Writing centers in U.S. colleges and universities help students improve their writing skills with unique operational and tutorial models,which have been globally promoted. However,the English writing education of the colleges and universities in China is not so well developed and only a small portion of universities have established English writing centers to provide tutoring services. Under the construction of the New Liberal Arts in China, the colleges and universities in China need to pay attention to personalized English writing tutoring services and to cultivate international talents. This paper reviews the theoretical bases, operation modes and characteristics of the English writing center for the past three decades, makes a comprehensive summary according to different research topics,and proposes the suggestions on the construction and development of English writing centers in China.
An important way to build “double world-class” medical universities is to improve students’ medical English quality. Based on the practice of medical English teaching in a medical university in Fujian Province, this study focuses on the implementation and evaluation of medical English teaching that integrates content-based instruction and project-based learning. There are four implementation approaches: optimizing teaching content with medical knowledge as the core, designing content-based projects for medical students, constructing project scenarios out of authentic language materials and evaluating the projects and the course with content-based tests. Through a questionnaire survey and semistructured interviews, it is found that the teaching of this course has positive effects on students’ knowledge acquisition, competence improvement and quality cultivation. The study may provide reference for the improvement of medical English course teaching.
The paper summarizes the methodological assumptions of cognitive grammar into “six phases”: phases of observation, data collection, theoretical development, validation, comparison and formalization, and five principles, i.e. factuality, economy, explicitness, generality and predictiveness. The methods in cognitive grammar prove to be a unification of empirical and theoretical methods, an integration of systemic and analytical methods and an association of specific analysis with abstract generalizations. The methodological principles of cognitive grammar turn out to be the one with dialectical thinking as its guide, and characteristics of sticking to the law of the unity of opposites and combining research subject with research object.
Contextual metaphor refers to the phenomen on where one genresymbolizes another. This study examines multimodal contextual metaphor and attempts to develop a four-dimensional analytical frame work underpinned by Systemic Functional Linguistics.A political cartoon is then analyzed to verify the frame work as well as to look in to the mechanism of multimodal contextual metaphor.It is found that the six meaning-corresponding strategies, including double-coding, imitating and symbolizing representational meaning, appraisal transfer, interactional mapping, and compositional parasitizing, facilitate the realization of a surface genre and a symbolized genre. The surface genre is characterized by a typical mode, whose generic structure is not completely presented, while the symbolized one features an untypical mode, whose generic structure is fully presented. A multimodal contextual metaphor blends features of both the surface genre and the symbolized genre, which further expands the meaning potential.
Xu Guangqi was a preeminent scitech translator in the late Ming Dynasty while Li Shanlan was his counterpart in the late Qing Dynasty. Although living in totally different historical periods, they did contribute to the dissemination of Western learning in China with Western science and culture at its core, which had an influence on both that time and later ages.Based on sorting out the historical materials regarding Xu’s and Li’s translations of Ji He Yuan Ben, this article finds out the similarities in their translation skopos, text selection principles,organizing patterns and translation features, and explores the causes for such similarities from historical, geographic, and individual perspectives,to see how Xu and Li have made dialogues with each other across time and space via translating distinct parts of the same book. This article aims to promote translation studies of Ji He Yuan Ben and studies on the two sci-tech translators Xu Guangqi and Li Shanlan.
Knowledge graph in foreign language discipline is a semantic network that represents and organizes various knowledge points, the relationship between knowledge points and the relationship between knowledge and resources in the field of foreign language. With the rapid development of language intelligence represented by ChatGPT, it is of great significance to construct a deep, accurate and professional disciplinary knowledge graph for intelligent foreign language teaching. Taking LingNet as an example, this paper introduces the features, architecture and application scenarios of foreign language knowledge graph,aiming at deeply integrating cognitive intelligence with foreign language teaching and promoting the digital transformation and development of intelligent foreign language education in China.
Based upon a brief introduction to embodied mentalism, pluralism, and multiple interactions of postmodern philosophy, this paper has conducted a case study to explore the postmodernistic features of multimodal interaction research. It finds that multimodal interaction research treats verbal and non-verbal modes as equal objects of study under the tenet of eliminating disembodied mentalism and language centralism, and advocates embodied mentalism.Specifically, multimodal interaction research,holding multiple research perspectives and methodologies, tends to investigate the multiple interaction between subjects and subjects, and between subjects and the external environment in naturally occurring conversations. The fit between the basic tenets of postmodern philosophy and those of multimodal interaction indicates the symbiosis of linguistics and philosophy in a new fashion.
Xu-argument is a hypothesis proposed by Chinese scholar Wang Chuming for enhancing the efficiency of foreign language learning.From the length approach to the reading-writing integrated continuation task and then to the xuargument, the study of continuation has been more than ten years, and its influence is growing.Against this backdrop, the paper, by collating the empirical research literature in the past ten years with the themes of the xu-argument and the reading-writing integrated continuation task,reviews relevant research on the promoting effect of the reading-writing integrated continuation task,the factors that constrain the alignment effect of the task, the practical application of the task, and other continuation tasks. The future research agenda and tendency of xu-argument are also discussed.
The paper proposes different views on the universality of the “Space-Time Mapping Hypothesis ” based on the res earch on the conceptualization of future expressions in English.Through the discussion of the “conceived future” and its conceptualization, it is found that:（1） Conceived future is the process of the world’s existence after the reference point, including the process of motion itself, distance and direction.（2） After repeated experience and perception, cognizers conceptualize different aspects of the conceived future and generate different concepts of the future. The mechanism of the conceptualization of future expressions in English is mainly conceptual metaphor or conceptual metaphor-metonymy. The paper holds that “TIME origins from SPACE” is a universal cognitive law, but the three cognitive models of space-time metaphor proposed by Lakoff et al., namely “MOVING TIME”, “MOVING EGO” and “TEMPORAL SUCCESSION” do not apply to the generation of all temporal concepts. The conceptualization of different aspects of conceived future by cognizers is an important motivation for the generation of different future expressions in English.
As an important translation activity, scitech translation often plays an important role in promoting the overall national social productivity,which can maximally highlight translators’ national consciousness. This paper, by taking Xu Guangqi, a translator in the late Ming Dynasty,as an example, expounds the formation of the translator’s national consciousness in terms of the social conditions, family environment and educational background, and then discusses Xu Guangqi’s national consciousness in his translation activities from perspectives of materials, ideas and readers. Finally, it discusses the enlightenment of Xu Guangqi’s national consciousness embodied in sci-tech translation on how to cultivate university students’ national consciousness.
In recent years, the combination of CLII（content and language integrated instruction）and TBLT（task-based language teaching） has created a new model of foreign/second language teaching: the interface of content and language integrated instruction and task-based language teaching（CLII-TBLT interface）. The present review starts with the definition of CLII-TBLT interface and then it explores its theoretical and practical foundations, followed by a discussion of its research achievements in terms of model construction studies and empirical studies. Finally,the future directions in CLII-TBLT interface research are presented. The study may shed light on the improvement of both content and language integrated instruction and foreign language education.
Based on the principle of nonlocality and other relative principles of quantum mechanism, this paper probes into the generation mechanism of oxymoron by proposing the Nonlocality Connection Model（NLCM）. According to this model, the generating process of oxymoron can be described as follows. Firstly, under the speaker’s intentionality and co-guidance of specific context,and further under the influence of non-locality law governing the activity of brain quanta and the related superposition and entanglement effect, the non-locality connection between contradictory concepts is constructed in the conscious activity after the speaker has perception and feeling about the object to be expressed. Secondly, based on the projection between the activity of brain quanta and the linguistic expression, the contradictory concepts in the consciousness are externalized into the contradictory semantic components in the linguistic expressions. Thirdly, based on the nonlocality contradictory connection, an oxymoron expression reflecting the speaker’s intention is established. Non-locality connection between contradictory concepts and the integration of meanings facilitated by the related superposition and entanglement effect are the key points of the generation process.
In this study, a questionnaire survey was conducted on 1 072 English majors and 948non-English majors to examine the relationship among learner self-efficacy, classroom anxiety,and subjective engagement in the classroom.Modeling the path influence relationship among the variables of the two student groups, it was found that the two groups had the same path relationship characteristics in the following three aspects:（1） Classroom anxiety regulates the relationship between self-efficacy and selflearning engagement.（2） A chain mediating effect can be formed between classroom teacher engagement, classroom peer engagement, selfefficacy, and classroom self-learning engagement.（3） Classroom anxiety positively affects selfefficacy and negatively affects self-learning engagement, but the latter coefficient is very low.The results were discussed with reference to the path influence model and conclusions were drawn,with implications for the future foreign language teaching and learning practice.
Pragmatic translation and literary translation are two aspects of translation, both of which have long histories. However, there has been only the history of literary translation up to now. This paper proposes construction of the history of pragmatic translation in China, which can be divided into four periods. The paper focuses on the research objects and scope of the history of pragmatic translation in China and outlines some problems in the field, and proposes some suggestions.
China is a big agricultural country and also a big agricultural proverb country.Agricultural proverbs are summed up by working people through their careful daily observation and their own life practices, reflecting the practical experiences of working people’s lives, and are the result of collective wisdom and natural environment. Agricultural proverbs contain rich agricultural knowledge and ecological values,they permeate and influence each other with Confucianism and Taoism, and they are an important part of Chinese excellent traditional culture. This paper discusses the characteristics of agricultural proverbs within the framework of the civilization of agricultural society and explores proverbs from a linguistic perspective.The research in this paper shows that the meaning of agricultural proverbs cannot be fully understood without semantic, grammatical, contextual,pragmatic and ecological analyses.
This study made a comparative analysis of the diachronic evolution of the most typical color words — “hong/red” “bai/white” and “hei/black”in Chinese by means of a corpus-based dynamic behavioral profile（BP） analysis. It aimed to explore these verbalized color words’ features of behavioral profile, typical meanings’ evolution paths and their internal cognitive mechanisms and motivations in different historical periods. The results showed that the verbalized color words are mainly used to express “the dynamic process of color change of things”（physical meaning） and “the psychological process of emotional change of people”（emotional meaning）,which are mainly negative emotions. According to the corpus statistics, up to now, the verbalized “hong/red” is more likely to be connected with people or human parts to express the dynamic changes of people’s emotions; while the verbalized “hei/black” and “bai/white” tend to be connected with specific things, showing the dynamic process of things’ color change, which is closely related to the Chinese cultural cognition. The cognitive mechanism of verbalized color words is mainly metonymy, and the process of “new meanings’ generation, expansion,solidification and recycling” is also a powerful explanation of “categorization and decategorization” theory.
This paper aims to explore the impacts of peer assessment on a non-English-major graduate role-play project. The quantitative findings reveal that both teacher’s evaluation and peer assessment were helpful for students to gain enjoyment and enhancement through teamwork. After peer assessment was adopted, 76.6% of the students received different numerical scores from their original group scores and the range of score differences was expanded by about 2.4 times. Peer assessment is conducive to improving evaluation fairness.However, the practice of peer assessment showed no significant effect on the further enhancement of the students’ group learning experiences. It was also found that 34.8% of the graduate students doubted or even dismissed the necessity of such an evaluation method. Moreover, due to the complexity of calculating individual contribution scores, the author suggests that a computer app should be developed to automatically calculate individual contributions.
This research focuses on college English language learners’ motivation and self-regulation in online language learning environments. A quantitative study was conducted based on 979students’ responses to two questionnaires at eight universities located in Beijing and Taiwan, China.The results indicated that university students in Beijing and Taiwan had rich online learning experiences although they employed different online platforms or resources for learning English.In general, learners at universities in Taiwan showed stronger motivation for learning English than learners at universities in Beijing. In contrast,learners from universities in Beijing perceived more effectively in goal setting, environmental structuring, and time management when learning online. The instrumental motivation of English language learners at universities in Beijing and Taiwan could positively predict all factors in their online self-regulated learning. Meanwhile,“cultural interest” played a significantly negative role in predicting most factors of online selfregulated learning. The research mapped the current status and structural relations between English language learners’ motivation and online self-regulation among university students in Beijing and Taiwan. It also provided empirical evidence and pedagogical implications for enhancing future educational exchanges and improving the quality of online education at both sides of the Taiwan Straits.
This study investigates college English teachers’ perceptions of alternative assessment and explores their influencing factors through quantitative analyses of questionnaire data and qualitative analyses of answers to subjective items. Results show that teachers’ perceptions are positive towards the cultural dimension of alternative assessment, uncertain about the political and postmodern dimension, and negative about the dimensions of assessment ability and teaching environment. In addition, course types have great influence on teacher’ perceptions; college types,teachers’ gender, educational backgrounds, majors and years of teaching experience have certain influence on their perceptions; the number of assessment courses, training and conferences has no significant impact on their perceptions. This study puts forward suggestions for improving teacher education, teacher training and teaching management.
Chinese-foreign co-produced medical dramas are conducive to constructing China’s national image across the medical field. They can both advocate for a global community of health for all and make the concept available to people around the world. High-quality translations prove essential throughout a range of aspects of internationalized film production. This study explores the application of Culpeper’s cognitive stylistic approach to characterisation of medical professionals, using the Chinese to English translation of the film literary script based on the significant historical event in China’s global engagement against the pandemic as an example. The study aims to provide theoretical guidance, key elements for characterisation, and an operational process for relevant translation practices. It explores new perspectives in audiovisual translation studies and enhances the influence, appeal, and formative power of Chinese stories in the medical field.
