscious manipulation of facial expressions aids acquisition of foreign vowels by learners, regardless of their native language and the culture they have been brought up in. Taking advantage of achievements derived from such disciplines as psychology of emotions and phonetics depicted as a physical process, an attempt is made to find a tool that improves teaching/learning of foreign vowels, that is to say, an effort is put in search of a useful method to make the phonetic process faster and more accurate. Teachers of English are encouraged to put the method, which is described in detail in the paper, into practice with their own mother languages and to share opinions about the method with colleagues. Similarly, it is believed that it can be applied to courses of other languages than just English. Teachers of those languages are encouraged to try to use it, too.

Foreign Ownership and International Trade Performance in China

We investigate the causal relationship between foreign ownership and international trade performance by comparing foreign-acquired firms with similar domestic-acquired firms in China with regard to changes in their post-acquisition international trade performance.Our findings indicate that foreign ownership significantly enhanced the probability of both exporting and importing,and strongly increased trade value.Foreign ownership took effect from the year of the acquisition and persisted for at least 2 years.It stimulated both processing trade and ordinary trade,and expanded products and trading partners.Post-acquisition trade performance also exhibited heterogeneity based on the different pre-acquisition and post-acquisition ownership.As for the underlying mechanisms,we show that firms experienced significant output expansion,increased export dependence,and eased financial constraints after foreign acquisition.

An Empirical Study of Applying English Films and TV Programs to English-Listening Teaching

This is a study of the feasibility and effects of teaching listening with films and TV programs. The research is a part of the English Learning Program directed by ZHANG Zhen, which is sponsored by Academic Affairs Office of Leshan Normal University. The researcher of the program sought for theretical bases from Krashen＇s Input Hypothesis, the Motivation Theory, the Context Theory, and the Communicative Language Teaching Theory. Then the author introduced a pilot study conducted by utilizing films or TV programs to teach listening from September 2010 till now. The statistic results from the experiment suggest that there is indeed some correlations between teaching listening with films or TV programs and a learner＇s listening comprehension in general in language achievement tests at certain stages. The scores of the students from the experimental group are improved after two years of teaching with the new methods. Analyses and discussions have been done based on a questionnaire and an interview. The results showed that both the teachers and the students had positive attitudes towards teaching listening with films or TV programs. Most of them view this method as an effective way in ELT （English language teaching）, because it provides more opportunities for contextual practice, lower their anxiety; it can also help to motivate them, stimulate their active participation and increase their activities as well. Therefore, this method can be used to cultivate students＇ communicative competence. Consequently, we can draw the conclusion that this method has some advantages over teaching listening with the pre-taped materials in New College English. It may play an important role in ELT, especially in listening teaching. Based on the statistic analyses and the survey, some activities and techniques are provided for the teacher on how to teach listening with films or TV programs. The roles that an English teacher plays in this method are illustrated at the end of the thesis.

Translational Techniques as a Teaching Tool Using Culture-Specific Units： The Case of French-English Proverbs

Given the fact that cultures are a distinct way of identifying the mores and customs of a people, culture-specific units such as proverbs could serve as veritable teaching tools to pass on otherwise difficult language concepts to students, especially in the context of acquiring a foreign language. Proverbs can actually be viewed as succinct sayings that convey semantically-laden units expressing a people＇s worldview. In this paper, an attempt is made to illustrate the effectiveness of using culture-specific units like French proverbs to teach challenging grammatical features to English-speaking students in a French class. For example, grammatical aspects like verb conjugation French syntax, etc., can be effectively tackled. Translational techniques could then serve as pedagogical tools to bring about a better grasp of the foreign language being acquired, and in the process, exposure to a larger world culture would be achieved

ON TEACHING NON-ENGLISH MAJORS LISTENING AND SPEAKING THROUGH VIDEOS

This is a study of the feasibility and effects of teaching listening and speaking with videos. The research is a part of the English Learning Program sponsored by Academic Affairs Office of Huazhong Agricultural University. The author introduced a pilot study conducted by utilizing videos to teach listening and speaking from September 2002 till now. The statistical result from the experiment suggests that this method has some advantages over teaching listening and speaking with the pre-taped materials in the text.