A CASE STUDY OF THE CHALLENGES IN A CHINESE ELT STUDENT TEACHER’S CLASSROOM TEACHING

This paper presents the results of an in-depth investigation into the challenges a Chinese English language teaching (ELT) student teacher faced in his classroom teaching during the teaching practicum. The subject for the study was the researcher himself. The data collection instrument consisted of a series of materials collected when he was doing the teaching practicum in Year 4 at the university, which included classroom observation forms by his supervisor, the evaluations from the supervisor and students after classes, his after-class reflections and the weekly journals written by himself. By analyzing these qualitative data with “coding”, the study revealed different challenges in a Chinese ELT student teacher’s classroom teaching, including (a) neglect of teaching aims and objectives; (b) inappropriate teaching philosophies and methods; (c) insufficient student analyses; (d) weakness in textbook integration; (e) lack of teaching experience, and so on. Corresponding strategies in coping with these challenges (implications) are put forward and discussed.  Article visualizations

Osteoarthritis and Cartilage Biotribology

Osteoarthritis (OA) involves deterioration of cartilage, including enzymatic degradation and mechanical damage, resulting in disruption of cartilage lubrication, which in turn gives rise to the progressive deterioration in the structure and function of the cartilage tissue. In order to discover new lubrication strategies or OA treatment, in vitro test methodologies are necessary, which are inexpensive and have lower approval hurdles at universities and companies worldwide as compared to in vivo tests. Based on this, we propose cartilage models to mimic the enzymatic degradation and mechanical damage (cartilage crack initiation) and report their tribological behavior. Restoring and enhancing cartilage lubrication is crucial for resisting OA deterioration. In this thesis we also propose a series of strategies to enhance cartilage lubrication, including modified hyaluronic acid, coating a biomaterial with macromolecular components which have similar functions to native lubricating molecules found in lamina splendens; and recruitment of lubricous macromolecules from synovia fluid onto damaged cartilage surface

“LEARNING JAPANESE IS A HEADACHE FOR ME”: AN INVESTIGATION OF ENGLISH MAJORS’ LEARNING JAPANESE AS A SECOND LANGUAGE IN CHINA

With the development of economic globalization in the past decades, the demand for Japanese-speaking talents has been increasing and an unprecedented upsurge of learning Japanese has appeared at tertiary education in China. In terms of English majors, not only are they stipulated to lay a solid foundation for English, but they also need to take another foreign language course and meet corresponding requirements. Due to the national and international environment nowadays, more and more English majors make their own choices in learning Japanese as another foreign language. However, compared with studies focusing on Japanese major education, research concerning non-major education, including English majors’ learning Japanese as a second language, is still scant. The questionnaires and interviews conducted at a university in Jiangsu, China indicated that English majors’ Japanese learning was somewhat problematic, which included poor motivations, inappropriate learning habits, and some apparent learning difficulties. Actually, it is found that both subjective elements (i.e. emotional resistance and discrimination, unawareness of the importance of Japanese, inappropriate learning methods) and objective elements (i.e. misallocation of time and class periods, disadvantages of the teaching material) contributed to the situation. Therefore, learning strategies have been put forward in this paper to help students optimize their learning.  Article visualizations

Antibacterial Performance of a Cu-bearing Stainless Steel against Microorganisms in Tap Water

This document is the Accepted Manuscript of the following article: Mingjun Li, Li Nan, Dake xu, Guogang Ren, Ke Yang, ‘Antibacterial Performance of a Cu-bearing Stainless Steel against Microorganisms in Tap Water’, Journal of Materials Science & Technology, Vol. 31 (3): 243-251, March 2015, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmst.2014.11.016, made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License CC BY NC-ND 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Tap water is one of the most commonly used water resources in our daily life. However, the increasing water contamination and the health risk caused by pathogenic bacteria, such as Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli have attracted more attention. The mutualism of different pathogenic bacteria may diminish antibacterial effect of antibacterial agents. It was found that materials used for making pipe and tap played one of the most important roles in promoting bacterial growth. This paper is to report the performance of an innovative type 304 Cu-bearing stainless steel (304CuSS) against microbes in tap water. The investigation methodologies involved were means of heterotrophic plate count, contact angle measurements, scanning electron microscopy for observing the cell and subtract surface morphology, atomic absorption spectrometry for copper ions release study, and confocal laser scanning microscopy used for examining live/dead bacteria on normal 304 stainless steel and 304CuSS. It was found that the surface free energy varied after being immersed in tap water with polar component and Cu ions release. The results showed 304CuSS could effectively kill most of the planktonic bacteria (max 95.9% antibacterial rate), and consequently inhibit bacterial biofilms formation on the surface, contributing to the reduction of pathogenic risk to the surrounding environments.Peer reviewe