Earticle

The English language curriculum (ELC) of Hong Kong and that of Shanghai have undergone drastic changes in the last decade. This paper compares the primary ELC of the two cities in the light of their reforms which started in the early 1990s. The comparison focuses on the aims and objectives of the curricula which are often the first level of discussion and analysis from which other corresponding components of the curriculum fall in place and educational decisions made. The comparison is analyzed using the conceptual framework of educational value systems (Clark 1987; Morris 1995; Skilbeck, 1982). The findings show that the Hong Kong ELC is more inclined towards the personally oriented values of “Progressivism” while that of Shanghai is more inclined towards the society oriented educational values of “Reconstructionism”. A review of the prevalent politico-economic-socio contexts of the two cities shows that the aims of the two ELC have their different extent of compatibility with the contexts in which they were conceived and enacted. The paper argues that there is a need for the curriculum development in both cities to be conducted in a more “teacher-centred” way while addressing the needs of the society at large.

This paper examines the mental processes of the highly proficient and less proficient tertiary students in a Malaysian tertiary institution while reading academic texts through the use of student diaries. Being process oriented, the study conducted was treated as a case study which lasted in 14 weeks time. Four research participants with twelve journal entries each were involved during the data collection. The analysis of the data from the student diaries was conducted using the Constant Comparative Method (Wellington, 2000, p. 137). For triangulation purposes, the reading texts read by the participants were also collected for document analysis. The study has yielded interesting findings on how the different academic reading proficiency of the selected tertiary students was reflected by the difference in quality in their use of the identified academic reading strategies. These findings have direct implications on the teaching and learning of the English language for the tertiary students. Besides enlightening the trainers, curriculum designer and policy makers, the findings have also provided means and ways on how the tertiary students could be more reflective of their academic reading strategies and be able to regulate their academic reading strategies more effectively through the use of student diaries.

In the field of foreign language education, learner autonomy, one of the ultimate goals of education, has been greatly promoted in China ever since the late 1990s. The present study examined via a questionnaire the status quo of Chinese postgraduate students’ autonomous English learning (AEL), aiming to present a clear picture of students’ autonomous learning situation for the improving of pedagogy. 292 postgraduate students from 7 universities were asked to report their attitudes towards AEL and actual out-of-class AEL behaviors. The findings revealed that postgraduate students generally held strongly positive attitudes towards AEL but exhibited only moderate frequency of autonomous learning behaviors outside of class. Students’ attitudes and behaviors were statistically significantly correlated, but the correlation was not high enough to guarantee that positive attitudes will bring about high frequency of AEL behaviors. Except for the perception of the importance of classroom teaching and learning, students of different genders showed no significant differences in either attitudes towards AEL or AEL behaviors. Suggestions on postgraduate English teaching were subsequently discussed.

The aims of this exploratory study are to explain the theoretical background to the design of a ‘Strategic Competence Test’ for EFL learners, the initial stages of the development of the test and an evaluation of its design and potential usefulness through a trial with Japanese high school students. Communicative competence consists of several major sub-competences. One of these, Strategic Competence, used to receive little attention in foreign language classrooms. However, the importance of nurturing this competence in learners has become increasingly recognized by many researchers and practitioners. This paper presents the brief theoretical background to the design of a ‘Strategic Competence Test,’ based on Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei and Thurrell (1995). The test, conducted with 264 Japanese high school students, was designed so that the results would show which specific strategies were familiar to them and also what differences could be seen between higher and lower test score groups. The results of the study give an indication of how a more extensive test might be used in deciding how to promote the learners’ knowledge of communication strategies that are important for getting involved in conversations more actively.

In the Hallidayan framework, theme and rheme form the message structure of the clause (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, p. 64). The patterning of theme and rheme in the text accounts for how the main ideas are structured and developed. The pioneering work of Daneš (1970, 1974) on thematic progression (TP) has been particularly valuable in showing how thematic patterning affects the flow and development of the message in various ways. Using the Hallidayan framework (incorporating Daneš’s TP), 20 essays written by upper secondary school students in Singapore are analyzed for theme and rheme. The good and weak essays in the corpus are compared to find out if there are differences in the way the two groups of writers organise the message structure of their writing. The results show that there is little difference in the selection of theme between the two groups of essays. In terms of TP, however, a striking difference is noted. The good essays are characterised by elaborated developments of theme and rheme. The developments in the weak essays, in contrast, are thin.

This paper investigates the use of reading strategies and analyzes the reading behaviors of mature English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) readers. In brief, this study examines the reading performance of four Thai college students. Through the use of think-aloud protocols, interviews, and observations, I document EFL Thai students’ use of reading strategies while they are in the process of reading and comprehending four English and Thai texts. The findings reveal that three broad themes emerge from the analysis: a) the most frequentlyused strategies across readers in reading L1 and L2 texts, b) the effective use of reading strategies demonstrated by the students in reading L2, and; c) metacognition development in reading L2. However, the data did not provide adequate evidence to comment on the issues of the language transfer and cognates in reading L2 texts.

This paper focuses on conversational style differences between Japanese and English and how to overcome the differences in English teaching to Japanese speakers. Using videotaped English conversations between native speakers of American English and Japanese, it analyses their differences in conversational styles. The result shows that native speakers of English interpreted Japanese speakers’ verbal and nonverbal behaviors, such as nodding, frequent pauses or ellipsis, and taking turns, differently from Japanese speakers’ intentions and sometimes regarded them as unfriendly or unfavorable. In the second half of the paper, it reports the result of experimental English classes in which positive politeness strategies, one of the constituents of conversational strategies, were explicitly taught. It shows students’ progress in conversational skills by using various strategies they learned in class. The last part summarizes the findings and discusses implications of the results in relation to cultural differences and learner identity. It points out that English teaching inevitably involves teaching the conversational strategies of English speaking societies and that it is necessary to raise awareness of both Japanese and English speakers about their different conversational styles and strategies.

This study investigated the separable and inseparable phrasal verbs in English by Korean learners of English. The target structures are: for separable phrasal verbs, bring in the chair and bring the chair in and for inseparable phrasal verbs, sit in the chair and the ungrammatical structure *sit the chair in. Native speakers were more precise in judging the separability of phrasal verbs than were Korean learners. In the three kinds of acceptability test, learners were more frequently correct when using inseparable phrasal verbs than when using separable phrasal verbs; this asymmetrical performance suggests that the learners can distinguish separable phrasal verbs from inseparable phrasal verbs. When using separable phrasal verbs, the learners show preference for the more frequent word sequence than the less frequent one and are sensitive to the corpus frequency. Pedagogical implications are discussed based on input sensitivity.

This paper reports on a study on students’ perceptions of a school-based English proficiency test. Administering a 60-item survey to 526 students in three different study years at a university in Beijing, the study revealed that (1) most students perceived different parts of the test difficult, (2) the majority of the participants felt anxious during the test, (3) first-year students considered the proficient test the easiest, felt the least anxious, and performed the best in the test, (4) students who considered one part of the proficiency test more difficult tended to score lower in that part, perceive other parts more challenging and feel more anxious during the test, and (5) all the measured variables were significantly related to one another and had a negative relationship with students’ achievement in the test. All these findings attest to the reliability and validity of the proficiency test. Based on these findings, some implications are discussed.