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Unlike Korean or Vietnamese adoptees who came to the U.S. during the postwar era, Chinese adoptees are mostly abandoned female infants under China's one-child policy from 1980 through 2015. Little work has documented Chinese adoptees' identity (trans)formation across time and space. This study examines how three Chinese adoptees from the U.S. who chose to go to Taiwan to teach English make sense of their Chinese heritages and their lives in and out of Asia. Drawing on the frameworks of positioning and chronotopic identities, this cross-sectional, multiple case study documents the participants' identity (trans)formations through their narratives on their moves across the U.S., China, and Taiwan during different points of their lives. Our adoptee participants' home and work experiences over time represent diverse pathways for their negotiations of various aspects of their identities – linguistic, cultural, Chinese, American, Asian American, and adoptee – in their life trajectories transnationally. Their diverse experiences complicate current understandings of adoptee identities within and across the adoptive home, the "homeland" of their birth places, and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing education in ancient China has a glorious history, it is an important reason for the prosperity of ancient Chinese civilization. The most important test of imperial examination is composition, which can not only test a person' s language level, but also can examine his or her thoughts and thinking level. Nowadays, eight-part essay in imperial examnation has become the symbol of rigidity, old fashion, dogmatism and stylization, but as a kind of writing routine training, its rationality has been ignored, its function and significance has been seriously underestimated. Although modern education carries out the new style teaching, it continues the importance of the writing education in ancient China. Every university major in the Republic of China period offered the "Chinese" course, among which writing is the most important content of the Chinese course, college students in the Republic of China period had strong writing ability no matter what they studied. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Chinese education still placed great emphasis on the development of students' writing ability. For a long time, writing courses were offered in all majors in universities, and it was one of the core courses, the Chinese language and literature specialty has the writing teaching and research office entity. However, since the implementation of the degree system in 1981, the status of Chinese writing has declined sharply, as a result of the lack of "Writing" discipline at the first level of Chinese language and literature. In 2022, the discipline adjustment, Chinese language and literature to add "Creative writing" second-level disciplines, which is an important event for China's writing education, it will have a far-reaching influence on the construction of Chinese language and literature specialty and discipline. In the future, the content of writing will be diverse, not a unified model, a small part of creative writing, but the vast majority of ordinary practical basic writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a professor emeritus of the Department of English, National Taiwan University, Perng Ching-Hsi (1945-) has dedicated his lifetime to literary translation and Shakespeare Studies for more than half a century. His Chinese translations of Shakespeare's plays are adopted by local Taiwan drama companies for their outstanding lingual performability on the stage for the audience of our times. The paper seeks to explore how Perng manages to render the various Shakespearean poetic styles of Hamlet into equivalent, readable and performable Chinese language. First, the investigation will focus on the way Perng resorts to sophisticated domestication strategy in translating the proper names of the play into corresponding Chinese character names, names that are in most cases highly revealing of the characters' essential roles as well as dramatic functions in the play. Second, the research will probe into Perng's special literary expressions in the Chinese language, a language that hallmarks formal and semantic fidelity to Shakespeare's original rhetorics and poetics. Altogether, I argue that Perng Ching-Hsi's Chinese translation of Shakespeare's Hamlet features a dual contextualization, with which he attempts not merely to represent the original poetic styles of the play, but also to incarnate the poetics of Chinese literary convention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I trace my career from an early interest in language that eventually led me to engage in Chinese medical translation. Born in the United Kingdom in 1954, I gained a Bachelor of Arts degree in German and Spanish from the University of HeriotWatt, Edinburgh. Subsequent study of Chinese took me to Taiwan, China, where I gained an interest in Chinese medicine and developed a coherent linguistic approach to Chinese medical term translation, which I and various colleagues have systematically applied in the translation and compilation of numerous works spanning modern texts, classics, dictionaries, and language-learning materials. Our translation approach, though conforming to principles universally recognized by translation theorists, has proven to be highly controversial, with opponents in both Western and Chinese circles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are three Chinese translations for Chronical of a Death Foretold, a novella by Gabriel García Márquez. The first one is in simple Chinese, which can be traced back to 1981. The other two were recently published, in 2013 and 2019, respectively. The former is in simple Chinese and the latter in traditional Chinese. In general, this study is set out to discuss the three aforementioned Chinese translations. More specifically, it is to verify the hypothesis on the retranslation of source text, analyze the translation strategies of the three target texts and compare the different promotion mechanisms of China and Taiwan. By both quantitative and qualitative methods, it examines the theoretical framework of retranslation and explore and compare the tree target texts from objective and comprehensive perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on advice-giving in health contexts are largely based on face-to-face data or on issues related to target groups of individuals with specific health conditions. However, advice delivered in response to the coronavirus pandemic constitutes an unprecedented health context, as such advice is provided for the benefit of every individual in society. Based on the data of 30 1-min videos produced by the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control, this study investigates how directives are delivered and how rén qíng wèi ('flavour of human feelings'), a Chinese term that encapsulates a composite of warm feelings, is manifested in the verbal delivery of Covid-19 directives. By conceptualising the delivery of Covid-19 directives as a pragmeme, this study investigates how the pragmeme is realised in Taiwan and examines how rén qíng wèi , an aggregate of culturally valued affectivity, is intertwined with directives, thereby strengthening the affective and cultural dimensions of pragmeme theory. • The delivery of Covid-19 directives is regarded as a pragmeme. • Four categories embodying varying degrees of directive strength oscillate in the data. • The affective and sociocultural dimensions of pragmeme theory are enriched. • Rén qíng wèi as a culturally valued concept is upheld in the production of the pragmeme of delivering Covid-19 directives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Compilation & Translation Review is the property of National Academy for Educational Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study explores long-range correlations in terms of sentence or segment length variation in Chinese narrative texts and nonfiction prose. (Drożdż et al. 2016, Quantifying origin and character of long-range correlations in narrative texts. Information Sciences , 331 32–44) analyzed Western novels and found fractal patterns, defined as self-similar, wavelet recurrence, and alternation. Inspired by this study, our research tries to determine whether similar patterns commonly exist in Chinese literature and compares the similarities and differences with Western literature. We calculated the Hurst exponent, β-values, and Δα values for ninety-five Chinese novels, ranging historically from late Qing to contemporary Internet novels, covering the geopolitical regions from Mainland China to Taiwan and Hong Kong. We also made comparisons with pre-modern vernacular novels, historical texts in classical Chinese, contemporary nonfiction and expository writings, as well as randomly generated texts. We found that Chinese novels exhibit fractal patterns as well. In particular, the texts exhibit a better fractal quality if the sentence lengths are measured by Chinese characters, instead of words. There is no clear correlation between fractality and cultural–political contexts and individual authors, but historically speaking, modern Chinese texts show stronger long-range correlations than pre-modern texts. Moreover, long-range correlations in Chinese literature are weaker than in Western literature, and there is a lower percentage of novels with multifractal structures. Our data also show that the fractality not only exists in literary texts, but also in nonliterary, non-narrative, and expository writings; yet, there is no long-range correlation in randomly generated texts. We further conclude that fractality is a fundamental feature of prose writing and human writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The globalization of island studies has resulted in a greater recognition by island studies scholars of the need for more regional-based island research to encompass the diversity of island knowledge and experiences. Island research in East Asia provides examples of both English and native language perspectives across four distinct socio-cultural contexts: Japan, South Korea, the Chinese mainland, and Taiwan. Historical literature and contemporary scholarly research provide a context for understanding: (1) how East Asian researchers engaged with island studies and islandness; and (2) how East Asian socio-economic development policies reflect understandings of islandness locally and across the region. We found similarities among the four East Asian regions, but also variations based on different domestic political perspectives. Given the late start of island research in East Asia, many topics await more detailed future examination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese language is a common language of Chinese people all over the world. The study of it is not only the basis for a comprehensive understanding of its situation, but also a window to explore the development of the Chinese society. Based on two newspapers of the Chinese mainland and Taiwan from Tagged Chinese Gigaword, this article has chosen and examined the word 預測 yùcè 'to predict' to explore "who predicated what" through comparing the similarities and differences of its collocates in the subject-predicate relation and the verb-object relation. This study reflects the preference of different newspapers and provides a window for looking into a period of history on both sides of the strait, which is conducive to strengthening the communication and exchanges of Chinese communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a corpus-based distributional analysis of the usage patterns of a cluster of words and compounds containing the morpheme qià (恰) 'just, exactly', by the aid of an extended concordancer to retrieve representative collocations from their adjacent contexts in Chinese Gigaword. Upon a survey of the historical evolution of the qià cluster with exemplar data and an overview of existing proposals to account for their usages in terms of expectational match, our distributional analysis is conducted to identify the salient collocational or contextual features that lead to a number of interesting findings. Substantial evidences are provided for clarifying the non-word status of qià rú (恰如) and qià sì (恰似) and their similarities, the exchangeability of qiàhǎo (恰好) and qiàqiǎo (恰巧), distinct collocational preferences of the adverbs qià (恰), qiàqià (恰恰) and the others with different subsets of verbs, the prosodic requirement of an even number of syllables for a qià-adverb and its main verb, and the contrastive popularity of qiàqià (恰恰) vs qiàdàng (恰当) to reveal different usage tendencies between speakers in Taiwan and the Mainland. All these novel findings and insights about the subtle (dis)similarities in the usage and meanings of the qià (恰) cluster suggest that distributional analysis of contextual collocations using large-scale language data remains a powerful tool that can complement other analytical approaches for the advancement of lexical semantic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of teaching Chinese as a foreign language is in rapid development after the Covid pandemic. One primary reason is that digitalization and e-learning seem to make almost everything possible. However, due to restrictions encountered in institutes and the variety of different types of language learners, there are plenty of face-to-face language courses needed around the world. What kind of face-to-face Chinese course is unique and not replaceable by digital means remains to be discovered. This teaching design aims to integrate the strategy of acting training into TCFL courses. The first part of the article is about the demand for face-to-face courses that can be observed in Taiwan and overseas and also about the need for speaking and listening training. Secondly, this article explores what acting training strategies could and maybe should be applied in TCFL courses. The course design offered at the end of this article presents a practical syllabus for a 14 weeks Chinese course incorporating acting, the development of text parts by the learners, and their use for language learning in a course for advanced Chinese learners. This design has proven its worth in a course led by the author and is here recommended and shared to encourage similar endeavors at other institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concentrates on the censorship in translating swear words in The Catcher in the Rye. Shi Xianrong and Sun Zhongxu's Chinese translations are used for the analysis. The text analysis and statistics indicate that more changes were made in Shi's version, which appeared in the forms of deletion, attenuation, and modulation. These changes, on the one hand, resulted from the censorships imposed by the legal and administrative requirements on publishing and editing. On the other hand, the peculiar sociocultural context of misogynistic homophobia in the People's Republic of China (prc) in the late 1980s was also normative and decisive to translators' choices, especially when a swear word was related to homosexuality or sexual content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On October 7, 2022, Darryl Sterk, a prolific Chinese-English literary translator, paid a virtual visit to my translation course at the University of Hong Kong. Students came ready to discuss Sterk's translations of Wu Ming-yi's The Stolen Bicycle (Danche shiqie ji, 2017), Sakinu Ahronglong's Hunter School (Shanzhu feishu Sakenu, 2020), and Kevin Chen's Ghost Town (Gui difang, 2022). I curated these three texts to consider the relationship between translation and minority issues in Taiwan from environmental, indigenous, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender angles. But my students had their own questions, which they later transcribed and edited, along with Sterk's responses. The result is an eclectic mix of topics that deal with the technical aspects of Chinese-English translation, such as code-switching, machine translation, translation of Chinese topolects (fangyan), relay translation, romanization, and translator's notes, as well as the cultural, historical, and even environmental aspects of Chinese-English translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Education Research (1680-6360) is the property of Angle Publishing Co., Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The present study investigated the use of apology response (AR) strategies by L1-Chinese L2-English learners and L1-English L2-Chinese learners from a cross-linguistic perspective. A total of 18 Taiwanese college students who were learning English as a foreign language and 18 foreigners in Taiwan who were learning Chinese as a second language were recruited to complete an oral discourse completion task both in Chinese and English. The major findings are as follows: First, the two groups showed no significant difference in their choice of AR strategies, both favoring Acceptance and Minimization, two face-preserving types, to show politeness. Second, cross-linguistic influence was found to affect our participants' AR performances. Both positive and negative influences occurred. Finally, regarding the use of multiple strategies, both groups of participants tended to combine Acceptance with other strategies to maintain social relationships. The results showed both language universal and language-specific features in the AR realizations in Chinese and English. The dominant use of positive response strategies, namely Acceptance and Minimization, highlights the profound influence of politeness principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Sounds of Mandarin: Learning to Speak a National Language in China and Taiwan, 1913–1960" by Janet Y. Chen explores the history of the standard national language in China and Taiwan, known as Mandarin, Guoyu, or Putonghua. Chen examines how the creation of this language was a result of the efforts of intellectuals, political parties, and common people who both struggled with and rejected the imposed national standard. Using archival sources from China, Taiwan, and the US, Chen focuses on social history and the experiences of students, teachers, movie-goers, and radio listeners. The book highlights the tensions between Mandarin and regional languages, as well as the difficulties faced in linguistic unification during the War against Japan and the challenges of making Putonghua the national standard in the 1950s. Chen's research demonstrates the complexity of linguistic standardization in China and Taiwan, making it a valuable addition to the scholarship on Chinese languages and scripts. [Extracted from the article]

A good command of referential skills has been seen as an effective indicator that reveals learners' discourserelated competence. However, in the realm of second language learning, a scant of attention has been paid to investigate L2 learners' referential skills in narratives. Therefore, the present study aims to address the gap through examining young Chinese EFL learners' abilities in using referential forms in English narratives. Three Chinese EFL fourth graders in Taiwan were asked to produce English and Chinese written narratives, elicited through a wordless picture book Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969). The results showed that the participants made few mistakes and achieved high level of appropriateness in the use of referential expressions in English narratives. It was also found that they used similar referential strategies across different discourse contexts in both English and Chinese narratives. It was suggested that their near-proficient performance regarding the referential skills may be attributed to the positive transfer from L1 to L2. However, the analysis of some mistakes by the participants also demonstrated that L2 overgeneralization played a role that hinders the participants' performance. Finally, implications for pedagogy and suggestions for future research are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike the queer formations resulting from racialised organising especially those in the Global North, this paper demonstrates the ways in which language, especially Chinese, is often a more functional identity marker than race or ethnicity in the community lives of LGBT Malaysians. This is evident in how queer advocacy groups are publicised as language-specific entities, calling themselves 'Chinese-speaking', 'English-speaking', or 'Malay-speaking', in urban cities such as Kuala Lumpur. One might see this use of language as a proxy of an existing racial configuration (the state-endorsed categories of Malay, Chinese, Indian, and Other), simply accommodating participants' linguistic preferences. However, my findings suggest the opposite is true. Drawing on interviews with Chinese-speaking queer Malaysian activists in Malaysia and Taiwan, this paper argues for the significance of Chinese in pushing forward their agendas in the illiberal setting locally and in mobilising LGBT Malaysians across the Chinese-speaking world. In doing so, it works towards an articulation of queer Sinophone Malaysia, highlighting the multiple trajectories of queer development locally as well as Malaysia's place in the global circuit of queer cultural formations. Methodologically, it overcomes the humanities bias of Sinophone research by demonstrating how qualitative methods can effectively capture the present localisation of Chinese languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Examine young bilinguals with distant languages (L1: Chinese and L2: English). • The early literacy transfer between L1 and L2 in an L1-dominant environment. • Use functional near-infrared spectroscopy to study transfer on phoneme awareness. • The L2 transfer on the left dorsal neural pathways with phonological processing. • The L1 transfer on the right frontal regions with increased cognitive load. The growing trend of bilingual education between Chinese and English has contributed to a rise in the number of early bilingual children, who were exposed to L2 prior to formal language instruction of L1. The L2-L1 transfer effect in an L1-dominant environment has been well established. However, the threshold of L2 proficiency at which such transfer manifests remains unclear. This study investigated the behavioral and neural processes involved when manipulating phonemes in an auditory phonological task to uncover the transfer effect in young bilingual children. Sixty-two first graders from elementary schools in Taiwan were recruited in this study (29 Chinese monolinguals, 33 Chinese-English bilinguals). The brain activity was measured using fNIRS (functional near-infrared spectroscopy). Bilingual children showed right lateralization to process Chinese and left lateralization to process English, which supports more on the accommodation effect within the framework of the assimilation-accommodation hypothesis. Also, compared to monolinguals, bilingual children showed more bilateral frontal activation in Chinese, potentially reflecting a mixed influence from L2-L1 transfer effects and increased cognitive load of bilingual exposure. These results elucidate the developmental adjustments in the neural substrates associated with early bilingual exposure in phonological processing, offering valuable insights into the bilingual learning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advancement of the Internet has changed people's ways of expressing and sharing their views with the world. Moreover, user-generated content has become a primary guide for customer purchasing decisions. Therefore, motivated by commercial interest, some sellers have started manipulating Internet ratings by writing false positive reviews to encourage the sale of their goods and writing false negative reviews to discredit competitors. These reviews are generally referred to as deceptive reviews. Deceptive reviews mislead customers in purchasing goods that are inconsistent with online information and thus obstruct fair competition among businesses. To protect the right of consumers and sellers, an effective method is required to automate the detection of misleading reviews. Previously developed methods of translating text into feature vectors usually fail to interpret polysemous words, which leads to such functions being obstructed. By using dynamic feature vectors, the present study developed several misleading review-detection models for the Chinese language. The developed models were then compared with the standard detection-efficiency models. The deceptive reviews collected from various online forums in Taiwan by previous studies were used to test the models. The results showed that the models proposed in this study can achieve 0.92 in terms of precision, 0.91 in terms of recall, and 0.91 in terms of F1-score. The improvement rate of our proposal is higher than 20%. Accordingly, we prove that our proposal demonstrated improved performance in detecting misleading reviews, and the models based on dynamic feature vectors were capable of more accurately capturing semantic terms than the conventional models based on the static feature vectors, thereby enhancing effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article conducts a corpus-based comparative study of explicitation, one of the translation universals widely explored, by investigating the use of connectives in two versions of the Chinese translation of The Lord of the Rings from Taiwan and Mainland China. The two versions are compared with the originally produced Chinese text and their source text to find out whether explicitation through the use of connectives occurs in Chinese translation and to what extent such explicitation is influenced by the source text. A quantitative plus qualitative method is adopted to analyze the connectives in the two Chinese versions and compare them with their counterparts in the source text and the non-translated target text. The results show that explicitation occurs in both versions and that the Taiwan version exhibits a higher degree of explicitation than the Mainland version. Such findings may result from different pedagogical and regional translation norms, especially with greater importance attached to faithfulness in translation in Mainland China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With increasingly rapid advances in machine translation (MT) technology, such as Google Translate, MT has become an indispensable learning resource for second or additional language learners. Many studies indicate that MT or post-editing of MT (PEMT) can be an effective tool for L2 learning and teaching. Nevertheless, little research illustrates how language learners judge or evaluate the accuracy of MT output. The judgement of MT accuracy is essential because MT is not yet error-free. Therefore, the aim of this research is to explore how L2 learners attempt to judge the accuracy of MT output when using MT or PEMT. This study was undertaken through a teaching intervention in an online English- Chinese translation course. Student participants included L2 learners of Chinese studying at a university in Taiwan. Findings from observations of screen recordings and focus group discussions reveal that students use different MT tools and additional online-based resources as complementary strategies to better judge MT accuracy. These include: 1) using more than one MT tool to cross-check MT output; 2) using dictionaries to check word meaning and word usage by looking at example sentences; 3) using search engines to check word definitions, translations, and collocations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OBJECTIVE: Self-Care of Heart Failure Index (SCHFI) v6.2 Chinese is an instrument used to assess the ability of self-care behaviour among heart failure patients. It has been validated in Taiwan; however it is yet to be validated in Malaysia. As a multi-ethnic country, Chinese language has been one of the major languages in Malaysia. Therefore, this study was conducted to examine the reliability of Self-Care of Heart Failure Index (SCHFI) v6.2 Chinese among Malaysian population. DESIGN: A successive independent sample design was used throughout a 4-months data collection period. SETTING: Eighty heart failure patients from University of Malaya Medical Centre and National Heart Institute were recruited through purposive sampling. The two hospitals were chosen because they have specialized heart clinics that eased the data collection. The out-patients were screened by the cardiologists for their eligibility to participate in this study. MEASURES: The samples were administered with SCHFI v6.2 Chinese. The item endorsement index, internal consistency and item-total correlation of SCHFI v6.2 Chinese was examined. RESULTS: The maintenance subscale of SCHFI showed a low internal consistency (Cronbach α = .52) while the management and confidence subscales showed an acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach α = .67 and .90 respectively). CONCLUSION: SCHFI v6.2 Chinese is a reliable instrument to be used to be used among Malaysian population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mainland China and Taiwan are two significant regions currently executing the death penalty; especially, Mainland China alone is believed to implement an amount of executions even larger than the total of all other countries. However, although Mainland China and Taiwan share the Chinese language, as well as traditional culture, the public's opinions on the death penalty diverge. There is no evidence showing that more people are becoming abolitionists, albeit different social groups, domestic and overseas, are trying to propel the process of abolitionism. The public's opinions on the death penalty are highly influenced by various factors, including cultural and historical ones, which are considered to be fundamental. Besides, the media, the public's confidence in the judicial system, nationalism and international pressure also impact the public opinion. The governments of both Mainland China and Taiwan should take further actions in terms of the judicial system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of School Administrators is the property of School Administration Research Association, R.O.C. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Compilation & Translation Review is the property of National Academy for Educational Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Quality Talks has been proven to be a group discussion approach that helps improving student’s reading comprehension and enhancing critical thinking. However, cultural and language differences in context might influence the discussion and interaction in class. In most Asian countries, teachers are deemed as the main role in teaching knowledge. Students are accustomed to passive learning. They are less likely to actively asking questions. Sometimes students worry about teacher or peer’s judgment and are timid to ask questions in class. Moreover, most of the learning significantly relies on the textbook in Taiwan. There is a fixed schedule for each curriculum and examinations are applied to evaluate the learning achievement. Therefore, how to embed Quality Talk in the current education system, how to conduct Quality Talk in the classroom, and the acceptance and learning achievement of students who go through Quality Talk, are the research topics that worth studying. This research applied action research. The research subjects were the students in Chinese Language Class. Through the cyclic process of planning, action, observation, and reflection, the research aimed to develop the framework of Quality Talk in Chinese Language Class and learned the change of the question level and critical capacity among students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Research in Education Sciences is the property of National Taiwan Normal University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper presents an in-depth analysis of the language of death in Chinese and discusses the relation between language and occupation as a social factor in analyzing the language of death. In this paper, I address in what specific ways Cognitive Linguistics may serve as a useful analytical framework in studying Chinese idioms used in funerals, in an attempt to uncover cultural elements and viewpoint structure in communicating death. The study introduces basic constructs in Cognitive Linguistics which could be used for such an analysis, and applies this CL machinery to analyzing three selected groups of four-character eulogistic idioms used at funerals in Taiwan. The analysis shows that, in addition to Conceptual Metaphor Theory, which has been considered the classic CL tool for studying abstract concepts like death, the subjectivity/objectivity distinction in Cognitive Grammar may also be employed as a complementary and useful theoretical construct in studying the language of death, as it helps identify the special characteristics of the eulogistic idioms for teachers as a special profession in the Chinese culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Education Research (1680-6360) is the property of Angle Publishing Co., Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Taiwan has been enthusiastically learning elderly-care policies from abroad, as its population is rapidly aging. It has even drafted a long-term care insurance (LTCI) bill--following what super-aged countries like Germany and Japan did decades ago. While Germany chose "cash benefits," Japan opted for "service-only," owing to feminist groups' opposition. When Taiwan attempted to adopt the German LTCI model, feminist, labor, and elderly advocacy groups criticized the government intensely. They worried that if cash payments were available, most Taiwanese would opt for them, rendering no alleviation of burdens on family caregivers--mostly women. During Taiwan's legislative debates, however, there seemed to be little discussion on the program characteristics and consequences of the original German cash benefits. The present study sets out to explore this phenomenon systematically and finds significant differences and omissions exist in the knowledge about the German LTCI between the scholarly literature published in Chinese and English languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Hybridity of Buddhism: Contemporary Encounters between Tibetan and Chinese Traditions in Taiwan and the Mainland" is a collection of eight papers that explore the development of Tibetan Buddhism in Taiwan and the Kham Tibetan area within the People's Republic of China. The volume addresses themes such as transnationalism, ecumenicalism, and the tensions between traditional transmission and religious innovation. Each chapter provides a detailed case study of a specific aspect of Tibetan Buddhism in Taiwan, offering valuable insights for scholars and readers interested in Tibetan, Chinese, and Global Buddhism. However, the volume is limited in scope and may primarily appeal to specialists in the field. [Extracted from the article]

Highlights • The Chinese-version BQDI, measuring betel quid dependence that is theoretically anchored in the framework of substance dependence guided by WHO and DSM-IV-TR for improving content validity, has been validated in 113 participants. • BQDI scores consisted of a three-factor structure, including physical and psychological urgent need, lack of resistance to betel quid, and maladaptive use. • The significant cross-sectional association between BQDI scores and arecaidine and N-methylnipecotate support the construct and discriminatory ability of BQDI. Abstract The purposes of this study were to develop the Chinese-version betel quid dependence instrument (BQDI) and to test its reliability and validity. An item pool relevant to betel quid dependence was generated. A panel of three experts assessed content validity including content relevance, clarity, and domain coverage. A cross-sectional study was conducted, consisting of 113 participants from a construction site, betel quid stalls, and a teaching hospital in Taichung, Taiwan. Construct validity was assessed by hypothesizing a significant correlation between the BQDI score and number of pieces-years for betel quid chewing and betel quid biomarkers. The overall Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.94. Factor analysis indicated the BQDI consisted of a three-factor structure, including physical and psychological cravings, lack of resistance to betel quid, and maladaptive use. We observed significant associations of BQDI total and factor scores with arecaidine (adjusted odds ratio [OR] for medium total BQDI score: 12.87, 95% CI: 1.45–114.5; high total BQDI score: 28.9, 3.53–236.6) and N-methylnipecotate (medium total BQDI score: 6.18, 1.21–31.62; high total BQDI score: 13.10, 2.72–63.03, respectively). Our results provide preliminary good internal consistency and construct validation of the Chinese-version BQDI as a measure of betel quid dependence in community adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to explore how gender restructuring might interact with immigrant second language (L2) learning in the new trends of feminized marriage migration in Asia, using Mandarin-language education in Taiwan as a case study. Drawing on positioning theory to analyze classroom discourse in a Mandarin-language class for marriage-migrants, this paper shows how the societal gendered expectations of marriage-migrants are concretely manifested and discursively negotiated in the classroom. As the teacher interactively positioned students as runaways, potential transgressors of chaste womanhood, and unfit mothers, the focal student reflectively positioned herself as an autonomous woman, capable mother, avid language learner, and multilingual speaker. By focusing on the dynamic negotiations of gender positionings in the language classroom for marriage-migrants in Asia, this study extends current research on immigrant L2 education to examine the nexus of globalization, transnational marriage migration, gender, and adult immigrant education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Previous studies of American English isms terms have uncovered as many as five broad factors: tradition-oriented religiousness (TR), subjective spirituality (SS), communal rationalism (CR), unmitigated self-interest (USI), and inequality aversion (IA). The present studies took a similar lexical approach to investigate the Chinese-language isms structures in both mainland China and Taiwan.Method and Results: In Study 1, exploratory factor analyses with 915 mainland Chinese subjects uncovered four interpretable factors dimensionalizing 165 mainland Chinese dictionary isms terms. These factors represented contents of a combination of TR and SS, USI, CR, and a culturally unique Communist Party of China (CPC) ideology factor. In Study 2, exploratory factor analyses with 467 Taiwan Chinese subjects revealed four interpretable factors categorizing 291 Taiwan Chinese dictionary isms terms. These factors represented contents of a combination of TR and SS, USI, CR, and a culturally unique dimension expressing aspirations for happiness.Conclusions: The results gave evidence for the existence of the isms factors TR and SS, USI, and CR in Chinese culture. Cultural uniqueness was reflected in the merging of TR and SS into the factor Syncretic Religiousness and the culture-specific factors of CPC ideology in China and Happiness/Peace Promotion in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The p-center in Mandarin Chinese is roughly aligned with the acoustic vowel onset, when the syllable does not have an onglide, and the onglide onset, when the syllable has an onglide. • The initial consonant manner did not significantly influence onglide or vowel onsets, but the initial consonant acoustic duration, rimes, and speech rates all significantly influenced the vowel onsets as previous p-center studies have found. • This appears to differ markedly from the p-center found in a recent study of Cantonese, and is very similar to previous findings from languages with complex onsets. This study explores the location of the p-center in Mandarin Chinese and factors that influence it. Previous research has suggested that p-center behavior in languages that lack obstruent clusters, such as Cantonese and Mandarin, will differ from that found in Indo-European languages and others that are typologically different from Chinese languages. The purposes of the current paper are to investigate (1) whether Chinese languages systematically have a different p-center location from that found in previous studies of Indo-European languages, (2) whether vowel onglides are included as part of the syllable rime as claimed in the assumed analysis of Mandarin, and (3) how the alignment of the p-center is influenced by different features of the initial consonant, different features of rime, as well as the speech rates. Six native Mandarin speakers from Taiwan participated in a syllable repetition task with two different speech rates: 60 bpm and 120 bpm. The results indicate that the p-center in Mandarin Chinese is roughly aligned with the acoustic vowel onset, when the syllable does not have an onglide, and the onglide onset, when the syllable has an onglide. The initial consonant manner did not significantly influence onglide or vowel onsets, but the initial consonant acoustic duration, rimes, and speech rates all significantly influenced the vowel onsets as previous p-center studies have found. This appears to differ markedly from the p-center found in a recent study of Cantonese. Various causes for this mismatch are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate the 'paucal' construction [無口舍物 X] 'very few， barely5 in Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM). The elements that can occur in this construction include nouns, adjectives, modal verbs, psychological verbs, active verbs, and 'H列 + active verb.' According to the 'scalar model,' all of these elements should possess the feature [+scalar] to specify the idea 'scalar.5 Adjectives, in particular, should make [+positive] prominent as well. 口舍物 'what' can be treated as a 'semi-adverb' when it modifies the following verbal elements. The grammaticalization of 卩舍物 4whaf from a interrogative pronoun to a semi-adverb, which has not heretofore been discussed, is another focus of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is an attempt to explore proficient Taiwanese senior high school students' difficulties and strategies in L1 (Chinese) and L 2 (English) Reading. A total of eight proficient students participated in this study. An in-depth face to face interview was adopted for data collection. Thanks to the enthusiastic response of the students, we could gain an overall understanding of their reading difficulties and strategies in Chinese and English reading. This study shows that there are some similarities and differences between Chinese and English reading perceptions. Based on the findings of this study, classroom teachers will be able to design more effective reading strategy curricula and instruction geared to their students' needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short essay is a casual narration on the experience of a studentintern who has stayed in a Taiwanese university and accommodated some Taiwan students in the Philippines. The author shares some of his insights as regards Taiwanese culture, student interactions, and the Chinese language in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study employed an ethnographic methodology to explore how Chinese sociocultural factors influence Chinese middle school students' reading motivation in Taiwan. Sixteen seventh grade students were selected to participate in the semi-structured interviews and observations in and outside of the classrooms for the course of a semester. The results showed evidence that instructional practices as well as social/ educational contexts influenced Chinese students' reading motivation. In particular, the hierarchical testing system is still strongly ingrained in Chinese middle schools, where reading for social recognition and competition appear to have a primary role in Chinese students' motivation to read. This study also provides some suggestions for Chinese reading teachers to apply instructional practices that help students develop into lifelong engaged readers, not just academic competitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the means by which social actors at one largely Indigenous elementary school in Taiwan resolve the linguistic conflicts arising between official language policies and practical pedagogical practices. Special reference is made to Pangcah, an endangered indigenous language in contest with other languages, Mandarin in particular, as the medium of instruction. The findings highlight the use of code-switches between languages in the context of the lesson being observed. The 'depreciation' of the Pangcah language can be understood as reflective of enduring symbolic and hegemonic dominations, the instability of the indigenous language being a manifestation of Pangcah's limited social status. While teachers may vociferously advocate Pangcah as a means of identity construction, they remain committed to Mandarin. It is suggested that their commitment to Mandarin reveals an internalization of the majority ideology that sees Mandarin as the most advantageous means by which indigenous children can adapt to the larger Sino-cultural social mainstream. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] A significant difference in symbolic development was observed between the two groups. [•] Taiwanese toddlers scored significantly lower in language comprehension. [•] Taiwanese toddlers showed discrepancies across three measures in object use. [•] Potential cultural factors may impact performance between the two groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the linguistic and interactional properties of computer-mediated communication in Taiwan. We collected data from messages posted asynchronously on Internet websites. The three primary sources of messages were, in volume order, online Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs), chatrooms, and MSN messenger. We identify innovative uses of English and Mandarin Chinese hybrids, examine their function, and examine the online interlocutors' ideologies when using them. Because of computer hardware and software, English plays an essential role even in a Mandarin-dominant online discourse by offering English expressions, words, pronunciations, and Roman letters to give loanwords, euphemisms, abbreviations, sentence-final particles, and emoticons in unique ways. The resultant hybrid language forms are easier to type, playful, funny, friendly, and trendy. The writer's personality and cultural mentality are disclosed in such communication. Many speakers are alarmed about the effects of this language practice - the online interaction between English and Mandarin Chinese - on the development of Chinese in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an empirical evaluation of Martin Ehala's (2007) mathematical model of ethnolinguistic vitality (EV). The model is here applied to assess the vitality of Taiwan's native Bensheng group (native Taiwanese speakers of Southern Min) by means of a comparison with the local Waisheng ethnolinguistic group (Mainland Chinese speakers of Mandarin). Traditionally, the EV-model measures the attitudes toward two distinct groups and their languages and cultures. In this article, we use the formula to deal with Taiwan's cultural complexity by including bilingual and hybrid identities into the EV-model. After an overview of the basic principles of the mathematical model and some essential facts about the Southern Min language, we test and discuss the results from 298 written questionnaires offered in Taipei and Kaohsiung. We then evaluate the workability of the EV instruments as well as the vitality of the Southern Min speakers and their language in Taiwan as indicated through EV results. The article concludes with suggestions for further elaboration of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]