Research with ESL students has begun to show that Chinese students experience particular challenges in English academic listening. This study focuses on their challenges as reported by Chinese ESL students in understanding English lectures. Seventy-eight Chinese ESL students at an American university participated in this study. This paper focuses…

By using an extended version of R. Treiman, M. Cassar, and A. Zukowski's (1994) flaps spelling task (wa_er, is it t or d in water?), the authors investigated the metalinguistic awareness of 6-year-old bilingual children from 3 different language backgrounds (LBs): English-LB (English-L1, Mandarin-L2), Chinese-LB (Mandarin-L1, English L2), and…

Chinese Americans' high levels of educational achievement have earned them attention as a "model minority" to be emulated by underachieving and underrepresented minority groups. However, the model minority analogy does not adequately explain how this achievement is realized, nor how such information can be used to help other groups close the…

Twelve languages--including the two prestigious colonial languages, English and French, a French-based creole and "ancestral" languages, such as Hindi and Mandarin--are spoken on the multiethnic island Mauritius. Given the multilingual and multiethnic nature of the nation, linguistic practices are an important way for Mauritians to…

This study investigated the effect of phonological sensitivity of two comparable groups of grades 4 and 5 Chinese children, one a Putonghua-speaking group ("n" = 77) from Beijing and the other a Cantonese-speaking group ("n" = 80) from Hong Kong on English and Chinese pseudoword reading. It was hypothesized that the Beijing…

This paper examines the linguistic landscapes of 15 Bangkok neighbourhoods to explore questions of language contact, language mixing and language dominance. It provides a linguistic framework for analysis of types of codemixing. It highlights the importance and influence of English as a global language. It examines the signs from government…

The historical development of written Japanese has resulted in an extremely complex system. Modern Japanese is usually written in logosyllabic script consisting of a combination of "kanji," the Chinese characters, and "kana," the Japanese syllables originally formed from them. There are two types of "kana," the…

Rapid changes in language form and function occurring in digital environments present teachers and students of second languages alike with conundrums as to language and discourse standards. Factors affecting the changes that are emerging in digital English include the spatial and temporal possibilities and constraints of the medium, digital…

Culture plays a vital role in second language learning. This paper presents an action research study that investigates the role of culture in a Chinese language program in a kindergarten classroom. Three topics have been explored: (a) culture as the core in the development of a thematic unit on Chinese festivals, (b) a culturally responsive…

One of the difficulties secondary non-Chinese-speaking background (NCSB) learners are facing is to remember the characters learned in order to recall them when necessary. The traditional way of teaching secondary NCSB learners to remember Chinese characters is through mere repetition, e.g. writing out each single character by following its stroke…

This study examines the intergenerational cultural conflict experienced by Chinese adolescents from immigrant families, and its consequences for their adjustment. Intergenerational cultural conflict is assessed as the mismatch between adolescents' ideals and perceptions of parental warmth. The extent and consequences of such mismatches for these…

The purpose of this study was to conduct psychometric testing on the Chinese version of the decisional balance scale (CDBS) with Taiwanese seventh, eighth, and ninth graders who were recruited from the Taipei metropolitan area. A random cluster sampling method was used with 554 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 17 years. Factor analysis…

Hepatitis B (HBV) infection is a serious health problem among Asian Americans, including Chinese Americans. This study was conducted to measure the perceptions of risk, barriers, and self-efficacy of HBV screening and vaccination in Chinese immigrants. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 429 Chinese Americans in New York City. A…

Research conducted in the context of the IELTS Research Program indicates that there are recurrent features in the writing under test conditions of candidates from Chinese language backgrounds, particularly in terms of interpersonal tenor. These include a high level of interpersonal reference, combined with a heavily dialogic and hortatory style.…

How are metalinguistic skills associated with vocabulary knowledge in languages with contrasting phonological and morphological properties? To address this question, tasks of phonological awareness and morphological awareness, other reasoning and literacy-related skills, and measures of vocabulary knowledge in Chinese and English, were…