Becoming Laoshi in US High Schools: Case Studies of Three Foreign-Born Chinese Language Teacher Candidates

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Xiao

2012-01-01

The foreign-born Chinese speakers that currently make up the largest component of those training to become Chinese language teachers encounter challenges during their internship that differ significantly from those experienced by interns who are more familiar with U.S. culture and institutions. Qualitative case studies of three Chinese language…

Home Literacy Environment and Word Knowledge Development: A Study of Young Learners of Chinese as a Heritage Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Dongbo; Koda, Keiko

2011-01-01

This study examined young Heritage Language (HL) learners' home literacy environment and its impact on HL word-knowledge development, focusing on a group of Chinese-English bilingual children learning to read in Chinese as a Heritage Language in the United States. A home literacy survey revealed that parents mostly used HL to talk to children,…

Reading Comprehension, Working Memory and Higher-Level Language Skills in Children with SLI and/or Dyslexia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wong, Anita M.-Y.; Ho, Connie S.-H.; Au, Terry K.-F.; McBride, Catherine; Ng, Ashley K.-H.; Yip, Lesley P.-W.; Lam, Catherine C.-C.

2017-01-01

This study examined (1) whether working memory and higher-level languages skills--inferencing and comprehension monitoring--accounted for individual differences among Chinese children in Chinese reading comprehension, after controlling for age, Chinese word reading and oral language skills, and (2) whether children with specific language…

Designing between Pedagogies and Cultures: Audio-Visual Chinese Language Resources for Australian Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yuan, Yifeng; Shen, Huizhong

2016-01-01

This design-based study examines the creation and development of audio-visual Chinese language teaching and learning materials for Australian schools by incorporating users' feedback and content writers' input that emerged in the designing process. Data were collected from workshop feedback of two groups of Chinese-language teachers from primary…

Chinese Language Education in Europe: The Confucius Institutes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Starr, Don

2009-01-01

This article explores the background to the Chinese government's decision to embark on a programme of promoting the study of Chinese language and culture overseas. This includes the impact of Joseph Nye's concept of "soft power" in China, ownership of the national language, the Confucius connection, and how these factors interact with…

Chinese Language Teachers' Orientation to Reading Instruction and Their Instructional Practices

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lau, Kit-ling

2007-01-01

This study aimed to develop a set of quantitative instruments to investigate Hong Kong Chinese language teachers' orientation to reading instruction, their instructional practices and the relation between these two constructs under the implementation of the new curriculum. A total of 493 Chinese language teachers from 170 secondary schools in Hong…

Factors Influencing the Learning of Chinese Characters

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sung, Ko-Yin; Wu, Hsiao-Ping

2011-01-01

This survey study, which involved 108 language learners enrolled in first-year Chinese as a foreign language classrooms in the United States, intended to address the research questions, "What types of Chinese-character learning strategies do US learners use?" and "Do US learners' Chinese-character learning strategy use differ based on the…

Expanding Secondary School Chinese Language Programs: A Study of Potential Challenges

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dretzke, Beverly J.; Jordan, Kelly

2010-01-01

The current interest in learning Chinese has been fueled by the growing strength of the Chinese economy and the need for Americans who are able to communicate at an advanced level in fields of business, science, and government. The present study reports the results of a survey of secondary school students enrolled in Chinese language classes with…

Home Literacy Environment and English Language and Literacy Skills among Chinese Young Children Who Learn English as a Second Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yeung, Susanna S.; King, Ronnel B.

2016-01-01

The present study explored the home literacy environment for Chinese ESL kindergarteners and examined the relationships between home literacy practices and language and literacy skills. Ninety Hong Kong Chinese ESL kindergarteners were assessed for English vocabulary, phonological awareness, letter knowledge and word reading. Their parents…

English Phonological Awareness in Bilinguals: A Cross-Linguistic Study of Tamil, Malay and Chinese English-Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dixon, L. Quentin; Chuang, Hui-Kai; Quiroz, Blanca

2012-01-01

To test the lexical restructuring hypothesis among bilingual English-language learners, English phonological awareness (PA), English vocabulary and ethnic language vocabulary (Mandarin Chinese, Malay or Tamil) were assessed among 284 kindergarteners (168 Chinese, 71 Malays and 45 Tamils) in Singapore. A multi-level regression analysis showed that…

Exploring Potential Uses of ICT in Chinese Language Arts Instruction: Eight Teachers' Perspectives

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Janet Mei-Chuen; Lee, Greg C.; Chen, Hsiu-Yen

2004-01-01

Eight experienced Chinese language arts teachers from a typical junior high school in Taiwan participated in this study to discuss the potential uses of information and communications technologies (ICT) in Chinese language arts instruction. After meeting for 12 roundtable sessions and using a web forum as a supplement for exchanging ideas, they…

Cross-Language Differences in Informational Masking of Speech by Speech: English versus Mandarin Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wu, Xihong; Yang, Zhigang; Huang, Ying; Chen, Jing; Li, Liang; Daneman, Meredyth; Schneider, Bruce A.

2011-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to determine why perceived spatial separation provides a greater release from informational masking in Chinese than English when target sentences in each of the languages are masked by other talkers speaking the same language. Method: Monolingual speakers of English and Mandarin Chinese listened to…

Adoption of Blogging by a Chinese Language Composition Class in a Vocational High School in Taiwan

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lou, Shi-Jer; Wu, Shi-Chiao; Shih, Ru-Chu; Tseng, Kuo-Hung

2010-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of adopting blogging upon Chinese language composition instruction in a vocational high school in Taiwan. The researchers developed a model that utilises blogging in Chinese language composition instruction. Forty randomly selected students from a public vocational high school served as the…

Acquisition of Compound Words in Chinese-English Bilingual Children: Decomposition and Cross-Language Activation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cheng, Chenxi; Wang, Min; Perfetti, Charles A.

2011-01-01

This study investigated compound processing and cross-language activation in a group of Chinese-English bilingual children, and they were divided into four groups based on the language proficiency levels in their two languages. A lexical decision task was designed using compound words in both languages. The compound words in one language contained…

Teaching Chinese Negotiating Style through Examination of Key Chinese Categories.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Myers, Dan

This study examined different shades of meaning that a single word may have in Chinese in an effort to better understand the relationship between language and culture. An understanding of the exact meaning of Chinese words and expressions can greatly assist non-Chinese in understanding both the language and the society as a whole. A total of 102…

Cracking the Chinese Character: Radical Sensitivity in Learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language and Its Relationship to Chinese Word Reading

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tong, Xiuli; Yip, Joanna Hew Yan

2015-01-01

Radicals are building blocks of Chinese complex characters and exhibit certain positional, phonological and semantic regularities. This study investigated whether adult non-native learners of Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) were aware of the positional (orthographic), phonological and semantic information of radicals, and whether such…

The Effects of Language on English Language Learners' Music Preferences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gosselin, Pei-Ying Lin

2017-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of songs in different languages on English language learners' (ELLs) music preferences. The participants (N = 62) were Chinese graduate students from a state university in the Midwestern United States. The survey contained nine excerpts from popular songs in three languages: Chinese (the…

Cross-Language Transfer of Morphological Awareness in Chinese-English Bilinguals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pasquarella, Adrian; Chen, Xi; Lam, Katie; Luo, Yang C.; Ramirez, Gloria

2011-01-01

This study examined cross-language transfer of morphological awareness in Chinese-English bilingual children. One hundred and thirty-seven first to fourth graders participated in the study. The children were tested on parallel measures of compound awareness, vocabulary, word reading and reading comprehension in Chinese and English. They also…

Impact of Home Language and Literacy Support on English-Chinese Biliteracy Acquisition among Chinese Heritage Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lu, Chan; Koda, Keiko

2011-01-01

Studies on monolingual children have shown that home language and literacy support is crucial in children's early literacy acquisition. However, such support has not been examined as thoroughly among bilingual children, including heritage speakers. This study investigated the effect of home language and literacy support on important precursors of…

Evaluating Language Environment Analysis System Performance for Chinese: A Pilot Study in Shanghai

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gilkerson, Jill; Zhang, Yiwen; Xu, Dongxin; Richards, Jeffrey A.; Xu, Xiaojuan; Jiang, Fan; Harnsberger, James; Topping, Keith

2015-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate performance of the Language Environment Analysis (LENA) automated language-analysis system for the Chinese Shanghai dialect and Mandarin (SDM) languages. Method: Volunteer parents of 22 children aged 3-23 months were recruited in Shanghai. Families provided daylong in-home audio recordings using…

Cross-language parafoveal semantic processing: Evidence from Korean-Chinese bilinguals.

PubMed

Wang, Aiping; Yeon, Junmo; Zhou, Wei; Shu, Hua; Yan, Ming

2016-02-01

In the present study, we aimed at testing cross-language cognate and semantic preview effects. We tested how native Korean readers who learned Chinese as a second language make use of the parafoveal information during the reading of Chinese sentences. There were 3 types of Korean preview words: cognate translations of the Chinese target words, semantically related noncognate words, and unrelated words. Together with a highly significant cognate preview effect, more critically, we also observed reliable facilitation in processing of the target word from the semantically related previews in all fixation measures. Results from the present study provide first evidence for semantic processing from parafoveally presented Korean words and for cross-language parafoveal semantic processing.

A Critical Review of Research on Strategies in Learning Chinese as Both a Second and Foreign Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jiang, Xiaoli; Cohen, Andrew D.

2012-01-01

This article critically reviews strategy research on learning Chinese both as a second and foreign language. Through a careful examination of major data bases in both the Chinese and English languages, the article summarizes research in the field and the principal research methods used in the studies reviewed. Moreover, key limitations in research…

The Wor(l)d is a Collage: Multi-Performance by Chinese Heritage Language Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

He, Agnes Weiyun

2013-01-01

This study examines the simultaneous use of English and Chinese by speakers of Chinese as a heritage language (CHL). It focuses on spontaneous, dynamic, and high-density mixing of the two languages within the smallest building block of a speaking turn: the turn constructional unit (TCU). Drawing upon data from different age and proficiency groups,…

Mandarin Chinese Immersion Program for Preschool Children in an Urban Private School in California: A Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cao, Yuan

2013-01-01

This study enlisted language immersion practitioners in highlighting and exploring the issues and challenges that accompany language immersion education. Comprehensive focused personal interviews of preschool Mandarin Chinese language immersion educators in a private school provided the basis of the study. The research literature reviewed…

Comparing Local and International Chinese Students' English Language Learning Strategies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anthony, Margreat Aloysious; Ganesen, Sree Nithya

2012-01-01

According to Horwitz (1987) learners' belief about language learning are influenced by previous language learning experiences as well as cultural background. This study examined the English Language Learning Strategies between local and international Chinese students who share the same cultural background but have been exposed to different…

Reading, Writing, and Animation in Character Learning in Chinese as a Foreign Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xu, Yi; Chang, Li-Yun; Zhang, Juan; Perfetti, Charles A.

2013-01-01

Previous studies suggest that writing helps reading development in Chinese in both first and second language settings by enabling higher-quality orthographic representation of the characters. This study investigated the comparative effectiveness of reading, animation, and writing in developing foreign language learners' orthographic knowledge…

Home Literacy Environment and Its Influence on Singaporean Children's Chinese Oral and Written Language Abilities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Li; Tan, Chee Lay

2016-01-01

In a bilingual environment such as Singaporean Chinese community, the challenge of maintaining Chinese language and sustaining Chinese culture lies in promoting the daily use of Chinese language in oral and written forms among children. Ample evidence showed the effect of the home language and literacy environment (HLE), on children's language and…

Native Chinese-Speaking K-12 Language Teachers' Beliefs and Practices

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lü, Chan; Lavadenz, Magaly

2014-01-01

This study investigated the relationships between the beliefs and practices of K-12 native Chinese teachers on Chinese language and literacy instruction. Using a descriptive-exploratory design, this study employed a mixed-methods approach consisting of three steps: (1) a teacher beliefs questionnaire, (2) classroom observations and videotaping,…

An Investigation of Three Chinese Students' English Writing Strategies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mu, Congjun; Carrington, Suzanne

2007-01-01

The purpose of this study is to investigate the writing processes of second language (L2) writers, specifically examining the writing strategies of three Chinese post-graduate students in an Australian higher education institution. The study was prompted by the paucity of second language writing strategies of Chinese students in an authentic…

An Exploration of the Use of Mobile Applications to Support the Learning of Chinese Characters Employed by Students of Chinese as a Foreign Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mason, Amanda; Wenxin, Zhang

2017-01-01

At present, there are few studies which explore the learning strategies employed by students of Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) and even fewer that focus specifically on mobile application use. This study provides insights into how adult learners at varying levels of proficiency employ mobile apps to support their Chinese character learning.…

Direct evidence from intraoperative electrocortical stimulation indicates shared and distinct speech production center between Chinese and English languages.

PubMed

Wu, Jinsong; Lu, Junfeng; Zhang, Han; Zhang, Jie; Yao, Chengjun; Zhuang, Dongxiao; Qiu, Tianming; Guo, Qihao; Hu, Xiaobing; Mao, Ying; Zhou, Liangfu

2015-12-01

Chinese processing has been suggested involving distinct brain areas from English. However, current functional localization studies on Chinese speech processing use mostly "indirect" techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography, lacking direct evidence by means of electrocortical recording. In this study, awake craniotomies in 66 Chinese-speaking glioma patients provide a unique opportunity to directly map eloquent language areas. Intraoperative electrocortical stimulation was conducted and the positive sites for speech arrest, anomia, and alexia were identified separately. With help of stereotaxic neuronavigation system and computational modeling, all positive sites elicited by stimulation were integrated and a series of two- and three-dimension Chinese language probability maps were built. We performed statistical comparisons between the Chinese maps and previously derived English maps. While most Chinese speech arrest areas located at typical language production sites (i.e., 50% positive sites in ventral precentral gyrus, 28% in pars opercularis and pars triangularis), which also serve English production, an additional brain area, the left middle frontal gyrus (Brodmann's areas 6/9), was found to be unique in Chinese production (P < 0.05). Moreover, Chinese speakers' inferior ventral precentral gyrus (Brodmann's area 6) was used more than that in English speakers. Our finding suggests that Chinese involves more perisylvian region (extending to left middle frontal gyrus) than English. This is the first time that direct evidence supports cross-cultural neurolinguistics differences in human beings. The Chinese language atlas will also helpful in brain surgery planning for Chinese-speakers. Copyright © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Relationships between Reading Comprehension and Its Components in Young Chinese-as-a-Second-Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wong, Yu Ka

2017-01-01

Based on the Simple View of Reading model, this study examines the relationships among Chinese reading comprehension and its two componential processes, Chinese character reading and listening comprehension, in young learners of Chinese as a second language (CSL) using a longitudinal design. Using relevant measures, a sample of 142 senior primary…

Measuring Adult Learners' Foreign Language Anxiety, Motivational Factors, and Achievement Expectations: A Comparative Study between Chinese as a Second-Language Students and English as a Second-Language Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Li-Ching

2013-01-01

This dissertation focuses on interpreting the impacts of foreign language anxiety and individual characteristics on the achievement expectations of Chinese second-language learners and English second-language students at the university level. Four research questions are examined through quantitative design. In relation to methodology, this study…

Novel Noun and Verb Learning in Chinese-, English-, and Japanese-Speaking Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Imai, Mutsumi; Li, Lianjing; Haryu, Etsuko; Okada, Hiroyuki; Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy; Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick; Shigematsu, Jun

2008-01-01

When can children speaking Japanese, English, or Chinese map and extend novel nouns and verbs? Across 6 studies, 3- and 5-year-old children in all 3 languages map and extend novel nouns more readily than novel verbs. This finding prevails even in languages like Chinese and Japanese that are assumed to be verb-friendly languages (e.g., T. Tardif,…

Towards Homogeneity in Home Languages: Malay, Chinese Foochow and Indian Tamil Families in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ting, Su-Hie; Mahadhir, Mahanita

2009-01-01

This preliminary study examines the languages used by parents with their children in Malay, Chinese Foochow and Indian Tamil families to find out how the similarity or dissimilarity in parents' ethnic language influenced the choice of language transmitted to children and how far standard languages have permeated the family domain in Kuching City…

Dissimilation in the Second Language Acquisition of Mandarin Chinese Tones

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Hang

2016-01-01

This article extends Optimality Theoretic studies to the research on second language tone phonology. Specifically, this work analyses the acquisition of identical tone sequences in Mandarin Chinese by adult speakers of three non-tonal languages: English, Japanese and Korean. This study finds that the learners prefer not to use identical lexical…

The Challenges of Chinese: A Preliminary Study of UK Learners' Perceptions of Difficulty

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hu, Bo

2010-01-01

This study aims to highlight aspects of difficulty encountered by Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) learners and to explore the factors underlying these aspects. Data were gathered through a Chinese Language Learning Difficulty Survey from 164 CFL learners, mostly in British higher education. The survey data provided useful exploratory findings.…

Language, Academic, Socio-Cultural and Financial Adjustments of Mainland Chinese Students Studying in Hong Kong

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cheung, Alan C. K.

2013-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine language, academic, social-cultural and financial adjustments facing mainland Chinese students in Hong Kong. Design/methodology/approach: The current study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods and included over 300 mainland Chinese students from seven major universities in Hong Kong.…

Is it culture or is it language? Examination of language effects in cross-cultural research on categorization.

PubMed

Ji, Li-Jun; Zhang, Zhiyong; Nisbett, Richard E

2004-07-01

Differences in reasoning styles between Chinese and European Americans held even when controlling for the language of testing. Bilingual Chinese organized objects in a more relational and less categorical way than European Americans, whether tested in English or in Chinese. Thus, culture affects categorization independent of the testing language. Nevertheless, language affected some Chinese bilinguals' categorization. The responses of Chinese from the Mainland and Taiwan were more relational when tested in Chinese than when tested in English. Responses of Chinese from Hong Kong and Singapore were equally relational when tested in Chinese and in English. Age and context of learning English are discussed to explain the differential language effects among different Chinese groups. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed. Copyright 2004 American Psychological Association

Communicative Language Teaching in the Chinese Environment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hu, Wei

2010-01-01

In order to explore effective ways to develop Chinese English learners' communicative competence, this study first briefly reviews the advantages of communicative language teaching (CLT) method which widely practiced in the Western countries and analyzes in details its obstacles in Chinese classroom context. Then it offers guidelines for…

Variability in Chinese as a Foreign Language Learners' Development of the Chinese Numeral Classifier System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Jie; Lu, Xiaofei

2013-01-01

This study examined variability in Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) learners' development of the Chinese numeral classifier system from a dynamic systems approach. Our data consisted of a longitudinal corpus of 657 essays written by CFL learners at lower and higher intermediate levels and a corpus of 100 essays written by native speakers (NSs)…

Word Reading in L1 and L2 Learners of Chinese: Similarities and Differences in the Functioning of Component Processes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Dongbo

2017-01-01

This study examined the similarities and differences in the functioning of component processes underlying first language (L1) and second language (L2) word reading in Chinese. Fourth-grade Chinese children in Singapore were divided into L1 and L2 reader groups based on whether they used Mandarin or English as their home language. Both groups were…

Disordered eating and body image in Chinese and Caucasian students in the United States.

PubMed

Baillie, Lauren E; Copeland, Amy L

2013-08-01

This study evaluated the roles of exposure to Western culture and language choice and gender differences in disordered eating symptoms in Chinese and Caucasian students. 796 Caucasian and 194 Chinese students completed measures of eating disorder symptoms, body image, and body esteem. Participants chose their survey language (English or Chinese). Caucasian women had higher levels of body dissatisfaction than Chinese women. Women of both ethnicities reported more disordered eating symptoms and body dissatisfaction than men; these differences were smaller for the Chinese group. Differences emerged on certain dimensions of body esteem between Chinese women who responded in Chinese and those who responded in English. There were few differences between ethnicities, suggesting that mechanisms other than Western culture play a role. Cultural variables may account for the degree of intra-ethnic gender differences. Individuals who complete studies in their native language may differ from their English-responding counterparts in areas of body esteem. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Negotiating Power and Access to Second Language Resources: A Study on Short-Term Chinese MBA Students in America

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shi, Xingsong

2011-01-01

By looking into a group of 13 Chinese master's in business administration students' study abroad experience in the United States, this study contends that being situated in the second language (L2) communicative context does not guarantee international students complete access to language and cultural resources in the host society. Due to limited…

Chinese Immersion Language Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jia, Hongyi

2017-01-01

In the present day Mandarin Chinese has become a commonly taught language in the U.S. Mandarin is widely taught in colleges and universities; K-12 Chinese programs, including immersion programs, have also grown rapidly. However, to date little research has been conducted on the latter programs. This study examines immersion programs in elementary…

Measuring social desirability across language and sex: A comparison of Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale factor structures in English and Mandarin Chinese in Malaysia.

PubMed

Kurz, A Solomon; Drescher, Christopher F; Chin, Eu Gene; Johnson, Laura R

2016-06-01

Malaysia is a Southeast Asian country in which multiple languages are prominently spoken, including English and Mandarin Chinese. As psychological science continues to develop within Malaysia, there is a need for psychometrically sound instruments that measure psychological phenomena in multiple languages. For example, assessment tools for measuring social desirability could be a useful addition in psychological assessments and research studies in a Malaysian context. This study examined the psychometric performance of the English and Mandarin Chinese versions of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale when used in Malaysia. Two hundred and eighty-three students (64% female; 83% Chinese, 9% Indian) from two college campuses completed the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale in their language of choice (i.e., English or Mandarin Chinese). Proposed factor structures were compared with confirmatory factor analysis, and multiple indicators-multiple causes models were used to examine measurement invariance across language and sex. Factor analyses supported a two-factor structure (i.e., Attribution and Denial) for the measure. Invariance tests revealed the scale was invariant by sex, indicating that social desirability can be interpreted similarly across sex. The scale was partially invariant by language version, with some non-invariance observed within the Denial factor. Non-invariance may be related to differences in the English and Mandarin Chinese languages, as well as cultural differences. Directions for further research include examining the measurement of social desirability in other contexts where both English and Mandarin Chinese are spoken (i.e., China) and further examining the causes of non-invariance on specific items. © 2016 The Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.

Why Some Imperfectives Are Interpreted Imperfectly: A Study of Chinese Learners of Japanese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gabriele, Alison; McClure, William

2011-01-01

The study investigates whether advanced second language (L2) learners can extend beyond the grammatical properties of the first language (L1) to successfully acquire tense and aspect. We examine the acquisition of the semantics of the imperfective marker "te-iru" in Japanese by native speakers of Mandarin Chinese, a language that…

Second Language and Literacy Learning in School and at Home: An Ethnographic Study of Chinese Canadian First Graders' Experiences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Guofang

2007-01-01

Based on the theoretical perspectives of socio-constructivism and language socialization, this study reports two Chinese Canadian first grader's experiences of language and literacy learning in and out of school in a unique sociocultural setting where they were "the mainstream." The article examines the students' reading and writing…

Testing the Improvement of English as a Foreign Language Instruction among Chinese College Students through Computerized Graphic Visuals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Quan; Miller, Michael; Bai, Kang

2011-01-01

The purpose of this study was to determine if animated illustrations would increase the recall and comprehension of a subject matter, English as a foreign language (EFL), among Chinese college students. The study was specifically designed to identify the influence of graphics on Chinese EFL students' learning by comparing abstract versus concrete…

Constructing Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in Chinese Heritage Language Classrooms: A Multiple-Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wu, Hsu-Pai

2011-01-01

Culturally relevant pedagogy uses cultural references to develop students' knowledge and identities thereby empowering them academically, socially and politically. This article examined how four Chinese heritage languages teachers constructed culturally relevant pedagogy in their language instructions. Qualitative cross-case analysis indicated…

Model of the Dynamic Construction Process of Texts and Scaling Laws of Words Organization in Language Systems

PubMed Central

Li, Shan; Lin, Ruokuang; Bian, Chunhua; Ma, Qianli D. Y.

2016-01-01

Scaling laws characterize diverse complex systems in a broad range of fields, including physics, biology, finance, and social science. The human language is another example of a complex system of words organization. Studies on written texts have shown that scaling laws characterize the occurrence frequency of words, words rank, and the growth of distinct words with increasing text length. However, these studies have mainly concentrated on the western linguistic systems, and the laws that govern the lexical organization, structure and dynamics of the Chinese language remain not well understood. Here we study a database of Chinese and English language books. We report that three distinct scaling laws characterize words organization in the Chinese language. We find that these scaling laws have different exponents and crossover behaviors compared to English texts, indicating different words organization and dynamics of words in the process of text growth. We propose a stochastic feedback model of words organization and text growth, which successfully accounts for the empirically observed scaling laws with their corresponding scaling exponents and characteristic crossover regimes. Further, by varying key model parameters, we reproduce differences in the organization and scaling laws of words between the Chinese and English language. We also identify functional relationships between model parameters and the empirically observed scaling exponents, thus providing new insights into the words organization and growth dynamics in the Chinese and English language. PMID:28006026

Model of the Dynamic Construction Process of Texts and Scaling Laws of Words Organization in Language Systems.

PubMed

Li, Shan; Lin, Ruokuang; Bian, Chunhua; Ma, Qianli D Y; Ivanov, Plamen Ch

2016-01-01

Scaling laws characterize diverse complex systems in a broad range of fields, including physics, biology, finance, and social science. The human language is another example of a complex system of words organization. Studies on written texts have shown that scaling laws characterize the occurrence frequency of words, words rank, and the growth of distinct words with increasing text length. However, these studies have mainly concentrated on the western linguistic systems, and the laws that govern the lexical organization, structure and dynamics of the Chinese language remain not well understood. Here we study a database of Chinese and English language books. We report that three distinct scaling laws characterize words organization in the Chinese language. We find that these scaling laws have different exponents and crossover behaviors compared to English texts, indicating different words organization and dynamics of words in the process of text growth. We propose a stochastic feedback model of words organization and text growth, which successfully accounts for the empirically observed scaling laws with their corresponding scaling exponents and characteristic crossover regimes. Further, by varying key model parameters, we reproduce differences in the organization and scaling laws of words between the Chinese and English language. We also identify functional relationships between model parameters and the empirically observed scaling exponents, thus providing new insights into the words organization and growth dynamics in the Chinese and English language.

Cultural differences in strategic behavior: a study in computational estimation.

PubMed

Imbo, Ineke; Lefevre, Jo-Anne

2011-09-01

Imbo and LeFevre (2009) observed that Asians (responding in their 2nd language) selected strategies less adaptively than did non-Asians (responding in their 1st language). In the present research, we tested whether adaptive strategy selection is (a) really more resource demanding for Asians than for non-Asians or (b) more resource demanding for participants answering in a nonpreferred language. Three groups of participants were tested on a computational estimation task (e.g., 42 × 57 ≈ ?) in no-load and load conditions: 40 Belgian-educated adults who answered in their first language (Dutch), 40 Chinese-educated adults who answered in their first language (Chinese), and 40 Chinese-educated adults who answered in their second language (English). Although the Chinese were faster and more accurate than the Belgians, they selected strategies less adaptively. That is, the Chinese were less likely to choose the strategy that produced the best estimate; this was especially so when their working memory was loaded. Further, we also observed that the Chinese who answered in English were slower than the Chinese who answered in Chinese; this difference was larger for difficult strategies and under working memory load. These results are interpreted in terms of the encoding complex model, whereas the explanation for the adaptivity results is based on cultural differences in educational history. (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved.

Language-specific memory for everyday arithmetic facts in Chinese-English bilinguals.

PubMed

Chen, Yalin; Yanke, Jill; Campbell, Jamie I D

2016-04-01

The role of language in memory for arithmetic facts remains controversial. Here, we examined transfer of memory training for evidence that bilinguals may acquire language-specific memory stores for everyday arithmetic facts. Chinese-English bilingual adults (n = 32) were trained on different subsets of simple addition and multiplication problems. Each operation was trained in one language or the other. The subsequent test phase included all problems with addition and multiplication alternating across trials in two blocks, one in each language. Averaging over training language, the response time (RT) gains for trained problems relative to untrained problems were greater in the trained language than in the untrained language. Subsequent analysis showed that English training produced larger RT gains for trained problems relative to untrained problems in English at test relative to the untrained Chinese language. In contrast, there was no evidence with Chinese training that problem-specific RT gains differed between Chinese and the untrained English language. We propose that training in Chinese promoted a translation strategy for English arithmetic (particularly multiplication) that produced strong cross-language generalization of practice, whereas training in English strengthened relatively weak, English-language arithmetic memories and produced little generalization to Chinese (i.e., English training did not induce an English translation strategy for Chinese language trials). The results support the existence of language-specific strengthening of memory for everyday arithmetic facts.

Mother Tongue Education in Singapore: Concerns, Issues and Controversies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ng, Chin Leong Patrick

2014-01-01

In 1966, the Singapore Government implemented the English-knowing bilingual policy which made it mandatory for all Chinese students to study English as a "First Language" and the Chinese language (CL) as a "Mother Tongue Language" in Singapore schools. Using key literature relevant to Singapore's bilingual educational policy…

Oral Reading in Bilingual Aphasia: Evidence from Mongolian and Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Weekes, Brendan Stuart; Su, I. Fan; Yin, Wengang; Zhang, Xihong

2007-01-01

Cognitive neuropsychological studies of bilingual patients with aphasia have contributed to our understanding of how the brain processes different languages. The question we asked is whether differences in script have any impact on language processing in bilingual aphasic patients who speak languages with different writing systems: Chinese and…

Orthographic Consistency and Individual Learner Differences in Second Language Literacy Acquisition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kim, Sun-A; Packard, Jerome; Christianson, Kiel; Anderson, Richard C.; Shin, Jeong-Ah

2016-01-01

This study investigated whether orthographic consistency and individual learner differences including working memory (WM), first language (L1) background, and second language (L2) proficiency affect Chinese L2 learners' literacy acquisition. Seventy American college students in beginning or intermediate Chinese classes participated in a character…

Metacognitive Beliefs and Strategies in Learning Chinese as a Foreign Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Jinghui; Spencer, Ken; Xing, Minjie

2009-01-01

The study investigates the effects of second-year university students' metacognitive beliefs and strategies on learning Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL). The analysis shows that metacognitive beliefs, which identify students who are confident about their ability to learn a foreign language, are positively associated with students' CFL…

Investigating the Target Language Usage in and outside Business English Classrooms for Non-English Major Undergraduates at a Chinese University

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xie, Qing

2017-01-01

This article reports an investigative study on the target language use in and outside business English classrooms for non-English major undergraduates in a Chinese university context. The aims of the study are to identify the actual situation of target language use in business English teaching and to suggest ways for improvements. The study uses…

Neural strategies for reading Japanese and Chinese sentences: a cross-linguistic fMRI study of character-decoding and morphosyntax.

PubMed

Huang, Koongliang; Itoh, Kosuke; Kwee, Ingrid L; Nakada, Tsutomu

2012-09-01

Japanese and Chinese share virtually identical morphographic characters invented in ancient China. Whereas modern Chinese retained the original morphographic functionality of these characters (hanzi), modern Japanese utilizes these characters (kanji) as complex syllabograms. This divergence provides a unique opportunity to systematically investigate brain strategies for sentence reading in Japanese-Chinese bi-literates. Accordingly, we investigated brain activation associated with Japanese and Chinese reading in 14 native Japanese speakers literate in Mandarin and 14 native Mandarin speakers literate in Japanese using functional magnetic resonance imaging performed on a 3T system. The activation pattern exhibited clearly distinct features specific for each language. Regardless of the subject's native language literacy, Chinese reading activated an area significantly larger than Japanese reading, suggesting that brain processes involved in Chinese reading were much more complex than Japanese reading. Significant recruitment of corresponding cortical areas in the right hemisphere with Chinese reading was also apparent. The activation patterns associated with Japanese reading by native Japanese literates was highly consistent with previous reports, and included the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), left posterior temporal lobe (PTL), and left ventral premotor cortex (PMv). The activation pattern associated with Chinese reading by native Chinese literates was also highly consistent with previous reports, namely the left IFG, left PTL, left PMv, left anterior temporal lobe (ATL), and bilateral parieto occipital lobes (LPOL). The activation pattern associated with Chinese reading by native Japanese literates was virtually identical to that by native Chinese literates, whereas the activation pattern associated with Japanese reading by native Chinese literates was signified by additional activation of LPOL compared to that by native Japanese literate. The study indicated that IFG and PTL are universal language areas, while PMv is the area for decoding complex syllabograms. LPOL is the "Chinese language area," while ATL is essential for languages with analytic morphosyntax. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

When Bilinguals Choose a Single Word to Speak: Electrophysiological Evidence for Inhibition of the Native Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Misra, Maya; Guo, Taomei; Bobb, Susan C.; Kroll, Judith F.

2012-01-01

Behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measures are reported for a study in which relatively proficient Chinese-English bilinguals named identical pictures in each of their two languages. Production occurred only in Chinese (the first language, L1) or only in English (the second language, L2) in a given block with the order counterbalanced…

Language Maintenance and Language Shift among Chinese Immigrant Parents and Their Second-Generation Children in the U.S.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Donghui

2010-01-01

This study examines the language experiences of two distinct Chinese immigrant groups in the U.S.: a Mandarin-speaking group and a Fujianese-speaking group across two generations. The different language trajectories of the parents' generation, along with their social class and different settlement patterns in the U.S., shaped the second-generation…

Development of the Language Subtest in a Developmental Assessment Scale to Identify Chinese Preschool Children with Special Needs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wong, Anita M. -Y.; Leung, Cynthia; Siu, Elaine K. -L.; Lam, Catherine C. -C.; Chan, Grace P. -S.

2011-01-01

This study reports on the development of the language subtest in the Preschool Developmental Assessment Scale (PDAS) for Cantonese-Chinese speaking children. A pilot pool of 158 items covering the two language modalities and the three language domains was developed. This initial item set was subsequently revised based on Rasch analyses of data…

An Exploration of Language Anxiety in L2 Academic Context for Chinese International Students in U.S. Universities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhao, Qing

2013-01-01

This mix-methods study examined the language anxiety levels that the Chinese international students perceived in second language (L2) academic context at four universities in the northeastern region of the United States of America; it explored the impact of language anxiety that these students perceived on their academic learning; it also…

Genetic and Environmental Overlap between Chinese and English Reading-Related Skills in Chinese Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wong, Simpson W. L.; Chow, Bonnie Wing-Yin; Ho, Connie Suk-Han; Waye, Mary M. Y.; Bishop, Dorothy V. M.

2014-01-01

This twin study examined the relative contributions of genes and environment on 2nd language reading acquisition of Chinese-speaking children learning English. We examined whether specific skills-visual word recognition, receptive vocabulary, phonological awareness, phonological memory, and speech discrimination-in the 1st and 2nd languages have…

Character Reading Fluency, Word Segmentation Accuracy, and Reading Comprehension in L2 Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shen, Helen H.; Jiang, Xin

2013-01-01

This study investigated the relationships between lower-level processing and general reading comprehension among adult L2 (second-language) beginning learners of Chinese, in both target and non-target language learning environments. Lower-level processing in Chinese reading includes the factors of character-naming accuracy, character-naming speed,…

Comparing Teachers' Judgments of Learners' Speech in Chinese as a Foreign Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Orton, Jane

2014-01-01

Pedagogical norms for Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) shared by teachers, curriculum writers, and resource designers inside and outside of Chinese societies are yet to be established. To initiate and inform dialogue within the CFL community over shared expectations of learners, this study compared the judgments of students' oral presentations…

Cultural Views, Language Ability, and Mammography Use in Chinese American Women

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liang, Wenchi; Wang, Judy; Chen, Mei-Yuh; Feng, Shibao; Yi, Bin; Mandelblatt, Jeanne S.

2009-01-01

Mammography screening rates among Chinese American women have been reported to be low. This study examines whether and how culture views and language ability influence mammography adherence in this mostly immigrant population. Asymptomatic Chinese American women (n = 466) aged 50 and older, recruited from the Washington, D.C. area, completed a…

An Instrument for Investigating Chinese Language Learning Environments in Singapore Secondary Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chua, Siew Lian; Wong, Angela F. L.; Chen, Der-Thanq

2009-01-01

This paper describes how a new classroom environment instrument, the "Chinese Language Classroom Environment Inventory (CLCEI)", was developed to investigate the nature of Chinese language classroom learning environments in Singapore secondary schools. The CLCEI is a bilingual instrument (English and Chinese Language) with 48 items…

Word-Processor or Pencil-and-Paper? A Comparison of Students' Writing in Chinese as a Foreign Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhu, Yu; Mark Shum, Shiu-Kee; Brian Tse, Shek-Kam; Liu, Jinghui Jack

2016-01-01

A study is reported of the performance and attainment of 32 students from overseas studying elementary Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) in a Chinese university. With an AB-BA design, they were asked to use two forms of writing media to present two essays: one a word-processed essay entitled "My Favourite Female" and the other a…

Subtlety of Ambient-Language Effects in Babbling: A Study of English- and Chinese-Learning Infants at 8, 10, and 12 Months

PubMed Central

Lee, Chia-Cheng; Jhang, Yuna; Chen, Li-mei; Relyea, George; Oller, D. Kimbrough

2016-01-01

Prior research on ambient-language effects in babbling has often suggested infants produce language-specific phonological features within the first year. These results have been questioned in research failing to find such effects and challenging the positive findings on methodological grounds. We studied English- and Chinese-learning infants at 8, 10, and 12 months and found listeners could not detect ambient-language effects in the vast majority of infant utterances, but only in items deemed to be words or to contain canonical syllables that may have made them sound like words with language-specific shapes. Thus, the present research suggests the earliest ambient-language effects may be found in emerging lexical items or in utterances influenced by language-specific features of lexical items. Even the ambient-language effects for infant canonical syllables and words were very small compared with ambient-language effects for meaningless but phonotactically well-formed syllable sequences spoken by adult native speakers of English and Chinese. PMID:28496393

The Impact of an Online Learning Community Project on University Chinese as a Foreign Language Students' Motivation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cai, Shengrong; Zhu, Wei

2012-01-01

This study investigated the impact of an online learning community project on university students' motivation in learning Chinese as a foreign language. A newly proposed second language (L2) motivation theory--the L2 motivational self system (Dornyei, 2005, 2009)--guided this study. A concurrent transformative mixed-methods design was employed to…

A structural–functional basis for dyslexia in the cortex of Chinese readers

PubMed Central

Siok, Wai Ting; Niu, Zhendong; Jin, Zhen; Perfetti, Charles A.; Tan, Li Hai

2008-01-01

Developmental dyslexia is a neurobiologically based disorder that affects ≈5–17% of school children and is characterized by a severe impairment in reading skill acquisition. For readers of alphabetic (e.g., English) languages, recent neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that dyslexia is associated with weak reading-related activity in left temporoparietal and occipitotemporal regions, and this activity difference may reflect reductions in gray matter volume in these areas. Here, we find different structural and functional abnormalities in dyslexic readers of Chinese, a nonalphabetic language. Compared with normally developing controls, children with impaired reading in logographic Chinese exhibited reduced gray matter volume in a left middle frontal gyrus region previously shown to be important for Chinese reading and writing. Using functional MRI to study language-related activation of cortical regions in dyslexics, we found reduced activation in this same left middle frontal gyrus region in Chinese dyslexics versus controls, and there was a significant correlation between gray matter volume and activation in the language task in this same area. By contrast, Chinese dyslexics did not show functional or structural (i.e., volumetric gray matter) differences from normal subjects in the more posterior brain systems that have been shown to be abnormal in alphabetic-language dyslexics. The results suggest that the structural and functional basis for dyslexia varies between alphabetic and nonalphabetic languages. PMID:18391194

Ethnic Contestation and Language Policy in a Plural Society: The Chinese Language Movement in Malaysia, 1952-1967

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yao Sua, Tan; Hooi See, Teoh

2014-01-01

The Chinese language movement was launched by the Chinese educationists to demand the recognition of Chinese as an official language to legitimise the status of Chinese education in the national education system in Malaysia. It began in 1952 as a response to the British attempt to establish national primary schools teaching in English and Malay to…

"CLASS Professional Standards" for K-12 Chinese Language Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Lucy C.; Lin, Yu-Lan; Su, Chih-Wen

2007-01-01

"CLASS Professional Standards" is a resource for Chinese teachers, foreign language specialists, school administrators, parents, and policy makers who recognize the importance of Chinese cultures taught by professional teachers of Chinese. The release of the book also marks the celebration of the Chinese Language Association of…

The Teaching of Chinese as a Second or Foreign Language: a Systematic Review of the Literature 2005-2015

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ma, Xiuli; Gong, Yang; Gao, Xuesong; Xiang, Yiqing

2017-01-01

This paper reports the results of a review of research articles on the teaching of Chinese as a second or foreign language published in four leading mainland Chinese journals during the years 2005-2015. The review found that Chinese language researchers are exploring a wide array of issues including language policy and planning, language learning…

Different mechanisms in learning different second languages: Evidence from English speakers learning Chinese and Spanish.

PubMed

Cao, Fan; Sussman, Bethany L; Rios, Valeria; Yan, Xin; Wang, Zhao; Spray, Gregory J; Mack, Ryan M

2017-03-01

Word reading has been found to be associated with different neural networks in different languages, with greater involvement of the lexical pathway for opaque languages and greater invovlement of the sub-lexical pathway for transparent langauges. However, we do not know whether this language divergence can be demonstrated in second langauge learners, how learner's metalinguistic ability would modulate the langauge divergence, or whether learning method would interact with the language divergence. In this study, we attempted to answer these questions by comparing brain activations of Chinese and Spanish word reading in native English-speaking adults who learned Chinese and Spanish over a 2 week period under three learning conditions: phonological, handwriting, and passive viewing. We found that mapping orthography to phonology in Chinese had greater activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and left inferior temporal gyrus (ITG) than in Spanish, suggesting greater invovlement of the lexical pathway in opaque langauges. In contrast, Spanish words evoked greater activation in the left superior temporal gyrus (STG) than English, suggesting greater invovlement of the sublexical pathway for transparant languages. Furthermore, brain-behavior correlation analyses found that higher phonological awareness and rapid naming were associated with greater activation in the bilateral IFG for Chinese and in the bilateral STG for Spanish, suggesting greater language divergence in participants with higher meta-linguistic awareness. Finally, a significant interaction between the language and learning condition was found in the left STG and middle frontal gyrus (MFG), with greater activation in handwriting learning than viewing learning in the left STG only for Spanish, and greater activation in handwriting learning than phonological learning in the left MFG only for Chinese. These findings suggest that handwriting facilitates assembled phonology in Spanish and addressed phonology in Chinese. In summary, our study suggests different mechanisms in learning different L2s, providing important insights into neural plasticity and important implications in second language education. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Looking Chinese and Learning Chinese as a Heritage Language: The Role of Habitus

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mu, Guanglun Michael

2016-01-01

The identity-language link has been widely recognised. In Heritage Language research, the complex entanglement between Chinese ethnic identity and Chinese Heritage Language has gained increasing attention in recent decades. Both social psychological and poststructural schools have offered meaningful insights into this field, but have also received…

Chinese American Adolescents’ Perceptions of the Language Brokering Experience as a Sense of Burden and Sense of Efficacy

PubMed Central

Wu, Nina H.

2009-01-01

Children of immigrants who do translations and who interpret for others using their heritage language and English are known as language brokers. Although prior research suggests that children of immigrants’ perceptions of the language brokering experience vary greatly—from feeling a sense of efficacy to feeling a sense of burden—what remains unanswered in the literature is identification of the antecedents and processes that help to explain the varying psychological experience of language brokers. Using data from a two-wave prospective longitudinal study of 256 Chinese American adolescents, the present study tested potential mechanisms that may be responsible for adolescents’ perceptions of the language brokering experience as a sense or burden or sense of efficacy. The results demonstrate that adolescents’ Chinese orientation sets in motion a family process that is linked to variations in the perceptions of adolescents’ language brokering experience. Adolescents who are more Chinese oriented have a stronger sense of familial obligation, and these adolescents are more likely to perceive that they matter to their parents. Adolescents’ perceived sense of mattering to parents, in turn, is associated positively with a sense efficacy, and negatively with a sense of burden as language brokers. Those adolescents who are less Chinese oriented have a weaker sense of familial obligation, and these adolescents are more likely to feel a sense of alienation from their parents. Adolescents’ sense of perceived alienation from parents, in turn, is associated with a sense of burden as language brokers. Implications for developing interventions for children who act as language brokers for their parents are discussed. PMID:19636765

The Pedagogical, Linguistic, and Content Features of Popular English Language Learning Websites in China: A Framework for Analysis and Design

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kettle, Margaret; Yuan, Yifeng; Luke, Allan; Ewing, Robyn; Shen, Huizhong

2012-01-01

As increasing numbers of Chinese language learners choose to learn English online, there is a need to investigate popular websites and their language learning designs. This paper reports on the first stage of a study that analyzed the pedagogical, linguistic, and content features of 25 Chinese English Language Learning (ELL) websites ranked…

Exploring the Relationships between Independent Listening and Listening-Reading-Writing Tasks in Chinese Language Testing: Toward a Better Understanding of the Construct Underlying Integrated Writing Tasks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhu, Xinhua; Li, Xueyan; Yu, Guoxing; Cheong, Choo Mui; Liao, Xian

2016-01-01

Integrated assessment tasks have been increasingly used in language tests, but the underlying constructs of integrated tasks remain elusive. This study aimed to improve understanding of the construct of integrated writing tasks in Chinese Language examinations in Hong Kong by looking at the language competences measured in the…

A View from Within: A Case Study of Chinese Heritage Community Language Schools in the United States.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Xueying, Ed.

A collection of essays on Chinese heritage community language schools in the United States addresses these topics: the schools, their curricula, and organization (Theresa Hsu Chao); school administration and management (Chao, Lydia Chen, Edward Chang); academic curriculum (Pay-Fen Serena Wang); non-heritage Chinese learners: practices and…

Preparedness of Chinese Students for American Culture and Communicating in English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rawlings, Melody; Sue, Edna

2013-01-01

What Chinese students learn about American culture and the English language in the classrooms of China does not adequately prepare them for the reality of American culture and communication in English. In this study, the constructs of American culture and models of English language taught in Chinese classrooms are compared with the reality of…

Language Anxiety: Experiences of Chinese Graduate Students at U.S. Higher Institutions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cheng, Rui; Erben, Antony

2012-01-01

It is very common for Chinese graduate students to experience language anxiety in the U.S. higher institutions, yet the literature on this topic is limited. This research study focused on the influence of the length of stay in U.S. higher institutions, various programs, gender, and acculturation process on Chinese graduate students' language…

Chinese International Students' Social Connectedness, Social and Academic Adaptation: The Mediating Role of Global Competence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Meng, Qian; Zhu, Chang; Cao, Chun

2018-01-01

This study examined global competence of Chinese international students sojourning in a non-Anglophone European country as a mediator between foreign language proficiency (i.e., English and local language) and social and academic adaptation, and social connectedness in international community. A sample of 206 Chinese students in Belgium responded…

Exploring Singapore Primary School Students' Perceptions of Chinese Asynchronous Online Discussions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chin, Wong Wan; Sum, Cheung Wing; Foon, Hew Khe

2008-01-01

Background: Asynchronous online discussion (AOD) has found widespread use in tertiary education and adult learning environment; however, there has been little research on its use in elementary school, especially in the context of the teaching of the Chinese Language. This study explores the use of AOD in a Chinese Language class in a primary…

The Acquisition of English Lexical Stress by Chinese-Speaking Learners: An OT Account

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yuan, Man; Cheng, Wei

2017-01-01

Lexical stress is an important contributor to foreign accent as well as intelligibility of second language (L2) speech. The present study intends to find out to what extent Chinese-speaking learners whose native language has less evident stress can acquire English lexical stress. A production test was administered to nine advanced Chinese learners…

Developing Orthographic Awareness among Beginning Chinese Language Learners: Investigating the Influence of Beginning Level Textbooks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fan, Hui-Mei

2010-01-01

The present study is based on the theoretical assumptions that frequency of characters and their structural components, as well as the frequency types of structural components, are important to enable learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) to discover the underlying structure of Chinese characters. In the CFL context, since reliable…

Flipping the Classroom in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Jia; Yin, Chengxu; Wang, Wei

2018-01-01

Through an in-depth analysis of quantitative and qualitative data, this article offers a case study of the advantages and challenges in the application of the flipped learning approach in the instruction of Chinese as a foreign language at the beginning level. Data were collected from two first-year Chinese classes (one in traditional and the…

Toward a Dynamic Interactive Model of Non-Native Chinese Character Processing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tong, Xiuli; Kwan, Joyce Lok Yin; Wong, Denise Wai Man; Lee, Stephen Man Kit; Yip, Joanna Hew Yan

2016-01-01

Previous studies have suggested that word processing in English as a second language (L2) is affected by first language (L1) orthographic features. However, little is known about what affects L2 Chinese character processing in adult Chinese learners with different L1 orthographies such as Japanese, Korean, and English. With a picture-character…

A Comparative Study of Language Reforms in China and Japan. Skidmore College Faculty Research Lecture 1969.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chu, Yu-Kuang; Nishimoto, Koji

1969-01-01

Chinese and Japanese, although they are unrelated languages, nevertheless have similar writing systems, since Japanese writing employs a mixed system of Chinese characters and phonetic script. Because Chinese characters are difficult to learn, however, reform movements to simplify the writing system to make the task of learning easier for a…

The Intelligibility of Chinese-Accented English to International and American Students at a U.S. University

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hardman, Jocelyn Brooks

2010-01-01

This study investigated the intelligibility of Chinese graduate students to their Indian, Chinese, Korean, and American peers. Specifically, the researcher sought to determine the teaching priorities for English for Academic Purposes in the US, where listeners have a wide variety of native languages. Research on Second Language Acquisition…

Politics, Economics, Society, and Overseas Chinese Teaching: A Case Study of Australia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Ping

2016-01-01

The history and current state of Chinese teaching in Australia has largely been determined by two key factors: first, the country's policy on languages, and in particular its policy regarding foreign language education; and second, its immigrants and overseas students from Chinese-speaking countries and regions. Beginning in the 1980s, Chinese…

Bringing out Children's Wonderful Ideas in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Yi

This paper describes one after-school program at the Cambridge Chinese School, dedicated to teaching Chinese literacy to Chinese K-12 students in the Boston, Massachusetts area. In 1998, the school initiated the "Chinese as a Foreign Language" program to cater to the needs of U.S. families with an interest in the Chinese language and culture…

Processing Modifier-Head Agreement in L1 and L2 Finnish: An Eye-Tracking Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vainio, Seppo; Pajunen, Anneli; Hyönä, Jukka

2016-01-01

This study investigated the effect of first language (L1) on the reading of modifier-head case agreement in second language (L2) Finnish by native Russian and Chinese speakers. Russian is similar to Finnish in that both languages use case endings to mark grammatical roles, whereas such markings are absent in Chinese. The critical nouns were…

Subtlety of Ambient-Language Effects in Babbling: A Study of English- and Chinese-Learning Infants at 8, 10, and 12 Months

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Chia-Cheng; Jhang, Yuna; Chen, Li-mei; Relyea, George; Oller, D. Kimbrough

2017-01-01

Prior research on ambient-language effects in babbling has often suggested infants produce language-specific phonological features within the first year. These results have been questioned in research failing to find such effects and challenging the positive findings on methodological grounds. We studied English- and Chinese-learning infants at 8,…

A Country in Focus: Empirical Studies on Foreign Language Learning and Teaching in China (2008-2011)--A Review of Selected Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gao, Xuesong; Liao, Yanyi; Li, Yuxia

2014-01-01

In this review, we highlight 60 articles from 1,120 empirical studies in leading language learning and teaching journals published on the Chinese mainland during the years 2008-2011. In preparing the review, we have found Chinese researchers addressing a wide range of topics including language learners' cognitive processes, their language…

Development and evaluation of a Chinese-language newborn feeding hotline: a prospective cohort study.

PubMed

Janssen, Patricia A; Livingstone, Verity H; Chang, Bruce; Klein, Michael C

2009-01-29

Preference for formula versus breast feeding among women of Chinese descent remains a concern in North America. The goal of this study was to develop an intervention targeting Chinese immigrant mothers to increase their rates of exclusive breastfeeding. We convened a focus group of immigrant women of Chinese descent in Vancouver, British Columbia to explore preferences for method of infant feeding. We subsequently surveyed 250 women of Chinese descent to validate focus group findings. Using a participatory approach, our focus group participants reviewed survey findings and developed a priority list for attributes of a community-based intervention to support exclusive breastfeeding in the Chinese community. The authors and focus group participants worked as a team to plan, implement and evaluate a Chinese language newborn feeding information telephone service staffed by registered nurses fluent in Chinese languages. Participants in the focus group reported a strong preference for formula feeding. Telephone survey results revealed that while pregnant Chinese women understood the benefits of breastfeeding, only 20.8% planned to breastfeed exclusively. Only 15.6% were breastfeeding exclusively at two months postpartum. After implementation of the feeding hotline, 20% of new Chinese mothers in Vancouver indicated that they had used the hotline. Among these women, the rate of exclusive breastfeeding was 44.1%; OR 3.02, (95% CI 1.78-5.09) compared to women in our survey. Initiation of a language-specific newborn feeding telephone hotline reached a previously underserved population and may have contributed to improved rates of exclusive breastfeeding.

CRIE: An automated analyzer for Chinese texts.

PubMed

Sung, Yao-Ting; Chang, Tao-Hsing; Lin, Wei-Chun; Hsieh, Kuan-Sheng; Chang, Kuo-En

2016-12-01

Textual analysis has been applied to various fields, such as discourse analysis, corpus studies, text leveling, and automated essay evaluation. Several tools have been developed for analyzing texts written in alphabetic languages such as English and Spanish. However, currently there is no tool available for analyzing Chinese-language texts. This article introduces a tool for the automated analysis of simplified and traditional Chinese texts, called the Chinese Readability Index Explorer (CRIE). Composed of four subsystems and incorporating 82 multilevel linguistic features, CRIE is able to conduct the major tasks of segmentation, syntactic parsing, and feature extraction. Furthermore, the integration of linguistic features with machine learning models enables CRIE to provide leveling and diagnostic information for texts in language arts, texts for learning Chinese as a foreign language, and texts with domain knowledge. The usage and validation of the functions provided by CRIE are also introduced.

Effects of language experience and expectations on attention to consonants and tones in English and Mandarin Chinese.

PubMed

Lin, Mengxi; Francis, Alexander L

2014-11-01

Both long-term native language experience and immediate linguistic expectations can affect listeners' use of acoustic information when making a phonetic decision. In this study, a Garner selective attention task was used to investigate differences in attention to consonants and tones by American English-speaking listeners (N = 20) and Mandarin Chinese-speaking listeners hearing speech in either American English (N = 17) or Mandarin Chinese (N = 20). To minimize the effects of lexical differences and differences in the linguistic status of pitch across the two languages, stimuli and response conditions were selected such that all tokens constitute legitimate words in both languages and all responses required listeners to make decisions that were linguistically meaningful in their native language. Results showed that regardless of ambient language, Chinese listeners processed consonant and tone in a combined manner, consistent with previous research. In contrast, English listeners treated tones and consonants as perceptually separable. Results are discussed in terms of the role of sub-phonemic differences in acoustic cues across language, and the linguistic status of consonants and pitch contours in the two languages.

Characteristics of number transcoding errors of Chinese- versus English-speaking Alzheimer's disease patients.

PubMed

Ting, Simon Kang Seng; Chia, Pei Shi; Kwek, Kevin; Tan, Wilnard; Hameed, Shahul

2016-10-01

Number processing disorder is an acquired deficit in mathematical skills commonly observed in Alzheimer's disease (AD), usually as a consequence of neurological dysfunction. Common impairments include syntactic errors (800012 instead of 8012) and intrusion errors (8 thousand and 12 instead of eight thousand and twelve) in number transcoding tasks. This study aimed to understand the characterization of AD-related number processing disorder within an alphabetic language (English) and ideographical language (Chinese), and to investigate the differences between alphabetic and ideographic language processing. Chinese-speaking AD patients were hypothesized to make significantly more intrusion errors than English-speaking ones, due to the ideographical nature of both Chinese characters and Arabic numbers. A simplified number transcoding test derived from EC301 battery was administered to AD patients. Chinese-speaking AD patients made significantly more intrusion errors (p = 0.001) than English speakers. This demonstrates that number processing in an alphabetic language such as English does not function in the same manner as in Chinese. The impaired inhibition capability likely contributes to such observations due to its competitive lexical representation in brain for Chinese speakers.

Is a High Tone Pointy? Speakers of Different Languages Match Mandarin Chinese Tones to Visual Shapes Differently

PubMed Central

Shang, Nan; Styles, Suzy J.

2017-01-01

Studies investigating cross-modal correspondences between auditory pitch and visual shapes have shown children and adults consistently match high pitch to pointy shapes and low pitch to curvy shapes, yet no studies have investigated linguistic-uses of pitch. In the present study, we used a bouba/kiki style task to investigate the sound/shape mappings for Tones of Mandarin Chinese, for three groups of participants with different language backgrounds. We recorded the vowels [i] and [u] articulated in each of the four tones of Mandarin Chinese. In Study 1 a single auditory stimulus was presented with two images (one curvy, one spiky). In Study 2 a single image was presented with two auditory stimuli differing only in tone. Participants were asked to select the best match in an online ‘Quiz.’ Across both studies, we replicated the previously observed ‘u-curvy, i-pointy’ sound/shape cross-modal correspondence in all groups. However, Tones were mapped differently by people with different language backgrounds: speakers of Mandarin Chinese classified as Chinese-dominant systematically matched Tone 1 (high, steady) to the curvy shape and Tone 4 (falling) to the pointy shape, while English speakers with no knowledge of Chinese preferred to match Tone 1 (high, steady) to the pointy shape and Tone 3 (low, dipping) to the curvy shape. These effects were observed most clearly in Study 2 where tone-pairs were contrasted explicitly. These findings are in line with the dominant patterns of linguistic pitch perception for speakers of these languages (pitch-change, and pitch height, respectively). Chinese English balanced bilinguals showed a bivalent pattern, swapping between the Chinese pitch-change pattern and the English pitch-height pattern depending on the task. These findings show for that the supposedly universal pattern of mapping linguistic sounds to shape is modulated by the sensory properties of a speaker’s language system, and that people with high functioning in more than one language can dynamically shift between patterns. PMID:29270147

Validation of the "Chinese Language Classroom Learning Environment Inventory" for Investigating the Nature of Chinese Language Classrooms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lian, Chua Siew; Wong, Angela F. L.; Der-Thanq, Victor Chen

2006-01-01

The Chinese Language Classroom Environment Inventory (CLCEI) is a bilingual instrument developed for use in measuring students' and teachers' perceptions toward their Chinese Language classroom learning environments in Singapore secondary schools. The English version of the CLCEI was customised from the English version of the "What is…

A cross-language study of perception of lexical stress in English.

PubMed

Yu, Vickie Y; Andruski, Jean E

2010-08-01

This study investigates the question of whether language background affects the perception of lexical stress in English. Thirty native English speakers and 30 native Chinese learners of English participated in a stressed-syllable identification task and a discrimination task involving three types of stimuli (real words/pseudowords/hums). The results show that both language groups were able to identify and discriminate stress patterns. Lexical and segmental information affected the English and Chinese speakers in varying degrees. English and Chinese speakers showed different response patterns to trochaic vs. iambic stress across the three types of stimuli. An acoustic analysis revealed that two language groups used different acoustic cues to process lexical stress. The findings suggest that the different degrees of lexical and segmental effects can be explained by language background, which in turn supports the hypothesis that language background affects the perception of lexical stress in English.

Chinese English Learners' Strategic Competence.

PubMed

Wang, Dianjian; Lai, Hongling; Leslie, Michael

2015-12-01

The present study aims to investigate Chinese English learners' ability to use communication strategies (CSs). The subjects are put in a relatively real English referential communication setting and the analyses of the research data show that Chinese English learners, when encountering problems in foreign language (FL) communication, are characterized by the frequent use of substitution, approximation, circumlocution, literal translation, exemplification, word-coinage, repetition, and the infrequent use of cultural-knowledge and paralinguistic CSs. The rare use of paralinguistic strategies is found to be typical of Chinese English learners. The high frequency of literal translation, one first language (L1)-based strategy in our study sample, suggests that FL learners' use of L1-based CSs may depend more upon the developmental stage of their target language than the typology distance between L1 and the target language. The frequency of repetition reveals one fact that the Chinese English learners lack variety and flexibility in their use of CSs. Based on these findings, it was indicated that learners' use of CSs is influenced by a variety of factors, among which the development stage of their interlanguage and their cultural background are identified as two important factors. Some implications are finally suggested for the English foreign language teaching practice in China.

An Investigation Into Second Language Aptitude for Advanced Chinese Language Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Winke, Paula

2013-01-01

In this study I examine the construct of aptitude in learning Chinese as a second language (L2) to an advanced level. I test 2 hypotheses: first, that L2 aptitude comprises 4 components--working memory, rote memory, grammatical sensitivity, and phonemic coding ability--and second, that L2 aptitude affects learning both directly and indirectly…

Variation in Second Language Learners' Strategies among Non-Native English Speakers from Three Language/Culture Backgrounds

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ebsworth, Miriam Eisenstein; Tang, Frank Lixing; Razavi, Nikta; Aiello, Jacqueline

2014-01-01

This study explored the effects of cultural and linguistic background, L2 proficiency, and gender on language learning strategies for 263 college-level learners from Chinese, Russian, and Latino backgrounds. Data based on the SILL (Oxford, 2001) revealed that Russian students used significantly more strategies than the Chinese students in three…

An Exploration of Chinese EFL Learners' Unwillingness to Communicate and Foreign Language Anxiety

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Meihua; Jackson, Jane

2008-01-01

This article reports the results of a study of the unwillingness to communicate, and anxiety of Chinese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in English language classrooms. A 70-item survey of 547 first-year undergraduate non-English majors revealed that (a) Most of the students were willing to participate in interpersonal…

The Effects of L2 Proficiency on Pragmatics Instruction: A Web-Based Approach to Teaching Chinese Expressions of Gratitude

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Li

2017-01-01

This study investigated whether the effects of pragmatics instruction delivered via a self-access website in a Chinese as a foreign language learning environment vary according to learners' language proficiency. The website provided learners with explicit instruction in how to express gratitude appropriately in Chinese and offered them pragmatic…

International Symposium on Chinese Languages and Linguistics Proceedings (4th, Taipei, Taiwan, July 18-20, 1994).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ho, Dah-an, Ed.; Tseng, Chiu-yu, Ed.

This publication of proceedings, most in English and some in Chinese, of a conference on Chinese languages and linguistics include the following papers: "On Rule Effect and Dialect Classification" (Chin-Chuan Cheng); "Cross-Linguistic Typological Variation, Grammatical Relations, and the Chinese Language" (Bernard Comrie); "Is Chinese a Pragmatic…

Chinese Language Learning Motivation: A Comparative Study of Heritage and Non-Heritage Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wen, Xiaohong

2011-01-01

This study investigates attitudes and motivation that influence heritage and non-heritage students' learning of Chinese as a second language, examining the similarities and differences among three subgroups: bilingual, heritage motivated, and non-heritage learners. The study uses the socio-educational model by Gardner (1985), the internal…

Chinese Language Study in American Higher Education: State of the Art. Language in Education: Theory and Practice. No. 30.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Eddy, Peter A.; And Others

A study was undertaken in order to provide current data and comprehensive information about Chinese language instruction in United States higher education. This report is based on the responses to a survey in 1979. In addition to the discussion of the survey responses, an examination of changes that have taken place since a previous report in 1969…

"Migratory Literature": A "Third Place" for Intercultural Teaching and Learning of Chinese as a Second Language?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hay, Trevor; Wang, Yongyang

2010-01-01

This paper, drawing upon multidisciplinary studies such as critical and cultural studies, literary criticism, intercultural communication and second language acquisition, suggests a specific literary genre--"migratory literature"--to support intercultural competence for learners of Chinese. We begin by elucidating key…

Intercultural Learning via Instant Messenger Interaction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jin, Li; Erben, Tony

2007-01-01

This paper reports on a qualitative study investigating the viability of instant messenger (IM) interaction to facilitate intercultural learning in a foreign language class. Eight students in a Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) class participated in the study. Each student was paired with a native speaker (NS) of Chinese, and each pair…

Does language affect personality perception? A functional approach to testing the Whorfian hypothesis.

PubMed

Chen, Sylvia Xiaohua; Benet-Martínez, Verónica; Ng, Jacky C K

2014-04-01

Whether language shapes cognition has long been a controversial issue. The present research adopts a functional approach to examining the effects of language use on personality perception and dialectical thinking. We propose that language use activates corresponding cultural mindsets, which in turn influence social perception, thinking, and behavior. Four studies recruited Chinese-English bilinguals (N = 129 in Study 1, 229 in Study 2, 68 in Study 3, 106 in Study 4) and used within-subjects and between-subjects design, written and behavioral reports, and self- and other perceptions. The four studies converged to show that Chinese-English bilinguals exhibit higher dialectical thinking and more variations in self- and observer ratings of personality when using the Chinese language than when using English. Furthermore, dialectical thinking predicted more self- and other-perceived variations in personality and behavior across bilingual contexts. These results highlight the important role of culture in understanding the relations between language and cognition, and attest to the malleability of personality perception and dialectical thinking within and across individuals in response to culture-related linguistic cues. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Negotiation of Meaning and Language-Related Episodes in Synchronous, Audio-Based Chinese-German eTandem

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Renner, Julia

2017-01-01

The present paper examines negotiation of meaning and language-related episodes in Chinese-German eTandem interaction, focusing on Chinese as target language. Against the background of the interactionist approach to language learning and drawing upon Swain and Lapkin's (1998, Interaction and second language learning: Two adolescent French…

Can Learning a Foreign Language Foster Analytic Thinking?-Evidence from Chinese EFL Learners' Writings.

PubMed

Jiang, Jingyang; Ouyang, Jinghui; Liu, Haitao

2016-01-01

Language is not only the representation of thinking, but also shapes thinking. Studies on bilinguals suggest that a foreign language plays an important and unconscious role in thinking. In this study, a software-Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2007-was used to investigate whether the learning of English as a foreign language (EFL) can foster Chinese high school students' English analytic thinking (EAT) through the analysis of their English writings with our self-built corpus. It was found that: (1) learning English can foster Chinese learners' EAT. Chinese EFL learners' ability of making distinctions, degree of cognitive complexity and degree of thinking activeness have all improved along with the increase of their English proficiency and their age; (2) there exist differences in Chinese EFL learners' EAT and that of English native speakers, i. e. English native speakers are better in the ability of making distinctions and degree of thinking activeness. These findings suggest that the best EFL learners in high schools have gained native-like analytic thinking through six years' English learning and are able to switch their cognitive styles as needed.

Writing System Modulates the Association between Sensitivity to Acoustic Cues in Music and Reading Ability: Evidence from Chinese-English Bilingual Children.

PubMed

Zhang, Juan; Meng, Yaxuan; Wu, Chenggang; Zhou, Danny Q

2017-01-01

Music and language share many attributes and a large body of evidence shows that sensitivity to acoustic cues in music is positively related to language development and even subsequent reading acquisition. However, such association was mainly found in alphabetic languages. What remains unclear is whether sensitivity to acoustic cues in music is associated with reading in Chinese, a morphosyllabic language. The present study aimed to answer this question by measuring music (i.e., musical metric perception and pitch discrimination), language (i.e., phonological awareness, lexical tone sensitivity), and reading abilities (i.e., word recognition) among 54 third-grade Chinese-English bilingual children. After controlling for age and non-verbal intelligence, we found that both musical metric perception and pitch discrimination accounted for unique variance of Chinese phonological awareness while pitch discrimination rather than musical metric perception predicted Chinese lexical tone sensitivity. More importantly, neither musical metric perception nor pitch discrimination was associated with Chinese reading. As for English, musical metric perception and pitch discrimination were correlated with both English phonological awareness and English reading. Furthermore, sensitivity to acoustic cues in music was associated with English reading through the mediation of English phonological awareness. The current findings indicate that the association between sensitivity to acoustic cues in music and reading may be modulated by writing systems. In Chinese, the mapping between orthography and phonology is not as transparent as in alphabetic languages such as English. Thus, this opaque mapping may alter the auditory perceptual sensitivity in music to Chinese reading.

Development and evaluation of a Chinese-language newborn feeding hotline: A prospective cohort study

PubMed Central

Janssen, Patricia A; Livingstone, Verity H; Chang, Bruce; Klein, Michael C

2009-01-01

Background Preference for formula versus breast feeding among women of Chinese descent remains a concern in North America. The goal of this study was to develop an intervention targeting Chinese immigrant mothers to increase their rates of exclusive breastfeeding. Methods We convened a focus group of immigrant women of Chinese descent in Vancouver, British Columbia to explore preferences for method of infant feeding. We subsequently surveyed 250 women of Chinese descent to validate focus group findings. Using a participatory approach, our focus group participants reviewed survey findings and developed a priority list for attributes of a community-based intervention to support exclusive breastfeeding in the Chinese community. The authors and focus group participants worked as a team to plan, implement and evaluate a Chinese language newborn feeding information telephone service staffed by registered nurses fluent in Chinese languages. Results Participants in the focus group reported a strong preference for formula feeding. Telephone survey results revealed that while pregnant Chinese women understood the benefits of breastfeeding, only 20.8% planned to breastfeed exclusively. Only 15.6% were breastfeeding exclusively at two months postpartum. After implementation of the feeding hotline, 20% of new Chinese mothers in Vancouver indicated that they had used the hotline. Among these women, the rate of exclusive breastfeeding was 44.1%; OR 3.02, (95% CI 1.78–5.09) compared to women in our survey. Conclusion Initiation of a language-specific newborn feeding telephone hotline reached a previously underserved population and may have contributed to improved rates of exclusive breastfeeding. PMID:19178746

Multilingual Education in Macao

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Young, Ming Yee Carissa

2009-01-01

This paper focuses on the current use of the three written languages (Chinese, Portuguese and English) and the four spoken languages (Chinese-Cantonese, Chinese-Putonghua, Portuguese and English) in Macao, a former Portuguese colony (1557-1999) which is now a Special Administrative Region of China. Chinese and Portuguese are official languages,…

The Contribution of Phonological and Morphological Awareness in Chinese-English Bilingual Reading Acquisition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Candise Y.; Cheng, Chenxi; Wang, Min

2018-01-01

The current study examined the contribution of cross-language phonological and morphological awareness to reading acquisition in bilingual children. Participants were 140 children (M[subscript age] = 8.26 years) between Grades 1-4 who learned Chinese as their first language and English as their second language. Awareness of phoneme, onset-rime,…

Variation in Second Language Learners' Strategies among Non-Native English Speakers from Three Language/Culture Backgrounds

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ebsworth, Miriam Eisenstein; Tang, Frank Lixing; Razavi, Nikta; Aiello, Jacqueline

2014-01-01

This study explored the effects of cultural and linguistic background, L2 proficiency, and gender on language learning strategies for 263 college-level learners from Chinese, Russian, and Latino backgrounds. Data based on the SILL (Oxford, 2001) revealed that Russian students used significantly more strategies than the Chinese students in three…

Motivators that Do Not Motivate: The Case of Chinese EFL Learners and the Influence of Culture on Motivation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Judy F.; Warden, Clyde A.; Chang, Huo-Tsan

2005-01-01

Language learning motivation plays an important role in both research and teaching, yet language learners are still largely understood in terms of North American and European cultural values. This research explored language learning motivation constructs in a Chinese cultural setting, where large numbers of students are required to study English.…

Differential Influences of Parental Home Literacy Practices and Anxiety in English as a Foreign Language on Chinese Children's English Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chow, Bonnie Wing-Yin; Chui, Barbie Hiu-Tung; Lai, Michael Wei-Chun; Kwok, Sylvia Y. C. L.

2017-01-01

This study investigated the differential influences of maternal and paternal factors on Chinese children's English as a foreign language development. It took into account both behavioral (i.e. parental home literacy practices, HLP; and children's vocabulary knowledge) and emotional (i.e. parental and children's foreign language reading anxiety,…

Investigating the Use of a Smartphone Social Networking Application on Language Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sung, Ko-Yin; Poole, Frederick

2017-01-01

This study explored college students' use of a popular smartphone social networking application, WeChat, in a tandem language learning project. The research questions included (1) How do Chinese-English dyads utilize the WeChat app for weekly language learning?, and (2) What are the perceptions of the Chinese-English dyads on the use of the WeChat…

Foreign Language Reading Anxiety in a Chinese as a Foreign Language Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhou, Jing

2017-01-01

This study examined the foreign language (FL) reading anxiety level of learners of Chinese as a FL (n = 76) in the United States. Data from an FL reading anxiety survey, a background information survey and a face-to-face interview indicated that there was no significant difference in reading anxiety level among four course levels. In general,…

Confucius Institute Programming in the United States: Language Ideology, Hegemony, and the Making of Chinese Culture in University Classes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stambach, Amy

2015-01-01

This article explores how Confucius Institute teachers and U.S. students use language to index qualities of Chinese people and culture. The study draws on the model of "linguistic fact" to argue that students' and teachers' contextualized use of language occurs in relation to their different yet naturalized assumptions about a commonly…

Contribution of Oral Language Skills, Linguistic Skills, and Transcription Skills to Chinese Written Composition among Fourth-Grade Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yeung, Pui-sze; Ho, Connie Suk-han; Chan, David Wai-ock; Chung, Kevin Kien-hoa

2013-01-01

The present study aimed to investigate the contribution of oral language skills, linguistic skills, and transcription skills to Chinese written composition among Grade 4 students in Hong Kong. Measures assessing verbal working memory, oral language skills, linguistic skills (i.e., syntactic skills and discourse skills), transcription skills (i.e.,…

The Pathway to English Word Reading in Chinese ESL Children: The Role of Spelling

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Dan; Liu, Yingyi; Sun, Huilin; Wong, Richard Kwok; Yeung, Susanna Siu-sze

2017-01-01

The present longitudinal study investigated the role of spelling as a bridge between various reading-related predictors and English word reading in Chinese children learning English as a Second Language (ESL). One hundred and forty-one 5-year-old kindergarten children from Hong Kong, whose first language (L1) was Cantonese and second language (L2)…

Are Alphabetic Language-Derived Models of L2 Reading Relevant to L1 Logographic Background Readers?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ehrich, John Fitzgerald; Zhang, Lawrence Jun; Mu, Jon Congjun; Ehrich, Lisa Catherine

2013-01-01

In this paper, we argue that second language (L2) reading research, which has been informed by studies involving first language (L1) alphabetic English reading, may be less relevant to L2 readers with non-alphabetic reading backgrounds, such as Chinese readers with an L1 logographic (Chinese character) learning history. We provide both…

Word Recognition and Cognitive Profiles of Chinese Pre-School Children at Risk for Dyslexia through Language Delay or Familial History of Dyslexia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McBride-Chang, Catherine; Lam, Fanny; Lam, Catherine; Doo, Sylvia; Wong, Simpson W. L.; Chow, Yvonne Y. Y.

2008-01-01

Background: This study sought to identify cognitive abilities that might distinguish Hong Kong Chinese kindergarten children at risk for dyslexia through either language delay or familial history of dyslexia from children who were not at risk and to examine how these abilities were associated with Chinese word recognition. The cognitive skills of…

JPRS Report China

DTIC Science & Technology

1988-04-25

Chinese 7 Apr 88p6 [Excerpt] Washington, 5 Apr—Han Xu, Chinese Ambas- sador to the United States, made a speech at the Sidwell Friends School in...deeper interest in studying each other’s languages. Han Xu particularly mentioned the achievements made by the Sidwell Friends School in running...Chinese language courses for middle school students in Washington. The ambassador also talked about both countries’ achievements in scientific

Cross-Language Transfer of Word Reading Accuracy and Word Reading Fluency in Spanish-English and Chinese-English Bilinguals: Script-Universal and Script-Specific Processes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pasquarella, Adrian; Chen, Xi; Gottardo, Alexandra; Geva, Esther

2015-01-01

This study examined cross-language transfer of word reading accuracy and word reading fluency in Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals. Participants included 51 Spanish-English and 64 Chinese-English bilinguals. Both groups of children completed parallel measures of phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, word reading accuracy,…

Chinese Learners of English See Chinese Words When Reading English Words

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ma, Fengyang; Ai, Haiyang

2018-01-01

The present study examines when second language (L2) learners read words in the L2, whether the orthography and/or phonology of the translation words in the first language (L1) is activated and whether the patterns would be modulated by the proficiency in the L2. In two experiments, two groups of Chinese learners of English immersed in the L1…

Assessment of Study Abroad Outcomes in Chinese as a Second Language: Gains in Cross-Cultural Adaptability, Language Contact and Proficiency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Taguchi, Naoko; Xiao, Feng; Li, Shuai

2016-01-01

Participants were 109 American college students studying Chinese in a study-abroad programme in Beijing. Following Kelley and Meyer, intercultural competence was defined as cross-cultural adaptability involving four dimensions (emotional resilience, flexibility/openness, perceptual acuity and personal autonomy) and was measured with a survey. A…

Chinese Translation Errors in English/Chinese Bilingual Children's Picture Books

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huang, Qiaoya; Chen, Xiaoning

2012-01-01

The aim of this study was to review the Chinese translation errors in 31 English/Chinese bilingual children's picture books. While bilingual children's books make definite contributions to language acquisition, few studies have examined the quality of these books, and even fewer have specifically focused on English/Chinese bilingual books.…

Social-Class Identity and English Learning: Studies of Chinese Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gao, Feng

2014-01-01

This article first looks at the complex conceptualization of Chinese learners' social-class identities with respect to a shifting Chinese class stratification. It then examines the link between social class and second-language learning in the Chinese context by reviewing several studies on Chinese learners' social-class backgrounds and their…

From the transnational to the Sinophone: lesbian representations in Chinese-language films.

PubMed

Wong, Alvin Ka Hin

2012-01-01

This article theorizes global lesbian cinema in Chinese-language films through regionalism, diaspora studies, and Sinophone studies. Through an inter-regional analysis of Butterfly (Yan Yan Mak, 2004, Hong Kong) and diasporic and Sinophone readings of Saving Face (Alice Wu, 2005, USA), I argue that Mak's film illustrates a Hong Kong regional retranslation of a Taiwanese lesbian story, which complicates any claim to a stable "Chinese" identity. Finally, Wu's representation of lesbianism also troubles the politics of Chineseness by pointing to the ways diasporic reproduction of "community" works through the disciplining of other non-normative sexualities.

Mother-adolescent language proficiency and adolescent academic and emotional adjustment among Chinese American families.

PubMed

Liu, Lisa L; Benner, Aprile D; Lau, Anna S; Kim, Su Yeong

2009-04-01

This study examined the role of adolescents' and mothers' self-reports of English and heritage language proficiency in youth's academic and emotional adjustment among 444 Chinese American families. Adolescents who were proficient in English tended to exhibit higher reading achievement scores, math achievement scores, and overall GPA. Mothers who were English proficient tended to have children with higher academic achievement and fewer depressive symptoms. Results also indicated that adolescents' heritage language maintenance was associated with positive adjustment, particularly amongst foreign-born youth and for youth whose parents were highly proficient in the heritage language. Mother-adolescent match in heritage language proficiency was related to higher math achievement scores and overall GPA. Additionally, higher heritage language proficiency was associated with fewer depressive symptoms for foreign-born but not U.S.-born youth. Overall, the findings suggest that proficiency in both the English and heritage language may confer advantages to Chinese American youth.

Comparison of directed and weighted co-occurrence networks of six languages

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gao, Yuyang; Liang, Wei; Shi, Yuming; Huang, Qiuling

2014-01-01

To study commonalities and differences among different languages, we select 100 reports from the documents of the United Nations, each of which was written in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish languages, separately. Based on these corpora, we construct 6 weighted and directed word co-occurrence networks. Besides all the networks exhibit scale-free and small-world features, we find several new non-trivial results, including connections among English words are denser, and the expression of English language is more flexible and powerful; the connection way among Spanish words is more stringent and this indicates that the Spanish grammar is more rigorous; values of many statistical parameters of the French and Spanish networks are very approximate and this shows that these two languages share many commonalities; Arabic and Russian words have many varieties, which result in rich types of words and a sparse connection among words; connections among Chinese words obey a more uniform distribution, and one inclines to use the least number of Chinese words to express the same complex information as those in other five languages. This shows that the expression of Chinese language is quite concise. In addition, several topics worth further investigating by the complex network approach have been observed in this study.

Pinyin and English Invented Spelling in Chinese-Speaking Students Who Speak English as a Second Language.

PubMed

Ding, Yi; Liu, Ru-De; McBride, Catherine A; Fan, Chung-Hau; Xu, Le; Wang, Jia

2018-05-07

This study examined pinyin (the official phonetic system that transcribes the lexical tones and pronunciation of Chinese characters) invented spelling and English invented spelling in 72 Mandarin-speaking 6th graders who learned English as their second language. The pinyin invented spelling task measured segmental-level awareness including syllable and phoneme awareness, and suprasegmental-level awareness including lexical tones and tone sandhi in Chinese Mandarin. The English invented spelling task manipulated segmental-level awareness including syllable awareness and phoneme awareness, and suprasegmental-level awareness including word stress. This pinyin task outperformed a traditional phonological awareness task that only measured segmental-level awareness and may have optimal utility to measure unique phonological and linguistic features in Chinese reading. The pinyin invented spelling uniquely explained variance in Chinese conventional spelling and word reading in both languages. The English invented spelling uniquely explained variance in conventional spelling and word reading in both languages. Our findings appear to support the role of phonological activation in Chinese reading. Our experimental linguistic manipulations altered the phonological awareness item difficulties.

Two languages, two personalities? Examining language effects on the expression of personality in a bilingual context.

PubMed

Chen, Sylvia Xiaohua; Bond, Michael Harris

2010-11-01

The issue of whether personality changes as a function of language is controversial. The present research tested the cultural accommodation hypothesis by examining the impact of language use on personality as perceived by the self and by others. In Study 1, Hong Kong Chinese-English bilinguals responded to personality inventories in Chinese or English on perceived traits for themselves, typical native speakers of Chinese, and typical native speakers of English. Study 2 adopted a repeated measures design and collected data at three time points from written measures and actual conversations to examine whether bilinguals exhibited different patterns of personality, each associated with one of their two languages and the ethnicity of their interlocutors. Self-reports and behavioral observations confirmed the effects of perceived cultural norms, language priming, and interlocutor ethnicity on various personality dimensions. It is suggested that use of a second language accesses the perceived cultural norms of the group most associated with that language, especially its prototypic trait profiles, thus activating behavioral expressions of personality that are appropriate in the corresponding linguistic-social context.

Collaborative Tasks in Web Conferencing: A Case Study on Chinese Online

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Guo, Sijia; Möllering, Martina

2017-01-01

This case study aimed to explore best practice in applying task-based language teaching (TBLT) via a Web-conferencing tool, Blackboard Collaborate, in a beginners' online Chinese course by evaluating the pedagogical values and limitations of the software and the tasks designed. Chapelle's (2001) criteria for computer-assisted language learning…

"Chairperson" or "Chairman"?--A Study of Chinese EFL Teachers' Gender Inclusivity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Jackie F. K.

2015-01-01

Given the potential influence of teachers' linguistic practice on children's language use and gender role development, the present study seeks to examine the extent of linguistic discrimination present in teachers' language. A total of 215 Chinese EFL teachers were invited to participate in the survey, which included a series of elicitation tests…

Case Studies of Multilingual/Multicultural Asian Deaf Adults: Strategies for Success.

PubMed

Wang, Qiuying; Andrews, Jean; Liu, Hsiu Tan; Liu, Chun Jung

2016-01-01

Case studies of adult d/Deaf or Hard of Hearing Multilingual Learners (DMLs) are few, especially studies of DMLs who learn more than one sign language and read logographic and alphabetic scripts. To reduce this paucity, two descriptive case studies are presented. Written questionnaires, face-to-face interviews, and self-appraisals of language-use rubrics were used to explore (a) the language and literacy histories of two adult Asian DMLs who had learned multiple languages: Chinese (spoken/written), English (written), Chinese Sign Language, and American Sign Language; and (b) how each language was used in different cultural communities with diverse conversational partners. Home literacy environment, family support, visual access to languages, peer and sibling support, role models, encouragement, perseverance, and Deaf identity all played vital roles in the participants' academic success. The findings provide insights into the acquisition of multiple languages and bi-literacy through social communication and academic content.

The Short Form 36 English and Chinese versions were equivalent in a multiethnic Asian population.

PubMed

Tan, Maudrene L S; Wee, Hwee-Lin; Lee, Jeannette; Ma, Stefan; Heng, Derrick; Tai, E-Shyong; Thumboo, Julian

2013-07-01

The primary aim of this article was to evaluate measurement equivalence of the English and Chinese versions of the Short Form 36 version 2 (SF-36v2) and Short Form 6D (SF-6D). In this cross-sectional study, health-related quality of life (HRQoL) was measured from 4,973 ethnic Chinese subjects using the SF-36v2 questionnaire. Measurement equivalence of domain and utility scores for the English- and Chinese-language SF-36v2 and SF-6D were assessed by examining the score differences between the two languages using linear regression models, with and without adjustment for known determinants of HRQoL. Equivalence was achieved if the 90% confidence interval (CI) of the differences in scores, due to language, fell within a predefined equivalence margin. Compared with English-speaking Chinese, Chinese-speaking Chinese were significantly older (47.6 vs. 55.5 years). All SF-36v2 domains were equivalent after adjusting for known HRQoL. SF-6D utility/items had the 90% CI either fully or partially overlap their predefined equivalence margin. The English- and Chinese-language versions of the SF-36v2 and SF-6D demonstrated equivalence. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Somatic and social: Chinese Americans talk about emotion.

PubMed

Tsai, Jeanne L; Simeonova, Diana I; Watanabe, Jamie T

2004-09-01

Empirical findings suggest that Chinese and Americans differ in the ways that they describe emotional experience, with Chinese using more somatic and social words than Americans. No one, however, has investigated whether this variation is related to differences between Chinese and American conceptions of emotion or to linguistic differences between the English and Chinese languages. Therefore, in two studies, the authors compared the word use of individuals who varied in their orientation to Chinese and American cultures (European Americans [EA], more acculturated Chinese Americans [CA], and less acculturated CA) when they were speaking English during emotional events. Across both studies, less acculturated CA used more somatic (e.g., dizzy) and more social (e.g., friend) words than EA. These findings suggest that even when controlling for language spoken, cultural conceptions of emotion may shape how people talk about emotion.

The Use of Segmental and Suprasegmental Information in Lexical Access: A First- and Second-Language Chinese Investigation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Connell, Katrina

2017-01-01

The present study investigated first language (L1) and second language (L2) Chinese categorization of tones and segments and use of tones and segments in lexical access. Previous research has shown that English listeners rely more on pitch height than pitch direction when perceiving lexical tones; however, it remains unclear if this superior use…

Responding to the Diversity of Chinese Language Learners in Australian Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Scrimgeour, Andrew

2014-01-01

Until recently Chinese language learning in Australian primary and junior secondary schools has been characterised by programs primarily designed for second language learners who have had no prior knowledge of or exposure to Chinese language. Participation in such programs by Australian-born children who speak Putonghua (Mandarin) or another…

Reading the World through Words: Cultural Themes in Heritage Chinese Language Textbooks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Curdt-Christiansen, Xiao Lan

2008-01-01

This paper explores the social and cultural knowledge embedded in the textbooks for language and literacy education in a Chinese heritage language school, the Zhonguo School, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It examines how Chinese language arts textbooks introduce the child reader to cultural knowledge considered legitimate and valued in China as…

English and Chinese languages as weighted complex networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sheng, Long; Li, Chunguang

2009-06-01

In this paper, we analyze statistical properties of English and Chinese written human language within the framework of weighted complex networks. The two language networks are based on an English novel and a Chinese biography, respectively, and both of the networks are constructed in the same way. By comparing the intensity and density of connections between the two networks, we find that high weight connections in Chinese language networks prevail more than those in English language networks. Furthermore, some of the topological and weighted quantities are compared. The results display some differences in the structural organizations between the two language networks. These observations indicate that the two languages may have different linguistic mechanisms and different combinatorial natures.

Workplace Influences on Chinese TEFL Academics' Development as Researchers: A Study of Two Chinese Higher Education Institutions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bai, Li; Millwater, Jan; Hudson, Peter

2013-01-01

Workplace influences on Chinese Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) academics' development as researchers were examined in two Chinese higher education institutions in this qualitative collective case study. Data sources included research documentation and interviews with 12 Chinese TEFL academics. Both institutions were keen on research…

Home environmental influences on children's language and reading skills in a genetically sensitive design: Are socioeconomic status and home literacy environment environmental mediators and moderators?

PubMed

Chow, Bonnie Wing-Yin; Ho, Connie Suk-Han; Wong, Simpson W L; Waye, Mary M Y; Zheng, Mo

2017-12-01

This twin study examined how family socioeconomic status (SES) and home literacy environment (HLE) contributes to Chinese language and reading skills. It included 312 Chinese twin pairs aged 3 to 11. Children were individually administered tasks of Chinese word reading, receptive vocabulary and reading-related cognitive skills, and nonverbal reasoning ability. Information on home environment was collected through parent-reported questionnaires. Results showed that SES and HLE mediated shared environmental influences but did not moderate genetic influences on general language and reading abilities. Also, SES and HLE mediated shared environmental contributions to receptive vocabulary and syllable and rhyme awareness, but not orthographic skills. The findings of this study add to past twin studies that focused on alphabetic languages, suggesting that these links could be universal across languages. They also extend existing findings on SES and HLE's contributions to reading-related cognitive skills. © 2017 Scandinavian Psychological Associations and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Relationships among Constructs of L2 Chinese Reading and Language Background

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hsu, Wei-Li

2016-01-01

Extensive research has been conducted on the relationships of Chinese-character recognition to reading development; strategic competence to reading comprehension; and home linguistic exposure to heritage language acquisition. However, studies of these relationships have been marked by widely divergent theoretical underpinnings, and their results…

Linkit: A CALL System for Learning Chinese Characters, Words, and Phrases

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shei, Chris; Hsieh, Hsun-Ping

2012-01-01

Teaching Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL) is increasingly becoming a mainstream profession and an independent academic discipline. However, there is little research in CALL targeting the Chinese language to date. This research attempts to show how a CALL system can be constructed following the unique properties of the Chinese language so it…

Cross-Language Transfer of Insight into the Structure of Compound Words

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Jie; Anderson, Richard C.; Li, Hong; Dong, Qiong; Wu, Xinchun; Zhang, Yan

2010-01-01

Cross-language transfer of awareness of the structure of compound words was investigated among native speakers of Chinese who were learning English as a second language. Chinese fifth graders received instruction in the morphology of four types of compound words in either Chinese or English. They then completed both the Chinese and English…

Educating Teachers of "Chinese as a Local/Global Language": Teaching "Chinese with Australian Characteristics"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Singh, Michael; Han, Jinghe

2014-01-01

How can the education of teacher-researchers from China be framed in ways so that they might make Chinese learnable for primary and secondary school learners for whom English is their everyday language of instruction and communication. The concept "making Chinese learnable" and the characters of the language learners are explained in the…

Vocabulary Knowledge and Morphological Awareness in Chinese as a Heritage Language (CHL) Reading Comprehension Ability

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Haomin; Koda, Keiko

2018-01-01

This study explored the role of vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness in reading comprehension ability of Chinese as a heritage language (CHL) learners. One hundred ninety five CHL students participated in this study and completed a series of measures including two sets of vocabulary knowledge (one consisting of items pertaining to…

A Case Study of Chinese University English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Students' Attitudes toward Learning Technologies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hayes, Kenneth Michael

2010-01-01

This qualitative case study investigates Chinese university English in the context of foreign language (EFL) learners' attitudes about video-aided instruction (VAI), video recording instruction, and mobile phone instruction (learning technologies). When I was working as an English teacher in Mainland China, several instructors and students stated…

Gesture Use in Story Recall by Chinese-English Bilinguals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nicoladis, Elena; Pika, Simone; Yin, Hui; Marentette, Paula

2007-01-01

Previous studies have shown inconsistent results concerning bilinguals' use of gestures to compensate for reduced proficiency in their second language (L2). These results could be because of differing task demands. In this study, we asked 16 intermediate English L2 speakers (whose first language [L1] was Chinese) to watch a story and tell it back…

The Impact of Academic Self-Efficacy, Acculturation Difficulties, and Language Abilities on Procrastination Behavior in Chinese International Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lowinger, Robert Jay; He, Zhaomin; Lin, Miranda; Chang, Mei

2014-01-01

This study examined the role of academic self-efficacy, acculturation difficulties, and language abilities on procrastination behavior using a convenience sample of 264 Chinese international students studying at three public universities in the United States. While there were no significant mean gender differences on any of the measures, results…

Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety among China Chinese Students Undergoing the Laureate English Programme in INTI International University, Malaysia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ampalagan, Meghavaani d/o; Sellupillai, Mogana d/o; Yap, Sze Sze

2014-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between foreign language classroom anxiety (communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation) among Mainland Chinese students undergoing the Laureate English Programme in INTI International University, Malaysia. The participants of this study consisted of 75…

Cultural views, language ability, and mammography use in Chinese American women.

PubMed

Liang, Wenchi; Wang, Judy; Chen, Mei-Yuh; Feng, Shibao; Yi, Bin; Mandelblatt, Jeanne S

2009-12-01

Mammography screening rates among Chinese American women have been reported to be low. This study examines whether and how culture views and language ability influence mammography adherence in this mostly immigrant population. Asymptomatic Chinese American women (n = 466) aged 50 and older, recruited from the Washington, D.C. area, completed a telephone interview. Regular mammography was defined as having two mammograms at age-appropriate recommended intervals. Cultural views were assessed by 30 items, and language ability measured women's ability in reading, writing, speaking, and listening to English. After controlling for risk perception, worry, physician recommendation, family encouragement, and access barriers, women holding a more Chinese/Eastern cultural view were significantly less likely to have had regular mammograms than those having a Western cultural view. English ability was positively associated with mammography adherence. The authors' results imply that culturally sensitive and language-appropriate educational interventions are likely to improve mammography adherence in this population.

Cultural Views, Language Ability, and Mammography Use in Chinese American Women

PubMed Central

Liang, Wenchi; Wang, Judy; Chen, Mei-Yuh; Feng, Shibao; Yi, Bin; Mandelblatt, Jeanne S.

2013-01-01

Mammography screening rates among Chinese American women have been reported to be low. This study examines whether and how culture views and language ability influence mammography adherence in this mostly immigrant population. Asymptomatic Chinese American women (n = 466) aged 50 and older, recruited from the Washington, D.C. area, completed a telephone interview. Regular mammography was defined as having two mammograms at age-appropriate recommended intervals. Cultural views were assessed by 30 items, and language ability measured women’s ability in reading, writing, speaking, and listening to English. After controlling for risk perception, worry, physician recommendation, family encouragement, and access barriers, women holding a more Chinese/Eastern cultural view were significantly less likely to have had regular mammograms than those having a Western cultural view. English ability was positively associated with mammography adherence. The authors’ results imply that culturally sensitive and language-appropriate educational interventions are likely to improve mammography adherence in this population. PMID:19233947

Development of a conceptually equivalent Chinese-language translation of the US Household Food Security Survey Module for Chinese immigrants to the USA.

PubMed

Kwan, Christine Ml; Napoles, Anna M; Chou, Jeyling; Seligman, Hilary K

2015-02-01

To develop a conceptually equivalent Chinese-language translation of the eighteen-item US Household Food Security Survey Module. In the current qualitative study, we (i) highlight methodological challenges which arise in developing survey instruments that will be used to make comparisons across language groups and (ii) describe the development of a Chinese-language translation of the US Household Food Security Survey Module, called the San Francisco Chinese Food Security Module. Community sites in San Francisco, CA, USA. We conducted cognitive interviews with twenty-two community members recruited from community sites hosting food pantries and with five professionals recruited from clinical settings. Development of conceptually equivalent surveys can be difficult. We highlight challenges related to dialect, education, literacy (e.g. preferences for more or less formal phrasing), English words and phrases for which there is no Chinese language equivalent (e.g. 'balanced meals' and 'eat less than you felt you should') and response formats. We selected final translations to maximize: (i) consistency of the Chinese translation with the intent of the English version; (ii) clarity; and (iii) similarities in understanding across dialects and literacy levels. Survey translation is essential for conducting research in many communities. The challenges encountered illustrate how literal translations can affect the conceptual equivalence of survey items across languages. Cognitive interview methods should be routinely used for survey translation when such non-equivalence is suspected, such as in surveys addressing highly culturally bound behaviours such as diet and eating behaviours. Literally translated surveys lacking conceptual equivalence may magnify or obscure important health inequalities.

Can Learning a Foreign Language Foster Analytic Thinking?—Evidence from Chinese EFL Learners' Writings

PubMed Central

Jiang, Jingyang; Ouyang, Jinghui; Liu, Haitao

2016-01-01

Language is not only the representation of thinking, but also shapes thinking. Studies on bilinguals suggest that a foreign language plays an important and unconscious role in thinking. In this study, a software—Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2007—was used to investigate whether the learning of English as a foreign language (EFL) can foster Chinese high school students’ English analytic thinking (EAT) through the analysis of their English writings with our self-built corpus. It was found that: (1) learning English can foster Chinese learners’ EAT. Chinese EFL learners’ ability of making distinctions, degree of cognitive complexity and degree of thinking activeness have all improved along with the increase of their English proficiency and their age; (2) there exist differences in Chinese EFL learners’ EAT and that of English native speakers, i. e. English native speakers are better in the ability of making distinctions and degree of thinking activeness. These findings suggest that the best EFL learners in high schools have gained native-like analytic thinking through six years’ English learning and are able to switch their cognitive styles as needed. PMID:27741270

Developmental dyslexia in Chinese and English populations: dissociating the effect of dyslexia from language differences

PubMed Central

Hu, Wei; Lee, Hwee Ling; Zhang, Qiang; Liu, Tao; Geng, Li Bo; Seghier, Mohamed L.; Shakeshaft, Clare; Twomey, Tae; Green, David W.; Yang, Yi Ming

2010-01-01

Previous neuroimaging studies have suggested that developmental dyslexia has a different neural basis in Chinese and English populations because of known differences in the processing demands of the Chinese and English writing systems. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we provide the first direct statistically based investigation into how the effect of dyslexia on brain activation is influenced by the Chinese and English writing systems. Brain activation for semantic decisions on written words was compared in English dyslexics, Chinese dyslexics, English normal readers and Chinese normal readers, while controlling for all other experimental parameters. By investigating the effects of dyslexia and language in one study, we show common activation in Chinese and English dyslexics despite different activation in Chinese versus English normal readers. The effect of dyslexia in both languages was observed as less than normal activation in the left angular gyrus and in left middle frontal, posterior temporal and occipitotemporal regions. Differences in Chinese and English normal reading were observed as increased activation for Chinese relative to English in the left inferior frontal sulcus; and increased activation for English relative to Chinese in the left posterior superior temporal sulcus. These cultural differences were not observed in dyslexics who activated both left inferior frontal sulcus and left posterior superior temporal sulcus, consistent with the use of culturally independent strategies when reading is less efficient. By dissociating the effect of dyslexia from differences in Chinese and English normal reading, our results reconcile brain activation results with a substantial body of behavioural studies showing commonalities in the cognitive manifestation of dyslexia in Chinese and English populations. They also demonstrate the influence of cognitive ability and learning environment on a common neural system for reading. PMID:20488886

Developmental dyslexia in Chinese and English populations: dissociating the effect of dyslexia from language differences.

PubMed

Hu, Wei; Lee, Hwee Ling; Zhang, Qiang; Liu, Tao; Geng, Li Bo; Seghier, Mohamed L; Shakeshaft, Clare; Twomey, Tae; Green, David W; Yang, Yi Ming; Price, Cathy J

2010-06-01

Previous neuroimaging studies have suggested that developmental dyslexia has a different neural basis in Chinese and English populations because of known differences in the processing demands of the Chinese and English writing systems. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we provide the first direct statistically based investigation into how the effect of dyslexia on brain activation is influenced by the Chinese and English writing systems. Brain activation for semantic decisions on written words was compared in English dyslexics, Chinese dyslexics, English normal readers and Chinese normal readers, while controlling for all other experimental parameters. By investigating the effects of dyslexia and language in one study, we show common activation in Chinese and English dyslexics despite different activation in Chinese versus English normal readers. The effect of dyslexia in both languages was observed as less than normal activation in the left angular gyrus and in left middle frontal, posterior temporal and occipitotemporal regions. Differences in Chinese and English normal reading were observed as increased activation for Chinese relative to English in the left inferior frontal sulcus; and increased activation for English relative to Chinese in the left posterior superior temporal sulcus. These cultural differences were not observed in dyslexics who activated both left inferior frontal sulcus and left posterior superior temporal sulcus, consistent with the use of culturally independent strategies when reading is less efficient. By dissociating the effect of dyslexia from differences in Chinese and English normal reading, our results reconcile brain activation results with a substantial body of behavioural studies showing commonalities in the cognitive manifestation of dyslexia in Chinese and English populations. They also demonstrate the influence of cognitive ability and learning environment on a common neural system for reading.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)-aided therapeutics of Chinese speech area-related lesions: screening of fMRI-stimulating mode and its clinical applications.

PubMed

Wu, Nan; Xie, Bing; Wu, Guo-Cai; Lan, Chuan; Wang, Jian; Feng, Hua

2010-01-01

Language area-related lesion is a serious issue in neurosurgery. Removing the lesion in the language area and at the same time preserving language functions is a great challenge. In this study, we aimed to screen functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) based task types suitable for activation of Broca and Wernicke areas in Chinese population, characterize lesion properties of functional area of Chinese language in brain, and assess the potential of fMRI-guided neuronavigation in clinical applications. Blood oxygen level-dependent fMRI has been used to localize language area prior to operation. We carried out extensive fMRI analyses and conducted operation on patients with lesions in speech area. fMRI tests revealed that the reciting task in Chinese can steadily activate the Broca area, and paragraph comprehension task in Chinese can effectively activate the Wernicke area. Cortical stimulation of patients when being awake during operation validated the sensitivity and accuracy of fMRI. The safe distance between language activation area and removal of the lesion in language area was determined to be about 10 mm. Further investigation suggested that navigation of fMRI combined with diffuse tensor imaging can decrease the incidence of postoperative dysfunction and increase the success rate for complete removal of lesion. Taken together, these findings may be helpful to clinical therapy for language area-related lesions.

The Proximate Phonological Unit of Chinese-English Bilinguals: Proficiency Matters

PubMed Central

Verdonschot, Rinus Gerardus; Nakayama, Mariko; Zhang, Qingfang; Tamaoka, Katsuo; Schiller, Niels Olaf

2013-01-01

An essential step to create phonology according to the language production model by Levelt, Roelofs and Meyer is to assemble phonemes into a metrical frame. However, recently, it has been proposed that different languages may rely on different grain sizes of phonological units to construct phonology. For instance, it has been proposed that, instead of phonemes, Mandarin Chinese uses syllables and Japanese uses moras to fill the metrical frame. In this study, we used a masked priming-naming task to investigate how bilinguals assemble their phonology for each language when the two languages differ in grain size. Highly proficient Mandarin Chinese-English bilinguals showed a significant masked onset priming effect in English (L2), and a significant masked syllabic priming effect in Mandarin Chinese (L1). These results suggest that their proximate unit is phonemic in L2 (English), and that bilinguals may use different phonological units depending on the language that is being processed. Additionally, under some conditions, a significant sub-syllabic priming effect was observed even in Mandarin Chinese, which indicates that L2 phonology exerts influences on L1 target processing as a consequence of having a good command of English. PMID:23646107

The perception of FM sweeps by Chinese and English listeners.

PubMed

Luo, Huan; Boemio, Anthony; Gordon, Michael; Poeppel, David

2007-02-01

Frequency-modulated (FM) signals are an integral acoustic component of ecologically natural sounds and are analyzed effectively in the auditory systems of humans and animals. Linearly frequency-modulated tone sweeps were used here to evaluate two questions. First, how rapid a sweep can listeners accurately perceive? Second, is there an effect of native language insofar as the language (phonology) is differentially associated with processing of FM signals? Speakers of English and Mandarin Chinese were tested to evaluate whether being a speaker of a tone language altered the perceptual identification of non-speech tone sweeps. In two psychophysical studies, we demonstrate that Chinese subjects perform better than English subjects in FM direction identification, but not in an FM discrimination task, in which English and Chinese speakers show similar detection thresholds of approximately 20 ms duration. We suggest that the better FM direction identification in Chinese subjects is related to their experience with FM direction analysis in the tone-language environment, even though supra-segmental tonal variation occurs over a longer time scale. Furthermore, the observed common discrimination temporal threshold across two language groups supports the conjecture that processing auditory signals at durations of approximately 20 ms constitutes a fundamental auditory perceptual threshold.

Awareness of Derivation and Compounding in Chinese-English Biliteracy Acquisition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Dongbo; Koda, Keiko

2014-01-01

This study examines the intra-and inter-lingual relationships between first and second language morphological awareness and reading comprehension among grade 6 Chinese learners of English as a foreign language in China. Morphological awareness measures covered compounding as well as derivation. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that within…

Project CHAMP, 1986-1987. OEA Evaluation Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cabrera, Eulalia; And Others

In its fourth year, Project CHAMP (Chinese Achievement and Mastery Program) provided instruction in English as a second language (ESL), native language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies to 728 limited-English-speaking Chinese immigrant students in grades nine through twelve at three schools. Content-area classes were taught in English…

Courseware Authoring and Delivering System for Chinese Language Instruction. Final Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mao, Tang

A study investigated technical methods for simplifying and improving the creation of software for teaching uncommonly taught languages such as Chinese. Research consisted of assessment of existing authoring systems, domestic and overseas, available hardware, peripherals, and software packages that could be integrated into this project. Then some…

"Multilingualizing" Composition: A Diary Self-Study of Learning Spanish and Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Severino, Carol

2017-01-01

Using her own experiences of keeping a journal while learning advanced Spanish creative writing and beginning Chinese during the same semester, the author illustrates that composition teachers' second language learning experiences--intimate and challenging encounters with a second language that multilingual composition students experience every…

Chinese Students' Approach to Learning English: Psycholinguistic and Sociolinguistic Perspectives.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

He, Hongwei

A study examined the historical, cultural, social, pedagogical, and psychological factors affecting Chinese students' language learning styles and attitudes, particularly concerning learning English as a Second Language (ESL). The first section offers an overview of considerations in understanding the cultural background that students bring to the…

Language Skills in Classical Chinese Text Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lau, Kit-ling

2018-01-01

This study used both quantitative and qualitative methods to explore the role of lower- and higher-level language skills in classical Chinese (CC) text comprehension. A CC word and sentence translation test, text comprehension test, and questionnaire were administered to 393 Secondary Four students; and 12 of these were randomly selected to…

Struggling to Thrive: The Impact of Chinese Language Assessments on Social Mobility of Hong Kong Ethnic Minority Youth

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Loh, Elizabeth K. Y.; Tam, Loretta C. W.

2016-01-01

The paper explores how the policy of alternative Chinese qualifications policy affects ethnic minorities' (EM) social mobility, and how such multi-exit assessment framework affects Chinese as a second language learning and teaching in Hong Kong. Chinese language (CL) qualifications other than the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE)…

Engaging a "Truly Foreign" Language and Culture: China through Chinese Film

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ning, Cynthia

2009-01-01

In this article, the author shares how she uses Chinese film in her Chinese language and culture classes. She demonstrates how Chinese films can help students "navigate the uncharted universe of Chinese culture" with reference to several contemporary Chinese films. She describes how intensive viewing of films can develop a deeper and…

An fMRI Study of Grammatical Morpheme Processing Associated with Nouns and Verbs in Chinese

PubMed Central

Yu, Xi; Bi, Yanchao; Han, Zaizhu; Law, Sam-Po

2013-01-01

This study examined whether the degree of complexity of a grammatical component in a language would impact on its representation in the brain through identifying the neural correlates of grammatical morpheme processing associated with nouns and verbs in Chinese. In particular, the processing of Chinese nominal classifiers and verbal aspect markers were investigated in a sentence completion task and a grammaticality judgment task to look for converging evidence. The Chinese language constitutes a special case because it has no inflectional morphology per se and a larger classifier than aspect marker inventory, contrary to the pattern of greater verbal than nominal paradigmatic complexity in most European languages. The functional imaging results showed BA47 and left supplementary motor area and superior medial frontal gyrus more strongly activated for classifier processing, and the left posterior middle temporal gyrus more responsive to aspect marker processing. We attributed the activation in the left prefrontal cortex to greater processing complexity during classifier selection, analogous to the accounts put forth for European languages, and the left posterior middle temporal gyrus to more demanding verb semantic processing. The overall findings significantly contribute to cross-linguistic observations of neural substrates underlying processing of grammatical morphemes from an analytic and a classifier language, and thereby deepen our understanding of neurobiology of human language. PMID:24146745

75 FR 5767 - All Terrain Vehicle Chinese Language Webinar; Meeting

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-02-04

... CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION All Terrain Vehicle Chinese Language Webinar; Meeting AGENCY... announcing the following meeting: All Terrain Vehicle Chinese Language Webinar. The webinar will focus on CPSC's requirements for ATV's, including CPSC's Action Plan and mandatory vehicle requirements. Date...

Personality expression in Chinese language use.

PubMed

Qiu, Lin; Lu, Jiahui; Ramsay, Jonathan; Yang, Shanshan; Qu, Weina; Zhu, Tingshao

2017-12-01

To date, little research has investigated personality expressions in languages other than English. Given that the Chinese language has the largest number of native speakers in the world, it is vitally important to examine the associations between personality and Chinese language use. In this research, we analysed Chinese microblogs and identified word categories and factorial structures associated with personality traits. We also compared our results with previous findings in English and showed that linguistic expression of personality has both universal- and language-specific aspects. Expression of personality via content words is more likely to be consistent across languages than expression via function words. This makes an important step towards uncovering universal patterns of personality expression in language. © 2016 International Union of Psychological Science.

A tale of two writing systems: double dissociation and metalinguistic transfer between Chinese and English word reading among Hong Kong children.

PubMed

Tong, Xiuli; Tong, Xiuhong; McBride-Chang, Catherine

2015-01-01

This study investigated the rate of school-aged Chinese-English language learners at risk for reading difficulties in either Chinese or English only, or both, among second and fifth graders in Hong Kong. In addition, we examined the metalinguistic skills that distinguished those who were poor in reading Chinese from those who were poor in reading English. The prevalence of poor English readers among children identified to be poor in Chinese word recognition across the five participating schools was approximately 42% at Grade 2 and 57% at Grade 5. Across grades, children who were poor readers of both languages tended to have difficulties in phonological and morphological awareness. Poor readers of English only were found to manifest significantly poorer phonological awareness, compared to those who were poor readers of Chinese only; their average tone awareness score was also lower relative to normally developing controls. Apart from indicating possible dissociations between Chinese first language (L1) word reading and English second language (L2) word reading, these findings suggested that the degree to which different metalinguistic skills are important for reading in different writing systems may depend on the linguistic features of the particular writing system. © Hammill Institute on Disabilities 2013.

Reading depends on writing, in Chinese.

PubMed

Tan, Li Hai; Spinks, John A; Eden, Guinevere F; Perfetti, Charles A; Siok, Wai Ting

2005-06-14

Language development entails four fundamental and interactive abilities: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Over the past four decades, a large body of evidence has indicated that reading acquisition is strongly associated with a child's listening skills, particularly the child's sensitivity to phonological structures of spoken language. Furthermore, it has been hypothesized that the close relationship between reading and listening is manifested universally across languages and that behavioral remediation using strategies addressing phonological awareness alleviates reading difficulties in dyslexics. The prevailing view of the central role of phonological awareness in reading development is largely based on studies using Western (alphabetic) languages, which are based on phonology. The Chinese language provides a unique medium for testing this notion, because logographic characters in Chinese are based on meaning rather than phonology. Here we show that the ability to read Chinese is strongly related to a child's writing skills and that the relationship between phonological awareness and Chinese reading is much weaker than that in reports regarding alphabetic languages. We propose that the role of logograph writing in reading development is mediated by two possibly interacting mechanisms. The first is orthographic awareness, which facilitates the development of coherent, effective links among visual symbols, phonology, and semantics; the second involves the establishment of motor programs that lead to the formation of long-term motor memories of Chinese characters. These findings yield a unique insight into how cognitive systems responsible for reading development and reading disability interact, and they challenge the prominent phonological awareness view.

Implementations of clinical functional magnetic resonance imaging using character-based paradigms for the prediction of Chinese language dominance.

PubMed

Liu, Ho-Ling; Wu, Chien-Te; Chen, Jian-Chuan; Hsu, Yuan-Yu; Wai, Yau-Yau; Wan, Yung-Liang

2003-01-01

Recently, functional MRI (fMRI) using word generation (WG) tasks has been shown to be effective for mapping the Chinese language-related brain areas. In clinical applications, however, patients' performance cannot be easily monitored during WG tasks. In this study, we evaluated the feasibility of a word choice (WC) paradigm in the clinical setting and compared the results with those from WG tasks. Intrasubject comparisons of fMRI with both WG and WC paradigms were performed on six normal human subjects and two tumor patients. Subject responses in the WC paradigm, based on semantic judgments, were recorded. Activation strength, extent, and laterality were evaluated and compared. Our results showed that fMRI with the WC paradigm evoked weaker neuronal activation than that with the WG paradigm in Chinese language-related brain areas. It was sufficient to reveal language laterality for clinical use, however. In addition, it resulted in less nonlanguage-specific brain activation. Results from the patient data demonstrated strong evidence for the necessity of incorporating response monitoring during fMRI studies, which suggested that fMRI with the WC paradigm is more appropriate to be implemented for the prediction of Chinese language dominance in clinical environments.

Processing temporal agreement in a tenseless language: an ERP study of Mandarin Chinese.

PubMed

Qiu, Yinchen; Zhou, Xiaolin

2012-03-29

Human languages are equipped with an impressive repertoire of time-encoding devices which vary significantly across different cultures. Previous research on temporal processing has focused on morphosyntactic processes in Indo-European languages. This study investigated the neural correlates of temporal processing in Mandarin Chinese, a language that is not morphologically marked for tense. In a sentence acceptability judgment task, we manipulated the agreement between semantically enriched temporal adverbs or a highly grammaticalized aspectual particle (-guo) and temporal noun phrases. Disagreement of both the temporal adverbs and the aspectual particle elicited a centro-parietal P600 effect in event-related potentials (ERPs) whereas only disagreeing temporal adverbs evoked an additional broadly distributed N400 effect. Moreover, a sustained negativity effect was observed on both the words following the critical ones and the last words in sentences with temporal disagreement. These results reveal both commonalities and differences between Chinese and Indo-European languages in temporal agreement processing. In particular, we demonstrate that temporal reference in Chinese relies on both lexical semantics and morphosyntactic processes and that the level of grammaticalization of linguistic devices representing similar temporal information is reflected in differential ERP responses. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Cultural and linguistic isolation: the breast cancer experience of Chinese-Australian women - a qualitative study.

PubMed

Kwok, Cannas; White, Kathryn

2011-08-01

Although Chinese-Australian women are at higher risk of developing breast cancer after migration to Australia, information on their experience is limited. This paper explores Chinese-Australian women's perceptions of the meaning and experience of a breast cancer diagnosis, treatment and coping mechanism. Three focus groups were conducted with 23 Chinese-Australian women diagnosed with breast cancer in their native language (Cantonese or Mandarin). Following transcription and translation, interview data was analysed by content analysis. Culturally specific values, beliefs and language barriers played a significant role in shaping the women's breast cancer experiences and their response to the diagnosis. Of note these women found the experience isolating and distressing, factors that were compounded by the lack of culturally sensitive resources and information. In providing information for Chinese-Australian women with breast cancer, culture, language and migration experience need to be taken into account.

A Chinese Interactive Feedback System for a Virtual Campus

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Jui-Fa; Lin, Wei-Chuan; Jian, Chih-Yu; Hung, Ching-Chung

2008-01-01

Considering the popularity of the Internet, an automatic interactive feedback system for Elearning websites is becoming increasingly desirable. However, computers still have problems understanding natural languages, especially the Chinese language, firstly because the Chinese language has no space to segment lexical entries (its segmentation…

Input and Output in Code Switching: A Case Study of a Japanese-Chinese Bilingual Infant

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Meng, Hairong; Miyamoto, Tadao

2012-01-01

Code switching (CS) (or language mixing) generally takes place in bilingual children's utterances, even if their parents adhere to the "one parent-one language" principle. The present case study of a Japanese-Chinese bilingual infant provides both quantitative and qualitative analyses on the impact of input on output, as manifested in CS. The…

A Case Study of Chinese Mongolian Students in ELT under the Background of MOOCs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhao, Lili

2015-01-01

In response to the current reform of college English teaching, a case study of Chinese Mongolian students in English language teaching under the influence of MOOCs is carried out in an attempt to examine the efficacy of the integration of information technology into English language teaching. After a brief introduction of the teaching mode of…

Word Reading Efficiency, Text Reading Fluency, and Reading Comprehension among Chinese Learners of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jiang, Xiangying; Sawaki, Yasuyo; Sabatini, John

2012-01-01

This study examined the relationship among word reading efficiency, text reading fluency, and reading comprehension for adult English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. Data from 185 adult Chinese EFL learners preparing to take the Test-of-English-as-a-Foreign-Language[TM] (TOEFL[R]) were analyzed in this study. The participants completed a…

Evaluating language environment analysis system performance for Chinese: a pilot study in Shanghai.

PubMed

Gilkerson, Jill; Zhang, Yiwen; Xu, Dongxin; Richards, Jeffrey A; Xu, Xiaojuan; Jiang, Fan; Harnsberger, James; Topping, Keith

2015-04-01

The purpose of this study was to evaluate performance of the Language Environment Analysis (LENA) automated language-analysis system for the Chinese Shanghai dialect and Mandarin (SDM) languages. Volunteer parents of 22 children aged 3-23 months were recruited in Shanghai. Families provided daylong in-home audio recordings using LENA. A native speaker listened to 15 min of randomly selected audio samples per family to label speaker regions and provide Chinese character and SDM word counts for adult speakers. LENA segment labeling and counts were compared with rater-based values. LENA demonstrated good sensitivity in identifying adult and child; this sensitivity was comparable to that of American English validation samples. Precision was strong for adults but less so for children. LENA adult word count correlated strongly with both Chinese characters and SDM word counts. LENA conversational turn counts correlated similarly with rater-based counts after the exclusion of three unusual samples. Performance related to some degree to child age. LENA adult word count and conversational turn provided reasonably accurate estimates for SDM over the age range tested. Theoretical and practical considerations regarding LENA performance in non-English languages are discussed. Despite the pilot nature and other limitations of the study, results are promising for broader cross-linguistic applications.

Mandarin Chinese Function Catalog and Rolebook. Method for Determining Language Objectives and Criteria, Volume IX.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Setzler, Hubert H., Jr.; And Others

A Mandarin Chinese Function Catalog and Instructor Rolebook for Mandarin Chinese are presented. The catalog and rolebook are part of the communication/language objectives-based system (C/LOBS), which supports the front-end analysis efforts of the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. The C/LOBS project, which is described in 13…

Mother-Adolescent Language Proficiency and Adolescent Academic and Emotional Adjustment Among Chinese American Families

PubMed Central

Benner, Aprile D.; Lau, Anna S.; Kim, Su Yeong

2009-01-01

This study examined the role of adolescents’ and mothers’ self-reports of English and heritage language proficiency in youth’s academic and emotional adjustment among 444 Chinese American families. Adolescents who were proficient in English tended to exhibit higher reading achievement scores, math achievement scores, and overall GPA. Mothers who were English proficient tended to have children with higher academic achievement and fewer depressive symptoms. Results also indicated that adolescents’ heritage language maintenance was associated with positive adjustment, particularly amongst foreign-born youth and for youth whose parents were highly proficient in the heritage language. Mother-adolescent match in heritage language proficiency was related to higher math achievement scores and overall GPA. Additionally, higher heritage language proficiency was associated with fewer depressive symptoms for foreign-born but not U.S.-born youth. Overall, the findings suggest that proficiency in both the English and heritage language may confer advantages to Chinese American youth. PMID:19636729

Keeping up Appearances before the "Other"? Interculturality and Occidentalism in the Educational TV-Program "Happy Chinese"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dervin, Fred; Gao, Minghui

2012-01-01

"Happy Chinese" or kuaile hanyu is an educational melodrama produced by the Chinese TV channel CCTV in 2009. Aiming to improve foreign learners' Chinese language skills, the plot revolves around Susan, an American, staying with her former Chinese classmate's family. "Happy Chinese" proposes both language and cultural learning.…

Native Language Experience Shapes Neural Basis of Addressed and Assembled Phonologies

PubMed Central

Mei, Leilei; Xue, Gui; Lu, Zhong-Lin; He, Qinghua; Wei, Miao; Zhang, Mingxia; Dong, Qi; Chen, Chuansheng

2015-01-01

Previous studies have suggested differential engagement of addressed and assembled phonologies in reading Chinese and alphabetic languages (e.g., English) and the modulatory role of native language in learning to read a second language. However, it is not clear whether native language experience shapes the neural mechanisms of addressed and assembled phonologies. To address this question, we trained native Chinese and native English speakers to read the same artificial language (based on Korean Hangul) either through addressed (i.e., whole-word mapping) or assembled (i.e., grapheme-to-phoneme mapping) phonology. We found that, for both native Chinese and native English speakers, addressed phonology relied on the regions in the ventral pathway, whereas assembled phonology depended on the regions in the dorsal pathway. More importantly, we found that the neural mechanisms of addressed and assembled phonologies were shaped by native language experience. Specifically, two key regions for addressed phonology (i.e., the left middle temporal gyrus and right inferior temporal gyrus) showed greater activation for addressed phonology in native Chinese speakers, while one key region for assembled phonology (i.e., the left supramarginal gyrus) showed more activation for assembled phonology in native English speakers. These results provide direct neuroimaging evidence for the effect of native language experience on the neural mechanisms of phonological access in a new language and support the assimilation-accommodation hypothesis. PMID:25858447

A Functional Study of "zhi [Chinese character omitted]" in the Chinese Nominal Group

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Weiwei; Li, Manliang

2017-01-01

Over the past decades, subjects concerned with the Chinese character "zhi [Chinese character omitted]", i.e. grammatical structure, in ancient Chinese language, have been widely explored. This paper conducts a research from a new dimension: the Cardiff Grammar, an integral part of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) which is famous for…

Prosody-Syntax Integration in a Second Language: Contrasting Event-Related Potentials from German and Chinese Learners of English Using Linear Mixed Effect Models

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nickels, Stefanie; Steinhauer, Karsten

2018-01-01

The role of prosodic information in sentence processing is not usually addressed in second language (L2) instruction, and neurocognitive studies on prosody-syntax interactions are rare. Here we compare event-related potentials (ERP) of Chinese and German learners of English L2 to those of native English speakers and show how first language (L1)…

General Auditory Processing, Speech Perception and Phonological Awareness Skills in Chinese-English Biliteracy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chung, Kevin K. H.; McBride-Chang, Catherine; Cheung, Him; Wong, Simpson W. L.

2013-01-01

This study focused on the associations of general auditory processing, speech perception, phonological awareness and word reading in Cantonese-speaking children from Hong Kong learning to read both Chinese (first language [L1]) and English (second language [L2]). Children in Grades 2--4 ("N" = 133) participated and were administered…

ICT and an Exploratory Pedagogy for Classroom-Based Chinese Language Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhao, XingLong; Wang, MinJuan; Wu, Juan; He, KeKang

2011-01-01

This paper reports on a new pedagogy for Chinese language teaching and learning at elementary schools through exploratory classroom instruction using Information and Communication Technologies. The study used quantitative method to collect data from two elementary schools of China. The results showed that: (1) the three-in-one pedagogy of…

Language Learner Strategy by Chinese-Speaking EFL Readers When Comprehending Familiar and Unfamiliar Texts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Jia-Ying

2015-01-01

This study compares the language learner and test-taking strategies used by Chinese-speaking graduate students when confronted with familiar versus unfamiliar topics in an English multiple-choice format reading comprehension test. Thirty-six participants at a large mid-western university performed three tasks: A content knowledge vocabulary…

Processing Relative Clauses in Chinese as a Second Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xu, Yi

2014-01-01

This project investigates second language (L2) learners' processing of four types of Chinese relative clauses crossing extraction types and demonstrative-classifier (DCl) positions. Using a word order judgment task with a whole-sentence reading technique, the study also discusses how psycholinguistic theories bear explanatory power in L2 data. An…

Chinese Learners' Acquisition of English Verbs: A Corpus-Driven Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Linxiao; Jo, Hie-myung

2012-01-01

Limited research has investigated advanced language learners' acquisition of English verbs. The current study examines and compares the acquisition pattern of English verbs among Chinese second language (L2) learners at both intermediate and advanced levels to answer the following questions: (1) Do L2 learners acquire regular verbs and irregular…

Perception of Tone and Aspiration Contrasts in Chinese Children with Dyslexia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cheung, Him; Chung, Kevin K. H.; Wong, Simpson W. L.; McBride-Chang, Catherine; Penney, Trevor B.; Ho, Connie S. H.

2009-01-01

Background: Previous research has shown a relationship between speech perception and dyslexia in alphabetic writing. In these studies speech perception was measured using phonemes, a prominent feature of alphabetic languages. Given the primary importance of lexical tone in Chinese language processing, we tested the extent to which lexical tone and…

China: A Guide to Reference Sources in English and Chinese.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Su, Comp.; Slavin, Suzy M., Ed.

This guide to selected reference sources in the McGill University (Quebec) Library for Sinology (the study of the language, history, literature, and civilization of China) contains annotated listings for English and Chinese language materials in the following categories: (1) guides to the literature (6 references); (2) encyclopedias (3…

Co-Ethnic Network, Social Class, and Heritage Language Maintenance among Chinese Immigrant Families

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Donghui

2012-01-01

This ethnographic study investigated heritage language maintenance among two distinct groups of Chinese immigrant families (Mandarin and Fujianese) from the social network perspective. The results indicated that a co-ethnic network could be a double-edged sword, which works differently on children from different social classes. While the Mandarin…

Development of a conceptually equivalent Chinese-language translation of the US Household Food Security Survey Module for Chinese immigrants to the USA

PubMed Central

Kwan, Christine ML; Napoles, Anna M; Chou, Jeyling; Seligman, Hilary K

2014-01-01

Objective To develop a conceptually equivalent Chinese-language translation of the eighteen-item US Household Food Security Survey Module. Design In the current qualitative study, we (i) highlight methodological challenges which arise in developing survey instruments that will be used to make comparisons across language groups and (ii) describe the development of a Chinese-language translation of the US Household Food Security Survey Module, called the San Francisco Chinese Food Security Module. Setting Community sites in San Francisco, CA, USA. Subjects We conducted cognitive interviews with twenty-two community members recruited from community sites hosting food pantries and with five professionals recruited from clinical settings. Results Development of conceptually equivalent surveys can be difficult. We highlight challenges related to dialect, education, literacy (e.g. preferences for more or less formal phrasing), English words and phrases for which there is no Chinese language equivalent (e.g. ‘balanced meals’ and ‘eat less than you felt you should’) and response formats. We selected final translations to maximize: (i) consistency of the Chinese translation with the intent of the English version; (ii) clarity; and (iii) similarities in understanding across dialects and literacy levels. Conclusions Survey translation is essential for conducting research in many communities. The challenges encountered illustrate how literal translations can affect the conceptual equivalence of survey items across languages. Cognitive interview methods should be routinely used for survey translation when such non-equivalence is suspected, such as in surveys addressing highly culturally bound behaviours such as diet and eating behaviours. Literally translated surveys lacking conceptual equivalence may magnify or obscure important health inequalities. PMID:24642365

Classroom Discourse and Reading Comprehension in Bilingual Settings: A Case Study of Collaborative Reasoning in a Chinese Heritage Language Learners' Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tsai, Hsiao-Feng

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines the participation of one Chinese teacher and five 13 to 15 year-old Chinese heritage students in a classroom in a Chinese community school during group discussions about narrative texts. In this study, the teacher used Collaborative Reasoning (CR) (Anderson, et al., 2001) to help the Chinese heritage students extend…

Dealing with Distinctiveness. Development of Chinese in the "Australian Curriculum: Languages"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Scrimgeour, Andrew; Foster, Marnie; Mao, Weifeng

2013-01-01

This article explores some of the distinctive challenges in Chinese language education in schools and discusses how the development of the "Australian Curriculum: Chinese" has responded to these challenges. It details how the curriculum framework outlined in the "Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Languages" (ACARA, 2011)…

The Voices of Thirteen Chinese and Taiwanese Parents Sharing Views about their Children Attending Chinese Heritage Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liao, Li-yuan; Larke, Patrica J.

2008-01-01

Many Chinese and Taiwanese parents in the United States see benefits of Chinese schools in providing their children the opportunity to learn Chinese culture and language. The results of this qualitative study involving interviews with thirteen Chinese and Taiwanese parents indicated that there were three main reasons why parents want to send their…

The Chinese Input Challenges for Chinese as Second Language Learners in Computer-Mediated Writing: An Exploratory Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wong, Lung-Hsiang; Chai, Ching-Sing; Gao, Ping

2011-01-01

This paper reports an exploratory study on Singapore secondary and primary school students' perceptions and behaviors on using a variety of Chinese input methods for Chinese composition writing. Significant behavioral patterns were uncovered and mapped into a cognitive process, which are potentially critical to the training of students in…

Language Development of Chinese Adoptees 18-35 Months Old

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tan, T.X.; Yang, Y.

2005-01-01

In this study, we investigated the expressive language development of 186 18-35 months old Chinese girls adopted into American families. The adoptees were adopted between 3 and 25 months (M=11.0, S.D.=3.1) and had lived in the adoptive families for 3-27 months (M=16.2, S.D.=5.8) at the time of the study. The adoptive mothers provided information…

Affective and Situational Correlates of Foreign Language Proficiency: A Study of Chinese University Learners of English and Japanese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jin, Yinxing; de Bot, Kees; Keijzer, Merel

2017-01-01

The study explores the effects of teacher support and student cohesiveness on foreign language (FL) learning outcomes and compares their effect with that of FL anxiety. One hundred and forty-six first-year Chinese undergraduates of Japanese, who were also learning English, participated in two surveys that were administered over a 2-month interval.…

Comparative intelligibility investigation of single-channel noise-reduction algorithms for Chinese, Japanese, and English.

PubMed

Li, Junfeng; Yang, Lin; Zhang, Jianping; Yan, Yonghong; Hu, Yi; Akagi, Masato; Loizou, Philipos C

2011-05-01

A large number of single-channel noise-reduction algorithms have been proposed based largely on mathematical principles. Most of these algorithms, however, have been evaluated with English speech. Given the different perceptual cues used by native listeners of different languages including tonal languages, it is of interest to examine whether there are any language effects when the same noise-reduction algorithm is used to process noisy speech in different languages. A comparative evaluation and investigation is taken in this study of various single-channel noise-reduction algorithms applied to noisy speech taken from three languages: Chinese, Japanese, and English. Clean speech signals (Chinese words and Japanese words) were first corrupted by three types of noise at two signal-to-noise ratios and then processed by five single-channel noise-reduction algorithms. The processed signals were finally presented to normal-hearing listeners for recognition. Intelligibility evaluation showed that the majority of noise-reduction algorithms did not improve speech intelligibility. Consistent with a previous study with the English language, the Wiener filtering algorithm produced small, but statistically significant, improvements in intelligibility for car and white noise conditions. Significant differences between the performances of noise-reduction algorithms across the three languages were observed.

Writing System Modulates the Association between Sensitivity to Acoustic Cues in Music and Reading Ability: Evidence from Chinese–English Bilingual Children

PubMed Central

Zhang, Juan; Meng, Yaxuan; Wu, Chenggang; Zhou, Danny Q.

2017-01-01

Music and language share many attributes and a large body of evidence shows that sensitivity to acoustic cues in music is positively related to language development and even subsequent reading acquisition. However, such association was mainly found in alphabetic languages. What remains unclear is whether sensitivity to acoustic cues in music is associated with reading in Chinese, a morphosyllabic language. The present study aimed to answer this question by measuring music (i.e., musical metric perception and pitch discrimination), language (i.e., phonological awareness, lexical tone sensitivity), and reading abilities (i.e., word recognition) among 54 third-grade Chinese–English bilingual children. After controlling for age and non-verbal intelligence, we found that both musical metric perception and pitch discrimination accounted for unique variance of Chinese phonological awareness while pitch discrimination rather than musical metric perception predicted Chinese lexical tone sensitivity. More importantly, neither musical metric perception nor pitch discrimination was associated with Chinese reading. As for English, musical metric perception and pitch discrimination were correlated with both English phonological awareness and English reading. Furthermore, sensitivity to acoustic cues in music was associated with English reading through the mediation of English phonological awareness. The current findings indicate that the association between sensitivity to acoustic cues in music and reading may be modulated by writing systems. In Chinese, the mapping between orthography and phonology is not as transparent as in alphabetic languages such as English. Thus, this opaque mapping may alter the auditory perceptual sensitivity in music to Chinese reading. PMID:29170647

The Effect of Word-Unit Spacing upon the Reading Strategies of Non-Native Readers of Chinese: An Eye-Tracking Study.

DTIC Science & Technology

1986-01-01

theories have begun to emerge that may prove useful in understanding the processes involved in learning Chinese as a foreign language ...way texts do in English . To assess the manipulation of this variable in terms of foreign language reading behavior and development, this experiment...KI CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM Introduction One of the more noteworthy undertakings in foreign language research has been an attempt to understand

Predicting health literacy among English-as-a-second-Language older Chinese immigrant women to Canada: comprehension of colon cancer prevention information.

PubMed

Todd, Laura; Hoffman-Goetz, Laurie

2011-06-01

Inadequate health literacy has been identified as a barrier to the utilization of health-care services, including cancer screening. This study examined predictors of health literacy among 106 older Chinese immigrant women to Canada and how colon cancer information presented in their first versus second language affected health literacy skill. Only 38.7% of the women had adequate health literacy based on Short Test of Functional Health Literacy for Adults, and 54.3% had adequate comprehension of the colon cancer information. Comprehension of the cancer information was significantly lower among women who received the information in English compared with those who received the information in Chinese. Age, acculturation, self-reported proficiency reading English, and education were significant predictors of health literacy but varied depending on the measure of health literacy used and language of the information. Presentation of cancer prevention information in one's first rather than second language improves health literacy but does not eliminate comprehension difficulties for older ESL Chinese immigrants.

Using a Radical-Derived Character E-Learning Platform to Increase Learner Knowledge of Chinese Characters

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Hsueh-Chih; Hsu, Chih-Chun; Chang, Li-Yun; Lin, Yu-Chi; Chang, Kuo-En; Sung, Yao-Ting

2013-01-01

The present study is aimed at investigating the effect of a radical-derived Chinese character teaching strategy on enhancing Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) learners' Chinese orthographic awareness. An e-learning teaching platform, based on statistical data from the Chinese Orthography Database Explorer (Chen, Chang, Chou, Sung, & Chang,…

A Comprehensive Evaluation of a K-5 Chinese Language Immersion Program

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jacobson, Shoufen

2013-01-01

This dissertation was designed to provide a comprehensive data-driven evaluation of a Chinese language Immersion Program (CIP) for the stakeholders. CIP was implemented in 2006 with a goal for students to become proficient in the Chinese language and develop increased cultural awareness while reaching at least the same level of academic…

Chinese Number Words, Culture, and Mathematics Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ng, Sharon Sui Ngan; Rao, Nirmala

2010-01-01

This review evaluates the role of language--specifically, the Chinese-based system of number words and the simplicity of Chinese mathematical terms--in explaining the relatively superior performance of Chinese and other East Asian students in cross-national studies of mathematics achievement. Relevant research is critically reviewed focusing on…

Dynamic spatial organization of the occipito-temporal word form area for second language processing.

PubMed

Gao, Yue; Sun, Yafeng; Lu, Chunming; Ding, Guosheng; Guo, Taomei; Malins, Jeffrey G; Booth, James R; Peng, Danling; Liu, Li

2017-08-01

Despite the left occipito-temporal region having shown consistent activation in visual word form processing across numerous studies in different languages, the mechanisms by which word forms of second languages are processed in this region remain unclear. To examine this more closely, 16 Chinese-English and 14 English-Chinese late bilinguals were recruited to perform lexical decision tasks to visually presented words in both their native and second languages (L1 and L2) during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. Here we demonstrate that visual word form processing for L1 versus L2 engaged different spatial areas of the left occipito-temporal region. Namely, the spatial organization of the visual word form processing in the left occipito-temporal region is more medial and posterior for L2 than L1 processing in Chinese-English bilinguals, whereas activation is more lateral and anterior for L2 in English-Chinese bilinguals. In addition, for Chinese-English bilinguals, more lateral recruitment of the occipito-temporal region was correlated with higher L2 proficiency, suggesting higher L2 proficiency is associated with greater involvement of L1-preferred mechanisms. For English-Chinese bilinguals, higher L2 proficiency was correlated with more lateral and anterior activation of the occipito-temporal region, suggesting higher L2 proficiency is associated with greater involvement of L2-preferred mechanisms. Taken together, our results indicate that L1 and L2 recruit spatially different areas of the occipito-temporal region in visual word processing when the two scripts belong to different writing systems, and that the spatial organization of this region for L2 visual word processing is dynamically modulated by L2 proficiency. Specifically, proficiency in L2 in Chinese-English is associated with assimilation to the native language mechanisms, whereas L2 in English-Chinese is associated with accommodation to second language mechanisms. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

A Case Study of Bilingual Student-Teachers' Classroom English: Applying the Education-Linguistic Model

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Han, Jinghe; Yao, Jun

2013-01-01

This paper explores the practicum experience of a group of bilingual student-teachers who taught Chinese using English to learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) in Western Sydney schools. Specifically it explores how these student-teachers used English as the instructional language in class and what strengths and weaknesses they…

Second Language Acquisition of Mandarin Chinese Vocabulary: Context of Learning Effects

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lan, Yu-Ju; Fang, Shin-Yi; Legault, Jennifer; Li, Ping

2015-01-01

In an increasingly multilingual world, it is important to examine methods that may lead to more efficient second language learning, as well as to analyze the mechanisms by which successful learning occurs. The purpose of the current study was to investigate how different learning contexts can impact the learning of Mandarin Chinese as a second…

Challenges Facing Chinese Academic Staff in a UK University in Terms of Language, Relationships and Culture

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hsieh, Hui-hua

2012-01-01

The recruitment of international academic staff is viewed as one of the strategies to internationalise the universities. International academic staff, however, usually encounter many challenges when in a foreign context. This study aims to investigate the challenges of Chinese academic staff teaching in the UK in terms of language, relationships…

Self-Efficacy in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language in Australian Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Zhu; Yeung, Alexander S.

2015-01-01

Participating in a research-oriented teacher education program, 20 university graduates from China were invited to teach Chinese as a foreign language in western Sydney schools and conducted teacher research for one and half years. By analysing their research on their own teaching through a qualitative approach, this study attempted to identify…

Use of Formulaic Sequences in Monologues of Chinese EFL Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Qi, Yan; Ding, Yanren

2011-01-01

The literature on formulaic language lacks sufficient research on how L2 learners make progress in native-like formulaicity of their target language. This study analyzed the use of formulaic sequences (FSs) by 56 Chinese university English majors in their prepared monologues at the beginning and end of a three-year period and compared the student…

Investigating Mobile-Assisted Oral Feedback in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xu, Qi; Peng, Hongying

2017-01-01

This article reports on an exploratory study investigating mobile-assisted oral feedback in teaching Chinese as a second language (CSL). It is aimed at exploring the characteristics of mobile-assisted feedback on oral production with the smartphone social communication app WeChat as a case in point and examining learners' perceptions of…

Challenges of Chinese Language Education in Multi-Lingual Societies: Hong Kong and Singapore

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tong, Ho-kin; Goh, Yeng-seng

2008-01-01

This paper aims to study the current challenges of Chinese language education in the multilingual societies of Hong Kong and Singapore through policy documents. After the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, the role of "Putonghua" is far more important than before due to political and economic reasons. However, the medium of…

The Use of Literacy Bags Promotes Parental Involvement in Chinese Children's Literacy Learning in the English Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huang, SuHua

2013-01-01

This study employed an ethnographic methodology to explore the use of "literacy bags" (LBs) to promote parental involvement in Chinese children's literacy learning in the English language. It was conducted with a first-grade class consisting of 18 students and their parents in Taiwan. Data resources were obtained from teaching…

Profiling Perceptual Learning Styles of Chinese as a Second Language Learners in University Settings

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sun, Peijian Paul; Teng, Lin Sophie

2017-01-01

This study revisited Reid's (1987) perceptual learning style preference questionnaire (PLSPQ) in an attempt to answer whether the PLSPQ fits in the Chinese-as-a-second-language (CSL) context. If not, what are CSL learners' learning styles drawing on the PLSPQ? The PLSPQ was first re-examined through reliability analysis and confirmatory factor…

Negative pragmatic transfer in Chinese students' complimentary speech acts.

PubMed

Ren, Juanjuan; Gao, Xiaofang

2012-02-01

Summary.-This study was designed to examine negative pragmatic transfer of the speech act of English compliments by Chinese who learn English as a foreign language and to estimate the correlation between the amount of negative pragmatic transfer and English proficiency of the Chinese learners. Frequencies of students' performance showed that both in the favored compliments and the response strategies, differences were evident between Chinese English learners and native English speakers. This indicated that Chinese learners had trouble with the "slang" or "idioms" of the target language and tended to transfer negatively their L1 pragmatic norms to their L2 communication. Moreover, the favored compliment response strategies used by two groups of Chinese learners--who had different levels of English proficiency--differed, and negative pragmatic transfer decreased as proficiency in English increased.

Characteristics of Chinese-English bilingual dyslexia in right occipito-temporal lesion.

PubMed

Ting, Simon Kang Seng; Chia, Pei Shi; Chan, Yiong Huak; Kwek, Kevin Jun Hong; Tan, Wilnard; Hameed, Shahul; Tan, Eng-King

2017-11-01

Current literature suggests that right hemisphere lesions produce predominant spatial-related dyslexic error in English speakers. However, little is known regarding such lesions in Chinese speakers. In this paper, we describe the dyslexic characteristics of a Chinese-English bilingual patient with a right posterior cortical lesion. He was found to have profound spatial-related errors during his English word reading, in both real and non-words. During Chinese word reading, there was significantly less error compared to English, probably due to the ideographic nature of the Chinese language. He was also found to commit phonological-like visual errors in English, characterized by error responses that were visually similar to the actual word. There was no significant difference in visual errors during English word reading compared with Chinese. In general, our patient's performance in both languages appears to be consistent with the current literature on right posterior hemisphere lesions. Additionally, his performance also likely suggests that the right posterior cortical region participates in the visual analysis of orthographical word representation, both in ideographical and alphabetic languages, at least from a bilingual perspective. Future studies should further examine the role of the right posterior region in initial visual analysis of both languages. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Bilingual/Multilingual Learners' Willingness to Communicate in and Anxiety on Speaking Chinese and Their Associations with Self-Rated Proficiency in Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Meihua

2018-01-01

The present research explored bilingual/multilingual students' willingness to communicate in Chinese (WTCC) and foreign language anxiety (FLA) when speaking Chinese and their associations with self-rated proficiency in Chinese in a university in Beijing. The study recruited 167 bilingual and multilingual learners of Chinese to fill in a battery of…

Adult Chinese as a Second Language Learners' Willingness to Communicate in Chinese: Effects of Cultural, Affective, and Linguistic Variables.

PubMed

Liu, Meihua

2017-06-01

The present research explored the effects of cultural, affective, and linguistic variables on adult Chinese as a second language learners' willingness to communicate in Chinese. One hundred and sixty-two Chinese as a second language learners from a Chinese university answered the Willingness to Communicate in Chinese Scale, the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale, Chinese Speaking Anxiety Scale, Chinese Learning Motivation Scale, Use of Chinese Profile, as well as the Background Questionnaire. The major findings were as follows: (1) the Willingness to Communicate in Chinese Scales were significantly negatively correlated with Chinese Speaking Anxiety Scale but positively correlated with length of stay in China and (2) Chinese Speaking Anxiety Scale was a powerful negative predictor for the overall willingness to communicate in Chinese and the Willingness to Communicate in Chinese Scales, followed by length of stay in China, Chinese Learning Motivation Scale, interaction attentiveness, and Chinese proficiency level. Apparently, students' willingness to communicate in Chinese is largely determined by their Chinese Speaking Anxiety Scale level and length of stay in China, mediated by other variables such as Chinese proficiency level and intercultural communication sensitivity level.

The Development of Word Recognition in a Second Language.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Muljani, D.; Koda, Keiko; Moates, Danny R.

1998-01-01

A study investigated differences in English word recognition in native speakers of Indonesian (an alphabetic language) and Chinese (a logographic languages) learning English as a Second Language. Results largely confirmed the hypothesis that an alphabetic first language would predict better word recognition in speakers of an alphabetic language,…

Event-Related Brain Potential Investigation of Preparation for Speech Production in Late Bilinguals

PubMed Central

Wu, Yan Jing; Thierry, Guillaume

2011-01-01

It has been debated how bilinguals select the intended language and prevent interference from the unintended language when speaking. Here, we studied the nature of the mental representations accessed by late fluent bilinguals during a rhyming judgment task relying on covert speech production. We recorded event-related brain potentials in Chinese–English bilinguals and monolingual speakers of English while they indicated whether the names of pictures presented on a screen rhymed.  Whether bilingual participants focussed on rhyming selectively in English or Chinese, we found a significant priming effect of language-specific sound repetition. Surprisingly, however, sound repetitions in Chinese elicited significant priming effects even when the rhyming task was performed in English. This cross-language priming effect was delayed by ∼200  ms as compared to the within-language effect and was asymmetric, since there was no priming effect of sound repetitions in English when participants were asked to make rhyming judgments in Chinese. These results demonstrate that second language production hinders, but does not seal off, activation of the first language, whereas native language production appears immune to competition from the second language. PMID:21687468

Auditory Perception, Suprasegmental Speech Processing, and Vocabulary Development in Chinese Preschoolers.

PubMed

Wang, Hsiao-Lan S; Chen, I-Chen; Chiang, Chun-Han; Lai, Ying-Hui; Tsao, Yu

2016-10-01

The current study examined the associations between basic auditory perception, speech prosodic processing, and vocabulary development in Chinese kindergartners, specifically, whether early basic auditory perception may be related to linguistic prosodic processing in Chinese Mandarin vocabulary acquisition. A series of language, auditory, and linguistic prosodic tests were given to 100 preschool children who had not yet learned how to read Chinese characters. The results suggested that lexical tone sensitivity and intonation production were significantly correlated with children's general vocabulary abilities. In particular, tone awareness was associated with comprehensive language development, whereas intonation production was associated with both comprehensive and expressive language development. Regression analyses revealed that tone sensitivity accounted for 36% of the unique variance in vocabulary development, whereas intonation production accounted for 6% of the variance in vocabulary development. Moreover, auditory frequency discrimination was significantly correlated with lexical tone sensitivity, syllable duration discrimination, and intonation production in Mandarin Chinese. Also it provided significant contributions to tone sensitivity and intonation production. Auditory frequency discrimination may indirectly affect early vocabulary development through Chinese speech prosody. © The Author(s) 2016.

Imagery and Verbal Coding Approaches in Chinese Vocabulary Instruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shen, Helen H.

2010-01-01

This study consists of two instructional experiments. Within the framework of dual coding theory, the study compares the learning effects of two instructional encoding methods used in Chinese vocabulary instruction among students learning beginning Chinese as a foreign language. One method uses verbal encoding only, and the other method uses…

Blocking Effects in the Learning of Chinese Classifiers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Paul, Jing Z.; Grüter, Theres

2016-01-01

This study investigated order-of-learning effects on the acquisition of classifier-noun associations in Chinese in two experiments modeled after Arnon and Ramscar's (2012) study of artificial language learning. In Experiment 1, learners with no prior exposure to Chinese showed better learning of classifier-noun associations when exposed to larger…

Humanistic Content in the Chinese Language Textbooks for Nine Year Compulsory Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Xiao; Sargent, Tanja

2011-01-01

In this paper, we employ quantitative and qualitative content analysis to investigate the nature of humanistic value content in the Chinese language arts curriculum and whether or not this varies across old and new versions of the textbooks. Our findings illustrate the various dimensions of humanistic value content in the Chinese language arts…

Oral Spelling and Writing in a Logographic Language: Insights from a Chinese Dysgraphic Individual

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Han, Zaizhu; Bi, Yanchao

2009-01-01

The oral spelling process for logographic languages such as Chinese is intrinsically different from alphabetic languages. In Chinese only a subset of orthographic components are pronounceable and their phonological identities (i.e., component names) do not always correspond to the sound of the whole characters. We show that such phonological…

Examining the Need for Chinese Language Programs in Mid-Atlantic Community Colleges

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Uhey, Ruth Ann Johnson

2012-01-01

Public education reform designed for K-12 and higher education exists to transform teaching and learning within the United States in order to graduate today's student. One specific initiative on the federal, state, and local levels is the implementation of Chinese language programs. Some of the Chinese language programs in the K-12 education…

Chinese as a Second Language, Level I: Teacher's Manual.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lew, Helene

The lessons in this booklet are developed for the Chinese Bilingual Pilot Program, San Francisco Unified School District. The main objective is to teach Cantonese to non-Chinese speaking children so that they can use this new language in a meaningful way such as, carry on a simple conversation in that language. The ultimate goal in the oral…

Where Research, Practice and the Authority Meet: A Collaborative Inquiry for Development of Technology-Enhanced Chinese Language Curricula

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wong, Lung Hsiang; Gao, Ping; Chai, Ching Sing; Chin, Chee Kuen

2011-01-01

This collaborative inquiry project brought together 14 Chinese Language teachers, 4 researchers and 2 Ministry of Education (MOE) curriculum specialists to co-design the Chinese Language curricula with the integrated use of information and communication technology (ICT). Three qualitative data sources--one-to-one interviews, focus group…

The Global Reach of Chinese Soft Power: China’s Rise and America’s Decline?

DTIC Science & Technology

2007-09-01

Chinese-language television, music , and film are appealing to more developing nations. The Philippines hosts its own Chinese film festival and even... tourism , promoting the Chinese-culture and language by osmosis. As Beijing has relaxed its policies and encouraged outward investment, Chinese...Chinese Migrants and the Power of Guanxi,” Asia Times, 30 July 2004. 21 Beijing’s relaxation of tourism limits has also allowed more Chinese to

On Chinese Culture Curriculum Planning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Catherine

2006-01-01

The importance of cultural elements in foreign language teaching has been widely accepted in recent years. This applies particularly to the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL) to non-native Chinese speakers at tertiary level in mainland China. However, there is no commonly accepted blueprint that defines the parts of Chinese culture…

Saving Chinese-Language Education in Singapore

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Cher Leng

2012-01-01

Three-quarters of Singapore's population consists of ethnic Chinese, and yet, learning Chinese (Mandarin) has been a headache for many Singapore students. Recently, many scholars have argued that the rhetoric of language planning for Mandarin Chinese should be shifted from emphasizing its cultural value to stressing its economic value since…

L2 Chinese: Grammatical Development and Processing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mai, Ziyin

2016-01-01

Two recent books (Jiang, 2014, "Advances in Chinese as a second language"; Wang, 2013, "Grammatical development of Chinese among non-native speakers") provide new resources for exploring the role of processing in acquiring Chinese as a second language (L2). This review article summarizes, assesses and compares some of the…

Computer-Based Writing and Paper-Based Writing: A Study of Beginning-Level and Intermediate-Level Chinese Learners' Writing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kang, Hana

2011-01-01

Chinese writing is one of the most difficult challenges for Chinese learners whose first language writing system is alphabetic letters. Chinese teachers have incorporated computer-based writing into their teaching in the attempt to reduce the difficulties of writing in Chinese, with a particular emphasis on composing (as opposed to simply writing…

An Advanced Reader in Chinese International Relations. International Studies, East Asian Language Text, No. 3.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johnson, Wallace, Ed.

This modern Chinese textbook offers three main features. It contains a graded selection of Chinese writings on international relations by some of the most important modern Chinese writers, representing a wide range of viewpoints. Secondly, all new words and phrases encountered in the lessons are defined in Chinese, so that the reader becomes…

An Advanced Reader in Chinese Literature. International Studies, East Asian Language Texts, No. 1.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johnson, Wallace, Ed.

This modern Chinese textbook offers three main features. It contains a graded selection of writings in Chinese by some of the most important modern Chinese writers, representing a wide range of viewpoints. Secondly, all new words and phrases encountered in the lessons are defined in Chinese, so that the reader becomes accustomed to the use of…

International Adoption and Bi-Cultural Identity Development: A Case Study of a Chinese Cultural School.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Manning, Linda D.

2001-01-01

Investigated how international adoptive families of Chinese children socialized their children biculturally. Interviews with and observations of adoptive families at a Chinese cultural school indicated that learning about the Chinese language and culture and interacting with others were the main ways that adopted children developed a sense of…

The Relationship between Global Competence and Language Learning Motivation: An Empirical Study in Critical Language Classrooms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Semaan, Gaby; Yamazaki, Kasumi

2015-01-01

This article examines the relationship between global competence and second language learning motivation in critical language classrooms. Data were collected from 137 participants who were studying critical languages (Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Persian) at two universities on the East and West Coasts of the United States, using a 30-item…

Evaluative Language Used by Mandarin-Chinese-Speaking Dyads in Personal Narratives: Age and Socioeconomic Differences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lai, Wen-Feng; Chen, Yen-Yu

2016-01-01

The aim of this study was to determine the effects of age and family socioeconomic status (SES) on the evaluative language performance of Mandarin-Chinese-speaking young children and their mothers. The participants were 65 mother-child dyads recruited in Taiwan. Thirty-four of these dyads were from middle-class families and 31 were from…

Contributions of Morphological Awareness to Adult L2 Chinese Word Meaning Inferencing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ke, Sihui Echo; Koda, Keiko

2017-01-01

This study examined the contributions of morphological awareness (MA) to second language (L2) word meaning inferencing in English-speaking adult learners of Chinese (N = 50). Three research questions were posed: Are L2 learners sensitive to the morphological structure of unknown multi-character words? Does first language (L1) MA contribute to L2…

"I Am Not Qualified to Be a Honkongese Because of My Accented Cantonese": Mainland Chinese Immigrant Students in Hong Kong

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gu, Mingyue Michelle

2011-01-01

This paper investigates the identity construction and language practice of a group of mainland Chinese immigrant students studying at a secondary school in Hong Kong, and explores the underlying reasons for, as well as the individual and group identities derived from, those language choices and practices. The data were collected through…

Native-Language Phonological Interference in Early Hakka-Mandarin Bilinguals' Visual Recognition of Chinese Two-Character Compounds: Evidence from the Semantic-Relatedness Decision Task

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wu, Shiyu; Ma, Zheng

2017-01-01

Previous research has indicated that, in viewing a visual word, the activated phonological representation in turn activates its homophone, causing semantic interference. Using this mechanism of phonological mediation, this study investigated native-language phonological interference in visual recognition of Chinese two-character compounds by early…

Incorporating Competency-Based Blended Learning in a Chinese Language Classroom: A Web 2.0 Drupal Module Design

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huang, Chung-Kai; Lin, Chun-Yu; Chiang, Yueh-Hui

2010-01-01

This study aims to create a blended learning environment, based on the concept of competency-based training, in a Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) classroom at an American university. Drupal platform and web 2.0 tools were used as supplements to traditional face-to-face classroom instruction. Students completed various selective tasks and…

Language Choices of CEOs of Chinese Family Business in Sarawak, Malaysia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ting, Su-Hie

2017-01-01

The study investigated the language choices of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of Chinese family business and the factors guiding their choices. Interviews were conducted with 17 CEOs of family businesses located in Sarawak, some of whom are the sons and grandsons of the founder of the business. The results showed that all the CEOs can speak their…

The Anxiety-Proficiency Relationship and the Stability of Anxiety: The Case of Chinese University Learners of English and Japanese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jin, Yinxing; de Bot, Kees; Keijzer, Merel

2015-01-01

Adopting a longitudinal design, this study investigates the effects of foreign language anxiety on foreign language proficiency over time within English and Japanese learning contexts. It also explores the stability of anxiety in English and Japanese over time and the stability of anxiety across English and Japanese. Chinese university students (N…

Using the Learners-as-Ethnographers Approach to Enhance Intercultural Learning among American College Students Learning Chinese as a Foreign Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lu, Minhui

2012-01-01

This study explored how the learners-as-ethnographers (LAE) approach facilitated intercultural learning among American students learning Chinese as a foreign language. Two research questions addressed the effectiveness of the LAE approach and students' learning experiences in a non-immersion context. I designed six ethnographic tasks for the…

A Dual Coding Model of Processing Chinese as a Second Language: A Cognitive-Load Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sham, Diana Po Lan

2002-01-01

The research was conducted in Sydney and Hong Kong using students, from grades 5 to 9, whose first language or teaching medium was English, learning to read Chinese as second language. According to cognitive load theory, the processing of single Chinese characters accompanied by pictures should impose extraneous cognitive load and thus hinders…

Which Learning Style is Most Effective in Learning Chinese as a Second Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ren, Guanxin

2013-01-01

Chinese is not only a tonal but also a visual language represented by tens of thousands of characters which are pictographic in nature. This presents a great challenge to learners whose mother tongue is alphabetical-based such as English. To assist English-speaking background learners to learn Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) well, a good…

The Role of Emotionality in Teacher Change: The Case of Chinese Language Teachers in Hong Kong

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Loh, Elizabeth K. Y.; Tam, Loretta C. W.

2017-01-01

Over the past decade, Chinese language teachers in Hong Kong have experienced a series of educational reforms. They are now expected to design and implement their own school-based Chinese language curriculum, and adopt innovative pedagogies and customized materials in the classroom. The current literature suggests that some teachers are not ready…

Conflicting Language Ideologies and Contradictory Language Practices in Singaporean Multilingual Families

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Curdt-Christiansen, Xiao Lan

2016-01-01

Informed by family language policy (FLP) as the theoretical framework, I illustrate in this paper how language ideologies can be incongruous and language policies can be conflicting through three multilingual families in Singapore representing three major ethnic groups--Chinese, Malay and Indian. By studying their family language audits, observing…

CHINESE-MANDARIN FOR SECONDARY SCHOOL, PART 1--TEACHER'S HANDBOOK.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

San Francisco State Coll., CA.

THIS TEACHER'S HANDBOOK IS FOR LANGUAGE LABORATORY INSTRUCTION IN MANDARIN CHINESE IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS. THE MATERIALS ARE PLANNED ACCORDING TO THE CHINESE CURRICULUM ADOPTED BY THE ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON CHINESE LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION IN CALIFORNIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS, AND CONSTITUTE THE FIRST LEVEL OF A 4-YEAR SEQUENCE TO BE USED BY NINTH-GRADE…

Using "Reading to Learn" (R2L) Pedagogy to Teach Discussion Genre to Non-Chinese-Speaking Students in Hong Kong

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shum, Mark Shiu-kee; Tai, Chung Pui; Shi, Dan

2018-01-01

Non-Chinese-speaking (NCS) South Asian students, as ethnic minority group in Hong Kong, are the main disadvantaged social cohort in Chinese language learning. It has been a challenge for L1 Chinese teachers to conduct L2 Chinese teaching to NCS students with diversified native languages and socio-cultural backgrounds. "Reading to Learn,…

Silence as Right, Choice, Resistance and Strategy among Chinese "Me Generation" Students: Implications for Pedagogy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ha, Phan Le; Li, Binghui

2014-01-01

The topic of silence and "the Chinese learner" has been extensively studied often in relation to cross-cultural adjustment, intercultural issues, learning styles, language ability and differences of classroom expectations. These studies have often led to recommendations to understand silence and "the Chinese learner" in more…

Researching Mobile-Assisted Chinese-Character Learning Strategies among Adult Distance Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Qian, Kan; Owen, Nathaniel; Bax, Stephen

2018-01-01

In the field of teaching and learning Chinese as a foreign language (CFL), most studies investigate Chinese character learning strategies in pen-and-paper study by campus-based students. With the increase in distance-learning, and expanding popularity of smartphones and tablets and widespread availability of mobile applications for language…

Sentence Integration Processes: An ERP Study of Chinese Sentence Comprehension with Relative Clauses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Chin Lung; Perfetti, Charles A.; Liu, Ying

2010-01-01

In an event-related potentials (ERPs) study, we examined the comprehension of different types of Chinese (Mandarin) relative clauses (object vs. subject-extracted) to test the universality and language specificity of sentence comprehension processes. Because Chinese lacks morphosyntactic cues to sentence constituent relations, it allows a test of…

Phonological awareness and oral language proficiency in learning to read English among Chinese kindergarten children in Hong Kong.

PubMed

Yeung, Susanna S; Chan, Carol K K

2013-12-01

Learning to read is very challenging for Hong Kong children who learn English as a second language (ESL), as they must acquire two very different writing systems, beginning at the age of three. Few studies have examined the role of phonological awareness at the subsyllabic levels, oral language proficiency, and L1 tone awareness in L2 English reading among Hong Kong ESL kindergarteners. This study aims to investigate L1 and L2 phonological awareness and oral language proficiency as predictors of English reading among children with Chinese as L1. One hundred and sixty-one typically developing children with a mean age of 5.16 (SD=.35) selected from seven preschools in Hong Kong. Participants were assessed for English reading, English and Chinese phonological awareness at different levels, English oral language skills, and letter naming ability. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that both oral language proficiency and phonological awareness measures significantly predicted L2 word reading, when statistically controlled for age and general intelligence. Among various phonological awareness units, L2 phonemic awareness was the best predictor of L2 word reading. Cross-language transfer was shown with L1 phonological awareness at the tone level, uniquely predicting L2 word reading. The present findings show the important role of phonological awareness at the subsyllabic levels (rime and phoneme) and oral language proficiency in the course of L2 reading development in Chinese ESL learners. The significant contribution of L1 tone awareness to L2 reading suggests that phonological sensitivity is a general competence that ESL children need to acquire in early years. The findings have significant implications for understanding L2 reading development and curriculum development. © 2012 The British Psychological Society.

Reading Comprehension Difficulties in Chinese-English Bilingual Children.

PubMed

Tong, Xiuhong; McBride, Catherine; Shu, Hua; Ho, Connie Suk-Han

2018-02-01

The co-occurrence of reading comprehension difficulties for first language (L1) Chinese and second language (L2) English and associated longitudinal cognitive-linguistic correlates in each language were investigated. Sixteen poor comprehenders in English and 16 poor comprehenders in Chinese, 18 poor readers in both, and 18 children with normal performance in both were identified at age 10. The prevalence rate for being poor in both was 52.94%, suggesting that approximately half of children who are at risk for Chinese reading comprehension difficulty are also at risk for English reading comprehension difficulty. Chinese word reading, phonological, and morphological awareness were longitudinal correlates of poor comprehension in Chinese. English word reading and vocabulary were longitudinal correlates of poor comprehension in English. Chinese phonological awareness was an additional correlate of poor comprehension in English. Moreover, poor comprehenders in both Chinese and English showed slower rapid automatized naming scores than the other groups. Findings highlight some factors that might be critical for reading comprehension in L1 Chinese and L2 English; fluency is likely to be a critical part of reading comprehension across languages. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Chinese English Learners' Strategic Competence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Dianjian; Lai, Hongling; Leslie, Michael

2015-01-01

The present study aims to investigate Chinese English learners' ability to use communication strategies (CSs). The subjects are put in a relatively real English referential communication setting and the analyses of the research data show that Chinese English learners, when encountering problems in foreign language (FL) communication, are…

A Character Level Based and Word Level Based Approach for Chinese-Vietnamese Machine Translation.

PubMed

Tran, Phuoc; Dinh, Dien; Nguyen, Hien T

2016-01-01

Chinese and Vietnamese have the same isolated language; that is, the words are not delimited by spaces. In machine translation, word segmentation is often done first when translating from Chinese or Vietnamese into different languages (typically English) and vice versa. However, it is a matter for consideration that words may or may not be segmented when translating between two languages in which spaces are not used between words, such as Chinese and Vietnamese. Since Chinese-Vietnamese is a low-resource language pair, the sparse data problem is evident in the translation system of this language pair. Therefore, while translating, whether it should be segmented or not becomes more important. In this paper, we propose a new method for translating Chinese to Vietnamese based on a combination of the advantages of character level and word level translation. In addition, a hybrid approach that combines statistics and rules is used to translate on the word level. And at the character level, a statistical translation is used. The experimental results showed that our method improved the performance of machine translation over that of character or word level translation.

The Acquisition of the BA Construction by English-Speaking Learners of Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xu, Hongying

2012-01-01

This study examined the acquisition of the BA construction by English-speaking learners of Chinese. The BA construction is a unique yet important grammar phenomenon in Chinese. Whether second language (L2) learners of Chinese are able to understand and use this construction correctly and appropriately may affect the overall success of their…

Examining the English Language Policy for Ethnic Minority Students in a Chinese University: A Language Ideology and Language Regime Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Han, Yawen; De Costa, Peter I.; Cui, Yaqiong

2016-01-01

We focus on the learning of English in a Chinese university in Jiangsu and the university's preferential language policy, which allowed Uyghur minority students from Xinjiang to be enrolled despite their lower scores in the entrance examination. Guided by the constructs of language ideologies [Kroskrity, P. V. (2000). "Regimes of language:…

No Perceptual Reorganization for Limburgian Tones? A Cross-Linguistic Investigation with 6- to 12-Month-Old Infants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ramachers, Stefanie; Brouwer, Susanne; Fikkert, Paula

2018-01-01

Despite the fact that many of the world's languages use lexical tone, the majority of language acquisition studies has focused on non-tone languages. Research on tone languages has typically investigated wellknown tone languages such as Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese. The current study looked at a Limburgian dialect of Dutch that uses lexical…

Cross-Linguistic Influence on Brain Activation during Second Language Processing: An fMRI Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jeong, Hyeonjeong; Sugiura, Motoaki; Sassa, Yuko; Yokoyama, Satoru; Horie, Kaoru; Sato, Shigeru; Taira, Masato; Kawashima, Ryuta

2007-01-01

The goal of this study was to examine the effect of the linguistic distance between a first language (L1) and a second language (L2) on neural activity during second language relative to first language processing. We compared different L1-L2 pairs in which different linguistic features characterize linguistic distance. Chinese and Korean native…

The New Zealand-Born Chinese Community of Auckland: Aspects of Language Maintenance and Shift.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sun, Susan

1999-01-01

Examines the Chinese immigrant community in Auckland, New Zealand and how they address the question of first language maintenance in their largely new English-speaking environment. Shows that language maintenance, especially the written language is going to be an uphill struggle. (Author/VWL)

Chinese Students' Perceptions of the Value of Test Preparation Courses for the TOEFL iBT: Merit, Worth, and Significance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ma, Jia; Cheng, Liying

2015-01-01

Test preparation for high-stakes English language tests has received increasing research attention in the language assessment field; however, little is known about what aspects of test preparation students attend to and value. In this study, we considered the perspectives of 12 Chinese students who were enrolled in various academic programs in a…

Does the Switch of Medium of Instruction Facilitate the Language Learning of Students? A Case Study of Hong Kong from Teachers' Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tam, Angela Choi Fung

2011-01-01

The medium of instruction (MOI) and its impact on improving the language proficiency of students has become a debated issue worldwide. The policy-makers of post-colonial Hong Kong believed that the general Chinese competency, Chinese writing and Putonghua proficiency of students would be improved through the use of a…

Reading Motivation and Reading Comprehension in Chinese and English among Bilingual Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Dan; Wong, Ka Ki; McBride-Chang, Catherine

2012-01-01

One hundred four Hong Kong Chinese fifth graders completed a questionnaire on eight separate motivational subscales related to reading separately for Chinese as a first language (L1) and English as a foreign language (EFL) in addition to measures of both Chinese and English reading comprehension. Motivations related to self-efficacy, curiosity,…

Effects of Using Self-Explanation on a Web-Based Chinese Sentence-Learning System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chang, Jia-Wei; Lee, Ming-Che; Su, Chien-Yuan; Wang, Tzone-I

2017-01-01

Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learners generally encounter difficulty in using some special rules of Chinese grammar because such grammar points do not exist in their native languages. CFL learners require an effective learning strategy to assist them in acquiring a greater understanding of Chinese grammar. Thus, we integrated a…

The China Educational Development Yearbook, Volume 2. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Yearbooks: Educational Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dongping, Yang, Ed.; Chungqing, Chai, Ed.

2010-01-01

The second volume of the English-language The China Educational Development Yearbook offers international scholars a glimpse into key issues in Chinese education today from the perspective of Chinese academics, practitioners, and applied researchers. An edited translation of the 2009 volume of the Chinese-language "Blue Book of…

Free Language Selection in the Bilingual Brain: An Event-Related fMRI Study

PubMed Central

Zhang, Yong; Wang, Tao; Huang, Peiyu; Li, Dan; Qiu, Jiang; Shen, Tong; Xie, Peng

2015-01-01

Bilingual speakers may select between two languages either on demand (forced language selection) or on their own volition (free language selection). However, the neural substrates underlying free and forced language selection may differ. While the neural substrates underlying forced language selection have been well-explored with language switching paradigms, those underlying free language selection have remained unclear. Using a modified digit-naming switching paradigm, we addressed the neural substrates underlying free language selection by contrasting free language switching with forced language switching. For a digit-pair trial, Chinese-English bilinguals named each digit in Chinese or English either on demand under forced language selection condition or on their own volition under free language selection condition. The results revealed activation in the frontoparietal regions that mediate volition of language selection. Furthermore, a comparison of free and forced language switching demonstrated differences in the patterns of brain activation. Additionally, free language switching showed reduced switching costs as compared to forced language switching. These findings suggest differences between the mechanism(s) underlying free and forced language switching. As such, the current study suggests interactivity between control of volition and control of language switching in free language selection, providing insights into a model of bilingual language control. PMID:26177885

A meta-analysis of fMRI studies on Chinese orthographic, phonological, and semantic processing.

PubMed

Wu, Chiao-Yi; Ho, Moon-Ho Ringo; Chen, Shen-Hsing Annabel

2012-10-15

A growing body of neuroimaging evidence has shown that Chinese character processing recruits differential activation from alphabetic languages due to its unique linguistic features. As more investigations on Chinese character processing have recently become available, we applied a meta-analytic approach to summarize previous findings and examined the neural networks for orthographic, phonological, and semantic processing of Chinese characters independently. The activation likelihood estimation (ALE) method was used to analyze eight studies in the orthographic task category, eleven in the phonological and fifteen in the semantic task categories. Converging activation among three language-processing components was found in the left middle frontal gyrus, the left superior parietal lobule and the left mid-fusiform gyrus, suggesting a common sub-network underlying the character recognition process regardless of the task nature. With increasing task demands, the left inferior parietal lobule and the right superior temporal gyrus were specialized for phonological processing, while the left middle temporal gyrus was involved in semantic processing. Functional dissociation was identified in the left inferior frontal gyrus, with the posterior dorsal part for phonological processing and the anterior ventral part for semantic processing. Moreover, bilateral involvement of the ventral occipito-temporal regions was found for both phonological and semantic processing. The results provide better understanding of the neural networks underlying Chinese orthographic, phonological, and semantic processing, and consolidate the findings of additional recruitment of the left middle frontal gyrus and the right fusiform gyrus for Chinese character processing as compared with the universal language network that has been based on alphabetic languages. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Motion Event Similarity Judgments in One or Two Languages: An Exploration of Monolingual Speakers of English and Chinese vs. L2 Learners of English.

PubMed

Ji, Yinglin

2017-01-01

Languages differ systematically in how to encode a motion event. English characteristically expresses manner in verb root and path in verb particle; in Chinese, varied aspects of motion, such as manner, path and cause, can be simultaneously encoded in a verb compound. This study investigates whether typological differences, as such, influence how first and second language learners conceptualize motion events, as suggested by behavioral evidences. Specifically, the performance of Chinese learners of English, at three proficiencies, was compared to that of two groups of monolingual speakers in a triads matching task. The first set of analyses regarding categorisation preferences indicates that participants across groups preferred the path-matched (rather than manner-matched) screens. However, the second set of analyses regarding reaction time suggests, firstly, that English monolingual speakers reacted significantly more quickly in selecting the manner-matched scenes compared with monolingual speakers of Chinese, who tended to use an approximately equal amount of time in making manner- and path-matched decisions, a finding that can arguably be mapped onto the typological difference between the two languages. Secondly, the pattern of response latency in low-level L2 learners looked more like that of monolingual speakers of Chinese. Only at intermediate and advanced levels of acquisition did the behavioral pattern of L2 learners become target-like, thus suggesting language-specific constraints from the L1 at an early stage of acquisition. Overall, our results suggest that motion event cognition may be linked to, among other things, the linguistic structure of motion description in particular languages.

Overseas Travel Opportunities for Administrators

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kisch, Marian

2009-01-01

This article presents 10 programs that run education missions abroad. One of these programs is the Chinese Bridge Delegation sponsored by Hanban (Office of Chinese Language Council International). It aims to learn about Chinese culture and language, and establish ties with schools and educators in China.

The Impact of Biculturalism on Language and Literacy Development: Teaching Chinese English Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Palmer, Barbara C.; Chen, Chia-I; Chang, Sara; Leclere, Judith T.

2006-01-01

According to the 2000 United States Census, Americans age five and older who speak a language other than English at home grew 47 percent over the preceding decade. This group accounts for slightly less than one in five Americans (17.9%). Among the minority languages spoken in the United States, Asian-language speakers, including Chinese and other…

Implementation of Task-Based Language Teaching in Chinese as a Foreign Language: Benefits and Challenges

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bao, Rui; Du, Xiangyun

2015-01-01

Task-based language teaching (TBLT) has been drawing increased attention from language teachers and researchers in the past decade. This paper focuses on the effects of TBLT on beginner learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) in Denmark. Participatory observation and semi-structured interviews were carried out with 18 participants from two…

"Seamlessly" Learning Chinese: Contextual Meaning Making and Vocabulary Growth in a Seamless Chinese as a Second Language Learning Environment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wong, Lung-Hsiang; King, Ronnel B.; Chai, Ching Sing; Liu, May

2016-01-01

Second language learners are typically hampered by the lack of a natural environment to use the target language for authentic communication purpose (as a means for "learning by applying"). Thus, we propose MyCLOUD, a mobile-assisted seamless language learning approach that aims to nurture a second language social network that bridges…

Language Brokering as Young People's Work: Evidence from Chinese Adolescents in England

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hall, Nigel; Sham, Sylvia

2007-01-01

Language brokering describes the task in an intercultural language event undertaken by children in families with one or two non-national languages parents or caregivers. This paper examines the complex issues involved in being a language broker and explores these as they apply to a group of adolescents in Chinese families in the UK. The findings…

Language screening in preschool Chinese children.

PubMed

Wong, V; Lee, P W; Lieh-Mak, F; Yeung, C Y; Leung, P W; Luk, S L; Yiu, E

1992-01-01

The incidence of language delay in Chinese preschool children was studied by a stratified proportional sampling of all 3 year olds in Hong Kong. The Developmental Language Screening Scale (DLSS) devised for use with Cantonese speaking children was used to identify children with language delay. Of 855 children sampled in the stage I screening procedure, 4%, 2.8% and 3.3% were identified as having delay in verbal comprehension, expression or both respectively. The stage II clinical diagnostic study included a randomly selected group of children screened in stage I with or without any associated behavioural problem. Among these, 3.4% were identified as having a language delay using the Reynell Language Developmental Scale (RDLS) with a criterion of language age of less than or equal to two-thirds of the chronological age; 3% had specific language delay using the criteria of language age less than or equal to two-thirds the chronological age and developmental age more than or equal to two-thirds the chronological age. More boys were found to have language delay, although this was not statistically significant.

Learning English Pragmatics in China: An Investigation into Chinese EFL Learners' Perceptions of Pragmatics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yuan, Yifeng; Tangen, Donna; Mills, Kathy A.; Lidstone, John

2015-01-01

This paper reports the findings of a study investigating Chinese English language learners' perceptions of pragmatics in the EFL learning context in China. A total of 237 Chinese EFL first--year university students participated in the study. A questionnaire and focus group interviews were used to collect data about learners' pragmatics insights…

Neural Signatures of the Reading-Writing Connection: Greater Involvement of Writing in Chinese Reading than English Reading.

PubMed

Cao, Fan; Perfetti, Charles A

2016-01-01

Research on cross-linguistic comparisons of the neural correlates of reading has consistently found that the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG) is more involved in Chinese than in English. However, there is a lack of consensus on the interpretation of the language difference. Because this region has been found to be involved in writing, we hypothesize that reading Chinese characters involves this writing region to a greater degree because Chinese speakers learn to read by repeatedly writing the characters. To test this hypothesis, we recruited English L1 learners of Chinese, who performed a reading task and a writing task in each language. The English L1 sample had learned some Chinese characters through character-writing and others through phonological learning, allowing a test of writing-on-reading effect. We found that the left MFG was more activated in Chinese than English regardless of task, and more activated in writing than in reading regardless of language. Furthermore, we found that this region was more activated for reading Chinese characters learned by character-writing than those learned by phonological learning. A major conclusion is that writing regions are also activated in reading, and that this reading-writing connection is modulated by the learning experience. We replicated the main findings in a group of native Chinese speakers, which excluded the possibility that the language differences observed in the English L1 participants were due to different language proficiency level.

Neural Signatures of the Reading-Writing Connection: Greater Involvement of Writing in Chinese Reading than English Reading

PubMed Central

Cao, Fan; Perfetti, Charles A.

2016-01-01

Research on cross-linguistic comparisons of the neural correlates of reading has consistently found that the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG) is more involved in Chinese than in English. However, there is a lack of consensus on the interpretation of the language difference. Because this region has been found to be involved in writing, we hypothesize that reading Chinese characters involves this writing region to a greater degree because Chinese speakers learn to read by repeatedly writing the characters. To test this hypothesis, we recruited English L1 learners of Chinese, who performed a reading task and a writing task in each language. The English L1 sample had learned some Chinese characters through character-writing and others through phonological learning, allowing a test of writing-on-reading effect. We found that the left MFG was more activated in Chinese than English regardless of task, and more activated in writing than in reading regardless of language. Furthermore, we found that this region was more activated for reading Chinese characters learned by character-writing than those learned by phonological learning. A major conclusion is that writing regions are also activated in reading, and that this reading-writing connection is modulated by the learning experience. We replicated the main findings in a group of native Chinese speakers, which excluded the possibility that the language differences observed in the English L1 participants were due to different language proficiency level. PMID:27992505

Optical mapping of brain activation during the English to Chinese and Chinese to English sight translation

PubMed Central

He, Yan; Wang, Meng-Yun; Li, Defeng; Yuan, Zhen

2017-01-01

Translating from Chinese into another language or vice versa is becoming a widespread phenomenon. However, current neuroimaging studies are insufficient to reveal the neural mechanism underlying translation asymmetry during Chinese/English sight translation. In this study, functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to extract the brain activation patterns associated with Chinese/English sight translation. Eleven unbalanced Chinese (L1)/English (L2) bilinguals participated in this study based on an intra-group experimental design, in which two translation and two reading aloud tasks were administered: forward translation (from L1 to L2), backward translation (from L2 to L1), L1 reading, and L2 reading. As predicted, our findings revealed that forward translation elicited more pronounced brain activation in Broca’s area, suggesting that neural correlates of translation vary according to the direction of translation. Additionally, significant brain activation in the left PFC was involved in backward translation, indicating the importance of this brain region during the translation process. The identical activation patterns could not be discovered in forward translation, indicating the cognitive processing of reading logographic languages (i.e. Chinese) might recruit incongruent brain regions. PMID:29296476

The Unified Phonetic Transcription for Teaching and Learning Chinese Languages

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shieh, Jiann-Cherng

2011-01-01

In order to preserve distinctive cultures, people anxiously figure out writing systems of their languages as recording tools. Mandarin, Taiwanese and Hakka languages are three major and the most popular dialects of Han languages spoken in Chinese society. Their writing systems are all in Han characters. Various and independent phonetic…

Standardizing Chinese Sign Language for Use in Post-Secondary Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Christina Mien-Chun; Gerner de Garcia, Barbara; Chen-Pichler, Deborah

2009-01-01

There are over 100 languages in China, including Chinese Sign Language. Given the large population and geographical dispersion of the country's deaf community, sign variation is to be expected. Language barriers due to lexical variation may exist for deaf college students in China, who often live outside their home regions. In presenting an…

Communication through Foreign Languages: An Economic Force in Chinese Enterprises.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hildebrandt, Herbert W.; Liu, Jinyun

1991-01-01

Second-language use by Chinese business managers illustrates that second-language competence is driven partly by economic and political forces. Although Russian language knowledge is typical of the older managers, English and Japanese are favored by younger managers, reflecting the wane of Russian political influence and the growing importance of…

Oracle Bones and Mandarin Tones: Demystifying the Chinese Language.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Michigan Univ., Ann Arbor. Project on East Asian Studies in Education.

This publication will provide secondary level students with a basic understanding of the development and structure of Chinese (guo yu) language characters. The authors believe that demystifying the language helps break many cultural barriers. The written language is a good place to begin because its pictographic nature is appealing and inspires…

Exploring the knowledge, attitudes and needs of advance care planning in older Chinese Australians.

PubMed

Yap, Sok Shin; Chen, Karren; Detering, Karen M; Fraser, Scott A

2017-05-23

To identify factors that influence the engagement of Chinese Australians with advance care planning. Despite the benefits of advance care planning, there is a low prevalence of advance care planning in the Chinese Australian community. Reasons for this are often cited as cultural considerations and taboos surrounding future medical planning and death; however, other logistical factors may also be important. This qualitative study used a thematic analysis grounded theory approach to explore facilitators and barriers to engagement in advance care planning. Semistructured interviews were conducted in-language (Mandarin or Cantonese) exploring the views of a purposive sample of 30 community-dwelling older Chinese Australians within Victoria, Australia. Three key themes were identified: knowledge of, attitudes towards and needs for undertaking advance care planning amongst the Chinese Australians. There was a low awareness of advance care planning amongst the participants and some confusion regarding the concept. Most participants reported positive attitudes towards advance care planning but acknowledged that others may be uncomfortable discussing death-related topics. Participants would want to know the true status of their health and plan ahead in consultation with family members to reduce the burden on the family and suffering for themselves. Language was identified as the largest barrier to overcome to increase advance care planning awareness. In-language materials and key support networks including GPs, family and Chinese community groups were identified as ideal forums for the promotion of advance care planning. The participants of this study were open to conversations regarding future medical planning and end-of-life care, suggesting the low uptake of advance care planning amongst Chinese Australians is not culturally motivated but may be due a lack of knowledge relating to advance care planning. The results highlight the need to provide access to appropriate in-language advance care planning resources and promotion of advance care planning across the Chinese community. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Cross-cultural measurement equivalence of the 5-level EQ-5D (EQ-5D-5L) in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus in Singapore.

PubMed

Wang, Ye; Tan, Ngiap-Chuan; Tay, Ee-Guan; Thumboo, Julian; Luo, Nan

2015-07-16

This study aimed to assess the measurement equivalence of the 5-level EQ-5D (EQ-5D-5L) among the English, Chinese, and Malay versions. A convenience sample of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus were enrolled from a public primary health care institution in Singapore. The survey questionnaire comprised the EQ-5D-5L and questions assessing participants' socio-demographic and clinical characteristics. Multiple linear regression models were used to assess the difference in EQ-5D-5L index (calculated using an interim algorithm) and EQ-visual analog scale (EQ-VAS) scores across survey language (Chinese vs. English, Malay vs. English, and Malay vs. Chinese). Measurement equivalence was examined by comparing the 90% confidence interval of difference in the EQ-5D-5L index and EQ-VAS scores with a pre-determined equivalence margin. Multiple logistic regression models were used to assess the response patterns of the 5 Likert-type items of the EQ-5D-5L across survey language. Equivalence was demonstrated between the Chinese and English versions and between the Malay and English versions of the EQ-5D-5L index scores. Equivalence was also demonstrated between the Chinese and English versions and between the Malay and Chinese versions of the EQ-VAS scores. Equivalence could not be determined between the Malay and Chinese versions of the EQ-5D-5L index score and between the Malay and English versions of the EQ-VAS score. No significant difference was found in responses to EQ-5D-5L items between any languages, except that patients who chose to complete the Chinese version were more likely to report "no problems" in mobility compared to those who completed the Malay version of the questionnaire. This study provided evidence for the measurement equivalence of the different language versions of EQ-5D-5L in Singapore.

Why Study Chinese Classics and How to Go about It: Response to Zongjie Wu's "Interpretation, Autonomy, and Transformation--Chinese Pedagogic Discourse in Cross-Cultural Perspective"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tan, Sor-Hoon

2011-01-01

This response to Zongjie Wu's "Interpretation, autonomy, and interpretation" focuses on the "battle between East and West" which contextualizes Wu's proposal to counter the current Western domination of Chinese pedagogic discourse with an "authentic language" recovered from the Chinese classics. It points out that it…

The Role of Foreign Domestic Helpers in Hong Kong Chinese Children's English and Chinese Skills: A Longitudinal Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dulay, Katrina May; Tong, Xiuhong; McBride, Catherine

2017-01-01

We investigated the influence of nonparental caregivers, such as foreign domestic helpers (FDH), on the home language spoken to the child and its implications for vocabulary and word reading development in Cantonese- and English-speaking bilingual children. Using data collected from ages 5 to 9, we analyzed Chinese vocabulary, Chinese character…

Intrinsic Motivation of Chinese Learning in Predicting Online Learning Self-Efficacy and Flow Experience Relevant to Students' Learning Progress

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hong, Jon-Chao; Hwang, Ming-Yueh; Tai, Kai-Hsin; Lin, Pei-Hsin

2017-01-01

Students of Southeast Asian Heritage Learning Chinese (SSAHLC) in Taiwan have frequently demonstrated difficulty with traditional Chinese (a graphical character) radical recognition due to their limited exposure to the written language form since childhood. In this study, we designed a Chinese radical learning game (CRLG), which adopted a drill…

The Writing of Chinese Characters by CFL Learners: Can Writing on Facebook and Using Machine Translation Help?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Qi; Lu, Zhouxiang

2014-01-01

The current study investigates the applications of the pinyin input system, a Chinese word processing method, for writing on Facebook in order to help CFL (Chinese as a foreign language) learners from two Irish universities to improve their handwriting in Chinese characters on paper. The data were collected from writing activities conducted over…

True reason for Zipf's law in language

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dahui, Wang; Menghui, Li; Zengru, Di

2005-12-01

Analysis of word frequency have historically used data that included English, French, or other language, data typically described by Zipf's law. Using data on traditional and modern Chinese literatures, we show here that Chinese character frequency stroked Zipf's law based on literature before Qin dynasty; however, it departed from Zipf's law based on literature after Qin dynasty. Combined with data about English dictionaries and Chinese dictionaries, we show that the true reason for Zipf's Law in language is that growth and preferential selection mechanism of word or character in given language.

Increasing the Number of African American Students in Undergraduate Level Classes of Chinese: A Call to Action

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Huiwen

2015-01-01

Chinese language is the only ideographic language remaining in the world (Osaka, 1976). It conveys affluent Chinese culture and has great influences on the East Asian countries (Miyake, 2013). In the economic globalization of the world, China's economy and international influence are expanding. For these reasons and many more the Chinese language…

The Role of Radical Awareness in Chinese-As-A-Second-Language Learners' Chinese Character Reading Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wong, Yu Ka

2017-01-01

In this paper, the role of radical awareness in Chinese character reading development among young Chinese-as-a-second-language (CSL) learners is evaluated in terms of a structural property of the writing system: the distribution of elementary, one-radical (i.e. one-element) simple characters as against majority, multi-radical compound characters.…

English-Chinese Cross-Language IR Using Bilingual Dictionaries

DTIC Science & Technology

2006-01-01

specialized dictionaries together contain about two million entries [6]. 4 Monolingual Experiment The Chinese documents and the Chinese translations of... monolingual performance. The main performance-limiting factor is the limited coverage of the dictionary used in query translation. Some of the key con...English-Chinese Cross-Language IR using Bilingual Dictionaries Aitao Chen , Hailing Jiang , and Fredric Gey School of Information Management

Mapping the unconscious maintenance of a lost first language.

PubMed

Pierce, Lara J; Klein, Denise; Chen, Jen-Kai; Delcenserie, Audrey; Genesee, Fred

2014-12-02

Optimal periods during early development facilitate the formation of perceptual representations, laying the framework for future learning. A crucial question is whether such early representations are maintained in the brain over time without continued input. Using functional MRI, we show that internationally adopted (IA) children from China, exposed exclusively to French since adoption (mean age of adoption, 12.8 mo), maintained neural representations of their birth language despite functionally losing that language and having no conscious recollection of it. Their neural patterns during a Chinese lexical tone discrimination task matched those observed in Chinese/French bilinguals who have had continual exposure to Chinese since birth and differed from monolingual French speakers who had never been exposed to Chinese. They processed lexical tone as linguistically relevant, despite having no Chinese exposure for 12.6 y, on average, and no conscious recollection of that language. More specifically, IA participants recruited left superior temporal gyrus/planum temporale, matching the pattern observed in Chinese/French bilinguals. In contrast, French speakers who had never been exposed to Chinese did not recruit this region and instead activated right superior temporal gyrus. We show that neural representations are not overwritten and suggest a special status for language input obtained during the first year of development.

A Study of Language Learning Strategy Use in the Context of EFL Curriculum and Pedagogy Reform in China

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yu, Yuanfang; Wang, Bing

2009-01-01

Language learning strategy (LLS) use is not only an individual attribute of language users, but also a group behaviour reflecting the learning culture and language pedagogy in a particular social context. This article reports a study on the LLS use of Chinese secondary school students of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Northeast China from…

Teaching Chinese as a Second Language: From Taiwan to the United States

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hsu, Shuliang

2014-01-01

Teaching Chinese as a second language in Taiwan vs. in the United States. How are they different? What are the challenges to teachers? This article will bring to you interesting findings from the perspective of a native speaking Chinese teacher.

The Visual Magnocellular Pathway in Chinese-Speaking Children with Developmental Dyslexia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Jiu-Ju; Bi, Hong-Yan; Gao, Li-Qun; Wydell, Taeko N.

2010-01-01

Previous research into the cognitive processes involved in reading Chinese and developmental dyslexia in Chinese, revealed that the single most important factor appears to be orthographic processing skills rather than phonological skills. Also some studies have indicated that even in alphabetic languages some dyslexic individuals reveal deficits…

A Russian-Chinese-English Glossary of Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hu, C. T., Ed.

This adaptation and elaboration of an original 1955 Chinese publication is a basic reference work for those who study the educational policies and structures of the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics and China. English language equivalents and explanations of Russian and Chinese pedagogical educational terms illuminate the cultural contacts…

Creative Writing Strategies of Young Children: Evidence from a Study of Chinese Emergent Writing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Si; Zhou, Jing

2010-01-01

The ways in which learning graphical representations can encourage the development of creativities in Chinese young children remain to be fully explored. Previous research on children's writing focused on children's symbolization with syllabic languages, providing little information regarding Chinese young children's symbolization and creative…

Ethnic Barriers to Utilization of Total Joint Arthroplasty Among Chinese Immigrants in the United States.

PubMed

Alley, Maxwell C; Mason, Andrew S; Tybor, David J; Pevear, Mary E; Baratz, Michael D; Smith, Eric L

2016-09-01

Previous studies have documented disparities in total joint arthroplasty (TJA) utilization among African American and Hispanic patients, but utilization among non-English-speaking Chinese patients in the United States has not been studied. To quantify the utilization rate and detect ethnic factors effecting TJA utilization in non-English-speaking Chinese patients, data were gathered prospectively from the practice of a single fellowship-trained Caucasian surgeon from October 2012 to February 2013. A customized survey was drafted and validated in collaboration with a social scientist. Questions assessed demography, lifestyle factors, socioeconomic status, language skills, cultural beliefs, and prior experience with surgery. Surveys were administered in patients' native language and were collected in a blinded fashion. Overall, 269 patients were surveyed (157 Caucasian and 65 Chinese), 85 of which were recommended surgery (42 Caucasian and 26 Chinese). Seventy-six percent of Caucasian patients elected surgery, compared to 35% of Chinese patients. A multivariate logistic regression showed Chinese ethnicity to be a significant predictor of surgical decision after controlling for age, gender, socioeconomic status, and education. Several questions drafted to detect cultural differences in the aforementioned 6 categories were answered significantly differently (P < .05, chi-square). Language, lack of familiarity with surgery, lack of TJA knowledge, family members' role in decision making, and preference for a doctor of the same race may contribute to decreased utilization of TJA in this population. We believe a better understanding of the cultural beliefs and behaviors of Chinese patients will help physicians provide more optimal care to this patient population. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

To Investigate ESL Students' Instrumental and Integrative Motivation towards English Language Learning in a Chinese School in Penang: Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hong, Yee Chee; Ganapathy, Malini

2017-01-01

Malaysians have long realised the importance of being competent in English as one of the success factors in attaining their future goals. However, English is taught as a second language in Malaysia, and it is not easy to teach under such a foreign context, because authentic input may not exist beyond the classroom, especially in Chinese private…

Hemispheric involvement in the processing of Chinese idioms: An fMRI study.

PubMed

Yang, Jie; Li, Ping; Fang, Xiaoping; Shu, Hua; Liu, Youyi; Chen, Lang

2016-07-01

Although the left hemisphere is believed to handle major language functions, the role of the right hemisphere in language comprehension remains controversial. Recently researchers have investigated hemispheric language processing with figurative language materials (e.g., metaphors, jokes, and idioms). The current study capitalizes on the pervasiveness and distinct features of Chinese idioms to examine the brain mechanism of figurative language processing. Native Chinese speakers performed a non-semantic task while reading opaque idioms, transparent idioms, and non-idiomatic literal phrases. Whole-brain analyses indicated strong activations for all three conditions in an overlapping brain network that includes the bilateral inferior/middle frontal gyrus and the temporo-parietal and occipital-temporal regions. The two idiom conditions elicited additional activations in the right superior parietal lobule and right precuneus. Item-based modulation analyses further demonstrated that activation amplitudes in the right angular gyrus, right superior parietal lobule and right precuneus, as well as left inferior temporo-occipital cortex, are negatively correlated with the semantic transparency of the idioms. These results suggest that both hemispheres are involved in idiom processing but they play different roles. Implications of the findings are discussed in light of theories of figurative language processing and hemispheric functions. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Policies and Identities in Mandarin Education: The Situated Multilingualism of University-Level "Heritage" Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kelleher, Ann Marie

2010-01-01

This dissertation explores complex positionings of Chinese heritage language (CHL) learners amid several intersecting discourses, including those around globalization, identity development and language policies. Using critical, qualitative methods, the study combines textual and site-based analyses, linking the language development experiences of…

Associations between Chinese EFL Graduate Students' Beliefs and Language Learning Strategies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tang, Mailing; Tian, Jianrong

2015-01-01

This study, using Horwitz's Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory and Oxford's Strategy Inventory for Language Learning, investigated learners' beliefs about language learning and their choice of strategy categories among 546 graduate students in China. The correlation between learners' beliefs and their strategy categories use was examined.…

The effect of sign language structure on complex word reading in Chinese deaf adolescents.

PubMed

Lu, Aitao; Yu, Yanping; Niu, Jiaxin; Zhang, John X

2015-01-01

The present study was carried out to investigate whether sign language structure plays a role in the processing of complex words (i.e., derivational and compound words), in particular, the delay of complex word reading in deaf adolescents. Chinese deaf adolescents were found to respond faster to derivational words than to compound words for one-sign-structure words, but showed comparable performance for two-sign-structure words. For both derivational and compound words, response latencies to one-sign-structure words were shorter than to two-sign-structure words. These results provide strong evidence that the structure of sign language affects written word processing in Chinese. Additionally, differences between derivational and compound words in the one-sign-structure condition indicate that Chinese deaf adolescents acquire print morphological awareness. The results also showed that delayed word reading was found in derivational words with two signs (DW-2), compound words with one sign (CW-1), and compound words with two signs (CW-2), but not in derivational words with one sign (DW-1), with the delay being maximum in DW-2, medium in CW-2, and minimum in CW-1, suggesting that the structure of sign language has an impact on the delayed processing of Chinese written words in deaf adolescents. These results provide insight into the mechanisms about how sign language structure affects written word processing and its delayed processing relative to their hearing peers of the same age.

Understanding Successful and Unsuccessful EFL Students in Chinese Universities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gan, Zhengdong; Humphreys, Gillian; Hamp-Lyons, Liz

2004-01-01

Unlike success in first language acquisition, success in learning a second or foreign language is considerably more variable. Recently, second language acquisition researchers have called for more integrative research on individual difference factors. With this goal in mind, this study followed a larger, quantitative study of the links between…

English in China's Language Policies for Higher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xu, Hongmei

2012-01-01

Taking ecological language planning and policy as its conceptual orientation and interpretive policy analysis as its methodological framework, and following an embedded single-case study design, this study explores the role of English, as compared with the role of Chinese, in China's educational language planning and policy for higher education.…

Metalinguistic Filters within the Bilingual Language Faculty: A Study of Young English-Chinese Bilinguals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ong, Kenneth Keng Wee; Zhang, Lawrence Jun

2010-01-01

This study reports two metalinguistic parameters that constitute the schematic control of lateral inhibitory links between translation equivalents within the bilingual lexico-semantic system of Green's ("Bilingualism: Language and Cognition" 1:67-81, 1998a, "Bilingualism: Language and Cognition" 1:100-104, 1998b, "The…

A Character Level Based and Word Level Based Approach for Chinese-Vietnamese Machine Translation

PubMed Central

2016-01-01

Chinese and Vietnamese have the same isolated language; that is, the words are not delimited by spaces. In machine translation, word segmentation is often done first when translating from Chinese or Vietnamese into different languages (typically English) and vice versa. However, it is a matter for consideration that words may or may not be segmented when translating between two languages in which spaces are not used between words, such as Chinese and Vietnamese. Since Chinese-Vietnamese is a low-resource language pair, the sparse data problem is evident in the translation system of this language pair. Therefore, while translating, whether it should be segmented or not becomes more important. In this paper, we propose a new method for translating Chinese to Vietnamese based on a combination of the advantages of character level and word level translation. In addition, a hybrid approach that combines statistics and rules is used to translate on the word level. And at the character level, a statistical translation is used. The experimental results showed that our method improved the performance of machine translation over that of character or word level translation. PMID:27446207

The 'biliterate' ballot controversy: language acquisition and cultural shift among immigrants.

PubMed

Loo, C M

1985-01-01

This US study tested the validity of assumptions made regarding multilingual electoral ballot provisions. Rationale for language assistance was found to exist on the basis of number and proportion of recent immigrants, proportion of foreign born, lag of biliterate skill behind bilingual ability, linguistic differences between the Chinese language and English, and the discriminatory structure of the labor market. In California, where close to 1/2 the population is an ethnic minority, the issue is particularly relevant. Bilingual advocates view English-only advocates as "un-American" on legal and ideological grounds, while English-only advocates consider it "un-American" to be non-English speaking. In addition to census data and the existing literature, this study relies on the structured interview survey data of a representative sample of the Chinese adult population of San Francisco's Chinatown. 2/3 of the immigrants believed an immigrant should make some cultural changes, and 1/2 of the immigrants had done so. Data failed to support the claim that immigrants are uninformed that English is necessary for sociopolitical participation. Their more recent pattern of immigration, the linguistic differences between Asian languages and the English language, and structural constraints of US society make successive language acquisition difficult for Chinese migrant adults. Policy recommendations include: 1) changing language assistance criteria in the electoral process, 2) adding Vietnamese as a single language minority, 3) not considering Asian language minorities as 1 generic category, 4) justifying electoral assistance on several grounds, 5) disseminating data bearing directly on misguided assumptions related to language and cultural shift factors, and 6) renaming the "bilingual ballots" to "biliterate ballots."

Are lexical tones musical? Native language's influence on neural response to pitch in different domains.

PubMed

Chen, Ao; Peter, Varghese; Wijnen, Frank; Schnack, Hugo; Burnham, Denis

2018-04-21

Language experience shapes musical and speech pitch processing. We investigated whether speaking a lexical tone language natively modulates neural processing of pitch in language and music as well as their correlation. We tested tone language (Mandarin Chinese), and non-tone language (Dutch) listeners in a passive oddball paradigm measuring mismatch negativity (MMN) for (i) Chinese lexical tones and (ii) three-note musical melodies with similar pitch contours. For lexical tones, Chinese listeners showed a later MMN peak than the non-tone language listeners, whereas for MMN amplitude there were no significant differences between groups. Dutch participants also showed a late discriminative negativity (LDN). In the music condition two MMNs, corresponding to the two notes that differed between the standard and the deviant were found for both groups, and an LDN were found for both the Dutch and the Chinese listeners. The music MMNs were significantly right lateralized. Importantly, significant correlations were found between the lexical tone and the music MMNs for the Dutch but not the Chinese participants. The results suggest that speaking a tone language natively does not necessarily enhance neural responses to pitch either in language or in music, but that it does change the nature of neural pitch processing: non-tone language speakers appear to perceive lexical tones as musical, whereas for tone language speakers, lexical tones and music may activate different neural networks. Neural resources seem to be assigned differently for the lexical tones and for musical melodies, presumably depending on the presence or absence of long-term phonological memory traces. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Talk-in-Interaction: Multilingual Perspectives

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nguyen, Hanh thi, Ed.; Kasper, Gabriele, Ed.

2009-01-01

"Talk-in-interaction: Multilingual perspectives" offers original studies of interaction in a range of languages and language varieties, including Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Swahili, Thai, and Vietnamese; monolingual and bilingual interactions; and activities designed for second or foreign language learning. Conducted from the…

Extracting important information from Chinese Operation Notes with natural language processing methods.

PubMed

Wang, Hui; Zhang, Weide; Zeng, Qiang; Li, Zuofeng; Feng, Kaiyan; Liu, Lei

2014-04-01

Extracting information from unstructured clinical narratives is valuable for many clinical applications. Although natural Language Processing (NLP) methods have been profoundly studied in electronic medical records (EMR), few studies have explored NLP in extracting information from Chinese clinical narratives. In this study, we report the development and evaluation of extracting tumor-related information from operation notes of hepatic carcinomas which were written in Chinese. Using 86 operation notes manually annotated by physicians as the training set, we explored both rule-based and supervised machine-learning approaches. Evaluating on unseen 29 operation notes, our best approach yielded 69.6% in precision, 58.3% in recall and 63.5% F-score. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Language differences in the brain network for reading in naturalistic story reading and lexical decision.

PubMed

Wang, Xiaojuan; Yang, Jianfeng; Yang, Jie; Mencl, W Einar; Shu, Hua; Zevin, Jason David

2015-01-01

Differences in how writing systems represent language raise important questions about whether there could be a universal functional architecture for reading across languages. In order to study potential language differences in the neural networks that support reading skill, we collected fMRI data from readers of alphabetic (English) and morpho-syllabic (Chinese) writing systems during two reading tasks. In one, participants read short stories under conditions that approximate natural reading, and in the other, participants decided whether individual stimuli were real words or not. Prior work comparing these two writing systems has overwhelmingly used meta-linguistic tasks, generally supporting the conclusion that the reading system is organized differently for skilled readers of Chinese and English. We observed that language differences in the reading network were greatly dependent on task. In lexical decision, a pattern consistent with prior research was observed in which the Middle Frontal Gyrus (MFG) and right Fusiform Gyrus (rFFG) were more active for Chinese than for English, whereas the posterior temporal sulcus was more active for English than for Chinese. We found a very different pattern of language effects in a naturalistic reading paradigm, during which significant differences were only observed in visual regions not typically considered specific to the reading network, and the middle temporal gyrus, which is thought to be important for direct mapping of orthography to semantics. Indeed, in areas that are often discussed as supporting distinct cognitive or linguistic functions between the two languages, we observed interaction. Specifically, language differences were most pronounced in MFG and rFFG during the lexical decision task, whereas no language differences were observed in these areas during silent reading of text for comprehension.

Reading Words or Pictures: Eye Movement Patterns in Adults and Children Differ by Age Group and Receptive Language Ability

PubMed Central

An, Licong; Wang, Yifang; Sun, Yadong

2017-01-01

This study was conducted to explore the differences in the degree of attention given to Chinese print and pictures by children and adults when they read picture books with and without Chinese words. We used an eye tracker from SensoMotoric Instruments to record the visual fixations of the subjects. The results showed that the adults paid more attention to Chinese print and looked at the print sooner than the children did. The stronger the children’s receptive language abilities were, the less time it took them to view the pictures. All participants spent the same amount of time looking at the pictures whether Chinese words were present or absent. PMID:28588526

Teaching Mathematics in Two Languages: A Teaching Dilemma of Malaysian Chinese Primary Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lim, Chap Sam; Presmeg, Norma

2011-01-01

This paper discusses a teaching dilemma faced by mathematics teachers in the Malaysian Chinese primary schools in coping with the latest changes in language policy. In 2003, Malaysia launched a new language policy of teaching mathematics using English as the language of instruction in all schools. However, due to the complex sociocultural demands…

"The Chinese Approach to Learning": Cultural Trait or Situated Response? The Case of a Self-Directed Learning Programme

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gieve, Simon; Clark, Rose

2005-01-01

This paper raises the question of how flexible approaches to learning are to contextual factors, as opposed to being culturally determined, with specific reference to autonomy in Chinese students studying in the UK. We describe the outcome of a research project which investigated Chinese undergraduates studying English language as part of their UK…

Learning Styles of Chinese and Dutch Students Compared within the Context of Dutch Higher Education in Life Sciences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Biemans, Harm; Van Mil, Marc

2008-01-01

This study investigated the extent to which the learning styles of Chinese students differ from those of Dutch students. The study was conducted within the context of English language Bachelor of Science programmes that Wageningen University offers together with China Agricultural University to Dutch and Chinese students. Sixteen Dutch students…

Conflict of interest reporting in biomedical journals published in China.

PubMed

Yang, Lili; Wang, Panzhi; Yang, Rongwang

2017-01-01

This study aimed to investigate the current status and policy of Conflict of interest (COI) reporting in biomedical journals in China. Thirty Chinese-language medical journals and 37 English-language biomedical journals indexed by Journal Citation Reports categories were included into this study. These 67 journals were all published in China. All articles published in the most recent two issues were checked for identifying the disclosure statement in the text or not. Twenty-one of 30 (70%) Chinese-language journals required a disclosure of author's potential COI. No journals require editors or referees to disclose the conflicts of interest to the readers. In total, 1,212 publications in Chinese-language were evaluated. Only two journals reported COI in their publications. For the 37 English-language journals, 32 (86.5%) required author's potential COI disclosure, and four of them required only research articles or original articles to disclose COI. A total of 1,170 publications were evaluated. Among them, 50% editorials, 79.3% review articles, and 73.6% original articles reported presence or absence of COI. In our studied journals, the percentage of the policies requiring author COI disclosure is still low. Biomedical journals published in China should enforce COI disclosure policies to authors, editors, and referees.

The Fluctuating Development of Cross-Linguistic Semantic Awareness: A Longitudinal Multiple-Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zheng, Yongyan

2014-01-01

Second language (L2) learners' awareness of first language-second language (L1-L2) semantic differences plays a critical role in L2 vocabulary learning. This study investigates the long-term development of eight university-level Chinese English as a foreign language learners' cross-linguistic semantic awareness over the course of 10 months. A…

Prolepsis, Syncretism, and Synergy in Early Language and Literacy Practices: A Case Study of Family Language Policy in Singapore

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ren, Li; Hu, Guangwei

2013-01-01

This article reports a case study of two Chinese-English bilingual families in Singapore and illustrates the importance of incorporating two hitherto disconnected fields of research--family language policy and family literacy practices--to an understanding of early language and literacy acquisition in the familial milieu. Specifically, this work…

Language Planning, Naming and Character Use in China

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhao, Shouhui; Baldauf, Richard B., Jr.

2007-01-01

As Chinese characters ("hanzi") have three aspects--as a technical writing system, an aesthetic visual art (Chinese calligraphy), and a highly-charged cultural symbolic system--changing them is a complex process. In the 1950s when language planning campaigns were launched to modernise Chinese through "hanzi" standardisation,…

Chinese Tertiary English Educators' Perceptions of Foreign Teacher Involvement in Their Professional Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bleistein, Tasha Maria

2013-01-01

China continues to invite expatriate tertiary-level English language educators to teach. Foreign English language teachers and local Chinese English educators who wish to develop professionally have an ever-increasing body of research regarding Chinese culture, education, professional development, and intercultural communication; however, research…

Chinese-Cantonese (Toishan) Basic Course.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Defense Language Inst., Washington, DC.

This seven-volume series constitutes the Defense Language Institute (Army Language School) 47-week course in the Toishan dialect of Cantonese. Beginning lessons present the tone and sound system in romanized script. Chinese characters are introduced in the fourth lesson. (See related document AL 001 479, "Chinese Cantonese Basic Course,"…

The Accessibility, Usability, and Reliability of Chinese Web-Based Information on HIV/AIDS.

PubMed

Niu, Lu; Luo, Dan; Liu, Ying; Xiao, Shuiyuan

2016-08-20

The present study was designed to assess the quality of Chinese-language Internet-based information on HIV/AIDS. We entered the following search terms, in Chinese, into Baidu and Sogou: "HIV/AIDS", "symptoms", and "treatment", and evaluated the first 50 hits of each query using the Minervation validation instrument (LIDA tool) and DISCERN instrument. Of the 900 hits identified, 85 websites were included in this study. The overall score of the LIDA tool was 63.7%; the mean score of accessibility, usability, and reliability was 82.2%, 71.5%, and 27.3%, respectively. Of the top 15 sites according to the LIDA score, the mean DISCERN score was calculated at 43.1 (95% confidence intervals (CI) = 37.7-49.5). Noncommercial websites showed higher DISCERN scores than commercial websites; whereas commercial websites were more likely to be found in the first 20 links obtained from each search engine than the noncommercial websites. In general, the HIV/AIDS related Chinese-language websites have poor reliability, although their accessibility and usability are fair. In addition, the treatment information presented on Chinese-language websites is far from sufficient. There is an imperative need for professionals and specialized institutes to improve the comprehensiveness of web-based information related to HIV/AIDS.

The Accessibility, Usability, and Reliability of Chinese Web-Based Information on HIV/AIDS

PubMed Central

Niu, Lu; Luo, Dan; Liu, Ying; Xiao, Shuiyuan

2016-01-01

Objective: The present study was designed to assess the quality of Chinese-language Internet-based information on HIV/AIDS. Methods: We entered the following search terms, in Chinese, into Baidu and Sogou: “HIV/AIDS”, “symptoms”, and “treatment”, and evaluated the first 50 hits of each query using the Minervation validation instrument (LIDA tool) and DISCERN instrument. Results: Of the 900 hits identified, 85 websites were included in this study. The overall score of the LIDA tool was 63.7%; the mean score of accessibility, usability, and reliability was 82.2%, 71.5%, and 27.3%, respectively. Of the top 15 sites according to the LIDA score, the mean DISCERN score was calculated at 43.1 (95% confidence intervals (CI) = 37.7–49.5). Noncommercial websites showed higher DISCERN scores than commercial websites; whereas commercial websites were more likely to be found in the first 20 links obtained from each search engine than the noncommercial websites. Conclusions: In general, the HIV/AIDS related Chinese-language websites have poor reliability, although their accessibility and usability are fair. In addition, the treatment information presented on Chinese-language websites is far from sufficient. There is an imperative need for professionals and specialized institutes to improve the comprehensiveness of web-based information related to HIV/AIDS. PMID:27556475

Scientific psychology within the Chinese language and cultural context.

PubMed

Shen, Heyong

2006-01-01

The Scientific Psychology that was founded by Wilhelm Wundt appeared in China in the late nineteenth century. The scholars translated the name of psychology into Chinese as Xin-Li-Xue, for which the meaning of the words looks like "heartology," i.e., "the study of the heart." In Chinese, the same core structure related to "heart" (Xin) is found in most of the terms of psychology, such as emotion, thinking, will, forgetting, and memory. By translating Xin as "heart" instead of "mind," we maintain an embodied approach to understanding the "principles of the heart." Through a historical approach to the influence of Western psychology, a cultural analysis of the meaning of the term psychology in Chinese, and a focus on the meeting of Eastern and Western psychology, we can witness the significance of psychology in the Chinese language and cultural context. I will use three parts to present psychology in the Chinese cultural context: the origins of Chinese psychology, from a historical approach; the meaning of "psychology" in Chinese, using a cultural analysis; and the meeting of Eastern and Western psychology, focusing on the development and future.

L1 and L2 Word Recognotion in Finnish. Examining L1 Effects on L2 Processing of Morphological Complexity and Morphophonological Transparency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vainio, Seppo; Anneli, Pajunen; Hyona, Jukka

2014-01-01

This study investigated the effect of the first language (L1) on the visual word recognition of inflected nouns in second language (L2) Finnish by native Russian and Chinese speakers. Case inflection is common in Russian and in Finnish but nonexistent in Chinese. Several models have been posited to describe L2 morphological processing. The unified…

Review of "A Dictionary of Global Huayu"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Rui

2016-01-01

As the first Huayu dictionary published by the Commercial Press, "A Dictionary of Global Huayu" (Chinese Language) did a pioneer work in many aspects. It did expand the influence of Chinese and provided Chinese speaker abroad a valuable reference book for study and communication. Nevertheless, there are still some demerits. First of all,…

A CEFR-Based Computerized Adaptive Testing System for Chinese Proficiency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Hsuan-Po; Kuo, Bor-Chen; Tsai, Ya-Hsun; Liao, Chen-Huei

2012-01-01

In the era of globalization, the trend towards learning Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) has become increasingly popular worldwide. The increasing demand in learning CFL has raised the profile of the Chinese proficiency test (CPT). This study will analyze in depth the inadequacy of current CPT's utilizing the common European framework of…

Shyness and Chinese and English Vocabulary Skills in Hong Kong Kindergartners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tong, Xiuli; Ting, Ka-Tsun; McBride-Chang, Catherine

2011-01-01

Research Findings: This study examined relations between parent-rated shyness and children's vocabulary skills in 54 Hong Kong Chinese kindergartners who learned English as a foreign language at school. Receptive vocabulary and expressive vocabulary were assessed both in Chinese and in English. Parent-rated shyness was uniquely associated with…

Semantic vs. Phonetic Decoding Strategies in Non-Native Readers of Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Williams, Clay H.

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines the effects of semantic and phonetic radicals on Chinese character decoding by high-intermediate level Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) learners. The results of the main study (discussed in Chapter #5) suggest that the CFL learners tested have a well-developed semantic pathway to recognition; however, their…

Self-Repair in Oral Production by Intermediate Chinese Learners of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Jiangtao

2009-01-01

For various reasons, second language learners modify their speech by means of self-repair. This study, based on a small-scale corpus, shows the patterns and features of self-repairs by intermediate Chinese learners of English. The results suggest that intermediate Chinese learners of English more frequently make repairs than advanced Chinese…

N170 Tuning in Chinese: Logographic Characters and Phonetic Pinyin Script

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Qin, Rui; Maurits, Natasha; Maassen, Ben

2016-01-01

In alphabetic languages, print consistently elicits enhanced, left-lateralized N170 responses in the event-related potential compared to control stimuli. In the current study, we adopted a cross-linguistic design to investigate N170 tuning to logographic Chinese and to "pinyin," an auxiliary phonetic system in Chinese. The results…

Elementary English Education: An Arena of Social Struggle for Professional Chinese Parents

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chao, Xia; Xue, Mo; Xu, Ming

2014-01-01

In response to the national and individual needs for English instruction, China mandated English provision in elementary schools in 2001. Grounded in the work of Bourdieu, this study examines professional Chinese parents' language attitudes in relation to their social positions. It draws data from interviews with 20 professional Chinese parents…

Lexical Borrowing from Chinese Languages in Malaysian English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Imm, Tan Siew

2009-01-01

This paper explores how contact between English and Chinese has resulted in the incorporation of Chinese borrowings into the lexicon of Malaysian English (ME). Using a corpus-based approach, this study analyses a comprehensive range of borrowed features extracted from the Malaysian English Newspaper Corpus (MEN Corpus). Based on the contexts of…

Developmental Dyslexia in Chinese and English Populations: Dissociating the Effect of Dyslexia from Language Differences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hu, Wei; Lee, Hwee Ling; Zhang, Qiang; Liu, Tao; Geng, Li Bo; Seghier, Mohamed L.; Shakeshaft, Clare; Twomey, Tae; Green, David W.; Yang, Yi Ming; Price, Cathy J.

2010-01-01

Previous neuroimaging studies have suggested that developmental dyslexia has a different neural basis in Chinese and English populations because of known differences in the processing demands of the Chinese and English writing systems. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we provide the first direct statistically based investigation…

Motion Event Similarity Judgments in One or Two Languages: An Exploration of Monolingual Speakers of English and Chinese vs. L2 Learners of English

PubMed Central

Ji, Yinglin

2017-01-01

Languages differ systematically in how to encode a motion event. English characteristically expresses manner in verb root and path in verb particle; in Chinese, varied aspects of motion, such as manner, path and cause, can be simultaneously encoded in a verb compound. This study investigates whether typological differences, as such, influence how first and second language learners conceptualize motion events, as suggested by behavioral evidences. Specifically, the performance of Chinese learners of English, at three proficiencies, was compared to that of two groups of monolingual speakers in a triads matching task. The first set of analyses regarding categorisation preferences indicates that participants across groups preferred the path-matched (rather than manner-matched) screens. However, the second set of analyses regarding reaction time suggests, firstly, that English monolingual speakers reacted significantly more quickly in selecting the manner-matched scenes compared with monolingual speakers of Chinese, who tended to use an approximately equal amount of time in making manner- and path-matched decisions, a finding that can arguably be mapped onto the typological difference between the two languages. Secondly, the pattern of response latency in low-level L2 learners looked more like that of monolingual speakers of Chinese. Only at intermediate and advanced levels of acquisition did the behavioral pattern of L2 learners become target-like, thus suggesting language-specific constraints from the L1 at an early stage of acquisition. Overall, our results suggest that motion event cognition may be linked to, among other things, the linguistic structure of motion description in particular languages. PMID:28638355

Motivation and Its Relationship with Learning Strategy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Yunzhen

2012-01-01

This study investigates motivation that influences heritage and non-heritage students' learning of Chinese, and its relationship with Chinese language learning strategies (LLS). The study uses Deci and Ryan's typology--"Intrinsic Motivation" and "Extrinsic Motivation", for the investigation, examining issues such as: (1) What…

Motivational Effects of Standardized Language Assessment on Chinese Young Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhao, Chuqiao

2016-01-01

This review paper examines how standardized language assessment affects Chinese young learners' motivation for second-language learning. By presenting the historical and contemporary contexts of the testing system in China, this paper seeks to demonstrate the interrelationship among cultural, social, familial, and individual factors, which…

High School Foreign Language Students' Perceptions of Language Learning Strategies Use and Self-Efficacy.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

National Capital Language Resource Center, Washington, DC.

This study investigated the relationship of language learning strategies use and self-efficacy of high school students learning Chinese, German, Russian, Japanese, and Spanish. Through two questionnaires, The Language Learning Strategies Questionnaire and The Self-Efficacy Questionnaire, researchers were able to collect and analyze data on…

Auditory Perception and Word Recognition in Cantonese-Chinese Speaking Children with and without Specific Language Impairment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kidd, Joanna C.; Shum, Kathy K.; Wong, Anita M.-Y.; Ho, Connie S.-H.

2017-01-01

Auditory processing and spoken word recognition difficulties have been observed in Specific Language Impairment (SLI), raising the possibility that auditory perceptual deficits disrupt word recognition and, in turn, phonological processing and oral language. In this study, fifty-seven kindergarten children with SLI and fifty-three language-typical…

Adoption age effects on english language acquisition: infants and toddlers from China.

PubMed

Krakow, Rena A; Tao, Shannon; Roberts, Jenny

2005-02-01

Children adopted from China represent the single largest group of internationally adopted children in this country. Because the adoptive families typically do not speak any Chinese language or dialect, most of these children experience an abrupt shift in their language environment. How age of adoption affects the course of English language development of children adopted from China is the focus of this study. All of the children in this study were either infants or toddlers at the time of adoption and all came from the same orphanage. The results showed that the older children (toddlers) were at both an advantage and a disadvantage when it came to English language development. The advantage of being older was that they learned faster. The disadvantage of being older was that there was more for them to learn to become age-appropriate in their English language development. There was, however, no evidence to suggest that the language switch from a Chinese- to an English-language environment was a formidable obstacle for either the infants or the toddlers.

Training Pre-Service Chinese Language Teachers to Create Instructional Video to Enhance Classroom Instruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Lih-Ching Chen; Wang, Ming-Chian Ken

2014-01-01

Foreign language instruction is a complex and challenging task made even more so by situations in which the learner's native language is radically different from the foreign language being mastered. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of native English speakers seeking to learn Mandarin Chinese. The rapid increase in the availability and…

"Do You Know Your Language?" How Teachers of Punjabi and Chinese Ancestries Construct Their Family Languages in Their Personal and Professional Lives.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beynon, June; Ilieva, Roumiana; Dichupa, Marela; Hirji, Shemina

2003-01-01

Focuses on how teachers of minority ancestries construct and represent their family language identities. Drawing on poststructural, postcolonial and sociocultural theory on culture, identity, and language, examined the complex nature of linguistic identities of 25 teachers of Chinese and 20 teachers of Punjabi ancestries. (Author/VWL)

Cross-language differences in the brain network subserving intelligible speech.

PubMed

Ge, Jianqiao; Peng, Gang; Lyu, Bingjiang; Wang, Yi; Zhuo, Yan; Niu, Zhendong; Tan, Li Hai; Leff, Alexander P; Gao, Jia-Hong

2015-03-10

How is language processed in the brain by native speakers of different languages? Is there one brain system for all languages or are different languages subserved by different brain systems? The first view emphasizes commonality, whereas the second emphasizes specificity. We investigated the cortical dynamics involved in processing two very diverse languages: a tonal language (Chinese) and a nontonal language (English). We used functional MRI and dynamic causal modeling analysis to compute and compare brain network models exhaustively with all possible connections among nodes of language regions in temporal and frontal cortex and found that the information flow from the posterior to anterior portions of the temporal cortex was commonly shared by Chinese and English speakers during speech comprehension, whereas the inferior frontal gyrus received neural signals from the left posterior portion of the temporal cortex in English speakers and from the bilateral anterior portion of the temporal cortex in Chinese speakers. Our results revealed that, although speech processing is largely carried out in the common left hemisphere classical language areas (Broca's and Wernicke's areas) and anterior temporal cortex, speech comprehension across different language groups depends on how these brain regions interact with each other. Moreover, the right anterior temporal cortex, which is crucial for tone processing, is equally important as its left homolog, the left anterior temporal cortex, in modulating the cortical dynamics in tone language comprehension. The current study pinpoints the importance of the bilateral anterior temporal cortex in language comprehension that is downplayed or even ignored by popular contemporary models of speech comprehension.

Cross-language differences in the brain network subserving intelligible speech

PubMed Central

Ge, Jianqiao; Peng, Gang; Lyu, Bingjiang; Wang, Yi; Zhuo, Yan; Niu, Zhendong; Tan, Li Hai; Leff, Alexander P.; Gao, Jia-Hong

2015-01-01

How is language processed in the brain by native speakers of different languages? Is there one brain system for all languages or are different languages subserved by different brain systems? The first view emphasizes commonality, whereas the second emphasizes specificity. We investigated the cortical dynamics involved in processing two very diverse languages: a tonal language (Chinese) and a nontonal language (English). We used functional MRI and dynamic causal modeling analysis to compute and compare brain network models exhaustively with all possible connections among nodes of language regions in temporal and frontal cortex and found that the information flow from the posterior to anterior portions of the temporal cortex was commonly shared by Chinese and English speakers during speech comprehension, whereas the inferior frontal gyrus received neural signals from the left posterior portion of the temporal cortex in English speakers and from the bilateral anterior portion of the temporal cortex in Chinese speakers. Our results revealed that, although speech processing is largely carried out in the common left hemisphere classical language areas (Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas) and anterior temporal cortex, speech comprehension across different language groups depends on how these brain regions interact with each other. Moreover, the right anterior temporal cortex, which is crucial for tone processing, is equally important as its left homolog, the left anterior temporal cortex, in modulating the cortical dynamics in tone language comprehension. The current study pinpoints the importance of the bilateral anterior temporal cortex in language comprehension that is downplayed or even ignored by popular contemporary models of speech comprehension. PMID:25713366

1Malaysia English Reflects Unity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thirusanku, Jantmary; Yunus, Melor Md

2014-01-01

The main aims of this qualitative study are to identify and categorise the types of lexical borrowings from the three main Malaysian languages which are the Malay language, Chinese dialects and Indian languages used by 203 ESL teachers, to what extent these lexical borrowings are used and for what reasons. This study has identified a new category…

The Influence of Cross-Language Similarity on within- and between-Language Stroop Effects in Trilinguals

PubMed Central

van Heuven, Walter J. B.; Conklin, Kathy; Coderre, Emily L.; Guo, Taomei; Dijkstra, Ton

2011-01-01

This study investigated effects of cross-language similarity on within- and between-language Stroop interference and facilitation in three groups of trilinguals. Trilinguals were either proficient in three languages that use the same-script (alphabetic in German–English–Dutch trilinguals), two similar scripts and one different script (Chinese and alphabetic scripts in Chinese–English–Malay trilinguals), or three completely different scripts (Arabic, Chinese, and alphabetic in Uyghur–Chinese–English trilinguals). The results revealed a similar magnitude of within-language Stroop interference for the three groups, whereas between-language interference was modulated by cross-language similarity. For the same-script trilinguals, the within- and between-language interference was similar, whereas the between-language Stroop interference was reduced for trilinguals with languages written in different scripts. The magnitude of within-language Stroop facilitation was similar across the three groups of trilinguals, but smaller than within-language Stroop interference. Between-language Stroop facilitation was also modulated by cross-language similarity such that these effects became negative for trilinguals with languages written in different scripts. The overall pattern of Stroop interference and facilitation effects can be explained in terms of diverging and converging color and word information across languages. PMID:22180749

Does Language Matter? Exploring Chinese-Korean Differences in Holistic Perception.

PubMed

Rhode, Ann K; Voyer, Benjamin G; Gleibs, Ilka H

2016-01-01

Cross-cultural research suggests that East Asians display a holistic attentional bias by paying attention to the entire field and to relationships between objects, whereas Westerners pay attention primarily to salient objects, displaying an analytic attentional bias. The assumption of a universal pan-Asian holistic attentional bias has recently been challenged in experimental research involving Japanese and Chinese participants, which suggests that linguistic factors may contribute to the formation of East Asians' holistic attentional patterns. The present experimental research explores differences in attention and information processing styles between Korean and Chinese speakers, who have been assumed to display the same attentional bias due to cultural commonalities. We hypothesize that the specific structure of the Korean language predisposes speakers to pay more attention to ground information than to figure information, thus leading to a stronger holistic attentional bias compared to Chinese speakers. Findings of the present research comparing different groups of English, Chinese, and Korean speakers provide further evidence for differences in East Asians' holistic attentional bias, which may be due to the influence of language. Furthermore, we also extend prior theorizing by discussing the potential impact of other cultural factors. In line with critical voices calling for more research investigating differences between cultures that are assumed to be culturally similar, we highlight important avenues for future studies exploring the language-culture relationship.

Conceptions of Language Teaching of Chinese-Born Language Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Packevicz, Michael Joseph, Jr.

2012-01-01

In the educational world, there is a growing amount of scholarship directed toward China. Much Western writing has focused on the supposedly deficient aspects of Chinese education: rote memorization, large class size, teacher-centered methodology. While there are those who challenge the deficiency view of Chinese education--Watkins and Biggs, Jin…

Metacognitive Awareness of EFL Student Writers in a Chinese ELT Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ruan, Zhoulin

2014-01-01

This paper reports on an investigation into metacognitive awareness of Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) student writers, under a threefold metacognition framework--person, task, and strategy variables, and within the broader domain of cognitive writing theories. Data were collected in a Chinese tertiary English language teaching (ELT)…

Cognitive and Linguistic Factors Affecting Alphasyllabary Language Users Comprehending Chinese Text

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shum, Mark Shiu Kee; Ki, Wing Wah; Leong, Che Kan

2014-01-01

Two groups of 13 to14-year-old alphasyllabary language users (mainly Hindi and Urdu), in integrated or designated school settings (respectively 40 and 48 students), were compared with 59 Chinese students in comprehending 4 elementary Chinese texts, each with three inferential questions requiring short open-ended written answers. Three constructs…

Communicative Development in Bilingually Exposed Chinese Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reetzke, Rachel; Zou, Xiaobing; Sheng, Li; Katsos, Napoleon

2015-01-01

Purpose: We examined the association of bilingual exposure with structural and pragmatic language development in Chinese children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Method: The parents of 54 children with ASD exposed to 1 (n = 31) or 2 (n = 23) Chinese languages completed (a) a questionnaire to evaluate their child's competence in structural…

Measurements of Development in L2 Written Production: The Case of L2 Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jiang, Wenying

2013-01-01

This study investigates measures for second language (L2) writing development. A T-unit, which has been found the most satisfactory unit of analysis for measuring L2 development in English, is extended to measure L2 Chinese writing development through a cross-sectional design in this study. Data were collected from three L2 Chinese learner groups…

Quality and Cultural Sensitivity of Linguistically Appropriate Cardiovascular Disease Information for Chinese Immigrants: A Review of Online Resources From Heart Foundations.

PubMed

Li, Jialin; Lowres, Nicole; Jin, Kai; Zhang, Ling; Neubeck, Lis; Gallagher, Robyn

Chinese immigrants are at an increased risk for cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) compared with Chinese nationals partly because of lifestyle changes and knowledge deficits. Translated patient resources are available on the Internet and are often provided by health professionals; however, the quality and cultural sensitivity of these resources have not been reported. The aim of this study was to assess the availability, quality, and cultural sensitivity of Chinese-language information available from national "Heart Foundations" (cardiac research bodies, nongovernmental organisations) of the 5 most popular destinations of Chinese immigration. This study is a descriptive research in which national "Heart Foundation" websites were systematically searched for Chinese-language CVD patient education resources. Quality (content, identification, structure) was assessed using the Ensuring Quality Information for Patients instrument. Cultural sensitivity was evaluated using the Cultural Sensitivity Assessment Tool. From 107 identified resources, 33 were CVD specific: coronary heart disease (n = 20), arrhythmias (n = 7), and heart failure (n = 6). Quality of resources was adequate (mean Ensuring Quality Information for Patients score, 69%), but scores varied significantly (min, 60%; max, 85%). Although all resources were classified as culturally sensitive (Cultural Sensitivity Assessment Tool score ≥ 2.5), 2 resources scored low (≤2.5) for visual impact, and across all resources, written and visual domains were assessed as least culturally sensitive. Most resources lacked culturally specific references. Chinese-language CVD resources were inconsistent in the supply of key information. Quality and level of cultural sensitivity were adequate, but most resources lacked culturally specific references. Comprehensive, high-quality CVD resources powered by Editorial Manager and ProduXion Manager from Aries Systems Corporation tailored for Chinese immigrants are urgently needed for healthcare providers to support CVD education and care of patients belonging to this population.

Interlingual and Interdialectal Borrowings in Chinese.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chao, Y.R.

The processes involved in "borrowing" words and structures between languages and among dialects are discussed and illustrated. Interlingual borrowings between Chinese and other languages have taken place in several different ways. Sometimes the sounds of the foreign word are imitated using the sounds of the borrowing language ("leidar" for 'radar'…

(Dis)connections between Specific Language Impairment and Dyslexia in Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wong, Anita M.-Y.; Ho, Connie S.-H.; Au, Terry K.-F.; Kidd, Joanna C.; Ng, Ashley K.-H.; Yip, Lesley P.-W.; Lam, Catherine C.-C.

2015-01-01

Specific language impairment (SLI) and dyslexia are found to co-occur in school-aged children learning Chinese, a non-alphabetic language (Wong, Kidd, Ho, & Au in "Sci Stud Read" 14:30--57, 2010). This paper examined the "Distinct" hypothesis--that SLI and dyslexia have different cognitive deficits and behavioural…

The influence of ethnic concordance and discordance on verbal reports and nonverbal behaviours of pain.

PubMed

Hsieh, Annie Y; Tripp, Dean A; Ji, Li-Jun

2011-09-01

This study's aim was to examine the influence of ethnic concordance on Chinese participants' pain report and nonverbal pain expression in a laboratory setting. Participants (n=102) were exposed to a cold pressor task under 1 of 2 conditions: Chinese milieu (n=52; participants exposed to Chinese experimenters and language), or European Canadian milieu (n=50; participants exposed to Euro-Canadian experimenters and English language). A reference group with 86 Euro-Canadian participants, exposed to the Euro-Canadian milieu only, was included for comparison. The Chinese groups did not differ on pain intensity during the pain task. However, Chinese participants in the Chinese milieu reported significantly higher affective pain and displayed more nonverbal behaviour of pain than the Chinese participants in the Euro-Canadian milieu. In addition, compared to the Euro-Canadian group, both Chinese groups reported higher pain intensity during the pain task and greater affective pain after immersion. The results demonstrated that an ethnically concordant milieu is associated with increased nonverbal pain displays and affective pain report. These findings suggest that research on ethnic disparities in pain treatment should examine ethnic concordance between observer and individual in pain. Copyright © 2011 International Association for the Study of Pain. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Effects of linguistic experience on early levels of perceptual tone processing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huang, Tsan; Johnson, Keith

2005-04-01

This study investigated the phenomenon of language-specificity in Mandarin Chinese tone perception. The main question was whether linguistic experience affects the earliest levels of perceptual processing of tones. Chinese and American English listeners participated in four perception experiments, which involved short inter-stimulus intervals (300 ms or 100 ms) and an AX discrimination or AX degree-of-difference rating task. Three experiments used natural speech monosyllabic tone stimuli and one experiment used time-varying sinusoidal simulations of Mandarin tones. AE listeners showed psychoacoustic listening in all experiments, paying much attention to onset and offset pitch. Chinese listeners showed language-specific patterns in all experiments to various degrees, where tonal neutralization rules reduced perceptual distance between two otherwise contrastive tones for Chinese listeners. Since these experiments employed procedures hypothesized to tap the auditory trace mode (Pisoni, Percept. Psychophys. 13, 253-260 (1973)], language-specificity found in this study seems to support the proposal of an auditory cortical map [Guenther et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 23, 213-221 (1999)]. But the model needs refining to account for different degrees of language-specificity, which are better handled by Johnsons (2004, TLS03:26-41) lexical distance model, although the latter model is too rigid in assuming that linguistic experience does not affect low-level perceptual tasks such as AX discrimination with short ISIs.

Aspects of the Two Language System and Three Language Problem in the Changing Society of Hong Kong.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tsou, Benjamin K.

1996-01-01

Presents details of the language shifts among the various sections of the Chinese-speaking population in Hong Kong and analyzes patterns of allegiance. Notes that complex social, economic, and political pressures will affect future language in Hong Kong and that, within the domains of family, work, and others, the use of Modern Standard Chinese is…

The role of early language abilities on math skills among Chinese children.

PubMed

Zhang, Juan; Fan, Xitao; Cheung, Sum Kwing; Meng, Yaxuan; Cai, Zhihui; Hu, Bi Ying

2017-01-01

The present study investigated the role of early language abilities in the development of math skills among Chinese K-3 students. About 2000 children in China, who were on average aged 6 years, were assessed for both informal math (e.g., basic number concepts such as counting objects) and formal math (calculations including addition and subtraction) skills, language abilities and nonverbal intelligence. Correlation analysis showed that language abilities were more strongly associated with informal than formal math skills, and regression analyses revealed that children's language abilities could uniquely predict both informal and formal math skills with age, gender, and nonverbal intelligence controlled. Mediation analyses demonstrated that the relationship between children's language abilities and formal math skills was partially mediated by informal math skills. The current findings indicate 1) Children's language abilities are of strong predictive values for both informal and formal math skills; 2) Language abilities impacts formal math skills partially through the mediation of informal math skills.

The role of early language abilities on math skills among Chinese children

PubMed Central

Fan, Xitao; Cheung, Sum Kwing; Cai, Zhihui; Hu, Bi Ying

2017-01-01

Background The present study investigated the role of early language abilities in the development of math skills among Chinese K-3 students. About 2000 children in China, who were on average aged 6 years, were assessed for both informal math (e.g., basic number concepts such as counting objects) and formal math (calculations including addition and subtraction) skills, language abilities and nonverbal intelligence. Methodology Correlation analysis showed that language abilities were more strongly associated with informal than formal math skills, and regression analyses revealed that children’s language abilities could uniquely predict both informal and formal math skills with age, gender, and nonverbal intelligence controlled. Mediation analyses demonstrated that the relationship between children’s language abilities and formal math skills was partially mediated by informal math skills. Results The current findings indicate 1) Children’s language abilities are of strong predictive values for both informal and formal math skills; 2) Language abilities impacts formal math skills partially through the mediation of informal math skills. PMID:28749950

Developing L2 Pragmatic Competence in Mandarin Chinese: Sequential Realization of Requests

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Su, Yunwen; Ren, Wei

2017-01-01

The present study explored the development of second language (L2) Chinese learners' ability to negotiate requests in interactions. It investigated the effect of proficiency on learners' use of request strategies and internal modifications and on their sequential realization of requests in L2 Chinese. Twenty-four American English learners of L2…

Positive Psychology in Cross-Cultural Narratives: Mexican Students Discover Themselves While Learning Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Oxford, Rebecca L.; Cuéllar, Lourdes

2014-01-01

Using the principles of positive psychology and the tools of narrative research, this article focuses on the psychology of five language learners who crossed cultural and linguistic borders. All five were university students learning Chinese in Mexico, and two of them also studied Chinese in China. The grounded theory approach was used to analyze…

A Narrative Inquiry of Chinese Immigrant Students' Educational Experiences in the United States: Language, Culture, and Identity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Deng, Yuwen

2017-01-01

In this dissertation research, I examined the overall educational experiences of Chinese immigrant students, particularly their educational experiences in the United States. Using narrative inquiry methodology in my study, I portrayed the stories of six Chinese immigrant students, including four undergraduates and two graduates in a Midwestern…

The Learning of Chinese Idiomatic Expressions as a Foreign Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Li; Yao, Jiayi

2017-01-01

Chinese idioms are mostly four-character phrases and are called Quadra-syllabic Idiomatic Expressions (QIEs). It has long been reported that learning of Chinese QIEs poses a great challenge for both young L1 speakers and adult L2 learners as the condensed form is often associated with complicated figurative meanings. The present study explored the…

Exceeding Boundaries: Chinese Children's Playful Use of Languages in Their Literacy Practices in a Mandarin-English Bilingual Program

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Yan; Guo, Yan

2017-01-01

Chinese children of immigrant families are often perceived as good at memorization and rote learning or as polite, obedient, and passive students lacking creativity and criticality. Guided by Multiple Literacies Theory and translanguaging, this study explores how Chinese children in a Mandarin-English bilingual program skillfully navigate…

Non-Native Chinese Language Learners' Attitudes towards Online Vision-Based Motion Games

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hao, Yungwei; Hong, Jon-Chao; Jong, Jyh-Tsorng; Hwang, Ming-Yueh; Su, Chao-Ya; Yang, Jin-Shin

2010-01-01

Learning to write Chinese characters is often thought to be a very challenging and laborious task. However, new learning tools are being designed that might reduce learners' tedium. This study explores one such tool, an online program in which learners can learn Chinese characters through vision-based motion games. The learner's gestures are…

Acculturation Attitudes and Sociocultural Adaptation of Chinese Mainland Sojourners in Hong Kong

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ma, Yuanyi; Wang, Bo

2015-01-01

Within these years, there has been a significant increase in the number of Chinese Mainland sojourners studying in Hong Kong. Due to the huge differences in various aspects like language, culture, cultural value, it would be considerably difficult for the Chinese Mainland students to adapt to the Hong Kong environment. This article investigates…

Validation of Self-Image of Aging Scale for Chinese Elders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bai, Xue; Chan, K. S.; Chow, Nelson

2012-01-01

Researchers are increasingly interested in the "image of aging" concept. Models on the image of aging abound, but few have rigorously tested measures that are culturally sensitive and domain-specific. This study first translates Levy et al.'s (2004) Image of Aging Scale into the Chinese language and revises it into the Chinese Version of…

"My Way or Mom's Way?" The Bilingual and Bicultural Self in Hong Kong Chinese Children and Adolescents

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Qi; Shao, Yi; Li, Yexin Jessica

2010-01-01

This study examined the relation of language to the development of a cultural self. Bilingual children ages 8-14 from Hong Kong (N = 125) were interviewed in either English or Chinese. They recalled autobiographical events and described themselves, and indicated their agreement with Chinese interdependent versus Western independent values.…

Strategies for Internationalization of Higher Education. A Case Study--the Nordic Centre at Fudan University, Shanghai, China.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Holtermann, Sigrid

1996-01-01

The Nordic Centre at Fudan University (China) links it with Norwegian universities, and has resulted in: a new Norwegian School of Management program; a Chinese-Norwegian dictionary; short credit courses on Scandinavian affairs for Chinese students; language courses and examinations for Norwegian students of Chinese; establishment of a library on…

Cross-Linguistic Variations in L2 Morphological Awareness.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koda, Keiko

2000-01-01

Investigated effects of first language processing on second language morphological awareness. Preliminary cross-linguistic comparisons indicated that morphological awareness in two typologically distinct languages, Chinese and English, differs in several major ways. Tested hypotheses from the study with two groups of English-as-a-Second-Language…

Through the Learners' Eyes: Reconceptualizing the Heritage and Non-Heritage Learner of the Less Commonly Taught Languages

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Jin Sook

2005-01-01

This study investigates how learners of the less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) (i.e., Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Swahili, Yoruba) perceive their identities as heritage or non-heritage language learners. A survey of 530 college-level language learners reveals that heritage and non-heritage…

Chine: Les Chances du Francais (The Fortunes of the French Language in China).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shuning, Zhang

1996-01-01

Examines the current situation in China surrounding the teaching of French as a Foreign Language. After the decline of French teaching subsequent to the Cultural Revolution, the language returned to favor around 1970. Chinese students are infatuated with French; many study it as a first or second foreign language. Additionally, French literature…

Caring in the Dynamics of Design and Languaging: Exploring Second Language Learning in 3D Virtual Spaces

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zheng, Dongping

2012-01-01

This study provides concrete evidence of ecological, dialogical views of languaging within the dynamics of coordination and cooperation in a virtual world. Beginning level second language learners of Chinese engaged in cooperative activities designed to provide them opportunities to refine linguistic actions by way of caring for others, for the…

Understanding Collaborative Language Learning in Novice-Level Foreign Language Classrooms: Perceptions of Teachers and Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sun, Peijian; Yuan, Rui

2018-01-01

This study explored the congruence and disparities among three groups of foreign language (Chinese, French, and German) students' and teachers' perceptions of collaborative/cooperative language learning (CLL) strategies in novice-level classroom contexts. A total of 168 participants from a university in the USA took part in this mixed-method…

Lost Opportunities: The Language Skills of Linguistic Minorities in England and Wales.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carr-Hill, Roy; Passingham, Steve; Wolf, Alison; Kent, Naomi

A study investigated the English language needs of five minority language communities in England (Bengali, Gujerati, Punjabi Urdu, Punjabi Gurmukhi, Chinese) and four refugee groups (Bosnians, Kurds, Somalis, Tamils). Data were gathered from 997 individuals in the language groups and 176 in the refugee groups using a test of listening, reading,…

Language Planning and Policy in a School Site: A Diachronic Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kemp, Shaun

2017-01-01

This article engages with diachronic analysis, an analysis of changes over time, as it relates to the field of language planning and policy (LPP) through a case study of a local language problem: the introduction of Chinese language into an established government school over a 10-year period. Using cultural-historical activity theory, expanding…

Home Language Shift and Its Implications for Chinese Language Teaching in Singapore

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Li; Tan, Chee Lay; Goh, Hock Huan

2016-01-01

In a bilingual society like Singapore, home language environment (HLE) of Singaporean children is becoming increasingly concerned, especially for those who are yet to have formal education in schools. The reported rapid shift of family language has increased the tensions among families, schools and communities. This study examined some of the many…

Orthographic Facilitation in Chinese Spoken Word Recognition: An ERP Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zou, Lijuan; Desroches, Amy S.; Liu, Youyi; Xia, Zhichao; Shu, Hua

2012-01-01

Orthographic influences in spoken word recognition have been previously examined in alphabetic languages. However, it is unknown whether orthographic information affects spoken word recognition in Chinese, which has a clean dissociation between orthography (O) and phonology (P). The present study investigated orthographic effects using event…

Sustaining Teacher Change through Participating in a Comprehensive Approach to Teaching Chinese Literacy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tse, Shek Kam; Ip, Olivia King Ming; Tan, Wei Xiong; Ko, Hwa-Wei

2012-01-01

An overview is presented of a three-year project aimed at helping Chinese language teachers in Taiwan refine ways that Chinese, an ideographic language that differs markedly from alphabetic English, is taught in primary schools. Guided by university staff in Taiwan, Hong Kong University and a Taiwanese non-government social enterprise, 20…

The Effect of Radical-Based Grouping in Character Learning in Chinese as a Foreign Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xu, Yi; Chang, Li-Yun; Perfetti, Charles A.

2014-01-01

The logographic nature of the Chinese writing system creates a huge hurdle for Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learners. Existing literature (e.g., Shen, [Shen, H. H., 2010]; Taft & Chung, [Taft, M., 1999]) suggests that radical knowledge facilitates character learning. In this project, we selected 48 compound characters in eight radical…

A Standalone but Not Lonely Language: Chinese Linguistic Environment and Education in Singapore Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Min, Huang; Kangdi, Cheng

2016-01-01

Bilingual education policy in Singapore permits the students learn both English as working language and mother tongues, such as Chinese, as L2 anchoring to culture heritage. Starting from historical and sociolinguistic reasons, this paper is intended to provide a panoramic view of Chinese education in Singapore, clarify and compare Chinese…

Is handwriting constrained by phonology? Evidence from Stroop tasks with written responses and Chinese characters

PubMed Central

Damian, Markus F.; Qu, Qingqing

2013-01-01

To what extent is handwritten word production based on phonological codes? A few studies conducted in Western languages have recently provided evidence showing that phonology contributes to the retrieval of graphemic properties in written output tasks. Less is known about how orthographic production works in languages with non-alphabetic scripts such as written Chinese. We report a Stroop study in which Chinese participants wrote the color of characters on a digital graphic tablet; characters were either neutral, or homophonic to the target (congruent), or homophonic to an alternative (incongruent). Facilitation was found from congruent homophonic distractors, but only when the homophone shared the same tone with the target. This finding suggests a contribution of phonology to written word production. A second experiment served as a control experiment to exclude the possibility that the effect in Experiment 1 had an exclusively semantic locus. Overall, the findings offer new insight into the relative contribution of phonology to handwriting, particularly in non-Western languages. PMID:24146660

Chinese Language and Culture Curriculum: Teacher's Manual [and] Student Activity Book.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Soh, Yong-Kian; And Others

This curriculum is designed to introduce Chinese language and culture in the elementary grades, and consists of a teacher's manual and student activity book. The teacher's guide consists of an introductory section, which outlines the rationale, objectives, suggested teaching techniques and materials, and language and culture content of the…

Enculturating Seamless Language Learning through Artifact Creation and Social Interaction Process

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wong, Lung-Hsiang; Chai, Ching Sing; Aw, Guat Poh; King, Ronnel B.

2015-01-01

This paper reports a design-based research (DBR) cycle of MyCLOUD (My Chinese ubiquitOUs learning Days). MyCLOUD is a seamless language learning model that addresses identified limitations of conventional Chinese language teaching, such as the decontextualized and unauthentic learning processes that usually hinder reflection and deep learning.…

Neural division of labor in reading is constrained by culture: A training study of reading Chinese characters

PubMed Central

Zhao, Jingjing; Wang, Xiaoyi; Frost, Stephen J.; Sun, Wan; Fang, Shin-Yi; Mencl, W. Einar; Pugh, Kenneth R.; Shu, Hua; Rueckl, Jay G.

2014-01-01

Word reading in alphabetic language involves a cortical system with multiple components whose division of labor depends on the transparency of the writing system. To gain insight about the division of labor between phonology and semantics subserving word reading in Chinese, a deep non-alphabetic writing system, fMRI was used to investigate the effects of phonological and semantic training on the cortical circuitry for oral naming of Chinese characters. In a training study, we examined whether a training task that differentially focused readers' attention on the phonological or semantic properties of a Chinese character changes the patterns of cortical activation that was evoked by that character in a subsequent naming task. Our imaging results corroborate that the cortical regions underlying reading in Chinese largely overlaps the left-hemisphere reading system responsible for reading in alphabetic languages, with some cortical regions in the left-hemisphere uniquely recruited for reading in Chinese. However, in contrast to findings from studies of English word naming, we observed considerable overlap in the neural activation patterns associated with phonological and semantic training on naming Chinese characters, which we suggest may reflect a balanced neural division of labor between phonology and semantics in Chinese character reading. The equitable division of labor for Chinese reading might be driven by the special statistical structure of the writing system, which includes equally systematic mappings in the correspondences between written forms and their pronunciations and meanings. PMID:24607883

Factors Influencing the Use of Captions by Foreign Language Learners: An Eye-Tracking Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Winke, Paula; Gass, Susan; Sydorenko, Tetyana

2013-01-01

This study investigates caption-reading behavior by foreign language (L2) learners and, through eye-tracking methodology, explores the extent to which the relationship between the native and target language affects that behavior. Second-year (4th semester) English-speaking learners of Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish watched 2 videos…

Effects of Language and Race on Undergraduates' Perceptions of International Instructors: Further Studies of Language and Attitude in Higher Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rubin, Donald; And Others

Predicating that undergraduate students' judgments of teaching ability are based on perceptions of the instructor's linguistic nonstandardness rather than on actual (or manipulated) language patterns, a study examined differences among students' perceptions of non-native English-speaking instructors (NNSI). Photographs of either a Chinese, a…

Language, Parents' Involvement, and Social Justice: The Fight for Maintaining Minority Home Language: A Chinese-Language Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Yuxiang

2009-01-01

English-only policies and the expiration of the "Bilingual Education Act," which is now replaced by "No Child Left Behind," make it clear that English is the official language of schools in the United States with the emphasis moved from the goal of maintaining students' home languages while learning English to a focus of ignoring minority…

Cross-cultural Adaptation of Roland-Morris Disability Questionnaire Needs to Assess the Measurement Properties: A Systematic Review.

PubMed

Yao, Min; Zhu, Sen; Tian, Zi-Rui; Song, Yong-Jia; Yang, Long; Wang, Yong-Jun; Cui, Xue-Jun

2018-03-26

To assess the cross cultural-adaptations of the Roland Morris Disability Questionnaire (RMDQ). English and Chinese databases were searched through December 2017. Cross-cultural adaptation and measurement properties were evaluated using the Guidelines for the Process of Cross-Cultural Adaptation of Self-Report Measures and the Quality Criteria for Psychometric Properties of Health Status Questionnaire. Among 34 studies, there were 31 RMDQ adaptations for 26 different languages/cultures. In the cross-cultural adaptation process, few studies reported expert committees completely constituted (3/31), and only ten studies complete the test of the pre-final version (10/31) due to insufficient sample sizes. As for the measurement properties, content validity (31/31) and construct validity (24/31) were assessed in most of the adaptations, whereas internal consistency (0/31), agreement (5/31), responsiveness (3/31), interpretability (6/31), and floor and ceiling effects (6/31) were not. The Hungarian and Moon's Korean adaptations were the highest quality translations. Where there were multiple adaptations for a language/culture, the Moon's Korean and Fan's simplified Chinese-Chinese Mainland adaptations are recommended over the other Korean or simplified Chinese-Chinese Mainland adaptations. Further studies are required to fully assess the measurement properties of the Arabic-Moroccan, Arabic-Tunisian, German- Austrian, Greek, Guajarati, Kim's Korean, Persian-Iranian, Polish, He's simplified Chinese-Chinese Mainland, Spanish, Spanish-Chilean, Thai, traditional Chinese-Taiwan, and Turkish adaptations of the RMDQ. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Language related differences of the sustained response evoked by natural speech sounds.

PubMed

Fan, Christina Siu-Dschu; Zhu, Xingyu; Dosch, Hans Günter; von Stutterheim, Christiane; Rupp, André

2017-01-01

In tonal languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, the pitch contour of vowels discriminates lexical meaning, which is not the case in non-tonal languages such as German. Recent data provide evidence that pitch processing is influenced by language experience. However, there are still many open questions concerning the representation of such phonological and language-related differences at the level of the auditory cortex (AC). Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we recorded transient and sustained auditory evoked fields (AEF) in native Chinese and German speakers to investigate language related phonological and semantic aspects in the processing of acoustic stimuli. AEF were elicited by spoken meaningful and meaningless syllables, by vowels, and by a French horn tone. Speech sounds were recorded from a native speaker and showed frequency-modulations according to the pitch-contours of Mandarin. The sustained field (SF) evoked by natural speech signals was significantly larger for Chinese than for German listeners. In contrast, the SF elicited by a horn tone was not significantly different between groups. Furthermore, the SF of Chinese subjects was larger when evoked by meaningful syllables compared to meaningless ones, but there was no significant difference regarding whether vowels were part of the Chinese phonological system or not. Moreover, the N100m gave subtle but clear evidence that for Chinese listeners other factors than purely physical properties play a role in processing meaningful signals. These findings show that the N100 and the SF generated in Heschl's gyrus are influenced by language experience, which suggests that AC activity related to specific pitch contours of vowels is influenced in a top-down fashion by higher, language related areas. Such interactions are in line with anatomical findings and neuroimaging data, as well as with the dual-stream model of language of Hickok and Poeppel that highlights the close and reciprocal interaction between superior temporal gyrus and sulcus.

Does a Speaking Task Affect Second Language Comprehensibility?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crowther, Dustin; Trofimovich, Pavel; Isaacs, Talia; Saito, Kazuya

2015-01-01

The current study investigated task effects on listener perception of second language (L2) comprehensibility (ease of understanding). Sixty university-level adult speakers of English from 4 first language (L1) backgrounds (Chinese, Romance, Hindi, Farsi), with 15 speakers per group, were recorded performing 2 tasks (IELTS long-turn speaking task…

Orthographic Transparency Modulates the Functional Asymmetry in the Fusiform Cortex: An Artificial Language Training Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mei, Leilei; Xue, Gui; Lu, Zhong-Lin; He, Qinghua; Zhang, Mingxia; Xue, Feng; Chen, Chuansheng; Dong, Qi

2013-01-01

The laterality difference in the occipitotemporal region between Chinese (bilaterality) and alphabetic languages (left laterality) has been attributed to their difference in visual appearance. However, these languages also differ in orthographic transparency. To disentangle the effect of orthographic transparency from visual appearance, we trained…

Eye Movements of Online Chinese Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stickler, Ursula; Shi, Lijing

2015-01-01

Although online tutorials are becoming commonplace for language teaching, very few studies to date have provided insights into learners' behaviours in synchronous online interactions from their own perspective. This study employs eyetracking technology to investigate ten learners' attention during synchronous online language learning in a…

Acculturation and sleep among a multiethnic sample of women: the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN).

PubMed

Hale, Lauren; Troxel, Wendy M; Kravitz, Howard M; Hall, Martica H; Matthews, Karen A

2014-02-01

Mexican immigrants to the United States report longer sleep duration and fewer sleep complaints than their US-born counterparts. To investigate whether this effect extends to other immigrant groups, we examined whether the prevalence of self-reported sleep complaints is higher among US-born Hispanic/Latina, Chinese, and Japanese immigrant women compared to their first-generation immigrant ethnic counterparts as well as to US-born whites. We examined whether these associations persisted after adjusting for sociodemographic and health characteristics and whether acculturation mediated the effects. Cross-sectional observational study. Multisite study in Oakland, CA; Los Angeles, CA; and Newark, NJ. Hispanic/Latina (n = 196), Chinese (n = 228), Japanese (n = 271) and non-Hispanic white (n = 485) women (mean age = 46 y, range 42-52 y) participating in the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN); 410 or 59.0% of the nonwhites were first-generation immigrants. None. Questionnaires were used to assess sleep complaints, race/ethnicity, immigrant status, language acculturation (use of English language), and sociodemographic and health variables. Approximately 25% of first-generation immigrant women reported sleep complaints compared to 37% of those who were US-born nonwhites and 42% of US-born whites. Multivariable adjusted logistic regression analyses showed that US-born nonwhites had higher odds of reporting any sleep complaints (odds ratio = 2.1, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.5-3.0), compared to first-generation immigrants. Women with higher levels of language acculturation had greater odds of reporting any sleep complaint compared to those with less language acculturation. Adjustment for language acculturation mediated 40.4% (95% CI 28.5-69.8) of the association between immigrant status and any sleep complaint. When results were stratified by race/ethnicity, significant mediation effects of acculturation were only found for Hispanic/Latina and Japanese women, but not for Chinese women. US-born Hispanic/Latina, Chinese, and Japanese immigrants were more likely to report sleep complaints than their first-generation ethnic counterparts, a finding largely explained by language acculturation and unmeasured factors associated with language acculturation.

The Effect of Ethnic Identity and Bilingual Confidence on Chinese Youth's Self-Esteem

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Jennifer Wen-shya

2008-01-01

This study examines the interrelated issues of private and public domains of self-esteem, ethnic identity formation, and bilingual confidence among youth of a minority group in a city in western Canada. One hundred, ten Chinese students aged 11-18 from a Chinese-language school were randomly surveyed. Most items of the instrument are derived from…

Cognitive Factors Contributing to Chinese EFL Learners' L2 Writing Performance in Timed Essay Writing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lu, Yanbin

2010-01-01

This study investigated cognitive factors that might influence Chinese EFL learners' argumentative essay writing in English. The factors that were explored included English (L2) language proficiency, Chinese (L1) writing ability, genre knowledge, use of writing strategies, and working memory capacity in L1 and L2. Data were collected from 136…

The Developmental Relationship between Bilingual Morphological Awareness and Reading for Chinese EFL Adult Learners: A Longitudinal Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xue, Jin; Jiang, Xiaoming

2017-01-01

The present research aimed to explore the developmental relationship between bilingual morphological awareness and reading for Chinese natives learning English as a foreign language (EFL learners). Pre- and post-tests were conducted with in an interval of 9 months. Morphological and reading measures in Chinese and English were administered to 139…

Development and Evaluation of a Culturally Tailored Educational Video: Changing Breast Cancer-Related Behaviors in Chinese Women

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Judy H.; Liang, Wenchi; Schwartz, Marc D.; Lee, Marion M.; Kreling, Barbara; Mandelblatt, Jeanne S.

2008-01-01

This study developed and evaluated a culturally tailored video guided by the health belief model to improve Chinese women's low rate of mammography use. Focus-group discussions and an advisory board meeting guided the video development. A 17-min video, including a soap opera and physician-recommendation segment, was made in Chinese languages. A…

Strategies for Reading Chinese Texts with and without Pop-Up Dictionary for Beginning Learners of Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Jing

2014-01-01

This study is aimed at identifying reading strategies of beginning learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) with and without a pop-up dictionary and at determining if learners retain the reading comprehension gained from using the dictionary. Beginning CFL learners at a Midwestern university answered questions about their reading strategies…

On Chinese Loan Words from English Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yan, Yun; Deng, Tianbai

2009-01-01

In the recent twenty years, with China's reform and opening policy to the outside world, there is a sharp increase in English loan words in Chinese. On the one hand, it demonstrates that China's soft power has been booming up. But on the other hand, some language pollution in the meanwhile is caused by non-standard use of loan words in Chinese.…

Students Learn about Chinese Culture through the Folktale "Yeh-Shen": Emphasizing Figurative Language Interpretation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Palmer, Barbara C.; Sun, Lingzhi; Leclere, Judith T.

2012-01-01

This article will analyze the figurative language that reflects Chinese traditional society and culture in "Yeh-Shen." The authors will consider both the figures of speech and the figures of thought (to include symbolism) that provide insight into an understanding of the Chinese culture through a reading of "Yeh-Shen." This analysis can be used by…

Newtown High School. Queens Chinese/Korean Bilingual Language Arts Resource Center, 1981-1982. O.E.E. Evaluation Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Choy, Michelle; And Others

The Queens Chinese/Korean Bilingual Language Arts Resource Center operates at Newtown High School, in a multiethnic neighborhood in Queens, New York. The program, designed to provide bilingual educational services and curricular materials to Chinese and Korean students (grades 9-12) at Newtown, and ancillary services to students at Bryant High…

Number line estimation and mental addition: examining the potential roles of language and education.

PubMed

Laski, Elida V; Yu, Qingyi

2014-01-01

This study investigated the relative importance of language and education to the development of numerical knowledge. Consistent with previous research suggesting that counting systems that transparently reflect the base-10 system facilitate an understanding of numerical concepts, Chinese and Chinese American kindergartners' and second graders' number line estimation (0-100 and 0-1000) was 1 to 2 years more advanced than that of American children tested in previous studies. However, Chinese children performed better than their Chinese American peers, who were fluent in Chinese but had been educated in America, at kindergarten on 0-100 number lines, at second grade on 0-1000 number lines, and at both time points on complex addition problems. Overall, the pattern of findings suggests that educational approach may have a greater influence on numerical development than the linguistic structure of the counting system. The findings also demonstrate that, despite generating accurate estimates of numerical magnitude on 0-100 number lines earlier, it still takes Chinese children approximately 2 years to demonstrate accurate estimates on 0-1000 number lines, which raises questions about how to promote the mapping of knowledge across numerical scales. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Understanding the Nature of Performance: The Influence of Learner Background on School-Age Learner Achievement in Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Scrimgeour, Andrew

2012-01-01

While Chinese language learning in Australian schools is characterised by predominantly second language programs for learners who have had no prior exposure to the target language, there is increasing participation by Australian-born children who speak Putonghua (Mandarin) or another dialect at home. Curriculum and assessment frameworks and…

Beliefs and Practices Regarding Intercultural Competence among Chinese Teachers of English at a Chinese University

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tian, Jie

2013-01-01

The foreign/world language (FL/WL) profession has become more concerned with intercultural dimensions of language teaching and learning. Various models and theories have been suggested from both inside and outside the language education field to help teachers understand the intercultural dimensions in teaching and improve their practices regarding…

Neural substrates of phonological selection for Japanese character Kanji based on fMRI investigations.

PubMed

Matsuo, Kayako; Chen, Shen-Hsing Annabel; Hue, Chih-Wei; Wu, Chiao-Yi; Bagarinao, Epifanio; Tseng, Wen-Yih Isaac; Nakai, Toshiharu

2010-04-15

Japanese and Chinese both share the same ideographic/logographic character system. How these characters are processed, however, is inherently different for each language. We harnessed the unique property of homophone judgment in Japanese kanji to provide an analogous Chinese condition using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 33 native Japanese speakers. We compared two types of kanji: (1) kanji that usually evokes only one pronunciation to Japanese speakers, which is representative of most Chinese characters (monophonic character); (2) kanji that evoked multiple pronunciation candidates, which is typical in Japanese kanji (heterophonic character). Results showed that character pairs with multiple sound possibilities increased activation in posterior regions of the left, middle and inferior frontal gyri (MFG and IFG), the bilateral anterior insulae, and the left anterior cingulate cortex as compared with those of kanji with only one sound. The activity seen in the MFG, dorsal IFG, and ventral IFG in the left posterior lateral prefrontal cortex, which was thought to correspond with language components of orthography, phonology, and semantics, respectively, was discussed in regards to their potentially important roles in information selection among competing sources of the components. A comparison with previous studies suggested that detailed analyses of activation in these language areas could explain differences between Japanese and Chinese, such as a greater involvement of the prefrontal language production regions for Japanese, whereas, for Chinese there is more phonological processing of inputs in the superior temporal gyrus. Copyright 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Normative Data for the Singapore English and Chinese SF-36 Version 2 Health Survey.

PubMed

Sow, Wei Ting; Wee, Hwee Lin; Wu, Yi; Tai, E-Shyong; Gandek, Barbara; Lee, Jeannette; Ma, Stefan; Heng, Derrick; Thumboo, Julian

2014-01-01

The aim of this study is to report normative data for the Short-Form 36 version 2 (SF-36v2) for assessing health-related quality of life, in the Singapore general population. Data for English and Chinese-speaking participants of the Singapore Prospective Study Programme were analysed. The SF-36v2 scores were norm-based with the English-speaking Singapore general population as reference and reported by age (in decades), gender and ethnicity as well as for the 5 most prevalent chronic medical conditions. Scores were reported separately for the English and Chinese language versions. A total of 6151 English-speaking (61.5% Chinese and 19.2% Malay) and 1194 Chinese-speaking participants provided complete data. Mean (SD) age of all participants was 49.6 (12.58) years with 52.4% being women. In both languages, women reported lower scores than men on all scales. Among the chronic medical conditions, stroke had the largest impact on all English SF-36v2 scales and on 3 Chinese SF-36v2 scales (role-physical, general health and social functioning). We have provided detailed normative data for the Singapore English and Chinese SF-36v2, which would be valuable in furthering HRQoL research in Singapore and possibly the region.

The Role of Oral Reading Fluency in ESL Reading Comprehension among Learners of Different First Language Backgrounds

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jiang, Xiangying

2016-01-01

This study discusses the construct of oral reading fluency and examines its relationship to reading comprehension among adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learners of four first language (L1) backgrounds. One hundred and forty-nine adult learners of English with Arabic, Japanese, Spanish and Chinese language backgrounds participated in this…

"That Didn't Work, Did It? I Need to Know How to Do that!" Delivering Classroom Activities to Maximise Language Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Conway, Clare; Richards, Heather; Harvey, Sharon; Roskvist, Annelies

2011-01-01

Many novice language teachers have difficulty putting into practice their developing knowledge of language teaching. This article focuses on one of seven case study teachers as an exemplar of those involved in a New Zealand in-service professional development program for teachers of languages (Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Spanish) in…

Beliefs and Out-of-Class Language Learning of Chinese-Speaking ESL Learners in Hong Kong

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wu, Manfred Man-fat

2012-01-01

Background: There has been a lack of research on exploring how beliefs about language learning (BALLs) and out-of-class language-learning activities are related. BALLs and out-of-class language-learning activities play an important role in influencing the learning behaviours of learners and learning outcomes. Findings of this study provide useful…

Europe versus Asia: Foreign Language Education Other than English in Japan's Higher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kobayashi, Yoko

2013-01-01

The era of Asia has been felt in foreign language education in Japan, with more and more youth reportedly opting to study Chinese and Korean as the second foreign language. The shift in popularity, from European to Asian languages, not only reflects the societal demand for the institutional rearrangement of academic staff but also stirs teachers…

English Language Writing Anxiety among Final Year Engineering Undergraduates in University Putra Malaysia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Min, Lau Sing; Rahmat, Nurhazlini

2014-01-01

Second Language Writing Anxiety (SLWA) is considered one of the most crucial factors affecting all second language learning. This study focused on a group of final year Engineering students' English Language writing anxiety (N = 93) in relation to their gender, race and MUET results. The findings showed that the male gender, Chinese and MUET band…

The Contribution of the Left Mid-fusiform Cortical Thickness to Chinese and English Reading in a Large Chinese Sample

PubMed Central

Zhang, Mingxia; Li, Jin; Chen, Chuansheng; Mei, Leilei; Xue, Gui; Lu, Zhonglin; Chen, Chunhui; He, Qinghua; Wei, Miao; Dong, Qi

2012-01-01

Previous functional neuroimaging studies have shown that the left mid-fusiform cortex plays a critical role in reading. However, there is very limited research relating this region’s anatomical structure to reading performance either in native or second language. Using structural MRI and three reading tasks (Chinese characters, English words, and alphabetic pseudowords) and a non-reading task (visual-auditory learning), this study investigated the contributions of the left mid-fusiform cortical thickness to reading in a large sample of 226 Chinese subjects. Results showed that cortical thickness in the left mid-fusiform gyrus was positively correlated with performance on all three reading tasks but not with the performance on the non-reading task. Our findings provide structural evidence for the left mid-fusiform cortex as the “gateway” region for reading Chinese and English. The absence of the association between the left mid-fusiform cortical thickness and non-reading performance implied the specific role of this area in reading skills, not in general language skills. PMID:23022094

A Sociolinguistic Profile of 100 Mothers from Middle to Upper-Middle Socio-Economic Backgrounds in Penang-Chinese Community: What Languages Do They Speak at Home with Their Children?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Low, Hui Min; Nicholas, Howard; Wales, Roger

2010-01-01

This paper reports the findings of a survey of 100 mothers of Chinese children aged between 6 and 36 months from middle to upper-middle socio-economic backgrounds in Penang, Malaysia. The findings include the language backgrounds of these mothers, their contextual uses of multiple languages and their language choices with their children. Through…

Bilingual Lexical Skills of School-Age Children with Chinese and Korean Heritage Languages in the United States

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jia, Gisela; Chen, Jennifer; Kim, HyeYoung; Chan, Phoenix-Shan; Jeung, Changmo

2014-01-01

This cross-sectional study investigated the bilingual lexical skills of 175 US school-age children (5 to 18 years old) with Cantonese, Mandarin, or Korean as their heritage language (HL), and English as their dominant language. Primary study goals were to identify potential patterns of development in bilingual lexical skills over the elementary to…

Content Familiarity, Task Repetition and Chinese EFL Learners' Engagement in Second Language Use

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Qiu, Xuyan; Lo, Yuen Yi

2017-01-01

Previous research has considered the effects of content familiarity and task repetition on second language (L2) performance, but few studies have looked at the effect of these factors on learners' engagement in task performance. This study explores the influence of content familiarity and task repetition on English as a foreign language (EFL)…

Oral-Performance Language Tasks for CSL Beginners in Second Life

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lan, Yu-Ju; Kan, Yu-Hsuan; Sung, Yao-Ting; Chang, Kuo-En

2016-01-01

The aim of this study was to determine the effects of different types of language tasks performed in Second Life (SL) on the oral performance of beginners of Chinese as a Second Language (CSL), focusing on oral accuracy. The 30 CSL beginners who participated in this study were randomly divided into two groups (n = 15 per group), required to…

Language Activation and Lexical Processing by Polish Learners of English and Chinese--The Role of Learning Experience in TLA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kujalowicz, Agnieszka; Zajdler, Ewa

2009-01-01

Many offline studies on third language acquisition suggest strong connections between speakers' L3 and L2 rather than between their L3 and L1, especially if the foreign languages are typologically related (Cenoz, Hufeisen, & Jessner, 2001; Singleton, 2001). However, a recent online study investigating trilingual processing did not provide evidence…

Neurolinguistic Studies of Reading in Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tzeng, Ovid J. L.; Lee, Chia Ying; Lee, Jun Ren; Wu, Denise H.; Lee, Rose R.-W.; Hung, Daisy L.

2017-01-01

Using the Chinese writing system, which is unique with respect to the composition of each character in terms of its graphic shape, as an example, this chapter addresses the neurobiological underpinnings of reading and writing and how these brain circuits are used in different languages.

What Is in the Naming? A 5-Year Longitudinal Study of Early Rapid Naming and Phonological Sensitivity in Relation to Subsequent Reading Skills in Both Native Chinese and English as a Second Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pan, Jinger; McBride-Chang, Catherine; Shu, Hua; Liu, Hongyun; Zhang, Yuping; Li, Hong

2011-01-01

Among 262 Chinese children, syllable awareness and rapid automatized naming (RAN) at age 5 years and invented spelling of Pinyin at age 6 years independently predicted subsequent Chinese character recognition and English word reading at ages 8 years and 10 years, even with initial Chinese character reading ability statistically controlled. In…

Recognizing Chinese characters in digital ink from non-native language writers using hierarchical models

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bai, Hao; Zhang, Xi-wen

2017-06-01

While Chinese is learned as a second language, its characters are taught step by step from their strokes to components, radicals to components, and their complex relations. Chinese Characters in digital ink from non-native language writers are deformed seriously, thus the global recognition approaches are poorer. So a progressive approach from bottom to top is presented based on hierarchical models. Hierarchical information includes strokes and hierarchical components. Each Chinese character is modeled as a hierarchical tree. Strokes in one Chinese characters in digital ink are classified with Hidden Markov Models and concatenated to the stroke symbol sequence. And then the structure of components in one ink character is extracted. According to the extraction result and the stroke symbol sequence, candidate characters are traversed and scored. Finally, the recognition candidate results are listed by descending. The method of this paper is validated by testing 19815 copies of the handwriting Chinese characters written by foreign students.

A Resource-Oriented Functional Approach to English Language Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Jia

2018-01-01

This article reports on a case study that investigates the learning preferences and strategies of Chinese students learning English as a second language (ESL) in Canadian school settings. It focuses on the interaction between second language (L2) learning methods that the students have adopted from their previous learning experience in China and…

Understanding Changes in Chinese Immigrant Language Learners' Beliefs in New Zealand

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhong, Qunyan Maggie

2014-01-01

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in language learners' beliefs in second language acquisition (SLA). Nonetheless, few studies to date have investigated the extent to which learners' beliefs develop, and the factors that contribute to this development have not been examined seriously. Employing a naturalistic inquiry, this…

Probing EFL Students' Language Skill Development in Tertiary Classrooms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Hong

2008-01-01

Research in second or foreign language learning indicates that for adult learners, the improvement of one language skill facilitates the development of other skills. The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlations among Chinese EFL students' reading, writing, and listening development by examining their test scores on the College…

Surveying and Modeling Students' Motivation and Learning Strategies for Mobile-Assisted Seamless Chinese Language Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chai, Ching Sing; Wong, Lung-Hsiang; King, Ronnel B.

2016-01-01

Seamless language learning promises to be an effective learning approach that addresses the limitations of classroom-only language learning. It leverages mobile technologies to facilitate holistic and perpetual learning experiences that bridge different locations, times, technologies or social settings. Despite the emergence of studies on seamless…

Second Language Comprehensibility Revisited: Investigating the Effects of Learner Background

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crowther, Dustin; Trofimovich, Pavel; Saito, Kazuya; Isaacs, Talia

2015-01-01

The current study investigated first language (L1) effects on listener judgment of comprehensibility and accentedness in second language (L2) speech. The participants were 45 university-level adult speakers of English from three L1 backgrounds (Chinese, Hindi, Farsi), performing a picture narrative task. Ten native English listeners used…

Linguistic Distance Effect on Cross-Linguistic Transfer of Morphological Awareness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Dongbo

2013-01-01

This study examined transfer facilitation effect of first language morphological awareness on second language lexical inference ability among Grade 6 Chinese-speaking English as a foreign language learners in China. A set of paper and pencil tests was administered to measure children's morphological awareness and lexical inference ability in both…

The Interaction between Sytactic and Semantic Modules in Chinese Learners' English Spotaneous Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gang, Xu

2014-01-01

According to modular theory, there are interactive effects between the central modules and language modules. The central cognition may deploy and redeploy resources from language modules. Moreover, the language modules can activate the cognitive ability. So this paper studies the spontaneous speech of students who learn English as a foreign…

Publishing trends in Chinese medicine and related subjects documented in WorldCat.

PubMed

Leung, Shirley; Chan, Kylie; Song, Lisa

2006-03-01

Chinese medicine (CM) has been the subject of increasing interest in the past 30 years, both as a discipline and in the larger context of alternative medicine. It has steadily been accepted by and integrated into the medical and health-care fields in many countries. This study aims to gain an overview of how CM has been interpreted and presented to the world outside China and to identify emerging trends. This study is designed to analyse the publishing trends of CM and related subjects in all languages except Chinese, ranging from books and serials to audio-visual and electronic resources found in WorldCat, the world's largest bibliographic database produced by OnLine Computer Library Center (OCLC). The findings showed a flourishing growth of publications in CM and related subjects beginning in the 1970s with greater coverage on acupuncture. The materials in English language constitute the major portion of total output. We conclude that Chinese medicine has steadily gained recognition in the world based on the analysis of publication records. The translation of original works and analysis of journal literature and conference proceedings on Chinese medicine merit further study.

The Tongue in Between: Some Thoughts on the Teaching of Chinese as a Second Language in Singapore

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tan, Chee Lay

2014-01-01

In Singapore's unique and complex linguistic environment, it is common to have Chinese-language learners from many different backgrounds in the same school classroom, which is why Singapore is nicknamed as a "language laboratory." In this paper, I hope to examine our linguistic environment and response strategies from different angles,…

A Needs Analysis for Chinese Language Teaching at a University in the United States

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huang, Chuanning

2014-01-01

This paper presents the results of a one-year language curriculum needs analysis project aimed at developing a deeper understanding of the learning needs of first and second year Chinese language students at a university in the United States. The purpose of this project was to provide a foundation for further curriculum development of the…

The Impact of Video-Based Materials on Chinese-Speaking Learners' English Text Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Lu-Fang

2016-01-01

This study investigated whether video-based materials can facilitate second language learners' text comprehension at the levels of macrostructure and microstructure. Three classes inclusive of 98 Chinese-speaking university students joined this study. The three classes were randomly assigned to three treatment groups: on-screen text (T Group),…

Chinese Students' Psychological and Sociocultural Adjustments to Britain: An Empirical Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Spencer-Oatey, Helen; Xiong, Zhaoning

2006-01-01

This paper reports an empirical study of the psychological and sociocultural adjustments of two cohorts of Chinese students taking a foundation course in English language at a British university. Using Zung's (1965) Self-Rating Depression Scale and a modification of Ward and Kennedy's (1999) Sociocultural Adaptation Scale, quantitative data were…

Chinese-French Case Study of English Language Learning via Wikispaces, Animoto and Skype

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hartwell, Laura M.; Zou, Bin

2013-01-01

This paper reports on the learning experience of Chinese and French students participating in a computer mediated communication (CMC) collaboration conducted in English and supported by Wikispaces, Animoto, and Skype. Several studies have investigated CMC contexts in which at least some participants were native speakers. Here, we address the…

Discursive Roles and Responsibilities: A Study of Interactions in Chinese Immigrant Households

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

He, Agnes Weiyun

2016-01-01

This study examines features of communication in American households where Chinese is used as a heritage language against the backdrop of global migration and technological advancement. It aims to elucidate how meaning emerges and evolves through repeated and varied performance by multiple participants over time, through mundane and iterative…

Neural division of labor in reading is constrained by culture: a training study of reading Chinese characters.

PubMed

Zhao, Jingjing; Wang, Xiaoyi; Frost, Stephen J; Sun, Wan; Fang, Shin-Yi; Mencl, W Einar; Pugh, Kenneth R; Shu, Hua; Rueckl, Jay G

2014-04-01

Word reading in alphabetic language involves a cortical system with multiple components whose division of labor depends on the transparency of the writing system. To gain insight about the neural division of labor between phonology and semantics subserving word reading in Chinese, a deep non-alphabetic writing system, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate the effects of phonological and semantic training on the cortical circuitry for oral naming of Chinese characters. In a training study, we examined whether a training task that differentially focused readers' attention on the phonological or semantic properties of a Chinese character changes the patterns of cortical activation that was evoked by that character in a subsequent naming task. Our imaging results corroborate that the cortical regions underlying reading in Chinese largely overlap the left-hemisphere reading system responsible for reading in alphabetic languages, with some cortical regions in the left-hemisphere uniquely recruited for reading in Chinese. However, in contrast to findings from studies of English word naming, we observed considerable overlap in the neural activation patterns associated with phonological and semantic training on naming Chinese characters, which we suggest may reflect a balanced neural division of labor between phonology and semantics in Chinese character reading. The equitable division of labor for Chinese reading might be driven by the special statistical structure of the writing system, which includes equally systematic mappings in the correspondences between written forms and their pronunciations and meanings. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Pragmatic Development of Chinese EFL Learners--A Study on FL Suggestions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gu, Tongqing

2014-01-01

While the number of studies on the pragmatic development of nonnative English speakers has been increasing, surprisingly little research has been conducted on the development of the ability of foreign language learners to perform the suggestion speech act, with even less taking Chinese EFL learners as the target group. The present study examines…

A Simple View of Writing in Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yeung, Pui-sze; Ho, Connie Suk-han; Chan, David Wai-ock; Chung, Kevin Kien-hoa

2017-01-01

This study examined the Chinese written composition development of elementary-grade students in relation to the simple view of writing. Measures of nonverbal reasoning ability, component skills of transcription (stroke sequence knowledge, word spelling, and handwriting fluency), oral language (definitional skill, oral narrative skills, and…

A Response to Professor Wu Zongjie's "Interpretation, Autonomy, and Transformation: Chinese Pedagogic Discourse in a Cross-Cultural Perspective"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Curran, Thomas D.

2014-01-01

In response to an essay by Prof Wu Zongjie that was published in the "Journal of Curriculum Studies" [43(5), (2011), 569-590], I argue that, despite dramatic changes that have taken place in the language of Chinese academic discourse and pedagogy, evidence derived from the fields of psychology and the history of Chinese educational…

Selected Articles on Machine Industry in Communist China in 1959

DTIC Science & Technology

1960-06-24

the Chinese -language periodical ■| Chi-hsieh Kung-yeh Chou-pao (Machine Industry weekly), • Peiping. Date of issue, page and author, if any are... Chinese Communist Party, had a rapid development. During the three- - year rehabilitation period, economic .rehabilitation work was vigorously...balances,, which.were designed by Chinese workers, are an important tool for use in complex scientific and technical studies. ■- ^ On radio

A First Grade Chinese Student's Self-Efficacy Beliefs about Learning English in American Classrooms and a Chinese Community

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Chuang

2007-01-01

Through a single case study and from the interpretive paradigm, the author described a first-grade student?s self-efficacy beliefs about learning English in various English language learning tasks and across school-based and home-based contexts. The student came from China and had been living in a Chinese community in the United States for one…

Impact of Culture on Breast Cancer Screening in Chinese American Women

DTIC Science & Technology

2004-09-01

health fairs, churches, and Chinese New Year Celebrations to introduce this study. Chinese-language recruitment flyers were distributed at these events...your medical care? [READ CATEGORIES] Yes No 6.1 Lack of transportation 1 2 6.2 Difficulty in getting an appointment 1 2 6.3 Lack of a babysitter 1 2...10 Lack of a babysitter ......................................................... 11 No or only partial insurance

Exploring reading-spelling connection as locus of dyslexia in Chinese.

PubMed

Leong, C K; Cheng, P W; Lam, C C

2000-01-01

This paper advances the argument that in learning to read/spell Chinese characters and words, it is important for learners to understand the role of the component parts. These constituents consist of phonetic and semantic radicals, or bujians, made up of clusters of strokes in their proper sequence. Beginning readers/spellers need to be sensitive to the positional hierarchy and internal structure of these constituent parts. Those Chinese children diagnosed with developmental dyslexia tend to have more difficulties in spelling Chinese characters and in writing to dictation than in reading. A lexical decision study with two groups of tertiary students differing in their Chinese language ability was carried out to test their efficiency in processing real and pseudo characters as a function of printed frequency of the characters, and the consistency of their component semantic radicals. There is some evidence that even for adult readers differing in their Chinese language ability, lexicality, frequency of characters and the consistency of the semantic radicals affect accurate and rapid character identification. Suggestions for research and teaching approaches are made to enhance the analysis and synthesis of the phonetic and semantic radicals to promote efficient reading and spelling in Chinese.

Acculturation and Sleep among a Multiethnic Sample of Women: The Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN)

PubMed Central

Hale, Lauren; Troxel, Wendy M.; Kravitz, Howard M.; Hall, Martica H.; Matthews, Karen A.

2014-01-01

Study Objectives: Mexican immigrants to the United States report longer sleep duration and fewer sleep complaints than their US-born counterparts. To investigate whether this effect extends to other immigrant groups, we examined whether the prevalence of self-reported sleep complaints is higher among US-born Hispanic/Latina, Chinese, and Japanese immigrant women compared to their first-generation immigrant ethnic counterparts as well as to US-born whites. We examined whether these associations persisted after adjusting for sociodemographic and health characteristics and whether acculturation mediated the effects. Design: Cross-sectional observational study. Setting: Multisite study in Oakland, CA; Los Angeles, CA; and Newark, NJ. Participants: Hispanic/Latina (n = 196), Chinese (n = 228), Japanese (n = 271) and non-Hispanic white (n = 485) women (mean age = 46 y, range 42-52 y) participating in the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN); 410 or 59.0% of the nonwhites were first-generation immigrants. Interventions: None. Measurements and Results: Questionnaires were used to assess sleep complaints, race/ethnicity, immigrant status, language acculturation (use of English language), and sociodemographic and health variables. Approximately 25% of first-generation immigrant women reported sleep complaints compared to 37% of those who were US-born nonwhites and 42% of US-born whites. Multivariable adjusted logistic regression analyses showed that US-born nonwhites had higher odds of reporting any sleep complaints (odds ratio = 2.1, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.5-3.0), compared to first-generation immigrants. Women with higher levels of language acculturation had greater odds of reporting any sleep complaint compared to those with less language acculturation. Adjustment for language acculturation mediated 40.4% (95% CI 28.5-69.8) of the association between immigrant status and any sleep complaint. When results were stratified by race/ethnicity, significant mediation effects of acculturation were only found for Hispanic/Latina and Japanese women, but not for Chinese women. Conclusion: US-born Hispanic/Latina, Chinese, and Japanese immigrants were more likely to report sleep complaints than their first-generation ethnic counterparts, a finding largely explained by language acculturation and unmeasured factors associated with language acculturation. Citation: Hale L; Troxel WM; Kravitz HM; Hall MH; Matthews KA. Acculturation and sleep among a multiethnic sample of women: the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN). SLEEP 2014;37(2):309-317. PMID:24497659

Chinese lexical networks: The structure, function and formation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Jianyu; Zhou, Jie; Luo, Xiaoyue; Yang, Zhanxin

2012-11-01

In this paper Chinese phrases are modeled using complex networks theory. We analyze statistical properties of the networks and find that phrase networks display some important features: not only small world and the power-law distribution, but also hierarchical structure and disassortative mixing. These statistical traits display the global organization of Chinese phrases. The origin and formation of such traits are analyzed from a macroscopic Chinese culture and philosophy perspective. It is interesting to find that Chinese culture and philosophy may shape the formation and structure of Chinese phrases. To uncover the structural design principles of networks, network motif patterns are studied. It is shown that they serve as basic building blocks to form the whole phrase networks, especially triad 38 (feed forward loop) plays a more important role in forming most of the phrases and other motifs. The distinct structure may not only keep the networks stable and robust, but also be helpful for information processing. The results of the paper can give some insight into Chinese language learning and language acquisition. It strengthens the idea that learning the phrases helps to understand Chinese culture. On the other side, understanding Chinese culture and philosophy does help to learn Chinese phrases. The hub nodes in the networks show the close relationship with Chinese culture and philosophy. Learning or teaching the hub characters, hub-linking phrases and phrases which are meaning related based on motif feature should be very useful and important for Chinese learning and acquisition.

Why do Chinese Canadians not consult mental health services: health status, language or culture?

PubMed

Chen, Alice W; Kazanjian, Arminée; Wong, Hubert

2009-12-01

Data from the Canadian Community Health Survey Cycle 1.1 showed that Chinese immigrants to Canada and Chinese individuals born in Canada were less likely than other Canadians to have contacted a health professional for mental health reasons in the previous year in the province of British Columbia. The difference persisted among individuals at moderate to high risk for depressive episode. Both immigrant and Canadian-born Chinese showed similar characteristics of mental health service use. The demographic and health factors that significantly affected their likelihood to consult mental health services included Chinese language ability, restriction in daily activities, frequency of medical consultations, and depression score. Notwithstanding lower levels of mental illness in ethnic Chinese communities, culture emerged as a major factor explaining differences in mental health consultation between Chinese and non-Chinese Canadians.

Socioeconomic Status, Parent Report of Children's Early Language Skills, and Late Literacy Skills: A Long Term Follow-Up Study among Chinese Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pan, Jinger; Kong, Yan; Song, Shuang; McBride, Catherine; Liu, Hongyun; Shu, Hua

2017-01-01

Previous research on the longitudinal prediction of literacy development has focused mainly on the relationship between early cognitive/language skills and late literacy skills. The present study aimed to test the reliability of a number of measures reported by parents as compared to measuring cognitive and language skills in predicting subsequent…

Emotional Valence, Arousal, and Threat Ratings of 160 Chinese Words among Adolescents

PubMed Central

Ho, Samuel M. Y.; Mak, Christine W. Y.; Yeung, Dannii; Duan, Wenjie; Tang, Sandy; Yeung, June C.; Ching, Rita

2015-01-01

This study was conducted to provide ratings of valence/pleasantness, arousal/excitement, and threat/potential harm for 160 Chinese words. The emotional valence classification (positive, negative, or neutral) of all of the words corresponded to that of the equivalent English language words. More than 90% of the participants, junior high school students aged between 12 and 17 years, understood the words. The participants were from both mainland China and Hong Kong, thus the words can be applied to adolescents familiar with either simplified (e.g. in mainland China) or traditional Chinese (e.g. in Hong Kong) with a junior secondary school education or higher. We also established eight words with negative valence, high threat, and high arousal ratings to facilitate future research, especially on attentional and memory biases among individuals prone to anxiety. Thus, the new emotional word list provides a useful source of information for affective research in the Chinese language. PMID:26226604

The Effects of Wiki-Based Recursive Process Writing on Chinese Narrative Essays for Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) Students in Singapore

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chin, Chee Kuen; Gong, Cheng; Tay, Boon Pei

2015-01-01

This paper reports on the effects of using wiki-based process writing in Singapore's Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) scenarios. A group of 32 Secondary 1 (Seventh Grade) students ("Students") received various forms of online scaffolding at different steps of the writing process over two years. A whole set of teaching materials on 45…

Why Does Rapid Naming Predict Chinese Word Reading?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shum, Kathy Kar-man; Au, Terry Kit-fong

2017-01-01

Rapid automatized naming (RAN) robustly predicts early reading abilities across languages, but its underlying mechanism remains unclear. This study found that RAN associated significantly with processing speed but not with phonological awareness or orthographic knowledge in 89 Hong Kong Chinese second-graders. RAN overlaps more with processing…

Working memory and sentence comprehension of Hong Kong Chinese children with specific language impairment.

PubMed

Siu, Elaine; Man, David W K

2006-09-01

Children with Specific Language Impairment present with delayed language development, but do not have a history of hearing impairment, mental deficiency, or associated social or behavioral problems. Non-word repetition was suggested as an index to reflect the capacity of phonological working memory. There is a paucity of such studies among Hong Kong Chinese children. This preliminary study aimed to examine the relationship between phonological working memory and Specific Language Impairment, through the processes of non-word repetition and sentence comprehension, of children with Specific Language Impairment and pre-school children with normal language development. Both groups of children were screened by a standardized language test. A list of Cantonese (the commonest dialect used in Hong Kong) multisyllabic nonsense utterances and a set of 18 sentences were developed for this study. t-tests and Pearson correlation were used to study the relationship between non-word repetition, working memory and specific language impairment. Twenty-three pre-school children with Specific Language Impairment (mean age = 68.30 months; SD = 6.90) and another 23 pre-school children (mean age = 67.30 months; SD = 6.16) participated in the study. Significant difference performance was found between the Specific Language Impairment group and normal language group in the multisyllabic nonsense utterances repetition task and the sentence comprehension task. Length effect was noted in Specific Language Impairment group children, which is consistent with the findings of other literature. In addition, correlations were also observed between the number of nonsense utterances repeated and the number of elements comprehended. Cantonese multisyllabic nonsense utterances might be worth further developing as a screening tool for the early detection of children with Specific Language Impairment.

A Novel Approach towards Medical Entity Recognition in Chinese Clinical Text

PubMed Central

Yu, Jian

2017-01-01

Medical entity recognition, a basic task in the language processing of clinical data, has been extensively studied in analyzing admission notes in alphabetic languages such as English. However, much less work has been done on nonstructural texts that are written in Chinese, or in the setting of differentiation of Chinese drug names between traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine. Here, we propose a novel cascade-type Chinese medication entity recognition approach that aims at integrating the sentence category classifier from a support vector machine and the conditional random field-based medication entity recognition. We hypothesized that this approach could avoid the side effects of abundant negative samples and improve the performance of the named entity recognition from admission notes written in Chinese. Therefore, we applied this approach to a test set of 324 Chinese-written admission notes with manual annotation by medical experts. Our data demonstrated that this approach had a score of 94.2% in precision, 92.8% in recall, and 93.5% in F-measure for the recognition of traditional Chinese medicine drug names and 91.2% in precision, 92.6% in recall, and 91.7% F-measure for the recognition of Western medicine drug names. The differences in F-measure were significant compared with those in the baseline systems. PMID:29065612

Studying the Effectiveness of an Online Language Learning Platform in China

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baker, Ryan; Wang, Feng; Ma, Zhenjun; Ma, Wei; Zheng, Shiyue

2018-01-01

In this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of an adaptive online learning platform, designed to support Chinese students in learning the English language. The adaptive platform is studied in three studies, where the experimental platform is compared to an alternate, non-adaptive platform, with random assignment to conditions (the adaptive…

Native-likeness in second language lexical categorization reflects individual language history and linguistic community norms.

PubMed

Zinszer, Benjamin D; Malt, Barbara C; Ameel, Eef; Li, Ping

2014-01-01

SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS FACE A DUAL CHALLENGE IN VOCABULARY LEARNING: First, they must learn new names for the 100s of common objects that they encounter every day. Second, after some time, they discover that these names do not generalize according to the same rules used in their first language. Lexical categories frequently differ between languages (Malt et al., 1999), and successful language learning requires that bilinguals learn not just new words but new patterns for labeling objects. In the present study, Chinese learners of English with varying language histories and resident in two different language settings (Beijing, China and State College, PA, USA) named 67 photographs of common serving dishes (e.g., cups, plates, and bowls) in both Chinese and English. Participants' response patterns were quantified in terms of similarity to the responses of functionally monolingual native speakers of Chinese and English and showed the cross-language convergence previously observed in simultaneous bilinguals (Ameel et al., 2005). For English, bilinguals' names for each individual stimulus were also compared to the dominant name generated by the native speakers for the object. Using two statistical models, we disentangle the effects of several highly interactive variables from bilinguals' language histories and the naming norms of the native speaker community to predict inter-personal and inter-item variation in L2 (English) native-likeness. We find only a modest age of earliest exposure effect on L2 category native-likeness, but importantly, we find that classroom instruction in L2 negatively impacts L2 category native-likeness, even after significant immersion experience. We also identify a significant role of both L1 and L2 norms in bilinguals' L2 picture naming responses.

Native-likeness in second language lexical categorization reflects individual language history and linguistic community norms

PubMed Central

Zinszer, Benjamin D.; Malt, Barbara C.; Ameel, Eef; Li, Ping

2014-01-01

Second language learners face a dual challenge in vocabulary learning: First, they must learn new names for the 100s of common objects that they encounter every day. Second, after some time, they discover that these names do not generalize according to the same rules used in their first language. Lexical categories frequently differ between languages (Malt et al., 1999), and successful language learning requires that bilinguals learn not just new words but new patterns for labeling objects. In the present study, Chinese learners of English with varying language histories and resident in two different language settings (Beijing, China and State College, PA, USA) named 67 photographs of common serving dishes (e.g., cups, plates, and bowls) in both Chinese and English. Participants’ response patterns were quantified in terms of similarity to the responses of functionally monolingual native speakers of Chinese and English and showed the cross-language convergence previously observed in simultaneous bilinguals (Ameel et al., 2005). For English, bilinguals’ names for each individual stimulus were also compared to the dominant name generated by the native speakers for the object. Using two statistical models, we disentangle the effects of several highly interactive variables from bilinguals’ language histories and the naming norms of the native speaker community to predict inter-personal and inter-item variation in L2 (English) native-likeness. We find only a modest age of earliest exposure effect on L2 category native-likeness, but importantly, we find that classroom instruction in L2 negatively impacts L2 category native-likeness, even after significant immersion experience. We also identify a significant role of both L1 and L2 norms in bilinguals’ L2 picture naming responses. PMID:25386149

Commonalities and Differences in Word Identification Skills among Learners of English as a Second Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Min; Koda, Keiko

2007-01-01

This study examined word identification skills between two groups of college students with different first language (L1) backgrounds (Chinese and Korean) learning to read English as a second language (ESL). Word identification skills were tested in a naming experiment and an auditory category judgment task. Both groups of ESL learners demonstrated…

Evidence for Long-Term Cross-Language Repetition Priming in Low Fluency Chinese-English Bilinguals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Li; Mo, Lei; Wang, Ruiming; Luo, Xueying; Chen, Zhe

2009-01-01

Previous studies have found that proficiency in a second language affects how the meanings of words are accessed. Support for this hypothesis is based on data from explicit memory tasks with bilingual participants who know two languages that are relatively similar phonologically and orthographically (e.g., Dutch-English, French-English). The…

Listening Strategy Use and Influential Factors in Web-Based Computer Assisted Language Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, L.; Zhang, R.; Liu, C.

2014-01-01

This study investigates second and foreign language (L2) learners' listening strategy use and factors that influence their strategy use in a Web-based computer assisted language learning (CALL) system. A strategy inventory, a factor questionnaire and a standardized listening test were used to collect data from a group of 82 Chinese students…