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…

To evaluate the sensitivity of multiple-choice cloze (MCC) tests that use different types of items--syntactic, semantic, and connective--to assess reading ability, 170 English as a foreign language (EFL) students in a vocational college in Taiwan were recruited. The students were divided into two groups (level A and level B) based on their scores…

Translation ability requires many language skills to produce an accurate and complete text; however, one important skill, critical reading in the research, has been neglected. This research, therefore, employed the explanatory sequential mixed method to investigate the differences in Thai-English translation ability between students with a high…

A continuation task provides learners with a text with its ending removed and requires them to complete it through writing in a most coherent and logical way. The current study investigated (a) whether the continuation task had a positive effect on text cohesion and (b) whether texts produced by pairs exhibited higher cohesion than those produced…

Central to argumentative writing is the proper use of epistemic devices (EDs), which distinguish writers' opinions from facts and evaluate the degree of certainty expressed in their statements. Important as these devices are, they turn out to constitute a thorny area for non-native speakers (NNS). Previous research indicates that Chinese EFL…

Generative semantics is (or perhaps was) a research program within linguistics, initiated by the work of George Lakoff, John R. Ross, Paul Postal and later McCawley. The approach developed out of transformational generative grammar in the mid 1960s, but stood largely in opposition to work by Noam Chomsky and his students. The nature and genesis of…

The study aims to investigate to what extent Chinese EFL learners' language use is influenced by English textbooks. Such influence may suggest the existence of lexical priming effects. Based on detailed and systematic analysis of a learner English corpus, in comparison with a textbook corpus, the present study revealed striking similarities of the…

This study introduced the specific purpose translation teaching to Indonesian undergraduate students at Universitas Al-Azhar Medan, Indonesia. The courses were attended by the Business and Economics students who are new to translation. As parallel corpus, bilingual contract documents in Indonesian and English were chosen to help the students to…

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…

Extensive studies have been conducted regarding mother tongue (L1) interference and developing English writing skills. This study, however, aims to investigate the influence of the Spanish language on second language (L2) writing skills at several Ecuadorian senior high schools in Loja. To achieve this, 351 students and 42 teachers from second…

This paper reports a textual analysis of letters written by 21 male and 21 female participants in Persian. Each writer wrote two letters, one to a dating service and another one to a hypothetical person chosen and introduced by the center. Therefore, a total of 84 letters were collected from the participants. Schema theory was used to find the…

This study explored the effect of employing two language teaching approaches, i.e., schema-based instruction (SBI) and translation-based instruction (TBI) on the structure and vocabulary knowledge as well as reading comprehension ability of sixty undergraduate students studying general English in a medical school in Mashhad, Iran. While the SBI…

An achievement test based on schema theory (S-Test) was developed on the passages comprising the English textbook taught at grade three in state high schools in Iran and administered concurrently with a validated and reliable Social Capital Scale (SCS) to four hundred seventy seven male and female participants. The Z-scores obtained on the S-Test…

Based on a paper read at the third Annual Conference of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language in London, England, December 1969. (DS)