A recent hypothesis proposes that reading depends on writing in a logographic language--Chinese. We present a Chinese individual (HLD) with brain damage whose profile challenges this hypothesis. HLD was severely impaired in the whole process of writing. He could not access orthographic knowledge, had poor orthographic awareness, and was poor at…

The historical integration of the University of Mississippi (UM) brought both national and local attention when James Meredith was escorted by U.S. Marshals to enroll and attend classes on October 1, 1962 (Cohodas, 1997; Doyle, 2001; Eagles, 2009). Since the integration of UM, racial issues and efforts to promote racial reconciliation primarily…

This dissertation includes two studies: a pilot study on native-English-speaking preservice teachers' perceptions of learning a foreign language online and a follow-up study on inservice teachers' perceptions of transferring teacher linguistic, cultural and technological awareness into teaching practice. Conducted in 2010, the pilot…

This dissertation provides a language processing perspective on the study of second language acquisition (SLA) of tense and aspect. Of special interest are the universal vis-a-vis language-specific dimensions of temporal and aspectual semantics involved. According to the Aspect Hypothesis (AH, e.g. Andersen & Shirai, 1994), the initial…

Automated scoring by means of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) has been introduced lately to improve the traditional human scoring system. The purposes of the present study were to develop a LSA-based assessment system to evaluate children's Chinese sentence construction skills and to examine the effectiveness of LSA-based automated scoring function…

This study investigated the effects of English and Chinese phonological awareness (PA) and naming speed (NS) on English reading achievement and the evidence for cross-linguistic transfer in Chinese English-immersion students. English PA was a significant predictor of English reading achievement for immersion students in Grades 2 and 4. There was…

Purpose of the Study: Recent demographic growth of the U.S. Chinese aging population calls for comprehensive understanding of their unique health needs. The objective of this study is to examine the perceptions, social determinants of depressive symptoms as well as their impact on health and well-being in a community-dwelling U.S. Chinese aging…

This case study explored collaborative writing in Chinese among 59 primary four Chinese students using a "Wiki-based Collaborative Process Writing Pedagogy" (WCPWP) in Shenzhen, China. It aimed mainly to design and orchestrate a WCPWP in order to facilitate students' Chinese writing. It investigated students' collaborative writing…

It has been proposed that external interfaces are vulnerable to residue optionality, whereas pure syntax and internal interfaces are acquirable in second language (L2) acquisition (Sorace, 2005, 2011; Sorace and Filiaci, 2006). The proposal was tested in this article through the interpretation of overt and null embedded arguments in L2 Chinese…

Drawing on the notions of scale and space, this paper investigates identity construction among a group of mainland Chinese cross-boundary students by analysing their language choices and linguistic practices in a multilingual university in Hong Kong. The research illustrates how movement across spaces by these students produces varying index…

To test the lexical restructuring hypothesis among bilingual English-language learners, English phonological awareness (PA), English vocabulary and ethnic language vocabulary (Mandarin Chinese, Malay or Tamil) were assessed among 284 kindergarteners (168 Chinese, 71 Malays and 45 Tamils) in Singapore. A multi-level regression analysis showed that…

Derived from the Confucian educational tradition, the term "Tongshi" reflects a contemporary Chinese effort to break away from the former Soviet legacy and forge undergraduate curricula on the basis of a US general education model. In recent years, "Tongshi" education reform has entered the spotlight in Chinese universities as…

This study investigated whether raters' second language (L2) background and the first language (L1) of test takers taking the TOEFL iBT® Speaking test were related through scoring. After an initial 4-hour training period, a group of 107 raters (mostly of learners of Chinese, Korean, and Spanish), listened to a selection of 432 speech samples that…

As Mandarin gains popularity in the whole world, Mandarin education becomes valued by the countries all over the world. The United Nations classifies Mandarin as one of the six major languages, and the number of people who learn Mandarin in the whole world grows with each passing day as the mainland China market grows. This study discusses the…

The aim of this article is to illustrate the use of the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) with a Cantonese-Putonghua speaker. We describe G, who is a relatively young Chinese bilingual speaker with aphasia. G's communication abilities in his L2, Putonghua, were impaired following brain damage. This impairment caused specific difficulties in…