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Informed by basic psychological needs theory, this multi-case study explored four supervisors’ feedback practices and their effects on Chinese English-major students’ engagement with feedback on their undergraduate dissertations written in English. Data comprised interviews with students and supervisors, stimulated recalls with students, audio recordings of supervisor-student conferences, and students’ multiple dissertation drafts with supervisory feedback. Cross-case comparisons were made to gauge the supervisory support. The analyses revealed salient differences in pedagogical caring, optimal structure, and autonomy support provided by the supervisors. The supervisees engaged affectively, behaviorally, and cognitively with supervisory feedback to different extents, and their engagement depended on the types and amounts of teacher support available. The findings of the study contribute to the application of basic psychological needs theory by extending it to undergraduate dissertation supervision. Practical implications for improving undergraduate dissertation supervision in the Chinese context are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on an experimental study that set out to investigate and compare the effectiveness of a direct and an indirect approach to data-driven learning (DDL) in facilitating Chinese learners' mastery of a challenging type of lexico-grammatical resource (i.e. hedges) in an undergraduate English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) writing class. The study adopted a pretest/posttest/delayed posttest randomized two treatment design. The two experimental groups received, respectively, direct and indirect DDL instruction in the use of hedges in English academic writing. The direct approach involved students in conducting guided searches and analyses of target hedges in online corpora, whereas the indirect approach featured the use of corpus-informed, paper-and-pen learning tasks. Within- and between-group analyses of the participants' performances on the three tests yielded evidence of both the strengths and limitations of the two approaches. A questionnaire survey revealed the participants' favorable attitudes toward the incorporation of corpora in classroom teaching, as well as their perceptions of the affordances and constraints of DDL. The article concludes with a discussion of the present study's limitations and recommendations for future DDL research in EFL classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While increasing efforts have been made to teach English prepositions to EFL learners from a Cognitive Linguistics (CL) perspective, the bulk of the extant research has focused on adult learners at the advanced English proficiency level and reported only quantitative results. Limited attention has been paid to elementary learners, and there has been little qualitative evidence of the pedagogical effectiveness of CL-informed approaches. This study aims to address these issues with a quasi-experiment embedded in an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design. Twenty-two young Chinese learners received two types of instruction, respectively, to learn locative prepositions in, on, and at. A conceptual metaphor time as space that originates in CL was exploited as the intervention for the experimental group, whereas a data-driven approach was adopted for the control group. Quantitative data collected from the participants through a set of tests and qualitative data collected from the instructor with a semi-structured interview generally supported the effectiveness and, to a lesser extent, the efficiency of the CL-informed approach. The paper concludes with a discussion of the pedagogical implications derived from the empirical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research on peer feedback in the L2 writing classroom has proliferated over the past three decades, only limited attention has been paid to how students respond to their peers’ writing in specific contexts and why they respond in the ways they do. As a result, much remains to be known about how individual differences and contextual influences shape L2 students’ peer feedback practices. To bridge the research gap, this case study examines two Chinese EFL university students’ peer feedback practices and the factors influencing their feedback practices. Analyses of multiple sources of data including interviews, video recordings of peer feedback sessions, stimulated recalls, and texts reveal that the students took markedly different approaches when responding to their peers’ writing. The findings also indicate that their peer feedback practices were situated in their own distinct sociocultural context and mediated by a myriad of factors including beliefs and values, motives and goals, secondary school learning and feedback experience, teacher feedback practices, feedback training, feedback group dynamics, as well as learning and assessment culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automated writing evaluation (AWE) systems can provide immediate computer-generated quantitative assessments and qualitative diagnostic feedback on an enormous number of submitted essays. However, limited research attention has been paid to locally designed AWE systems used in English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom contexts. This study explored the precision of feedback provided by a Chinese AWE programmePigaiand students’ uptake of such feedback. Data comprisingPigaifeedback, students’ revised submissions, incorporatedPigaisuggestions and proportions of ‘good’, ‘neutral’ and ‘bad’ revisions were collected from 210 drafts by 30 undergraduate students in an EFL writing class. Results show that (1) the precision rates of AWE feedback differed across categories of feedback (ie grammar, collocations and mechanics); (2) students were selective in their utilisation of AWE feedback and able to adjust their uptake of AWE suggestions according to the accuracy of the feedback. Survey and interview data demonstrated that the students were cognisant of the strengths and limitations of the AWE system as a source of feedback for improving their writing. These results indicate that AWE feedback can usefully supplement peer and instructor feedback in the EFL writing classroom but cannot replace the latter, given the low precision and accuracy rates of the former in identifying a range of errors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research on plagiarism has largely left English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) teachers out of the picture. This study set out to bridge the gap by comparing how 142 Chinese university EFL teachers and 270 undergraduate students viewed exemplars of unacknowledged copying and unattributed paraphrasing, two forms of intertextuality generally regarded as plagiarism in Anglo-American academia. More than half of the teacher participants had overseas academic experience. Quantitative and qualitative analyses found that the participants, though understanding plagiarism in English academic writing differently from Anglo-American academia, clearly disapproved of recognized cases of plagiarism. The analyses also revealed that greater knowledge of and harsher stances on both types of transgressive intertextuality were associated with wider exposure to and more experience in English academic writing. Furthermore, the participants had more similar understandings of unacknowledged copying than of unattributed paraphrasing and took harsher stances on the former. These findings highlight complex and nuanced understandings of plagiarism and point to the crucial role of academic socialization in shaping knowledge of and attitudes toward plagiarism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Chinese university students' perceptions of plagiarism have been extensively investigated, those of their teachers have been surprisingly under-researched. This study sought to address this gap by investigating 112 Chinese university English teachers' knowledge of and attitudes towards plagiarism. While 57 participating teachers had overseas academic experience, the remaining ones received all their education in mainland China. They completed a perceptions of plagiarism survey that elicited their knowledge of several common forms of plagiarism in Anglo-American academia, perceptions of various possible causes of plagiarism, and attitudes towards plagiarism induced by different causes and plagiarism in general. The study found that the teachers reported varying knowledge of different types of transgressive textual practices, variegated perceptions of the different causes of plagiarism, but clearly punitive attitudes towards plagiarism. It also revealed significant differences between teachers with and without overseas academic experience in knowledge of and stances on plagiarism. These findings highlight the complexity of plagiarism as an intertextual phenomenon and point to the important role of cultural practices and academic socialisation in shaping perceptions of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews important second language research on recasts in response to a recent debate between Goo and Mackey (2013) and Lyster and Ranta (2013) in the journal Studies in Second Language Acquisition. It begins by clarifying the definition of recasts and then examines several controversial issues featuring prominently in the debate, including the theoretical underpinnings of existing research on recasts, mixed findings about their effectiveness in language acquisition, and methodological concerns in effectiveness research. The primary aim of this paper is to demarcate common ground and disagreement that are emerging in this debate and, based on a synthesis and critique of previous empirical studies, to identify directions for future research. It also explores pedagogical implications of recasts research for English-as-a-foreign-language contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study sought to provide a nuanced understanding of the relationship between metacognitive awareness and listening performance by eliciting from 113 English-as-a-second-language (ESL) Chinese learners their metacognitive awareness with regard to knowledge of listening strategies used and perceptions of difficulty and anxiety following a listening lesson. Data were collected through the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ) and an official sample IELTS listening test. Responses were examined for how different aspects of metacognitive awareness represented by the MALQ factors related to listening performance and for individual differences in metacognitive awareness across these factors. The results showed a significant positive relationship between learners’ metacognitive awareness scores and listening performance and that their metacognitive awareness accounted for 22% of the variance in listening performance. Analysis of individual factors showed a significant relationship between listening performance and the strategies of directed attention and problem solving as well as an overall moderate-to-low sense of confidence among the participants in the study. It also revealed considerable intrapersonal variation in different aspects of metacognitive awareness. The paper discusses the results as well as the use of the questionnaire as an instrument for eliciting and interpreting learners’ metacognitive awareness about listening. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study investigates whether English-medium instruction (EMI) has an impact on Chinese undergraduates' English proficiency and affect in English learning and use. A cross-section of 136 sophomores and juniors were drawn from an English-medium and a parallel Chinese-medium program. Data included: (a) participants' scores on two national standardized English proficiency tests; (b) their English-related affect as measured by three scales adapted from Gardner's (2004) Attitude/Motivation Test Battery; (c) their perceptions of EMI in Chinese tertiary education elicited with a survey developed by the Chinese Ministry of Education (2006), and (d) interviews with 10 focal students from the English- and Chinese-medium programs. Results showed no statistically significant effect of medium of instruction on English proficiency or affect in English learning and use. However, extent of satisfaction with EMI, perceived necessity for EMI, and perceived increases in study burden had statistically significant effects on the outcome measures. Additionally, prior English proficiency was the strongest predictor of subsequent English proficiency and English-related affect. These findings raise concerns about the quality of the focal English-medium program and point to students' perceptions of EMI and prior English proficiency as crucial influences on further language learning and use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research and discussion on plagiarism have focused predominantly on ESOL students with little attention paid to ESOL teachers. This article reports a study of Chinese university English lecturers’ knowledge of and stance on two intertextual practices (i.e. unacknowledged copying and unattributed paraphrasing) regarded as plagiarism in Anglo-American academia, and, consequently, in the wider international academic community. Drawing on 117 Chinese university English lecturers’ ratings of three short English passages and open-ended justifications of their ratings, the study found that around two-thirds and two-fifths of them recognized unacknowledged copying and paraphrasing as plagiarism, respectively, and held clearly punitive attitudes towards detected plagiarism. It also revealed that while there was a broad consensus of opinion about unacknowledged copying, understandings of unattributed paraphrasing appeared divergent and ambivalent. These findings not only call into question essentialized views of plagiarism that stereotype cultures as either condoning or condemning plagiarism but also suggest a need to raise Chinese university English lecturers’ awareness about Anglo-American notions of plagiarism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: This paper reports on a study designed to investigate the acquisition of metalinguistic knowledge by L2 learners exposed to large doses of explicit grammar instruction, their facility with metalanguage, and the relationship between metalinguistic and metalingual knowledge. Seventy-six young adult Chinese learners of English as a foreign language completed an untimed rule verbalization task that involved 49 uses of 6 English target structures: the definite article, the indefinite article, the zero article, the simple present, the simple past, and the present perfect. The rule verbalizations were rated for acceptability, and all the metalingual terms used in the verbalizations were identified and coded for correct usage. Quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal that 1) the participants amassed much explicit knowledge of the target structures; 2) their explicit knowledge was mostly consistent with typical pedagogical rules; 3) they had a productive knowledge of a large number of metalingual terms; and 4) there was a positive relationship between metalinguistic knowledge and facility with metalanguage. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article focuses on how higher institutions can better deal with the unacceptable intertextuality in the writings of Chinese students who are learning English as a second language. Topics discussed include the extensive research on plagiarism in ESL academic writing and the influx of Chinese students into higher education institutions in the West. The need for professors to instill academic integrity among students and the use of text-matching programs for detecting plagiarism are mentioned.

The global spread of EMI is a response to the internationalisation and marketisation of higher education. However, students may not fully benefit from EMI programmes if they are not adequately prepared. The extent to which students have been prepared to succeed in such programmes and acquire English as linguistic capital is an underexplored area. The present study addressed the research gap by investigating the preparation and support that students received in EMI programmes in Chinese higher education. The study adopted a mixed-methods design by collecting responses to an online survey from 248 students in different Chinese universities and conducting semi-structured interviews with 12 students regarding their preparation and support for, their learning motivation and views of EMI programmes as well as their expectations of EMI teachers. The findings showed that the students did not seem to be sufficiently prepared to achieve the dual goal of EMI (i.e., subject and language learning) and that the EMI programmes tended to widen the gap between students with different English proficiency and might lead to educational inequality. Finally, the students were critical of the quality of EMI teachers and favoured teachers with high English proficiency and pedagogical skills in delivering sophisticated content knowledge. These findings suggested that future studies need to explore strategies to better prepare and support students to benefit from EMI programmes and promote educational equality. Furthermore, the criteria for recruiting EMI teachers should be reconsidered to meet students' learning needs and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]