The Globalization of English: Its Impact on English Language Education in the Tertiary Education Sector in Taiwan

The overall agenda for the research reported here grew out of semi-structured interviews with senior educational managers from a tertiary educational institution in Taiwan. These managers raised a number of issues, including the changing profile of tertiary students, the changing nature of English curricula, the increasing need for English teaching staff to be adaptable, highly qualified and research-active, and the growing pressure on institutions to introduce English language proficiency benchmarking. Each of these issues can be related to the impact of globalization and, in particular, the impact of the globalization of English, on the education sector. Following a critical review of selected literature on the impact of globalization on the teaching and learning of English, each of these issues, as it affects the tertiary education sector in Taiwan, was explored. Analysis of the Taiwanese national curriculum guidelines for schools, strongly influenced by academics in the tertiary education sector, revealed a number of problems relating to a lack of proficiency benchmarking and a lack of coherence, consistency and transparency in some areas. These problems may be associated with the initial phase of transition from a grammar-based curriculum to a more communicatively-oriented, outcomes-centered one. Problems of a similar type were indicated in responses to questions relating to curriculum matters included in a questionnaire distributed to a sample of teachers of English in the tertiary sector. Among other things revealed by questionnaire responses was the fact that many survey participants had received no training in English teaching. The results of a C-test (one that was initially used in a major European study) taken by a sample of entry-level and exit-level Bachelors degree students indicated a wide variation in proficiency, with individual scores differing by as much as 64 percentage points in the case of exit-level students. Furthermore, there was a difference of almost 10 percentage points between the mean scores of students from two different institutions who had majored in English. These results indicate some of the difficulties that Taiwan faces in attempting to establish graduation proficiency benchmarking. -ii- C-test participants completed a background questionnaire, the responses indicating a generally positive attitude towards English-speaking people, a general willingness to use English in situations where there was the option of not doing so, and a strong tendency towards instrumental motivation. Although one of the factors that appeared to have a positive impact on C-test performance was time spent in an English-speaking country, fewer than 18% of respondents had done so. Although there appears to be considerable anxiety and uncertainty associated with the teaching of English at tertiary level in Taiwan, and some genuine cause for concern, there are also many positive indicators of future success. Teachers and educational managers are aware of the problems they currently face and appear determined to resolve them. Taiwanese academics are increasingly involved in language-related research and increasingly prepared to interrogate their own practices, and Taiwan, unlike some other countries in Asia, is moving towards graduation proficiency benchmarking

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (3rd edition)

In 2008 we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, research on this topic has continued to accelerate, and many new scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Accordingly, it is important to update these guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Various reviews have described the range of assays that have been used for this purpose. Nevertheless, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to measure autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. For example, a key point that needs to be emphasized is that there is a difference between measurements that monitor the numbers or volume of autophagic elements (e.g., autophagosomes or autolysosomes) at any stage of the autophagic process versus those that measure fl ux through the autophagy pathway (i.e., the complete process including the amount and rate of cargo sequestered and degraded). In particular, a block in macroautophagy that results in autophagosome accumulation must be differentiated from stimuli that increase autophagic activity, defi ned as increased autophagy induction coupled with increased delivery to, and degradation within, lysosomes (inmost higher eukaryotes and some protists such as Dictyostelium ) or the vacuole (in plants and fungi). In other words, it is especially important that investigators new to the fi eld understand that the appearance of more autophagosomes does not necessarily equate with more autophagy. In fact, in many cases, autophagosomes accumulate because of a block in trafficking to lysosomes without a concomitant change in autophagosome biogenesis, whereas an increase in autolysosomes may reflect a reduction in degradative activity. It is worth emphasizing here that lysosomal digestion is a stage of autophagy and evaluating its competence is a crucial part of the evaluation of autophagic flux, or complete autophagy. Here, we present a set of guidelines for the selection and interpretation of methods for use by investigators who aim to examine macroautophagy and related processes, as well as for reviewers who need to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of papers that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a formulaic set of rules, because the appropriate assays depend in part on the question being asked and the system being used. In addition, we emphasize that no individual assay is guaranteed to be the most appropriate one in every situation, and we strongly recommend the use of multiple assays to monitor autophagy. Along these lines, because of the potential for pleiotropic effects due to blocking autophagy through genetic manipulation it is imperative to delete or knock down more than one autophagy-related gene. In addition, some individual Atg proteins, or groups of proteins, are involved in other cellular pathways so not all Atg proteins can be used as a specific marker for an autophagic process. In these guidelines, we consider these various methods of assessing autophagy and what information can, or cannot, be obtained from them. Finally, by discussing the merits and limits of particular autophagy assays, we hope to encourage technical innovation in the field

Erratum to: Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (3rd edition) (Autophagy, 12, 1, 1-222, 10.1080/15548627.2015.1100356

non present