This paper addresses the complexity of the linguistic situation in China by examining the language policy and language categorisation in the People's Republic of China (PRC), which has implications for how multilingual speakers conceptualise and practice 'language'. In addition, this paper examines the conceptual framework of translanguaging and…

This study (a) conducted a feature analysis of the spoken data of Chinese university students in pronunciation, grammar, and discourse, (b) investigated the contributions of the discrete linguistic features to the perceptual ratings on foreign accent, comprehensibility, delivery, and general language use. Ten university learners were selected from…

This article explores how a cohort of tertiary-level Uyghur students contested and negotiated their identities through multilingual practices in the receiving community. Drawing upon interview data from fieldwork, this study indicates that these students experienced essentialist understandings and negative views in the host society. Participants…

As an interactional encounter between a journalist and one or more newsworthy public figures, an interview program is a special type of discourse that is full of evaluative language. This paper sets out to explore evaluation in interview programs from the perspective of appraisal system. The corpus software used in this study is UAM CorpusTool…

Instructional practices are fundamentally influenced by teacher beliefs. Cultural and pedagogical belief differences in EFL teachers can fuel a lack of professional understanding among teachers with contrasting perspectives about effective teaching practices. The present study examined the alignment between the beliefs of Chinese English teachers…

Little research has focused on extended concurrent speech, unexpected floor taking, or topic switching, since it has been deemed rare (Schegloff 2000. "Overlapping talk and the organization of turn-taking for conversation." "Language in Society" 29(1). 1-63.) or inappropriate (Goldberg 1990." Interrupting the discourse on…

This study reports an empirical study of an explicit instruction of corpus-aided Business English collocations and verifies its effectiveness in improving learners' collocation awareness and learner autonomy, as a result of which is significant improvement of learners' collocation competence. An eight-week instruction in keywords' collocations,…

Social support and face-to-face learning may enhance outcomes for students who face barriers in accessing Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). This study investigated how self-identified volunteer leaders guide and foster interactions among small groups of students who face technical and conceptual barriers in accessing MOOC content. Several…

The purpose of this small-scale study was to examine whether language is a factor in the reporting of bullying behavior by young English language learners enrolled in an early childhood program of an English-medium school in China. Further investigated was whether an English-only language policy affects the reporting of bullying behavior.…

This study examines the interaction between learner-oriented codeswitching (CS) practices and the degree to which intermediate Chinese L2 learners of English engage in classroom interaction. The guiding questions are whether the teacher's CS use facilitates classroom interaction at moderate L2 proficiency, and if so, at which specific stages of…

This paper examines ideologies of American study abroad in politically and culturally "non-Western" countries. Drawing from the theory of orientalism (Said, 1978), we analyze how American public discourse on study abroad for learners of Mandarin and Arabic manifests an orientalist thinking, and how such macro discourse both produces…

Insider-researchers are said to enjoy many advantages during the interview process that help them to access the innermost thoughts of participants. As a Chinese doctoral student interviewing other Chinese doctoral students, I assumed I was an insider. However, my experiences proved otherwise, as I oscillated between insider and outsider positions.…

This article reports on a study that investigated the role of metapragmatic awareness of L2 learners in Hong Kong, and the impact it has on language choices when addressing requests in English. Simulated open role-plays and retrospective interviews were used to explore the ways in which mainland Chinese undergraduates assess, plan and produce…

Culture-loaded words and expressions are loaded with specific national cultural information and indicate deep national culture. They are the direct and indirect reflection of national culture in the structure of words and expressions. The improper use of culture-loaded words often leads to misunderstanding in cross-cultural communication. However,…

The United Nations' declaration on climate change education in December 2014 has sparked a renewal of policies and programs initiated during the "Decade of Education for Sustainable Development" (DESD, 2005-2014), aimed at promoting awareness, understanding, and civic action for environmental sustainability within learning communities…