Background: This study screened children in Beijing, China, in order to establish the validity of a Mandarin Chinese translation of the ASSQ. Methods: We recruited children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), childhood-onset schizophrenia (COS) (DSM-IV diagnoses made independently by…

The purpose of this study was to examine second language learners' learning achievement and attitudes toward two different types of dual coding designs (text group: image plus on-screen text versus narration group: image plus narration) in Chinese character acquisition. A total of 66 college students who did not have prior knowledge of the Chinese…

Three-dimensional (3-D) multi-user virtual environments (3-D MUVEs) have been used to provide language learners with realistic scenarios in which verbal and non-verbal interactions are simulated. However, little is known of the underlying factors that shape interaction in avatar-based virtual worlds. This study examined the perceptions of 38…

The present study aimed to investigate the contribution of oral language skills, linguistic skills, and transcription skills to Chinese written composition among Grade 4 students in Hong Kong. Measures assessing verbal working memory, oral language skills, linguistic skills (i.e., syntactic skills and discourse skills), transcription skills (i.e.,…

"Jogi yuhak" (early study abroad) has become a prominent educational and linguistic investment strategy for middle-class Korean families to raise their children as global elites, allowing them to attain multilingual competence through transnational educational migration. Singapore, a newly emerging center of "jogi yuhak",…

The everyday reality of children's multilingualism is a significant resource for expanding students' perspectives on the world, but many questions remain regarding the negotiation of these resources in mainstream classrooms. Drawing on research from a long-term Canadian study of multiliterate pedagogies, this paper explores mediation of home…

While there has been an increase in students studying abroad in China, this increase has not been seen in the respective number of articles published in scholarly journals on education abroad in China. This paper summarizes articles from journals on the types of education abroad programs in China, organized by topic, and by the outcomes and…

This paper presents a comparative curricular inquiry of teacher education programs of Chinese as a foreign language in China and Australia. While there is an increasing demand for qualified Chinese language teachers both within China and Western countries, pre-service teacher training is regarded as one of the major factors in impeding success in…

This single site case study examines the ways a particular STEM school in its first year of operation meets the unique needs of freshmen students with disabilities (SWD). Specific research questions address primary supports and challenges to the learning of SWD, and the working relationship among general and special educators and administrators. A…

Little empirical research on bilingual beginning teachers has been conducted to examine their actual linguistic performance in the classrooms in Australia and other English-speaking countries. This study investigates the bilingual beginning Mandarin teachers' use of English in Mandarin classes in Australian primary and secondary schools, focusing…

Mandarin Chinese and many other tonal languages use tones that are defined as specific pitch patterns to distinguish syllables otherwise ambiguous. It had been shown that tones carry at least as much information as vowels in Mandarin Chinese [Surendran et al., 2005]. Surprisingly, though, many speech recognition systems for Mandarin Chinese have…

Grammatical metaphor is the term used by Halliday to refer to meaning transference in grammar. Instead of the congruent realization of a norm, the metaphorical representation has become the norm in many instances. Metaphorical modes of expression are characteristic of all adult discourses (Halliday, 1994). The shift from congruent to metaphorical…

This dissertation measured the acoustic properties of the English fricatives and affricates produced by native and Chinese L2 speakers of English to identify the phonetic basis and sources of a foreign accent and to explore the mechanism involved in L2 speech production and L2 phonological acquisition at the segmental level. Based on a Network…

In a quantitative survey of religious attitudes and practices in a multi-religious sample of 369 school pupils aged between 13 and 15 in London, the presence of a home shrine was found widespread in 11% of adolescents spanning several religious affiliations and ethnicities--especially Buddhists, Hindus and those of Indian, Chinese and "Other…

The left mid-fusiform gyrus is repeatedly reported to be involved in visual word processing. Nevertheless, it is controversial whether this area responds to orthographic processing of reading. To examine this idea, neural activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging in the present study while subjects performed phonological,…