Two auditory ERP studies examined the role of animacy in sentence comprehension in Mandarin Chinese by comparing active and passive sentences in simple verb-final (Experiment 1) and relative clause constructions (Experiment 2). In addition to the voice manipulation (which modulated the assignment of actor and undergoer roles to the arguments),…

This study investigated cognitive factors that might influence Chinese EFL learners' argumentative essay writing in English. The factors that were explored included English (L2) language proficiency, Chinese (L1) writing ability, genre knowledge, use of writing strategies, and working memory capacity in L1 and L2. Data were collected from 136…

This dissertation reports the results of within-English structural priming experiments in language production which investigated the syntactic representations of English syntactic structures in three different bilingual groups: Japanese-English, Korean-English, and Mandarin Chinese-English bilinguals. Specifically, my dissertation research…

This paper on pedagogical training of TCFL (Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language) programs is based on the author's five-week study in the summer of 2008 at six Chinese universities. Based on class observations, interviews of teachers and students, and documents provided by the six universities, the author has found that their curriculum for…

Like many other developing countries around the world, China is witnessing a growing prominence of English in its school system. One immensely popular form of English provision in the country is Chinese-English bilingual education for majority-language students, which involves the varying use of English as a medium of instruction in the teaching…

This article details a mixed methods study conducted during the 2007-2008 academic year at the National Chengchi University (NCCU) in Taipei Taiwan. It contributes to discourse examining the opportunities and challenges of international student enrollments in institutions of higher learning around the globe. In scope it details an empirical study…

Research has demonstrated that second language immersion is an effective means of facilitating primary school students' second language without undermining competence in their first language. Despite the rapid growth of English immersion (EI) programmes in China, only limited empirical research has been conducted to evaluate students' academic…

Repeated reading, a procedure involving repetition of the same text, has received copious attention from first language reading research providing highly converging evidence of its potency for reading fluency, accuracy, and comprehension. In contrast, second language research on repeated reading has been scarce. The very few studies extant have,…

This study investigated the effects of dialogic parent-child reading in English on 51 Hong Kong kindergarteners learning English as a second language. Children were pre-tested on nonverbal IQ, reading interest and receptive vocabulary, word reading and phonological awareness in both Chinese and English. They were then assigned randomly to one of…

Information provided by examination of the skills that underlie holistic scores can be used not only as supporting evidence for the validity of inferences associated with performance tests but also as a way to improve the scoring rubrics, descriptors, and benchmarks associated with scoring scales. As fluency is considered a critical, perhaps…

This paper is a situated biographical reflection on the author's Hong Kong teaching experience written using a narrative inquiry approach, describing attempts to generate innovative pedagogical practices. The journey explores how autocratic, traditional Chinese cultural expectations in Hong Kong education have nurtured a commonsense belief in…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate rapid automatized naming skills (RAN) and immediate memory processes in 243 Chinese Mandarin-speaking elementary readers (ranging from Grade 1 to Grade 5). For RAN subtests, the mean naming time decreased monotonically with grade level in good and average readers, and a similar trajectory was found in poor…

The present study sought to identify cognitive abilities that might distinguish Hong Kong Chinese adolescents with and without dyslexia and examined the cognitive profile of dyslexic adolescents in order to better understand this important problem. The performance of 27 Chinese adolescents with childhood diagnoses of dyslexia was compared with 27…

Whether and to what extent conceptual structure is universal is of great importance for understanding the nature of human concepts. Two major factors that might affect concepts are language and culture. The authors investigated whether these 2 factors affect concepts of everyday objects in any significant ways. Specifically, they tested (a)…

Many novice language teachers have difficulty putting into practice their developing knowledge of language teaching. This article focuses on one of seven case study teachers as an exemplar of those involved in a New Zealand in-service professional development program for teachers of languages (Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Spanish) in…