Research productivity is an important criterion for the university to assess teachers. Studies about factors that affect teachers’ research productivity are increasing nowadays. It is generally agreed that academics’ research productivity depends on how much mentorship is provided to them and how the current working environment is mediated by their research motivation and self-efficacy. Despite the increasing amount of the literature along this line, we know little about what kinds of situations that Chinese university English as a (...) foreign language (EFL) teachers are in and how they regard the importance of mentorship and what roles their working environments would play in affecting their research productivity. To fill the research gap, we utilized the snowball method to collect the survey data from 546 Chinese EFL tertiary teachers. The results show that mentorship is not correlated with research productivity while the working environment has a positive direct correlation with it. Both motivation and self-efficacy mediate the working environment and research productivity significantly. Specifically, only extrinsic motivation has a negative mediation influence on teachers’ research productivity; teachers’ intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy play a positive mediation role in affecting their research productivity. (shrink)

Researchers have suggested that ethical judgments about “right” and “wrong” are the result of deep and thoughtful principles and should therefore be consistent and not influenced by factors, such as language :e94842, 2014b, p. 1). As long as an ethical scenario is understood, individuals’ resolution should not depend on whether the ethical scenario is presented in their native language or in a foreign language. Given the forces of globalization and international convergence, an increasing number of accountants and accounting students are (...) becoming proficient in more than one language, and they are required to interpret and apply complex ethical pronouncements issued by various global standard setters both in their native language and in English. There have been calls in the literature to examine whether subjects make systematically different ethical judgments in a foreign language than in their native language. We contribute to the literature by drawing on culture, linguistics, and psychology research to provide empirical evidence that Chinese subjects are more aggressive in interpreting the concept of control when providing their consolidation reporting recommendations in English than in Simplified Chinese. We applied a 2 × 2 within-subject and between-subject randomized experimental design using a sample of Chinese final year undergraduate accounting students at a leading Chinese university, where accounting courses are taught in both Simplified Chinese and English. Students in our study are proxy for entry-level accounting practitioners. Our findings have implications for the globalized business world and cross-cultural research by challenging the commonly held assumption that an individual’s ethical judgment is consistent in different languages. We suggest that systematically different ethical judgments in native and foreign languages needs to be recognized. (shrink)

The Records of Mazu and the Making of Classical Chan Literature explores the growth, makeup, and transformation of Chan (Zen) Buddhist literature in late medieval China. The volume analyzes the earliest extant records about the life, teachings, and legacy of Mazu Daoyi (709-788), the famous leader of the Hongzhou School and one of the principal figures in Chan history. While some of the texts covered are well-known and form a central part of classical Chan (or more broadly Buddhist) (...) literature in China, others have been largely ignored, forgotten, or glossed over until recently. Poceski presents a range of primary materials important for the historical study of Chan Buddhism, some translated for the first time into English or other Western language. He surveys the distinctive features and contents of particular types of texts, and analyzes the forces, milieus, and concerns that shaped key processes of textual production during this period. Although his main focus is on written sources associated with a celebrated Chan tradition that developed and rose to prominence during the Tang era (618-907), Poceski also explores the Five Dynasties (907-960) and Song (960-1279) periods, when many of the best-known Chan collections were compiled. Exploring the Chan School's creative adaptation of classical literary forms and experimentation with novel narrative styles, The Records of Mazu and the Making of Classical Chan Literature traces the creation of several distinctive Chan genres that exerted notable influence on the subsequent development of Buddhism in China and the rest of East Asia. (shrink)

In the last 20 years, much attention has been paid to learners’ demotivation. Researchers have conducted many studies on second/foreign language learning demotivation from the perspectives of social culture, social psychology, and so forth. In China, related studies have mainly focused on college students’ demotivation; scant attention has been paid to senior high school students. Regarding scale development, although much progress has been made, there remains a need for a scale with high reliability and validity that is suitable for students (...) in the basic education stage. Therefore, based on previous studies and choosing Chinese senior high school students as participants, this research study developed a scale with 55 items, and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to develop a 28-item scale with six dimensions. The six-dimensional construct encompasses teacher knowledge, important others, teacher responsibility, learner-related factors, learning contents, and critical incidents, which are the key factors leading to English learners’ demotivation. Among them, the factor of critical incidents is new and has been overlooked by other researchers. Moreover, the descriptive analysis demonstrated the degree to which the demotivators influence learners, and the independent samplest-test found a significant difference in the impact of critical incidents in terms of the students’ language proficiency. Ultimately, four suggestions are put forward to remotivate and sustain learners’ motivation. (shrink)

Reading-to-write is an essential skill in academic writing, and reading-writing tasks have been widely adopted in standardized English tests. Much more recent literature on integrated reading-writing tasks has focused on writers’ use of source texts or the validity of integrated writing assessment, while little is known about whether the nature of the types of reading texts has any bearing on integrated reading-writing tasks. This study examines whether the types of reading texts (i.e., similar views or opposing views on (...) a debatable issue) have any influence on second language (L2) students’ argumentative writing in terms of the use of argument elements and its overall quality. Fifty-four Chinese second-year university students majoring in English language teaching were asked to write an argumentative essay after reading texts with either similar views or opposing views. Results show that students reading texts with opposing viewpoints presented more data and higher overall quality of argumentative essays than students reading texts with similar viewpoints, although the latter group presented more counterargument data. Pedagogical implications on teaching argumentative writing are discussed. (shrink)

One of the significant courses in Chinese universities is English. This course is usually taught by a foreign language instructor. There will, however, necessarily be some communication hurdles between “foreign language teachers” and “native students.” This research presents an emotion recognition method for foreign language teachers in order to eliminate communication barriers between teachers and students and improve student learning efficiency. We discovered four factors of emotion recognition through literature analysis: smile, eye contact, gesture, and tone. We (...) believe that differences in foreign language teachers’ performance in these four areas will have an impact on students’ emotion recognition and, as a result, on their learning efficiency. The influence of the foreign language teacher’s eye contact and gestures is larger in the decision whether can improve the students’ classroom learning efficiency, according to 43 of the questionnaire data analysis. The second is the tone and smile. Our research contributes to the body of knowledge on emotion recognition in university foreign language teachers by presenting a practical method for recognizing emotion in foreign language teachers. We recommend that college foreign language teachers pay attention to eye and gesture communication with students in English classrooms based on the findings. By enriching the style of emotional expression in class, college language teachers, particularly foreign language teachers, can improve communication, and connection with students. (shrink)

This review aims to identify key cultural factors that affect translation quality and propose strategies to enhance accuracy in cross-cultural translation. A programmatic method is a viable culture competency approach that involves learning by participating, interacting, and immersing in the target culture through intercultural exchange programs or by interacting with native speakers. The analysis begins with data extraction, where valuable information is collected from selected articles on author(s), publication year, research design, methodology, findings, and translation practice implications. the results are (...) synthesized to provide a comprehensive overview of the themes and patterns that emerged from the data, presented in a narrative format. NVivo or similar software will be used to facilitate data analysis, coding, and theme identification. Your conclusion provides a comprehensive overview of the importance of cultural awareness in translation and offers practical solutions for enhancing translation accuracy in cross-cultural contexts. (shrink)

Second language listening is a common challenge for language learners. It remains largely unknown how bilinguals process L2 listening. The literature has suggested an interactive model of L2 listening processing. However, few studies have examined the model from an experimental approach. The current study tried to provide empirical evidence for the interactive model of L2 listening processing in bilinguals by exploring the relationships among English spoken word segmentation, cognitive inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and L2 listening proficiency. The results showed (...) positive associations among SWS, cognitive inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and L2 listening proficiency. Mediation analysis suggested that SWS might have a positive influence on L2 listening proficiency both directly and indirectly through cognitive inhibition and cognitive flexibility, respectively. These results imply that both bottom-up and top-down processes are engaged in bilinguals’ L2 listening processing. (shrink)

Languages differ systematically in how to encode a motion event. English characteristically expresses manner in verb root and path in verb particle; in Chinese, varied aspects of motion, such as manner, path and cause, can be simultaneously encoded in a verb compound. This study investigates whether typological differences, as such, influence how first and second language learners conceptualise motion events, as suggested by behavioural evidences. Specifically, the performance of Chinese learners of English, at three proficiencies, was (...) compared to that of two groups of monolingual speakers in a triads matching task. The first set of analyses regarding categorisation preferences indicates that participants across groups preferred the path-matched (rather than manner-matched) screens. However, the second set of analyses regarding reaction time suggests, firstly, that English monolingual speakers reacted significantly more quickly in selecting the manner-matched scenes compared with monolingual speakers of Chinese, who tended to use an approximately equal amount of time in making manner- and path-matched decisions, a finding that can arguably be mapped onto the typological difference between the two languages. Secondly, the pattern of response latency in low-level L2 learners looked more like that of monolingual speakers of Chinese. Only at intermediate and advanced levels of acquisition did the behavioural pattern of L2 learners become target-like, thus suggesting language-specific constraints from the L1 at an early stage of acquisition. Overall, our results suggest that motion event cognition may be linked to, among other things, the linguistic structure of motion description in particular languages. (shrink)

We contribute to the literature on intentions to report wrongdoing by examining whether Chinese internal auditors make consistent judgments when an ethical dilemma is presented in English and when the same dilemma is presented in Chinese. We invoke cultural frame switching theory, and our findings, which are based on a randomized experiment using between-subjects and within-subject mixed design, support the hypothesis that Chinese internal auditors are more likely to report wrongdoing when the ethical dilemma is (...) presented in English than when it is presented in Chinese. Our results, which demonstrate that internal auditors make inconsistent ethical judgments in English and Chinese, point to language-triggered cognitive bias resulting from cultural mindsets. We suggest practical interventions and language strategies to improve audit quality. (shrink)

This study analyses the influence and infection of traditional Chinese culture, starting from the cultural influence of ancient Chinese poetry and literature, and explores the impact and healing effect of traditional Chinese poetry and literature on college students’ psychological anxiety. Combining with traditional Chinese culture, it proposes intervention and treatment strategies for college students’ psychological anxiety. Through volunteer recruitment, 100 college students were recruited for comparative experiments, and the subjects were divided into an experimental (...) group and a control group. The experimental group participants regularly participate in Chinese ancient poetry and literature appreciation courses during the experimental period, and form an ancient poetry and literature learning group for discussion and learning. Research has found that psychological anxiety is a common psychological problem among contemporary college students, with most of them experiencing varying degrees of psychological anxiety. After the experiment, the number of patients with severe anxiety disorder decreased by 64.21%, while the number of patients with moderate anxiety disorder decreased by 57.36%. Under the artistic influence of traditional Chinese culture, the anxiety state of students with mental anxiety has been significantly improved, and the overall satisfaction score of students with treatment intervention plans is relatively high. Contribution: This study uses the profound historical heritage of Chinese ancient poetry and literature to help contemporary college students adjust their psychological state and reach the psychological adjustment under the infection of Chinese tradition culture. During the learning and appreciation of Chinese ancient poetry, literature and culture, students can comprehend the literature advancement in Chinese society, also influenced by the excellent traditional Chinese culture, for enhancing the humanistic quality and mental health level. The results of this study can be utilised by scholars in the field of the psychology of religion and public theology. (shrink)

In the long river of human history, if one person can represent the civilization of a whole nation, it is perhaps Master Kong, better known as Confucius in the West. If there is one single book that can be upheld as the common code of a whole people, it is perhaps Lun Yu, or The Analects. Surely, few individuals in history have shaped their country's civilization more profoundly than Master Kong. The great Han historiographer, Si-ma Qian, writing 2,100 years ago (...) said, "He may be called the wisest indeed!" And, as recently as 1988, at a final session of the first international conference of Nobel prize-winners in Paris, the seventy-five participants, fifty-two of whom where scientists, concluded: "If mankind is to survive, it must go back twenty- five centuries in time to tap the wisdom of Confucius." This a man whose influence in world history is truly incomparable. His sayings form the basis of a distinct social, ethical, and intellectual system. They have retained their freshness and vigor for two and a half millennia, and are still admired in today's China. Compiled by pupils of Confucius's disciples half a century after the Master's death, The Analects of Confucius laid the foundation of his philosophy of humanity--a philosophy aimed at "cultivating the individual's moral conduct, achieving family harmony, bringing good order to the state and peace to the empire. Containing 501 very succinct chapters and organized into twenty books, the collection comprises mostly dialogues between the Master and his disciples and contemporaries. The ethical tenets Confucius put forth not only became the norm of conduct for the officialdom and intelligentsia, but also profoundly impacted the behavior of the common people. The great sage's unique integration of humanity and righteousness struck a powerful chord in all who attempted to understand his moral philosophy. As translator Chichung Huang contends, "What ethical principle laid down by man could be more sensible that none which blends the best our heart can offer with the best our mind can offer as the guiding light for our conduct throughout our lives?" Ever timely, Confucius's teachings on humanity and righteousness may well serve as a ready-made cure for today's ills in an era which human beings are blinded by force and lust, not unlike Confucius's own day. Far more literal than any English version still in circulation, this brilliant new rendition of The Analects helps the reader not only to acquire and accurate and lucid understanding of the original text, but also to appreciate the imagery, imagery, parallelism, and concision of its classical style. The translator Chichung Huang, a Chinese scholar born in a family of Confucian teachers and schooled in one of the last village Confucian schools in South China, brings to this treasure of world literature a sure voice that captures the power and subtleties of the original. Vivid, simple, and eminently readable, this illuminating work makes the golden teachings of the sage of the East readily available to anyone in search of them. (shrink)

Mobile English learning has multiple advantages and brings enormous benefits to EFL learners. However, not everyone adopts it, and the determinants of learners’ adoption intention have not yet been investigated fully. This study aimed to better understand learners’ adoption by employing the theory of planned behaviour in conjunction with the influences of technostress and compatibility. Based on existing literature, a research model was proposed and verified with a sample of 409 undergraduates from a Chinese university. The results (...) indicated that in the context of mobile English learning: Individuals with higher adoption intention are more likely to engage in mobile English learning with higher frequency. Practical implications related to mobile English learning were discussed. (shrink)

It has been a growing trend in Chinese universities to shift from English for general purposes to English for specific purposes teaching. Against this background, large groups of teachers previously engaged in teaching EGP have become or are becoming ESP teachers, which means a complex process of learning for subject-specific information, transforming teaching practices and constructing new identities. Despite this, very little has been written about the ESP teacher cognition of language teaching or the factors influencing this (...) shift in teaching. This study involved English for Medical Purposes teachers in Chinese universities as participants, and a scale of EMP TC with 31 items was developed on the basis of questionnaire results. Data from exploratory factor analysis revealed six dimensions of the scale, namely, teacher attitude, teacher belief, teacher learning, teacher support, role identification, and teacher practice—that combine to constitute and influence EMP TC. While the identity factor has attracted wide attention in ESP teacher research, other factors have largely been neglected. Thus, this research highlights the importance of more factors in shaping and changing the language teaching cognition of EMP or ESP teachers in large, especially the teacher belief factor. In addition, results of independent samples t-tests indicated significant difference in EMP teacher learning in terms of gender, differences in EMP teacher attitude and teacher support in terms of EMP teaching experience. Suggestions for enhancing EMP TC are offered on the basis of the conclusions of this research. (shrink)

This study investigated the possible prosodic transfer influences native regional dialects may have in the perception of English lexical stress by speakers of three Chinese dialects [Beijing (BJ), Changsha (CS), and Guangzhou (GZ)] compared to 20 American English (AE) speakers. F0, duration, intensity, and vowel reduction were manipulated in nonce disyllabic words. Participants performed four-word sequence recall tasks to identify lexical stress location. They performed better with natural sounds than with manipulated words. This study focused on the (...) performance differences in manipulating words. The results showed that all four-group members performed similarly processing F0 condition nonce words. BJ and CS participants were more accurate than GZ participants in duration and vowel reduction cues. Reaction time (RT) suggested that the processing time of acoustic cues differed significantly across language groups. The findings indicate that first language (L1) dialect effect is robust in second language (L2) stress perception tasks. (shrink)

Many studies have linked idealized body image on social media to negative psychological well-being among young females. However, social media influencers’ imagery has not attracted much research attention in either the Western or the Asian context. This study aimed to experimentally investigate the impact of high versus low popular social media influencer images on young Chinese females’ body satisfaction and mood. The participants were 420 female RED users who were randomly assigned to three groups: the influencer-high group ; the (...) influencer-low group ; or a control set of nature images. The results revealed that the groups exposed to influencer imagery had lower body satisfaction and more negative mood than the control group. Notably, this comparison showed no significant difference between the low-influencer and high-influencer groups in body satisfaction and mood. Additionally, this effect was moderated by individuals’ self-discrepancy between personal ideals and their own bodies. That is, exposure to idealized body images does not always produce harmful effects. For those with lower self-discrepancy, idealized body posts somewhat positively affected their body satisfaction. The current research contributes to the media effect literature by providing critical new insights into the study of body image in the context of China. (shrink)

BackgroundThe concept of benefit sharing to enhance the social value of global health research in resource poor settings is now a key strategy for addressing moral issues of relevance to individuals, communities and host countries in resource poor settings when they participate in international collaborative health research.The influence of benefit sharing framework on the conduct of collaborative health research is for instance evidenced by the number of publications and research ethics guidelines that require prior engagement between stakeholders to determine the (...) social value of research to the host communities. While such efforts as the production of international guidance on how to promote the social value of research through such strategies as benefit sharing have been made, the extent to which these ideas and guidelines have been absorbed by those engaged in global health research especially in resource poor settings remains unclear. We examine this awareness among stakeholders involved in health related research in Kenya.MethodsWe conducted in-depth interviews with key informants drawn from within the broader health research system in Kenya including researchers from the mainstream health research institutions, networks and universities, teaching hospitals, policy makers, institutional review boards, civil society organisations and community representative groups.ResultsOur study suggests that although people have a sense of justice and the moral aspects of research, this was not articulated in terms used in the literature and the guidelines on the ethics of global health research.ConclusionThis study demonstrates that while in theory several efforts can be made to address the moral issues of concern to research participants and their communities in resource poor settings, quick fixes such as benefit sharing are not going to be straightforward. We suggest a need to pay closer attention to the processes through which ethical principles are enacted in practice and distil lessons on how best to involve individuals and communities in promoting ethical conduct of global health research in resource poor settings. (shrink)

The Qing dynasty scholar Wang Guowei 王國維 (1877–1927) has received little recognition in the English-speaking world, and even less in the philosophical community. Raised to be a Ruist (or Confucian) scholar official, he gave up this path to pursue the study of the “new learning” (xīnxué 新學) from the West and became enamored with German aesthetic philosophy, especially the works of Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. However, by the start of the modern Republic period in China, Wang had denounced (...) all his previous research interests and dedicated himself to “old learning” (jiùxué 舊學), fearing for the future of China’s traditions and cultures. Taking Wang Guowei as a case study, my dissertation functions as an exercise in decolonial philosophy, highlighting the impacts of coloniality on his thinking while attempting to revitalize his theories from the perspective of decoloniality. -/- The Introduction sets up this case study by clarifying the points laid out in the title: Who is Wang Guowei, what is coloniality, and why is this case study “philosophical?” To begin, it details the specifics of Wang’s life and explaining his approach to comparative thinking, which became a target of criticism for later Chinese thinkers, including Qian Zhongshu. Next, it offers an overview of the concept of coloniality, referring to thinkers such as Aníbal Quijano, Maria Lugones, Walter Mignolo and Nelson Maldonado-Torres. From this point, this chapter moves into the literature on colonialism in China, emphasizing Anne Reinhart’s understanding of China’s situation as one of “semi-colonialism.” To end, it briefly outlines the earliest and latest periods of Wang’s life, in order to bookend my own discussion, which focuses on the period after he became invested in new learning and before he abandoned it for old learning. -/- Part I centers on Wang’s philosophical essays, all of which were published in the journal Education World between 1903 and 1908. Chapter 1 focuses on Wang’s earliest writings on “philosophy” (zhéxué 哲學), wherein he aims to properly introduce this imported discipline to his peers and make them aware of its value. Chapter 2 concentrates on the earliest of Wang’s major philosophical influences: Kant and Schopenhauer. Although Wang was attracted to Kant’s demarcation of the limits of reason, he could not accept his reimagining of the demands of reason as regulative principles. And while he sympathized with Schopenhauer’s criticisms of Kantian philosophy, he eventually came to regard metaphysical pessimism and the will to life as flawed theories. Chapter 3 deals with the two thinkers who shaped Wang’s views the most in his later philosophical essays: Nietzsche and Schiller. After rejecting Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, Wang came under the influence of Nietzsche and adopted a psychophysiological worldview. However, even though he accepted Nietzsche’s conception of the will to power, he could not accept Nietzsche’s view of overcoming. For Wang, consolation is all we can hope for in this life, and the best means to attain it is through the creation and appreciation of art, which prompts him to look to Schiller and his doctrine of aesthetic education. -/- Part II revolves around Wang’s mature aesthetic writings, specifically his Remarks on Lyrics in the Human World (1908–1909), a work in the “remarks on lyrics” (cíhuà 詞話) genre of literary criticism, which he published just before the Qing dynasty fell in 1911. Under the influence of decoloniality, Chapter 4 examines this work through the lens of praxis, highlighting the specifics of the traditional “remarks on lyrics” genre. After discussing the unique praxical features of this work, Chapter 5 analyzes it through the lens of theory, discussing its most significant ideas, such as its reimagining of the beautiful and the sublime, and the concept of “poetic worlds” (jìngjiè 境界). -/- The Conclusion examines everything discussed in Chapters 1 through 5 from the perspective of coloniality. It begins by determining how, and to what extent, colonial modernity impacted Wang’s thinking, in terms of both theory and praxis. It then provides some ways in which Wang’s theories and practices can contribute to the development of intellectual “worlds otherwise.” Beyond this, it aims to demonstrate how investigating the scholarly endeavors of non-Western thinkers caught in confluence of tradition and modernity can give us glimpses of alternatives to our modern intellectual and ontological modalities, thereby furthering the movement of decoloniality. (shrink)

Cross-dressing, as a cultural practice, suggests gender ambiguity and allows freedom of self expression. Yet, it may also serve to reaffirm ideological stereotypes and the binary distinctions between male and female, masculine and feminine, homosexual and heterosexual. To explore the nature and function of cross-dressing in Chinese and Western cultures, this paper analyzes the portrayals of cross-dressing heroines in two Chinese stories: The Ballad of Mulan, and The Butterfly Lovers. Distorted representations in the English translated texts are (...) also explored.. (shrink)

During the COVID-19, online teaching has become a popular way of teaching in the world. Previous research on English language teachers’ emotional labor has not focused on the changes brought about by online teaching. Unlike the traditional physical teaching space, the emotional labor of English teachers teaching online changes with the daily use of online technological conditions. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the factors influencing teachers’ emotional labor in online teaching and the emotional labor dilemmas. We took (...) interviews with a group of English teachers in China (T1, T2, … T20) and found that their online teaching emotions were influenced by three main factors: the degree of adaptation to online teaching technology, the invisibility of the online teaching space, and the peripheral environment of the space in which the teachers were located. In addition, this study observed the online classrooms of the interviewees and found that the first two influences are at a priority level for Chinese English teachers, while whether the third factor can bring positive or negative emotions is often influenced by the nature of the emotions brought by the first two factors. In order to find a balance between norms and emotions, English teachers are often accompanied by emotional labor in their work. However, they face many dilemmas of choice and behavior during the emotional labor of teaching online: emotional rule dilemma, emotional expression dilemma and professional identity dilemma. The emergence of these dilemmas is directly related to the influencing factors. In conclusion, this article uses normative and emotional labor theories to explore how norms affect Chinese English teachers’ emotions when teaching online as a response to the question of why emotions need to be labored. Ultimately, this study offers some useful suggestions for language teachers’ emotional labor dilemmas. (shrink)

These two volumes are the first extensive study of the influence of Marsilio Ficino on major English poets. Ficino lived in Florence, Italy from 1433 to 1499. He introduced Plato to the Renaissance by his translations of the philosopher's complete works with detailed commentary. He wrote important works on astrology, a multi-volume work on Platonic Theology, and hundreds of brilliant public letters on a variety of subjects.

Considering the significant contribution of teachers’ professional triumph in the prosperity of students, the current study aims to investigate the existence of any relationship among three factors influencing teachers’ success: immunity, mindfulness, and engagement. Furthermore, we attempt to investigate whether English as a foreign language teachers’ immunity and mindfulness can predict their work engagement. To this end, a Likert-scale questionnaire including items on teacher immunity, mindfulness, and work engagement was distributed to 582 EFL teachers in China through the WeChat (...) application by employing a convenient sampling. To analyze the collected data, the Spearman Rho correlation index and linear multiple regression analysis are employed. The findings are that there does exist an indication of a direct relationship among EFL teachers’ immunity, mindfulness, and work engagement. Also, it is found that immunity and mindfulness can predict EFL teachers’ work engagement. The current study’s findings support the necessity of training language teachers to cope with the EFL context adversities. (shrink)

In "World Literature, Industrialization, and the Two Faces of Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction" Yiping Wang discusses contemporary Chinese science fiction against the backdrop of the influence of world literature and the development of industrialization in China. Wang argues that two sides represented respectively by Liu Cixin and Han Song constitute the feature of contemporary Chinese science fiction. The side characterized by the works of Liu Cixin is the close connection with world science fiction and the (...) positive attitude and consistency with technological innovation and industrialization in China while the other side has Han Song as its representative, whose works, with similarities to high literature of world canons and the mainstream Chinese literature, reflect on the development of technology and industrialization focusing on individuals and disasters in the shadow of modernization. These two sides join together in the illustration of the basic image of science fiction in contemporary Chinese literature. By absorbing the essence of world literature and echoing the concerns of the nation, contemporary Chinese science fiction surmounts the hierarchy of literary genres and make its way into the active center of world literature. (shrink)

Relevant research shows teachers’ “psychological power” plays a more essential role in promoting their professional development compared with the powers provided by various external factors, and it is therefore held that exploring college English teachers’ individual psychological power is of great significance. To this end, this study investigated college English teachers’ psychological empowerment via the development and validation of CETPE’s scale. Based on our literature review on psychological empowerment and analysis of teachers professional development’s status quo, we (...) made a working definition of CETPE as a system involving perception of their occupation, sense of competence, experiencing of autonomy, judgment of their impact and understanding of their status. In our study, firstly the literature review and the interview with 17 college English teachers were adopted to conceptualize the dimensions of CETPE, and an exploratory factor analysis of data was conducted from 227 college English teachers and then the subsequent confirmatory factor analysis of data collected from another sample of 1030 generated 15 items belonging to five factors. The findings reveal that CETPE is systematically composed of teachers’ positive perception and experience of work meaningfulness, teaching autonomy, occupational competence, professional impact and social status. This study provides a new path for teachers’ professional development via strengthening their intrinsic driving force and thus helps improve the college English teaching effects. (shrink)

In "Formations of World Literature and Shaw's The Man of Destiny in Chinese and Japanese Translation" Shunqing Cao and Xin Chen expand Franco Moretti's dictum that "world literature is not an object, it's a problem" to elaborate that the concept of world literature is in some sense a problematic one, which is itself under a process of problematization. Cao and Chen discuss how variation and heterogeneity contribute to a more in-depth understanding of formations of world (...) class='Hi'>literature. Taking the Bernar Shaw's The Man of Destiny they discuss the writer's presence in world literature from a bi-lateral perspective: Shaw's work in the English-speaking West and Shaw in Asia. For the former, Shaw stands in a specific place in recent postcolonial Irish Studies and thus raise problems for their research paradigm. For the latter, Cao and Chen present an analytical comparison between a Chinese and a Japanese translation of The Man of Destiny. Cao and Chen argue that by such a bilateral approach we may recognize the importance of heterogeneity so as to obtain further reflections on present discussions of world literature. (shrink)

Self-efficacy is crucial for successful self-regulated learning, particularly in an online environment, yet research on self-efficacy for online self-regulated learning has received relatively little empirical attention in the language education domain. In this study, we investigated the dynamic features of English as a Foreign Language university students’ self-efficacy for self-regulated learning in the online environment, and explored the influencing factors on SESRL. Multiple sources of data over a period of one semester were collected, analysed, and triangulated. Our results demonstrated (...) that most students displayed a relatively constant and high self-efficacy for self-regulated online learning, and that a few students also experienced an increased or decreased SESRL. Thematic analysis further revealed a variety of task-, learner-, course-, and technology-level factors contributing to learners’ self-efficacy beliefs for self-regulated online learning. Our findings thus offer pedagogical implications for self-regulated foreign language learning in an online context. (shrink)

This study explores the development of tourists’ confidence in Chinese culture through red tourism. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was adopted to analyze the survey data collected from red tourists in Wuxiang county, Changzhi, Shanxi province, China to examine the influence of a destination’s red cultural atmospherics on tourists’ confidence in Chinese culture. The results indicated that Wuxiang’s red cultural atmospherics composed of physical atmospherics, spiritual atmospherics and institutional atmospherics significantly influences tourists’ confidence in Chinese culture. (...) Tourists’ perception of red education and their red cultural identity mediate the impact of the destination’s red cultural atmospherics on tourists’ confidence in Chinese culture. These findings contribute to the red tourism literature by providing empirical support for building tourists’ confidence in Chinese culture through red tourism. The empirical results also offer managerial implications for red tourism destinations’ planning and management. (shrink)

The present study (N= 109) set out to examine the role of cross-linguistic differences as a source of potential difficulty in the acceptance and online interpretation of the English singulartheyby Chinese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners across two levels of second-language proficiency. Experiment 1 operationalized performance through an untimed acceptability judgment test and Experiment 2 through a self-paced reading task. Statistical analyses yielded an asymmetric pattern of results. Experiment 1 indicated that unlike native English (...) speakers who generally accepted the singulartheywith all antecedent types, two Chinese EFL groups consisting of English majors (higher level) and non-English majors (lower level) both rated it as the least acceptable pronoun regardless of their proficiency level. In contrast, Experiment 2 demonstrated that like native English speakers, both Chinese EFL groups were not disrupted in their reading by the use of the singulartheymost of the time, although its online interpretation was modulated by L2 proficiency levels of the participants. While the English majors were not affected by the use of the singularthey, the non-English majors spent a significantly longer time reading the latter region of the sentences where the singulartheywas used. In short, the results of the two experiments seem to indicate that under no time constraint, L2 speakers showed a heightened degree of grammar sensitivity, whereas when there was a time constraint, their grammatical sensitivity was reduced by a greater need to focus on meaning. The difficulty for Chinese EFL learners to acquire the singulartheymay be located at the restructuring of their existing knowledge of the plural feature ofthey[−PLURAL] in their mental lexicon and the adaptation to the sociocultural norms of the target language. The pedagogical implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

Speakers of different languages (e.g., English vs. Turkish) show a binary split in how they package and order components of a motion event in speech and co‐speech gesture but not in silent gesture. In this study, we focused on Mandarin Chinese, a language that does not follow the binary split in its expression of motion in speech, and asked whether adult Chinese speakers would follow the language‐specific speech patterns in co‐speech but not silent gesture, thus showing a (...) pattern akin to Turkish and English adult speakers in their description of animated motion events. Our results provided evidence for this pattern, with Chinese—as well as English and Turkish—speakers following language‐specific patterns in speech and co‐speech gesture but not in silent gesture. Our results provide support for the “thinking‐for‐speaking” account, namely that language influences thought only during online, but not offline, production of speech. (shrink)

Resumo: Com o aumento do intercâmbio cultural entre a China e o Ocidente, o inglês tem se tornado cada vez mais um curso obrigatório. Embora uma grande proporção de estudantes chineses tenha boa proficiência em inglês, suas habilidades comunicativas são muito pobres. Eles podem lutar para expressar-se efetivamente em inglês, devido às diferenças culturais entre a China e os países ocidentais. Como o ambiente de vida dos chineses é muito diferente do ambiente dos países ocidentais, os estudantes chineses geralmente seguem (...) sua própria cultura, enquanto aprendem inglês, ignorando a compreensão e a pesquisa das culturas de outros países. Como resultado, surgiu o chamado chinglês, no aprendizado do inglês. Superar essas dificuldades e aprender inglês mais preciso tornaram-se um desafio significativo na aprendizagem do inglês de hoje. Portanto, este artigo fornece uma análise detalhada das disparidades morais e culturais tradicionais entre a China e o mundo ocidental, explorando suas respectivas influências, positivas e negativas, na aquisição da língua inglesa. Além disso, o artigo conclui, sugerindo medidas adequadas para aumentar o impacto positivo das culturas chinesa e ocidental na aprendizagem de inglês. (shrink)

One of many writers inspired by Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, the German novelist Jean Paul Richter coined the term 'Shandean humour' in his work of aesthetic theory. The essays in this volume investigate how Sterne's humour functions, the reasons for its enduring appeal, and what role it played in identity-construction and in the representation of melancholy. In tracing its hitherto under-recognised impact both on literary writers, such as Jean Paul and Herman Melville, and on philosophers, including Hegel and Marx, the (...) collection reveals that Shandean humour is a Grenzgänger - a point of commerce not only between Anglophone and German discourses, but also between literature and philosophy.Klaus Vieweg is Professor of Philosophy at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena; James Vigus is postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of English and American Studies, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich; Kathleen M. Wheeler is Reader in English Literature at the University of Cambridge. (shrink)

Chinese culture is the aggregate term for the diverse behavioral norms and ideas that Chinese people share. A college English education can assist students learn about Chinese culture and promote it across the world. This paper explores the deep integration of Chinese culture into college English education through the lens of cross-cultural communication. Effective cross-cultural knowledge has become especially important in English language instruction as globalization encourages relationships between various cultures. This study investigates (...) how Chinese cultural components can enhance the learning process and help students become more culturally conscious by examining the present curricula, teaching strategies, and evaluation procedures in Chinese higher education institutions. The study emphasizes the relevance of giving students the tools for navigating cultural distinctions in English communication by examining instructional approaches that integrate Chinese literature, philosophy, and values. Integration of Chinese cultural viewpoints into the English language curriculum in an effort to create a more comprehensive learning environment that fosters intercultural competency in addition to language ability. The results show that a culturally responsive approach to teaching English in college can help students better appreciate the complexity of global communication as well as their own cultural identity, which will eventually help them become well-rounded, culturally aware people. (shrink)

Tome I: Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish and Dutch -- Tome II: English, A - K -- Tome III: English L-Z -- Tome IV: Finnish, French, Galician and German -- Tome V: Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian and Polish -- Tome VI: Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish and Swedish.

The era of the Tang dynasty was a period of great flourishing of all aspects of Chinese culture, when changes covered the most diverse spheres of philosophy, art and literature. The article examines the role played in this cultural transformation by translations from Sanskrit into Chinese of the religious and philosophical texts of Indian Buddhism. The specificity of the Chinese approach to the translation of Indian texts is demonstrated, when, at the initial stage, many works were (...) translated in a rather free style due to the lack of precisely established correspondences between Sanskrit and Chinese philosophical terms. The authors identify two additional factors that influenced the nature of the translations. Firstly, this is the requirement of compliance with the norms of public, mainly Confucian, morality. Secondly, the adaptation of the Indian philosophical context to the Chinese cultural and worldview traditions, which led to the emergence of new schools of religious and philosophical thought that were not known in India itself, such as Tiantai, Jingtu or Chan, each of which in its own way influenced the art of the Medieval China. Special attention is paid to the activities of the legendary translator, Xuanzang, whose travel to India gave a huge impetus to the development of Chinese philosophy in subsequent centuries, as well as to the contribution to Chinese culture and art, which was made by the translation activities of the three great teachers of the Tang era Shubhakarasimha, Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra. (shrink)

The Zhuangzi — an anthology of anonymous writings produced in China between the fourth and second centuries BC — is one of the world's great literary treasures and the single most important source for early Daoist philosophy. It has exerted a profound influence on Chinese thought, literature, and culture, inspiring philosophy, poetry, idioms, proverbs, and even visual art. -/- This volume provides a complete, annotated English translation of the Zhuangzi with a philosophical focus that guides readers in (...) understanding and appreciating the text's world of thought. Informed by traditional and recent scholarship, the translation presents the ideas, reasoning, and worldview of the Zhuangzi in smooth, idiomatic English carefully formulated to reflect the phrasing and philosophical nuances of the original Chinese. Providing a lucid, lively translation, this edition is a guidebook into the philosophy of the Zhuangzi. (shrink)

Motivation has been recognized as a vital component in successfully learning a second or foreign language. However, research on language learners’ motivation in a study abroad context requires more attention in an era in which international mobility is becoming a new normal. This study investigated 217 Chinese overseas university students’ L2 motivation during their one-year postgraduate study in the United Kingdom. by examining a range of motivational variables in relation to their motivated English language learning behaviors. Integrating results (...) from both questionnaires and interviews from nine participating students, the study revealed that international posture showed the strongest positive power, followed by the ideal L2 self, in explaining the learners’ willingness to communicate, frequency of communication, and intended learning effort. Additionally, instrumentality and parental encouragement exerted prominent promotional influence in shaping their intended learning effort. However, the ought-to L2 self-displayed a significant negative impact on their L2 learning in this study abroad context, and the role of attitudes toward L2 speakers/community and culture was not evident in this case. The findings shed light on a more comprehensive understanding of L2 motivation in a study abroad context, and offer insightful implications for English as a Foreign Language education in cultivating language learners’ motivation to prepare for study abroad. (shrink)

The present longitudinal survey study explored changes in and effects of foreign language classroom anxiety and listening anxiety on Chinese undergraduate students’ English proficiency over a semester in the COVID-19 context. A set of 182 matching questionnaires was collected from first-year undergraduate English as a foreign language learners at two time points of a 16-week semester. Analyses of the data revealed the following major findings: the participants experienced high levels of FLCA and FLLA both at the beginning (...) and end of the semester, neither of which changed significantly during the semester, FLCA and FLLA were highly positively related to each other, FLCA and FLLA significantly predicted students’ self-rated proficiency in listening and speaking English, and confidence in using English, efforts and motivation to learn English and interaction with instructors and peers mediated FLCA and FLLA to exert effects on students’ self-perceived proficiency in listening and speaking English. These findings indicate that the learning environment is critical in influencing the levels of and changes in FLCA and listening anxiety and that these two types of foreign language anxiety are serious issues in the pandemic foreign language learning context. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to investigate how the subjective impression of English speech would change when pause duration at punctuation marks was varied. Two listening experiments were performed in which written English speech segments were rated on a variety of evaluation items by both native-English speakers and non-native speakers (native-Chinese speakers and native-Japanese speakers). The ratings were then subjected to factor analysis. In the first experiment, the pauses in three segments were made into the (...) same durations, from 0.075 to 4.8 s. Participants rated the segments on 23 evaluation items on a rating scale from 1 to 10. A varimax rotation after PCA (principal component analysis) led to two factors that were related to speech style. These two factors could be interpreted as representing speech naturalness and speech rate. Speech segments with a pause duration of 0.6 s received the highest naturalness evaluation, while perceived speech rate decreased as the physical pause duration increased, without any changes in utterance segments. In the second experiment, a full-factorial design of pause durations (0.15, 0.3, 0.6, 1.2, and 2.4 s) within and between sentences, i.e., for commas and for periods, was implemented in two speech segments. The original speech segments and speech segments without any pauses were also included as control conditions. From ratings on 12 evaluation items, similar to Experiment 1, two factors representing speech naturalness and speech rate were obtained. The results showed again that the perceived speech rate decreased with an increase only in pause duration. As for speech naturalness, the highest evaluations occurred when pause durations were 0.6 s within sentences, and either 0.6 or 1.2 s between sentences. This recommends fixing all pause durations to 0.6 s as a practical way to train non-native speakers to make their spoken English appear more natural. (shrink)

During a period of political and social upheaval in China, the unconventional insights of the great Daoist Zhuangzi pointed to a way of living naturally. Inspired by his fascination with the wisdom of this sage, the immensely popular Taiwanese cartoonist Tsai Chih Chung created a bestselling Chinese comic book. Tsai had his cartoon characters enact the key parables of Zhuangzi, and he rendered Zhuangzi's most enlightening sayings into modern Chinese. Through Tsai's enthusiasm and skill, the earliest and core (...) parts of the Zhuangzi were thus made accessible to millions of Chinese-speaking people with no other real chance of appreciating this major Daoist text. Translated into English by Brian Bruya, the comic book is now available to a Western audience. The classical Chinese text of the selections of the Zhuangzi is reproduced in the margins throughout. Evoked by the translation and the playful cartoons is the spontaneity that Zhuangzi favors as an attitude toward life: abandon presuppositions, intellectual debates, and ambitions, he suggests, and listen to the "music of nature." With the writings attributed to Laozi, the Zhuangzi contributed to an alternative philosophical ideal that matched Confucianism in its impact on Chinese culture. Over the centuries this classical Daoism influenced many aspects of Chinese life, including painting, literature, and the martial arts. It had a particularly strong effect on Chan Buddhism. For this book, Donald Munro has written an afterword that places Daoism and the Zhuangzi in historical and cultural context. (shrink)

In a wholesale destructive or deconstructive critique of Western philosophical tradition, it is precisely this ethnocentric-phonocentric view of language that Jacques Derrida has chosen for his target. In Derrida’s critique, Hegel appears as one of the powerful enactors of that tradition yet peculiarly on the verge of turning away from it as “the last philosopher of the book and the first thinker of writing.”13 As Derrida sees it, phonocentrism in its philosophical dimension is also “logocentrism: the metaphysics of phonetic writing” (...) . Derrida makes it quite clear that such logocentrism is related to Western thinking and to Western thinking alone. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak points this out in the translator’s preface to Of Grammatology: “Almost by a reverse ethnocentrism, Derrida insists that logocentrism is a property of the West…. Although something of the Chinese prejudice of the West is discussed in Part I, the East is never seriously studied or deconstructed in the Derridean text” . As a matter of fact, not only is the East never seriously deconstructed but Derrida even sees in the nonphonetic Chinese writing “the testimony of a powerful movement of civilization developing outside of all logocentrism” . When he looks within the Western tradition for a breakthrough, he finds it in nothing other than the poetics of Ezra Pound and his mentor, Ernest Fenollosa, who built a graphic poetics on what is certainly a peculiar reading of Chinese ideograms:This is the meaning of the work of Fenellosa [sic] whose influence upon Ezra Pound and his poetics is well-known: this irreducibly graphic poetics was, with that of Mallarmé, the first break in the most entrenched Western tradition. The fascination that the Chinese ideogram exercised on Pound’s writing may thus be given all its historical significance. [P. 92]Since Chinese is a living language with a system of nonphonetic script that functions very differently from that of any Western language, it naturally holds a fascination for those in the West who, weary of the Western tradition, try to find an alternative model on the other side of the world, in the Orient. This is how the so-called Chinese prejudice came into being at the end of the seventeenth and during the eighteenth centuries, when some philosophers in the West, notably Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, saw “in the recently discovered Chinese script a model of the philosophical language thus removed from history” and believed that “what liberates Chinese script from the voice is also that which, arbitrarily and by the artifice of invention, wrenches it from history and gives it to philosophy” . In other words, what Leibniz and others saw in the Chinese language was what they desired and projected there, “a sort of European hallucination,” as Derrida rightly terms it. “And the hallucination translated less an ignorance than a misunderstanding. It was not disturbed by the knowledge of Chinese script, limited but real, which was then available” . Zhang Longxi is on the faculty of the Department of English Language and Literature at Peking University. He is the author of A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century Theories of Literature and is currently studying comparative literature at Harvard University. (shrink)

In light of current findings under the culture-driven view, the present article proposes a co-shaping interactive relation between the human brain and culture, and a further notion that semiosis actually serves as the central link that connects external models and internal models, initiating what is known as unlimited semiosis, which coincides with the neurological process of cognition. Empirical studies on the differences of neural activities pertaining to distinct cultural modeling systems, such as the Chinese orthography, the English and (...) the French alphabets, have also provided clear evidence that the human brain exists in an adaptive relation to the corresponding culture, in which semiosis proves to be one of the fundamental mechanisms of how culture exerts its influence. Besides the cultural specificity of semiosis and brain functions, this paper also proposes that it is essential to pay constant attention to semiosic individuality, as this will secure a comprehensive unbiased perspective of semiotic and cognitive studies. (shrink)

"What can we expect from the study of Chinese philosophy? « In the philosophical systems of the Hindoos and the Chinese there are still hidden treasures, in which the anticipation of scientific discoveries, the results of thousands of years of occidental research, is most striking. Such are the words of Edward von Hartmann, the most famous living German philosopher1. Much labour has been spent in Europe on the Indian Vedanta philosophy, which had such a marked influence on Arthur (...) Schopenhauer. « The Upanishads, says the author of the Parerga and Paralipomena, are the outcome of the highest human wisdom.... They afford the most remunerative and sublime reading possible in this world, which has been the consolation of my life, as it will be that of my death 2. I do not see why the many germs scattered over the vast field of Chinese philosophy should not have a similar fertilizing influence on some philosophical European mind also. The deep impression caused by the Tao-tê-king will support my view. But much work remains to be done before Chinese philosophy will take its proper place in the history of philosophy. The burden of this task lies with us who are living in China and studying her language and literature, for, while great care is bestowed on all her sister languages in Europe and America, Chinese, the oldest of all, but the youngest in the curriculum of our high-schools, is treated as a step-child by public opinion. This paper is meant as a move in the direction just indicated.". (shrink)

This study investigated the role of cross-linguistic influence in L2 learners’ integration of a verb and a construction during online English sentence processing. In a self-paced reading task, L1-English speakers and Chinese-L1 learners of English read the English double-object and prepositional dative constructions with verbs whose Chinese translation equivalents are either compatible or incompatible with each dative form. When including only a subset of trials for which participants provided expected translations for the target sentences (...) (i.e., translating the English prepositional dative construction into a Chinese prepositional dative sentence and translating the English double-object construction into a Chinese double-object sentence), the effect of cross-linguistic influence emerged only in a certain type of verbs. When including all trials in the analysis, we found the effect of cross-linguistic influence for all verb types. These results provide some evidence that the cross-linguistic activation of verbs can influence verb-construction integration in L2 processing. The study highlights how bilingual co-activation of verbs extends beyond the lexical and structural levels to influence the integration of multiple sources of information. (shrink)

The early Sino-Western contact was through the way in which religion and language interact to produce language contact. However, research on this contact is relatively limited to date, particularly in the realm of English language materials. In fact, there is a paucity of research on Western religions in English Language Teaching textbooks. By applying corpus linguistics as a tool and the Critical Discourse Analysis as the theoretical framework, this manuscript critically investigates the significant semantic domains in ten (...) class='Hi'>English language textbook series that are officially approved and are widely used in Chinese universities. The findings suggest that various Western religious beliefs, which are the highly unusual topics in previous Chinese ELT textbooks, are represented in the textbook corpus. The results also show that when presenting the views and attitudes toward Western religious beliefs, these textbooks have adopted an eclectic approach to the material selection. Surprisingly, positive semantic prosody surrounding the concept of religion is evident and no consistent negative authorial stance toward religion is captured. Atheism has been assumed to be in the center of Chinese intellectual traditions and the essence of the Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party. Interestingly, the findings from this study provide a new understanding of Chinese foreign language textbooks in the new era, and its addition to the literature on the study of ELT textbooks, as well as its development worldwide. (shrink)