Chinese writing is one of the most difficult challenges for Chinese learners whose first language writing system is alphabetic letters. Chinese teachers have incorporated computer-based writing into their teaching in the attempt to reduce the difficulties of writing in Chinese, with a particular emphasis on composing (as opposed to simply writing…

The current study explored the personal and contextual influences that contribute to a Chinese-American undergraduate students' career decision-making process. The goal of the study was to determine if discrimination, personal interests, family conflict, and information seeking behaviors would significantly predict for one's level of career…

This article reports results of a corpus-based evaluation of 14 syntactic complexity measures as objective indices of college-level English as a second language (ESL) writers' language development. I analyzed large-scale ESL writing data from the Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners (Wen, Wang, & Liang, 2005) using a computational system…

Purpose: The Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) is a quantitative instrument for collecting student feedback on programme quality that has been tested and practically used in Western university response-contexts. The purpose of this paper is to adapt and partially validate a Chinese translation of the CEQ, for application in the new context of…

Previous literature in alphabetic languages suggests that the occipital-temporal region (the ventral pathway) is specialized for automatic parallel word recognition, whereas the parietal region (the dorsal pathway) is specialized for serial letter-by-letter reading (and). However, few studies have directly examined the role of the ventral and…

This study compares the development and use of evaluative expressions in the English narratives elicited from 80 Chinese-English bilinguals and 80 American monolingual peers at four ages--five, eight, ten, and young adults--using the wordless picture book "Frog, where are you?" (Mayer, 1969). Results revealed both similarities and differences…

The Internet has changed many people's lives, in both positive and negative ways. The Taiwan Ministry of Education has recognized the Internet's possible risks and has initiated the island-wide "Teacher Awareness of Internet Safety" (TAIS) project for elementary and middle school teachers since 2000. TAIS project is the first…

Parents and early childhood teachers in Chinese societies and the United States have had dissimilar views about appropriate art instruction for young children. The Chinese view is that creativity will emerge after children have been taught essential drawing skills. The American view has been that children's drawing skills emerge naturally and that…

Motivation to learn a second language (L2) is considered a crucial individual factor in explaining success or lack thereof in second language learning. This study examined learners' motivation to learn Chinese as a second language (L2). The study was longitudinal and cross sectional. Interviews were conducted with learners at different year levels…

Eighty-five Hong Kong Chinese children were tested across both the 2nd and 3rd years of kindergarten (ages 4-5 years) on tasks of inhibitory control, working memory, vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and word reading. With age, vocabulary knowledge, and metalinguistic skills statistically controlled, the…

New York City sets itself apart from many locations in the USA due to its citizens' unparalleled diversity. The degree to which schools either build upon or suppress the backgrounds of their linguistically and culturally diverse students is dependent on the degree to which they can provide an education that is both bilingual and multicultural.…

This study investigated the effectiveness of the integrative perceptual approach (IPA) to enhancing Hong Kong kindergarten children's Chinese character learning. The study applied the IPA to an experimental group of 29 lower form (K2) children. A group of 30 upper form children taught via traditional methods the year before, served as the control…

This dissertation examines the particle "ye" in the IV century BCE Chinese Guodian manuscripts by providing a synchronic analysis of its functions and a diachronic hypothesis relating all functions to focus marking. I have subdivided the around 600 occurrences of "ye" into four main functions: focus marker, topic marker, clause connection…

This experiment investigated how two factors which relate to icon representations affected Taiwanese computer users. These were: alphabetic or non alphabetic representations and cultural or standard imagery. Alphabetic representations are representations which show Chinese characters or English words/letters. Non alphabetic representations are…

One of the difficulties in learning Chinese characters is distinguishing similar characters. This can cause misunderstanding and miscommunication in daily life. Thus, it is important for students learning the Chinese language to be able to distinguish similar characters and understand their proper usage. In this paper, the authors propose a game…