“My Excellent College Entrance Examination Achievement” — Noun Phrase Use of Chinese EFL Students’ Writing

Previous studies have shown that phrasal structure, particularly complex noun phrases with phrasal modifiers, is a feature of advanced academic writing. Therefore, it would be important for those who plan to pursue further studies to learn to write in the way that is appropriate for academic writing. Using the manual annotation function of UAM corpus tool, this study compared the noun phrase use of Chinese EFL students’ writing with that of proficient language users. This study also discussed the significant differences found between these two groups in terms of noun phrase use and their implications for EFL/ ESL writing instruction

“My Excellent College Entrance Examination Achievement” — Noun Phrase Use of Chinese EFL Students’ Writing

—Previous studies have shown that phrasal structure, particularly complex noun phrases with phrasal modifiers, is a feature of advanced academic writing. Therefore, it would be important for those who plan to pursue further studies to learn to write in the way that is appropriate for academic writing. Using the manual annotation function of UAM corpus tool, this study compared the noun phrase use of Chinese EFL students’ writing with that of proficient language users. This study also discussed the significant differences found between these two groups in terms of noun phrase use and their implications for EFL/ ESL writing instruction

Integrating Language, Content, Technology, and Skills Development through Project-based Language Learning: Blending Frameworks for Successful Unit Planning

In this article, the authors first summarize the literature on project-based language learning (PBLL), a sound approach to second language teaching, addressing its various benefits such as providing opportunities to develop language authentically in real-world contexts, building decision-making and problem-solving skills, and developing content knowledge. In acknowledging reports that have also suggested that students can struggle to see how language is being developed through PBLL, the authors then argue that by looking at a project as a social practice, educators can demonstrate how language, content, and 21st century skills can be taught as an integrated whole through PBLL. They describe two existing frameworks, Mohan’s (1986) knowledge framework and Beckett and Slater’s (2005) Project Framework, and illustrate how these can be combined to create unit plans that explicitly integrate language, content, skills, and technology. To illustrate the blending of the two frameworks, the authors present a unit plan that targets the content area of applying for American graduate schools. This unit plan offers eleven lessons that include teaching sequences, tasks, and learning objectives for the content, language, academic skills, and technological understandings that the unit comprises. The authors also detail how the combination of the frameworks led to the creation of the various lessons so that this process can be used as a model for creating future relevant unit plans

PROJECT-BASED LEARNING FOR 21ST-CENTURY SKILLS: THE FIVE C’S FOR L2 STUDENTS: Received: 04th May 2023; Revised: 21st August 2023, 06th September 2023; Accepted: 14th September 2023

This article proposes a project-based approach for teaching the five C’s of the 21st-century skills – Critical thinking, Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Competencies in digital literacy, to promote deeper learning, higher-order thinking, and language development contextually and functionally for second language students. It calls for language socialization theory and practice within the systemic functional linguistics paradigm and elaborates the rationale. Those proposals are illustrated with five C’s project ideas that benefit students and teachers. With those projects, students can develop their five C’s competencies by asking vital questions, gathering, assessing, and interpreting information, posing and solving problems, drawing conclusions, and proposing alternatives with justification while developing the associated language. Teachers can utilize the project ideas provided in this article with necessary modifications to their contextual needs and possibilities in their teaching of the five C’s and the associated language. They may also add components such as the assessment they needed to those project ideas. Depending on their needs and contextual possibilities, they may design, implement, and assess semester-long projects for competency development in all five C’s. The arguments and proposals included are applicable to all contexts. Researchers, teachers, and curriculum developers may utilize them for their needs with modifications as well

Japanese Exchange Students' Writing Experiences in a Canadian University

This study investigated the learning experiences of 23 Japanese students in a one-year Academic Exchange Program at a Canadian university. The participants wrote either an opinion task or a summary task at the beginning of the program using two preselected source texts. They then revised the drafts at the end of the program and were interviewed to comment on what they had learned about English writing during their study in Canada. Analyses of the interview data and comparisons of the original and the revised texts indicate that participants revised their drafts to use more words of their own and to follow the more direct English style and linear rhetoric pattern. The narrative of how these students adopted English writing conventions and their perceptions of whether they would continue to use them when they returned to Japan suggests an impact of English training not only on their English but also on their Japanese academic writing.Cette etude s'est penchee sur l'apprentissage de 23 etudiants japonais participant a un programme d'echange dans une universite canadienne. Au debut du programme, les participants ont ecrit un texte d'opinion ou un resume de texte a partir de deux textes preselectionnes. Un an plus tard, a la fin du programme, ils ont revise leur brouillon et ont passe une entrevue pour expliquer ce qu'ils avaient appris sur la redaction anglaise pendant leur sejour d'etudes au Canada. Ensemble, l'analyse des donnees d'entrevues et la comparaison du texte original et la version revisee ont revele que les etudiants avaient modifie leur brouillon pour ajouter davantage de leurs propres expressions et pour suivre de plus pres la structure rhetorique lineaire de l'anglais. La fa(on dont ces etudiants ont adopte les conventions de la redaction anglaise d'une part, et leurs perceptions quant ala possibilite de continuer a les employer apres leur retour au Japon d'autre part, nous indiquent que !'impact de leur formation en anglais ne se pas fait uniquement sentir sur leurs redactions en anglais mais aussi sur leurs redactions en japonais

SCRIPT RELATIVITY IN PSYCHOLINGUISTICS AND SOCIOLINGUISTICS: WRITING SYSTEMS AS A CATALYST FOR COGNITION AND CULTURE: Received: 07th August 2023; Revised: 26th December 2023; Accepted: 29th December 2023

Script relativity posits that the writing system in which we read affects our thinking, information processing, cognitive mapping, and thought patterns. Given that script effects have been investigated primarily in psycholinguistics, this paper discusses the potential to extend the scope and sequence of research to a broader level of sociolinguistics. As the microscopic psycholinguistic analysis can be complemented by a macroscopic sociolinguistic view, the interplay among cognitive, linguocultural, and sociocultural variables can facilitate our holistic understanding of script effects. To this end, this paper provides an account of writing systems as a catalyst for building cognition and culture. The dynamic interaction between individual language processing (psycholinguistics) and language use in social and cultural contexts (sociolinguistics) is discussed, which has both theoretical and methodological implications for future research, policy, and practice