Let’s Take an Adventure: Exploring Beginner Writing in Chinese by Non-Heritage Learner

Abstract Due to the globalization and economic growth, both the U.S. and Chinese governments increased their investment in Chinese language education across the US, especially in K-12 schools (Shi, 2010). This rapid development demands tremendous support, especially from the research on Chinese language learning and teaching. Unfortunately the research in this area is very limited, particularly on writing in Chinese. For those whose first language is alphabetical, writing in Chinese is tremendously difficult. Learners of Chinese usually do not compose writing until intermediate high level, before which learners usually learn to decode and write Chinese characters (Ke, 1998; Shen, 2005). Therefore the research on composing in Chinese is scarce and none at the beginning level. Gee believes that writing as a form of acquisition of literacy can be practiced in a very early stage (Gee, 2012). What is it going to be like if I introduce writing into beginning level curriculum? In order to explore this question and help fill the gap of research on writing, this ethnographic case study attempts to use sociocultural theories (Cope & Kalantsz, 2000, 2009; Gee 2012; Kern, 2009; Norton, 2000; Norton & Toohey 2004) and second language teaching and genre-based pedagogies to explore writing (composing) in Chinese as form of co-construction of text by beginning level students and teacher in an urban high school. Since no research on writing at this level was found, this study is exploratory. The goal is to investigate: 1) how do student’s identities revealed in the writing process affect her investment in writing and in the learning of the target language? 2) how do beginning level student and teacher co-construct texts with different genres using Chinese as foreign language? 3) what are the intertextualities and genre moves student uses to construct her writing (Bakhtin, 1982)? The findings from this study will offer insights of creating more opportunities for learners to learn Chinese language, especially on composing in early learning stage. It is my hope that this study will contribute to the field of Chinese language learning in K-12 level

G7.7-3.7: a young supernova remnant probably associated with the guest star in 386 CE (SN 386)

Although the Galactic supernova rate is about 2 per century, only few supernova remnants are associated with historical records. There are a few ancient Chinese records of "guest stars" that are probably sightings of supernovae for which the associated supernova remnant is not established. Here we present an X-ray study of the supernova remnant G7.7-3.7, as observed by XMM-Newton, and discuss its probable association with the guest star of 386 CE. This guest star occurred in the ancient Chinese asterism Nan-Dou, which is part of Sagittarius. The X-ray morphology of G7.7-3.7 shows an arc-like feature in the SNR south, which is characterized by an under-ionized plasma with sub-solar abundances, a temperature of 0.4--0.8 keV, and a density of $\sim 0.5(d/4 kpc)^{-0.5}$ cm$^{-3}$. A small shock age of $1.2\pm 0.6 (d/4 kpc)^{0.5}$ kyr is inferred from the low ionization timescale of $2.4^{+1.1}_{-1.3}\times 10^{10}$ cm$^{-3}$ s of the X-ray arc. The low foreground absorption ($N_H=3.5\pm0.5\times 10^{21}$ cm$^{-2}$) of G7.7-3.7 made the supernova explosion visible to the naked eyes on the Earth. The position of G7.7-3.7 is consistent with the event of 386 CE, and the X-ray properties suggest that also its age is consistent. Interestingly, the association between G7.7-3.7 and guest star 386 would suggest the supernova to be a low-luminosity supernova, in order to explain the not very long visibility (2--4 months) of the guest star.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 1 table; accepted for publication in ApJL; a few sentences about the details are added to the accepted versio

Electrically and Electrochemically Assisted Nanofiltration: A Promising Approach for Fouling Mitigation

Membrane fouling is regarded as the most critical bottleneck for the widespread application of membrane separation technology. The application of electricity to the surface of membrane provides a promising alternative for fouling mitigation, which may involve the following effects such as electrophoresis, electroosmosis, and electrooxidation. Electrophoresis and electroosmosis influence the movement of charged species (ions or molecules) or movement of fluid adjacent to charged surface under the applied electric field, while electrooxidation functions by degrading species accumulated in the concentration polarization layer and fouling layer to resume permeate flux. Different membrane modules have been developed to satisfy the requirement of electrode assembly. Meanwhile, this coupled process also promotes the development of stable and conductive electrodes including membrane electrodes. Successful applications have been found in the areas of ion separation and treatment of dye wastewater, arsenic contaminated wastewater, antibiotic contaminated wastewater, etc. Compared with microfiltration (MF) and ultrafiltration (UF), existing research in the nanofiltration (NF) is still limited. The increasing applications of NF in practice because of its unique separation capability will definitely trigger more investigations on this electrically or electrochemically combined antifouling technique