chinese,efl,culture

篇一：Chinese EFL culture

Chinese EFL culture

English as a foreign language is widely used around the world. For

example,learning English language becomes more and more popular. This is because that English language influences Chinese culture for some good

aspects.It offers some new ideas for Chinese to view themselves,helps people get good jobs in foreign companies and riches Chinese culture.

In the first place, English language expends people's view about

themselves by the new ideas. As we all know,we have been learning English language from middle school till now. We obtain the English knowledge from the text book. In the other words,we absorb the English countries' culture as well. By this way, learning English language provides us to view ourselves in that we start to use the English thinking pattern instead of the traditional Chinese thinking way. For instance,from the process of learning English language,we know that English people draw much attention to punctuality according to their custom. Although we live under the big environment of

China,our living habits start changing with the great influence from the English culture. We accept and learn the good aspect though learning English. By this way, we start to be strict with ourselves,concern the punctuality and view ourselves with the new ideas.

On the second place,mastery of English language helps people improve potential when they are looking for jobs. With quick growth of the global

economy,many countries seem to convert into an unity. As for China,it keeps a close economic relationship with the Europe country,especially those English countries. As a result,many foreign companies have been opened in China and many talents with the skill of mastering English language are in great

demand.Mastering English language means to get the key of overcoming the language barrier. In the job-hunting market,those job hunters with the skill of mastering a second language have the superiority than

others. Thereby,choosing to learn and master the English language can be a good choice for those people who want to work in foreign companies. Learning English not only helps people enhance professional abilities but also helps them find good jobs in the future.

On the third place,from learning English language,we receive new culture which riches Chinese culture. Nowadays,celebration of foreign festivals of English countries is popular in China. For example,Christmas Day is a good witness that introduces many western elements for us. We acquire the knowledge of the English culture during the process of learning English language,and then we add some creative elements into traditional Chinese culture. By this way, our Chinese culture becomes more colorful and we absorb the good culture of English language to make more innovations for our own culture. This is called mutual-culture communication.

All in all,from what we have discussed above,we can make a basic

conclusion that the learning of English not only provides us new ideas to view ourselves through learning the new culture but also helps people improve

personal capacity to find good jobs in the future. Beside this,mastery of English language is an essential for our future life due to the close connection of the whole world. It is also a good way to make our Chinese culture more comprehensive,more creative and more colorful.

篇二：Chinese-Culture

Chinese culture

As far as I am concerned, it is necessary to learn Chinese culture course for foreign

learners at Chinese colleges and universities as we are Chinese and the Chinese culture is well-established, broad and profound.

? China has a 5 000-year history of the development of civilization. The Chinese culture is one of the most ancient cultures in the world, and the only one that has lasted for thousands of years without suspension. Chinese as we are, learning Chinese culture is one of our most significant tasks during your whole life, you have to start with traditional Chinese culture whoever you will be in the future. Because it has a profound affection in every aspects of our daily life. For instance, a lot of remarkable theories and thoughts are still popular in today’s society. These precious heritages become the guideline of our moral standards. In addition, one of the core principles of traditional Chinese culture is that of harmony between humans and nature. Since one's life must respect and conform to the seasons. This is a way of life that pursues harmony with nature and with others, simplicity, and a feeling of warmth and oneness with all. The traditional worldview, values and mode of thinking of the Chinese people stem from a perennial process of historical development.

Chinese culture has also influenced the world for thousands of years with its art,

philosophy, technology, food, medicine and performing arts. Ancient Chinese culture not only contributes civilization or "four great inventions" to the world. In Ming and Qing dynasty, Confucianism had influenced the Renaissance in Europe since the new idea formed by combining modern history, and it became the leading European spirit - an important Enlightenment thoughts origin. In addition, as shining treasure in Chinese traditional culture, more and more classical Chinese poems are translated into various foreign languages. The translation of classical Chinese poems plays an important role in the transmission of Chinese culture in the world.

Aside from the obvious benefits Chinese culture, the lack of a traditional culture in China has a larger effect on Chinese lifestyles than you might first realize.In recent years, more and more young people have been fascinated to celebrate western festivals, and forget our traditional festivals. It’s a sign of the times that Chinese people are taking to celebrating Western traditional festivals in droves. The media join in, building up the

festivals through wide coverage. Above all, business people seize the opportunity to add more sparks and whip up the celebrations into frenzy of buying and eating. We may not pursue the Western cultures out of our own will, but our own cultures are put away

unconsciously while we are enjoying the fast-food culture brought by Western festivals. Look around our surroundings. McDonald's, KFC, hamburgers and pizzas flourish in all Chinese cities, big or small, in China, even in the rural areas. Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Halloween and April Fool’s Day seem to have become part of Chinese culture. We are

gradually losing our traditional festivals and foreign festivals are coming in and taking over. With the progress of urbanization, celebrating the traditional festivals is losing popularity in some big cities. Although older citizens still maintain their passion for the traditional festivals, the young are no longer interested. This all leads to situation that China is neglecting its own traditions by embracing western culture so enthusiastically. An

American sociologist said that the spread of American popular cultures would be the most effective action to realize the unification of the globe. This is a true problem that we are seeing all over the world, and the main reason behind it is unfortunately Globalization. Economically and industrially speaking, we can’t neglect the negative effects it has on culture and society.

China fully respects the diversity and differences of various nations and cultures. It advocates coexistence instead of conflicts, dialogue instead of confrontations,

communication instead of blockade, tolerance instead of repulsion. It calls for all cultures to learn from one another and work together to seek universal development.

Actually we are living at a time when two cultures are merging into each other. As Traditional Chinese Culture spreads around the world and more people become

interested in Chinese, foreign culture and concepts have begun to spread into China. This is inevitable as development is increasing communication and integration. More and more foreigners are studying Chinese and great masses of Chinese people are studying English in order to aid this goal of communication. Yet, even foreign popular cultural

aspects have begun to spread as well. But we need to pay more attention to our spirit, to our traditional Chinese culture. Either academic thinking and creative convergence on eastern and western cultures since the 20th century under the background of severe collision between eastern and western cultures, or carrying forward the spirit of the

thousand-year-long Chinese culture to the world, is all connected with Chinese traditional culture. As a result, we should be aware of the situation that we are losing the cultural identity in facing the cultural globalization. We’re losing one of the things that count the most: our identity, the uniqueness in us, that which makes us special and allows us to stand out from the world.

So protecting our traditional culture is the historical mission of our generation. As an English learner, it is expected that we will increase our awareness of our own cultural characteristics. We need to pay more attention to our spirit, to our traditional Chinese culture. That’s why the Chinese culture course is so important to foreign languages learners in China.

篇三：The Challenges Faced by Chinese EFL Young Learners

Research Proposal

郭雨明

20120110334

Guangdong University of Foreign Studies

Postgraduate Academic Writing

Research Proposal

题 目 The Challenges Faced by Chinese Young EFL 姓 名 郭 雨 明 学 号 20120110334 学 院 Faculty of English Language and Culture 专 业

二○一三年一月

1. Introduction

The elementary education is of primary importance to the development and prosperity of a country. This is particular the case in China, where the need for qualified personnel is becoming increasingly urgent in the recent years. The education of a foreign language, especially English, is indispensable to the educational system as “the world is becoming a village”. We need personnel with global vision and language ability to communicate with other countries. In Hong Kong, children begin to learn English from Grade1 at public schools. And for some children the age of learning English could be as early as three when they are in kindergartens. The case in Hong Kong might be particular, but in most Asian countries English courses are offered at Grade 3(Zhang HL & Luan FJ, 2002). Although the necessity of learning English from middle school to university is made clear, it remains to be testified whether English courses should be obligatory at elementary schools. Doubts about the efficiency and necessity of English courses at elementary schools (Gui SH, 1992; Dong YP, 2003) always remind us to take early English education seriously and to develop appropriate and available courses for the pupils.

1.1. The national curriculum standard

Although persistent researches are needed in order to make the English courses for young learners more feasible and practical, the truth is that we do make English courses compulsory in elementary schools in China. More than ten years has passed since the Ministry of Education published a nation wide instruction to launch English courses in elementary schools. Until 2008, about 70% of the schools have opened English courses and the figure is almost 100% in many major cities (Wang Q, 2009). Usually, pupils in elementary schools would, for the first time, receive English course that is carried out under the frame of national curriculum. This course is designed to be included in a series of English curriculum within the system of English Curriculum Standards (2011 edition) which contains nine level. And the second level corresponds

to the achievement of pupils in their English course at the end of Grade 6. This means that in order to graduate, they must pass the examination relevant to the requirements of the standard at second level.

At the same time, the this compulsory English course emphasize the comprehensive language ability, which not only includes the acquisition of language skills and knowledge, but also cultural awareness and the cultivation of value with the help of language. For instance, the development of global vision and sense of team spirit is regarded as one of the expectations for the students who receive the English course. Further, it seems that the curriculum-designers are ambitious enough to make full use of the English language, because the awareness of one’s own nation, the affection to the motherland and awareness of self-confidence are written into the English Curriculum Standards (2011 edition).

Furthermore, the “new curriculum standards” has laid the foundation of course de sign in elementary schools across China. Under the frame work of the “new curriculum”, the following basic concepts of courses should be taken into consideration:

Toward a full development of the students’ ability

Importance of individual differences

Focus on the continuity of language learning in nature

Focus on the practical use of language

Evaluation of comprehensive language ability

Using various resources in teaching

English Curriculum Standards (2011 edition)

It is also worth noting that the skill of playing is demanded at level 1 and level 2, which are supposed to accomplish in elementary schools. For example, at level 2 the children should be able to play some easy games with the English language, sing about thirty nursery rhymes in English and perform short plays with the help of teachers (English Curriculum Standards:2011 edition). The inclusion of this kind of

skill in the relatively low level of English acquisition suggests that the curriculum designers have taken the nature of children into full consideration.

In summary, the new national curriculum standard offers a comprehensive suggestion on the English course design in China. It involves the idea of communicative language ability, pragmatic language ability and strategic language ability. It also gains support form teaching methodology and various advanced technology, including multi-media and network resources. Thus, the theoretical foundation of the new standard is reliable enough to guide the English teaching and learning to an effective and efficient way. In addition, the new curriculum standard is closely connected to the national conditions—its unbalanced development, especially the gap between the rural and urban areas. Specially designed courses to correspond with local conditions are developed for the benefit of students in less developed areas.

1.2. Current situation of Chinese young learners: conditions and

demands

While reforms and resolutions are desirable, the current situation is not optimistic enough to prove that the plans are well implemented, or that the implementation is beneficial to the learners’ language ability. There is still a long way to go in order for the new curriculum standard to achieve its goal. For one thing, alongside with the new concepts about language knowledge and language ability, the new pedagogical principles and the new technology used in teaching process, the educational expectations and accountability are also increased. The importance of English language test is gradually increasing to become one of the major factors that determine the success of the secondary school entrance examination. A three year project in Hong Kong reported that stakeholders were using language tests and education to pursuit materials educational recourses (Chik & Besser, 2011). It is the similar situation in Guangzhou, where the secondary school entrance exam requires participants to finish an English language test with full score of 100. In addition, winners of Guangzhou English Contest for Primary Students could be admitted by

篇四：Chinese EFL Programs, Foreign Teachers, and Intercultural Communication Skills

Chinese EFL Programs, Foreign Teachers, and Intercultural Communication Skills

(Published in Crosslinks in English Language Teaching, 1, 2000.)

Abstract

This paper argues that use of English by Chinese people is virtually always for purposes of

intercultural communication, so training in intercultural communication (ICC) skills should be included in university English as a Foreign Language (EFL) programs. Because ICC is not usually taught as a part of university training programs for EFL teachers in China -- or in the West -- teachers often need to develop ICC skills and knowledge after graduation, and the presence of foreign EFL teachers on Chinese

university and college faculties provides one good avenue through which this can happen. However, this opportunity often goes unused because of inadequate interaction between Chinese and foreign faculty, and also because too little conscious attention is given to how such contact can be used to enhance the intercultural understanding of both Chinese and foreign teachers. The paper will conclude by suggesting a number of ways in which this situation can be rectified.

I. The importance of intercultural communication in EFL training

For Chinese people, the ultimate goal of English study should not be limited to a

knowledge of the language itself; the goal is rather to develop communication skills which allow Chinese to interact with people from other cultural backgrounds. Often this interaction is indirect, occurring through printed and visual media such as books, magazine, newspaper and journal articles, films, television programs, and so forth. However, as more and more foreigners come to China to work, study, or visit -- and as more and more Chinese go abroad for the same purposes -- there is also a constant increase in the amount of direct face to face interaction with foreigners. Needless to say, not all of China's contact with the outside world is confined to English-speaking nations such as such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. However, even much of China's interaction with people from non-English-speaking nations such as Brazil, Malaysia, and Poland takes place in English, the world's most widely used international language (Crystal 1997).

In Chinese primary and middle schools, students' attention is generally focused on

learning the mechanics of English so that they can do well on examinations, so this idea that the true purpose of English study is mastering intercultural communication skills is understandably obscured. However, by the time students reach university level it is both possible and necessary for students to turn their attention to the broader goals of English study, the ability to understand what people of other cultures mean and to make one's self understood to people of other cultures. For this purpose, mastery of the English language alone is insufficient. For example, citing the results of a British study of communication between native-born British and natives of South Asia and the Caribbean, Gumperz (1994) notes that even when the non-native speakers of English had a good command of the language, cultural differences between them and other British people resulted in a relatively high rate of miscommunication. As Young (1994) argues at length, Chinese who have developed a fairly good command of English often face the similar kinds of problems when interacting with Westerners. Of course, one way to address this problem is to teach students Western culture as well as English, and there is no doubt that such a strategy is beneficial to some extent. However, this strategy is limited in its effectiveness by the fact that it takes considerable time and effort for students to gain a good understanding of even one other culture, and it would be impossible for them to study in depth all of the cultures which they

might encounter over the course of a career, especially given the fact that in many settings where Chinese would need to use English, the people with whom they were communicating might not even be from Western cultural backgrounds.

Thus, in addition to studying the English language and Western culture, students of English should also be taught something about intercultural communication -- that particularly difficult kind of communication which takes place when people of two very different cultural backgrounds try to understand each other and make themselves understood to each other. This, in turn, suggests that Chinese teachers of English need themselves to learn as much as possible about the theoretical and practical aspects of ICC.

II. Lack of ICC training in EFL teacher training programs

Despite the desirability of including ICC training in EFL classes, teachers in China are often not well prepared to do this.1 One reason is that most English departments in Chinese

universities and teacher training colleges give minimal attention to ICC. While culture issues are often addressed in courses with titles like "Background to the US/UK," the goal of such courses is more to teach students about the major English-speaking nations than it is to help them learn ICC skills which could be generalized to all communication between people of different cultures. In fact, such courses may even unintentionally suggest to students that the key to effective

communication with foreigners -- or at least English-speaking Westerners -- lies in developing a better background knowledge about certain key cultures, and students often come away from such courses with the idea that Western cultures can be summer up in a (necessarily) limited set of generalizations. While such courses play an important role in the training of EFL teachers, we should not mistake training in cultural background knowledge for training in ICC; the two are related but also quite different. ICC skills are generalized habits and skills, applicable to any interaction between people of different cultural backgrounds, that help students better understand how to negotiate the often tricky task of interpreting the meaning and intentions of "others" whose cultural background is not familiar. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to list in detail the issues involved in ICC, a few of the most important include awareness of:

-- how one's own cultural pre-conceptions (ethnocentrism) can cause one to misinterpret the meaning and intentions of an "other";

-- how subtle differences in communication styles can lead to misunderstandings and negative judgments of the "other";

-- how the unfamiliarity and stress which are commonly a part of intercultural

interactions, especially the frequency with which one's expectations are violated, can unduly influence judgments about an "other;

-- the process by which we judge the intentions of "others," and the habit of delaying or suspending judgment.2

It should be noted that it is by no means only in China that ICC plays little role in EFL training. In the West the academic field of ICC has developed rather separately from the field of 1 "China" here and below primarily refers to the Chinese mainland, but many of the generalizations are more or less true for Hong Kong as well.

2 For a brief introduction to issues in ICC, see Barna 1994. For a more thorough introduction see Lustig and Koester 1996 or Gundykunst and Kim 1997.

English language teaching, and while the Western EFL community has begun to give more

attention to ICC during the past few years, this is a fairly recent development. Most EFL teacher training programs still do not require students to take a course in ICC; in fact, many programs do about one fourth of such programs offer a course which is explicitly entitled "Intercultural

Communication" or the equivalent, and only about one fifth of the programs require students to take such a course.3 Another indication of the relative lack of attention given to ICC is its role in TESOL, the largest professional organization of EFL and ESL teachers in the West. While TESOL has long had "interest sections" representing the various major aspects of English

teaching, such as grammar, testing, and so forth, it was not until quite recently (1996) that such an interest section for intercultural communication issues was formed.

The second reason many Chinese EFL teachers are ill-prepared to teach ICC is that many have never had much opportunity for contact with Westerners or other foreigners, hence most have little first-hand experience of intercultural communication. While over the years it has

become more and more possible for Chinese EFL teachers to study or live abroad for a period of time, such opportunities are still relatively limited, and the great majority of Chinese EFL teachers have not lived in a foreign country for any length of time. The number of foreigners living in China is also relatively small, at least when compared to China's population, and not many Chinese EFL teachers have a "foreign friend" in China.

III. Foreign teachers as an opportunity for intercultural interaction.

One avenue through which many Chinese EFL teachers do have the opportunity for

intercultural experience is through the presence of foreign teachers in an ever-growing number of Chinese universities, colleges, and even some middle schools. Whereas foreign teachers were relatively few and far between during the early 1980s, and were once found primarily at larger universities in China's major cities, especially in the relatively wealthy eastern coastal provinces, over the past two decades it has become ever more common for language departments even in relatively small colleges to have one or more foreign teachers. For example, now even in

relatively less-developed provinces like Jiangxi, it is not uncommon for many smaller schools such as two- and three-year prefectural teacher training colleges (shi zhuan) to have foreign teachers.4 As a result of this growing foreign presence in Chinese schools, an increasing number of Chinese EFL teachers have at least one foreign colleague, hence at least some opportunity for first-hand ICC experience through contact with foreign colleagues in their departments.

Obviously one reason contact with foreign teachers can potentially help Chinese EFL teachers build ICC skills is that such contact is in and of itself a form of ICC. Perhaps less

obvious but equally important, the presence of foreign teachers is a good learning opportunity for 3 Garshick 1998. Many of the EFL teacher training programs listed require students to take a course entitled something like "Language and Culture," and it is possible that such courses have an ICC component, but it would seem unlikely that ICC is the major focus of most such courses, and it may not be included in them at all.

4 Through personal contact, I am aware that there are now foreign teachers in the teachers colleges (shi zhuan) of at least eight of Jiangxi's prefectures.

their Chinese colleagues because foreign teachers in China are usually undergoing a fairly intense experience of intercultural communication and adaptation as they adjust to life in a culture which is significantly different from their own. The specific problems these foreign teachers from the United States, United Kingdom and other countries encounter in trying to understand Chinese people and culture are necessarily somewhat different from the difficulties Chinese people have when trying to understand Westerners and other foreigners, hence the

lessons that these foreign teachers learn are not always the same lessons Chinese teachers would need to learn or pass on to their students about relating to Westerners. However, the broad general types of ICC issues that foreign teachers encounter in China are often quite similar to those Chinese encounter when dealing with Westerners. Consider the following examples, first of foreign teachers in China interacting with Chinese and then of Chinese in the US interacting with Americans:5

buy a Chinese colleague to help edit a paper the colleague was writing. As they

worked together over several evenings, Sarah felt that she and the colleague were

becoming friends. However, when the paper was finished, the colleague stopped

coming to visit. As Sarah later said, she was hurt because this did not coincide

with her notion of how a friend should behave, and she felt somewhat "used."

(Later, however, when Sarah was working on a project of her own she discovered

that the colleague was more than willing to be called on for help, and she decided

that her original judgment that her colleague had "used" her was unfair.)

a poetry course for the young faculty members of his department. He had

previously taught poetry in the US, and had also successfully taught such a course

to colleagues during a previous stay in China. The approach he used in class was

to ask the Chinese participants to present their views and interpretations of each

poem considered, and then have group discussion. Bob consistently refused to

share his own views of the poems because he felt that his ideas might be taken as

the "right answer," hence shutting off discussion. He felt the main goal of the

course was to help the Chinese participants to develop their own interpretive

ability.

After the first few weeks, attendance in the course began to fall off, and

eventually a small delegation from the class came to ask Bob to lecture more

about standard Western interpretations of the poems. As this did not coincide with

Bob's goals, he refused to do this, and over the following weeks attendance

continued to fall. In the end it was decided by mutual agreement to cancel the

course. By this time Bob was upset with the department because he felt that by

letting more and more participants drop out they had demonstrated a lack of

support for the course. He was also critical of the participants, feeling they were

5 The first two examples are based on stories related to me by the participants. While I have altered details in order to protect anonymity, the intercultural issues in the examples are faithful to the actual incidents. My thanks to the teachers who shared these stories. Examples three and four are also based on true stories, taken from of Chen 1998, chapter four.

not willing to work hard enough developing their own views and wanted to take an easier route, simply memorizing his "received wisdom." (The students, in turn, complained that they could figure out their own views without the assistance of a foreign teacher; what they wanted from Bob was a perspective different from their own. They were also under time pressure, and felt that if the course didn't serve their needs their time could be better spent in other ways.)

an English major in university and had had fairly extensive contact with Westerners in China through his work. He was thus confident that he would experience few communication difficulties in the US and would adjust smoothly to life there. This confidence was bolstered in the first weeks after his arrival in the US by the success of several short visits he made to Americans he had met in China.

However, when Jiao Lin started working at a part time job he found it was often difficult to follow the conversation and especially the jokes made by his American co-workers, and after a time he noticed that they began slowing down their speech when talking to him. They also often asked him if he understood what they were saying. Jiao Lin found this patronizing and somewhat insulting; his view was that he would ask if he didn't understand, so there was no need for them to ask. Jiao Lin came to feel that these co-workers and other Americans who engaged in similar behavior looked down on him, and over time he became less and less willing to interact with them or try to be friends with them.

encounter with a female American classmate. The class was on an a work-project outing, and Jiao Lin tried to carry a large board for his classmate. (Apparently she was picking it up and he tried to take it from her.) Instead of thanking him, to Jiao Lin's shock and puzzlement, she accused him of being prejudiced against women. The incident embarrassed and angered Jiao Lin, made him feel stupid, and made him less sure of himself and more cautious about doing anything. In general he stopped offering to help Americans, and even began avoiding them, especially women. He felt he was too different from them, and that there was no point in trying to make his way into their social circle.

篇五：Evaluation of Chinese EFL learners

An Evaluation of Chinese EFL learners’ actual word processing and

lexical learning in performing a collaborative output task

The paper written by NIU Ruiying is aimed to investigate the association between Chinese EFL learners’ actual word processing and lexical learning in performing a collaborative output task. By analyzing previous studies, the author found that existing studies haven’t obtained a unanimous result and had their own limitations. The author’s research focuses on how Chinese EFL learners’ word processing in performing a collaborative output task is associated with both their receptive and lexical learning. In the experiment, 98 samples selected among first-year English majors in South China were paired according to their semester final English core courses scores.

NIU Ruiying employs both learning task(collaborative oral output) which takes form of text reconstruction and practice task to realize the research purpose. Two kinds of vocabulary pretests and four types of post-tests are employed to set up participants’ baseline knowledge of the target word and to assess both lexical acquisition and retention. Post-test 3 and 4 are same as Post-test 1(10 target words and 4 distracters) and 2(only 10 target words). The experiment lasts six weeks during which the data is collected in listening class by sound recording. In Week 2, 3, 5 and 6, Post-test 1, 2, 3 and 4 are administered.

The author analysis data through both qualitative and quantitative procedure. As some participants absent data collection session, 72 participants’ post-tests were scored. The productive post-tests are measured by letter-based scoring(LPSP) while the receptive post-tests are rated using graded scoring(VSK assessment scheme). This paper codes and quantifies participants’ cognitive word processing, and analyses them in four steps. Based on data analysis, the study found that the participants use four types of cognitive word processing: simple repetition, metatalk, generative use and reflective repetition. According to the statistic comparison, the researcher finds that participants who did more word processing, achieved better productive lexical learning; overall processing, simple repetition, generative use and reflective repetition have a positive affect to receptive lexical learning while the amount of metatalk tend not to affect in this aspect; more word processing lead to a greater productive lexical acquisition and retention.

As a small scale study, it still has limitations. However, despite limitations, the study finds out the correlation between word processing and lexical learning corroborates the role of word processing depth in lexical learning. Moreover, the author also points out the aspects or perspectives can be studied by future research.

Empirical study is data-based or data driven, aiming at describing phenomenon and finding out an explanatory and predictable general rule. In this research, the data are in the form of numbers. According to the instrument the author used to collect data, it is a pretest/post-test equivalent true-experimental research which belongs to empirical study. Theobjective of this article is to investigate the association between Chinese EFL learners’ actual word processing and their lexical learning in performing a collaborative oral output task. Heuristic objective is to describe what happens or to gather data and

generate the hypotheses about the phenomenon studied. In this research, the author doesn’t have a hypothesis at very beginning. On the contrary, by analyzing data, she draws a conclusion which reveals the relationship among factors in research purpose. The objective of this paper is heuristic as it comes into general principles by experiment about the phenomenon studied.

In the article, the author states the research questions explicitly. She mentions three research questions in the third part:

? What cognitive word processing will be involved in Chinese EFL learners’

performance of a collaborative output task?

? How is Chinese EFL learners’ cognitive word processing correlated with their

productive lexical learning in performing the collaborative output task?

? How is Chinese EFL learners’ cognitive word processing correlated with their

receptive lexical learning in performing the collaborative output task?

As the author states in the article, for research design, this study adopted mixed methods in the sense that both qualitative and quantitative data are concerned at all stages of the research. For features of qualitative design, researcher design an experiment to generate hypotheses about her research questions, that is, research questions are gradually specified in the process of study. What’s more, it is a small-scale study which includes 98 samples but only 72 participants’ post-tests are collected so that the outcome is not generalizable enough. Moreover, this research collects data in a structured way and analyzes these data statistically, which are the features of quantitative design.

The samples are 98 undergraduate first-year English majors in South China who have passed the national entrance examination. They had learned English for 7 to 9 years, 80 females and 18 males, aged on average 19. They are paired according to their semester final English core course scores. After the pretest screening and excluding those who absent from any data collection session, 72 participants’ post-posts are scored.

The instrumentsused to collect the data include learning tasks and vocabulary pretest and post-tests. For learning task, the chosen passage is expositive, without cultural-loaded words and non-essential sentences. 10 words(2 nouns, 3 adjectives and 5 verbs) were selected as target words and 6 words as distracters. The pretest is intended to find out the participants’ baseline knowledge of target words by Laufer and Nation’s controlled productive vocabulary size while employs VKS(get ride of Category V) to assess participants’ receptive lexical learning.In order to examine both lexical acquisition and retention, four vocabulary post-test are employed.

In this research, the independent variables are four types of word processing and overall word processing

while the dependent variables are both learners’ productive and receptive lexical learning and retention. There is a cause-effect relationship between these two variables: the frequencies of these word processing will affect learners’ productive and receptive lexical learning and retention in different degree.

The author uses quantitative data analysis procedures to draw her conclusion. For quantitative method, letter-based scoring and VKS assessment scheme are employed to score the result of pretest and post-test. The former calculates the percentage of correct

letters and takes the percentage as the score; the latter rates each target word on five-points scale. What’s more, the author codes and quantifies participants’ cognitive word processing. In the part of Finding, she compares the statistic of categories to find out the frequency of four types of cognitive word processing, the relationship between word processing and productive lexical learning, correlation between word processing and receptive lexical learning, etc.

However, in this research, there are some factors may affect the external and internal validity of the research. In this research, factors related to the subject (morality) and measurement may affect internal validity while factors related to selection of subjects may affect the external validity. For this research, factor of mortality which refers to the loss of subjects during the experiment will affect internal validity. During the research, 26 participants are excluded because of the absence of data collection session. Another set of factors which might affect the internal validity is related to measurement. Participants’ performances are all audio-recorded with their permission so that the researcher can analyze the data later on. However, method of audio recording will cause psychological effect like nervousness which may affect participants’ performance, even the result of research. For the factors affecting external validity, selection of subject is involved in this study. If the researcher wants to be able to generalize her findings, the choice of sample should be more general. The object of this study should be Chinese EFL learners. However, her samples are chosen among English majors students, which affect the university and accuracy of research.

In conclusion, this paper shows the correlation between word processing and lexical learning corroborates the role of word processing depth in lexical learning, which makes contributions in the field of English learning. Researcher uses a huge mass of literature as reference material. She points out the limitations of these previous studies and tries to avoid these defects in her own research. By controlling the intervening variables as far as possible, her experiment is rigorous and thorough. Well-organized and logical, her paper can help readers easily find out the research question, instruments, result, etc. Especially in the part of data analysis, the tables make the results more authentic and help readers understand the outcome. What’s more, as the simplicity of her experimental processing, this experiment can be reproduced by other researchers. Moreover, the author also points out the aspect or perspective the future studies can study.

However, this research still has limitations for ignoring the qualitative aspect of learners’ word processing and investigating only collaborative output task. In addition, as I mentioned above, there are some factors can affect the external and internal validity of the research, such as morality of subject, measurement and selection of subjects.

小学作文