This study investigated an emerging language learning culture by examining the relationship between teachers' pedagogical beliefs and perceived efficacy in two cities in southern Texas. Drawing on Bandura's (1994) theory of self-efficacy and Ashton and Webb's (1986) notions about teacher efficacy, a multi-sited case study was conducted to explore…

The qualitative research describes the experience of an instructor, participants, and researcher in a community college-based Chinese language class. Tse's (2000) Foreign Language Autobiographies (FLA), classroom observations, student vignette interviews and observations accompanied by field notes were the sources of data for this study.…

Built from data collected through three-phase in-depth interviews, this study explores from cultural and social perspectives why Chinese students may initially be termed silent participants when they first commence group work with western students; and then examines the impact of cultural interaction through group work on their adjustment.…

This quantitative study examines current practice and challenges of Chinese-English bilingual education in Chinese tertiary institutions and presents a case study of a bilingual course by investigating learners' attitudes toward this educational and language policy. Using a convenience sampling strategy with an instrument modified from a…

It is generally accepted that cognitive ability predicts academic achievement, and that parental involvement and expectations form part of the constellation of factors that predict their children's academic achievement, particularly for families within the Chinese-heritage Cultures. Although a number of interactions between these parental factors…

Lexical-tone languages use fundamental frequency (F0/pitch) to convey word meaning. About 41.8% of the world's languages use lexical tone (Maddieson, 2008), yet those systems are under-studied. I aim to increase our understanding of speech-sound inventory organization by extending to tone-systems a model of vowel-system organization, the Theory of…

This dissertation examines the effects of semantic and phonetic radicals on Chinese character decoding by high-intermediate level Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) learners. The results of the main study (discussed in Chapter #5) suggest that the CFL learners tested have a well-developed semantic pathway to recognition; however, their…

The dissertation examines the resultatives in Mandarin Chinese (henceforth Mandarin) and Taiwanese Southern Min (henceforth Taiwanese), a notoriously difficult construction that has drawn extensive attention in the literature. With a microparametric approach, I offer a syntactic analysis for two kinds of resultatives, phrasal resultatives and…

While the auditory-only aspects of Mandarin speech are heavily-researched and well-known in the field, this dissertation addresses its lesser-known aspects: The visual and audio-visual perception of Mandarin segmental information and lexical-tone information. Chapter II of this dissertation focuses on the audiovisual perception of Mandarin…

While the number of studies on pragmatic development has been increasing since Kasper and Schmidt's call for more research into this under-researched area (e.g., [Barron, A., 2003. Acquisition in Interlanguage Pragmatics: Learning How to do Things with Words in a Study Abroad Context. Benhamins, Amsterdam; Achiba, M., 2003. Learning to Request in…

The use of a particular language as medium of instruction (MOI) is a complex issue in multilingual and post-colonial contexts such as Hong Kong, on which teachers' voices are often neglected. To capture their voices, this paper reports on an interpretive inquiry of eight experienced Chinese teachers' professional experiences with a focus on their…

There are abundant studies on second/foreign language learners' identities. However, there appears to be insufficient longitudinal research on the construction of learners' L2 identities in systematic interactions between fixed dyads in an out-of-class context. Adopting a critical discourse analysis framework (Fairclough, 2003) and suitably…

Past research has tended to ignore the emergence or existence of "middle zone" varieties such as topolects or regiolects. In addition, attitudinal dynamics have received little attention, including their contribution towards the re-evaluation of the status of language varieties. Regarding the status of Cantonese, linguistic, political…

This study investigated the bi-directionality of language transfer (first language [L1] to second language [L2] and L2 to L1) at the pragmatic level with a focus on the speech act of request. The L2 participants were Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners at the intermediate and advanced levels. Data were collected via discourse…

Singapore's language policy has no place for either the various dialects of Chinese (the exception is Mandarin), or Singlish (a colloquial variety of English). These have been the targets of government campaigns that aim, as far as possible, to ensure that Singaporeans stop using them. However, it is interesting to observe that government…