Search

Abstract: Good language learner studies show that attending to form is associated with successful learning. This paper reports interviews with three university English majors who had won prizes in nationwide English speaking competitions and debate tournaments in China. The interviewees regarded text memorization and imitation as the most effective methods of learning English. They had been initially forced to use these methods but gradually came to appreciate them. The practice enabled them to attend to and learn collocations and sequences, to borrow these sequences for productive use, to improve pronunciation, and to develop the habit of attending to details of language in the context of language input. The paper concludes that such practice enhances noticing and rehearsal and hence facilitates second language acquisition. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Plagiarism is a major problem for universities worldwide and has been a constant cause of concern in higher education. Previous research has focused on Chinese students' attitudes toward, knowledge of, and engagement in plagiarism in Chinese and overseas educational contexts, and there is also a growing body of research on Chinese teachers' understandings of and stance on plagiaristic practices. However, little research attention has been given to institutional policies on plagiarism in the Chinese context, though similar research has been conducted in other settings. This paper reports on a study that examines the plagiarism policies made publicly available by eight major universities of foreign studies in mainland China. Both the structure and content of these universities' policy documents are analyzed to identify institutional understandings of, attitudes toward, and sanctions on plagiarism. The analysis reveals that despite inter-institutional variations, the policy documents are dominated by moralistic and regulatory discourses and are characterized by the conspicuous lack of an educative approach to plagiarism. We argue that such an institutional approach to plagiarism is unlikely to be effective because it largely fails to support students’ acquisition of academic literacy and legitimate intertextual practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To gain promotion advantages, municipal governments usually set higher growth targets than higher level governments to show loyalty and to signal ability in China, thereby forming growth target constraints. There is still a lack of research linking targets with urban development models. This paper contributes to this by examining the impact of economic growth target constraints on urban sprawl. We found that municipal governments are facing obvious economic growth target constraints, especially top-down overweighting constraints. The urban growth target constraint has significantly promoted urban sprawl, and that the impact is more obvious for cities that use hard constraint vocabulary to set growth targets, small and medium-sized cities and cities that failed to achieve their growth targets as scheduled last year. The mechanism is that the growth target constraint will lead to the local governments placing emphasis on land, ignoring population and investment bias in their emphasis on construction, and ignoring public services, which will lead to low density and decentralisation of cities. Our main novel empirical findings provide important clues for understanding the evolution of urban spatial morphology and urban development models in China. This will provide new policy insights for the transformation of urban models to more sustainable development. • City economic growth is an important macroeconomic management target set by the policy authorities. • City governments are facing obvious economic growth target constraints, especially top-down overweighting constraints. • The urban growth target constraint has significantly promoted urban sprawl. • The growth target constraint will lead to the local governments placing emphasis on land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The paper reports on a study about how a group of Chinese university teachers and two groups of their English major students used personal ‘teacher’ metaphors via a metaphor prompt “An English teacher is…because…” to represent their beliefs relating to EFL teachers’ roles. Data sources also included follow-up individual interviews. The primary aims of the study were (a) to examine the effects of metaphor analysis concerning beliefs about classroom teachers’ roles between teachers and students, including comparing accounts by students at different levels of English proficiency and (b) to establish whether the use of metaphor analysis involving teachers and students with a degree of interaction between them leads to behavioural change, particularly change in teaching practices. The results identified mismatches regarding the interpretations of the teachers’ roles both between students and teachers and between student groups at different levels of English proficiency. Metaphor functioned as a powerful cognitive tool in gaining insight into students’ and teachers’ beliefs. Also, engaging in an interaction involving ‘teacher’ metaphors between students and teachers worked reasonably well in resolving the belief conflicts across the two groups and led to willingness for changes in teaching practice by most teachers. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Parental investment and skill mediate caregiver mental health and child development. • Caregiver depression are more harmful to parenting practices and child development. • The variety of play material has significant mediation effect on child development. • Coercive parenting mediate caregiver mental health and child development. Parenting practices are associated with early childhood development (ECD), and some evidences suggest that mental health might affect parenting practices. However, the interrelationships of mental health, parenting practices, and ECD outcomes have not yet been well documented in developing contexts like rural China. This paper aims to investigate the interrelationships between the caregiver's mental health, parenting practices, and the child's ECD outcomes in rural China. A total of 1787 sample households in an undeveloped rural area of western China are enrolled in the study. A socioeconomic questionnaire, the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale, the Family Care Indicators, the Parent and Family Adjustment Scales, and the Bayley Scales of Infant Development version III were used to measure the socioeconomic characteristics of sample households, the caregiver's mental health, parental investments and parenting skills, and the child's development outcomes, respectively. Mediation model was then applied to estimate the interrelationships. The results showed that parental practices significantly mediated between the caregiver's mental health and the child's cognition, language, motor, and social–emotion development. Through parental investments, one standard deviation increases in the caregiver's mental health test score was associated with the decline in the child's four development scores by 0.6% standard deviation, respectively. Through parenting skills, one standard deviation increases in the caregiver's mental health test score was associated with the decline in the child's language and social-emotional score by 2% and 5% standard deviation, respectively. Different dimensions of caregiver mental health, parental investments and skills played heterogeneous roles in the interrelationships. Early interventions aimed at improving the caregiver's mental health, parental investments and skills are important and might be effective to improve early childhood development in rural China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]