ICAL2015 Abstracts 2

Abstracts of Keynote Speeches

1

Saturday, May 30, 2015 Session: Auditorium, the University Hall, 09:20-10:20 Multilingual and Intercultural Communication across Time and Space

Zhu Hua

Birkbeck College, University of London, UK

The nature of diaspora is changing in the 21st century. Yet many of the communication issues

remain the same. At the heart of it is multilingual and intercultural communication across time and

space. This talk discusses some of the core issues of communication between the diaspora and the

homeland, the past and the present, the individual and the community, and the sense of belonging and

the ascribed category with a detailed analysis of empirical data collected through linguistic

ethnography in the Chinese diaspora in Britain and elsewhere. It also highlights the significance of

dynamic multilingualism in everyday communication.

Bio-statement

Dr Zhu Hua is Professor in Applied Linguistics and Communication and Head of Department in

Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication, Birkbeck College, University of London.

She has previously worked in various roles in Newcastle University. Her research interests are

intercultural communication, pragmatics, multilingualism and child development. Among her recent

book-length publications are Exploring Intercultural Communication: Language in Action (2014,

Routledge), Development of Pragmatic and Discourse Skills in Chinese-speaking children (2014, John

Benjamins, co-ed with Lixian Jin) and The Language and Intercultural Communication Reader (2011,

Routledge). She is joint Series editor for Routledge Studies in Language and Intercultural

Communication (Routledge, with Claire Kramsch). She has led a number of major research

council-funded projects including one on childrens development of cross-cultural awareness and

communicative competence co-funded by DTI and ESRC and one on changing cultural values and

linguistic practices in Chinese diasporic families funded by AHRC. She is currently a

Co-Investigator for the project Translation and Translanguaging: Investigating Linguistic and

Cultural Transformations in Superdiverse Wards in Four UK Cities funded by AHRC large grant.

2

Saturday, May 30, 2015 Session: Auditorium, the University Hall, 16:40-17:40

Critical linguistics for teachers: Reading and writing to change the

world

Shelley Wong

George Mason University, USA

Critical linguistics can provide teachers with tools to get to know their students and to better

understand the issues that are part of their world. Teachers become more aware of the

communicative situations their students encounter, their dreams and their hopes for the future. How

can students lives and realities become the center of curriculum design? In a dialogic classroom

students engage in discovery or problem posing to create knowledge. In contrast to a transmission

model of learning, or what Paulo Freire termed a banking model in which knowledge is deposited

in students heads, discovery learning enables students to engage in real world activities and

assignments in which they engage in inquiry and social action. Shelley Wong will introduce four

features of dialogic pedagogy: 1) Learning in community, 2) Problem Posing, 3) Learning by doing

and 4) Knowledge for whom. She will then show how the four features are inter-connected in

creating ethical anti-racist practices in classrooms which embrace diversity and hybridity. The first

three features of dialogic pedagogy: 1) learning in community, 2) problem posing and 3) learning by

doing combine Vygotskian pedagogical theories to support students from a wide range of

(dis)Abilities, educational backgrounds, and ages. The fourth feature of dialogic pedagogy,

knowledge for whom connects the first three to extend education to those who have traditionally

been excluded from education (such as girls, poor and working class students, racial and ethnic

minorities) by analyzing structures of historic inequality. As teachers we must ask the political

question: whose knowledge counts in schools today? And how can we transform what counts as

knowledge? Queer theory, post-colonial and womanist pedagogies are newer curricular

frameworks that ask us to listen to voices from the margins to enrich our understanding of history

from the ground up.

3

Sunday, May 31, 2015 Session: Auditorium, the University Hall, 09:00-10:00

Megastudies and typological psycholinguistics

James Myers

National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan

Don't believe everything you read in the newspaper, especially when it comes to medical claims. Most of

them are based on very small samples, and when larger studies are carried out later, the originally reported

effects often shrink dramatically or even disappear. That's why the gold standard in medicine is what is

sometimes called a "megastudy", where the data samples are as large as the researcher can manage.

Megastudies are part of the current trend towards "Big Data", though for scientific rather than capitalistic,

privacy-invading purposes.

My own interest in megastudies began when I was doing experiments on phonological knowledge and

found it impossible to control all of the crucial variables in a traditional experimental design. For example, to

test if Mandarin speakers have a productive constraint against labial onsets with round glides (e.g. */fu_/), we

would give them fake syllables that either obeyed or violated this constraint, and asked them to judge the

syllables' acceptability ("Mandarin-likeness"). The problem was that we couldn't compare syllables like /fua/

with syllables like /fia/, since /fi_/ and /_ia/ also violate constraints, nor could we contrast /fua/ with /kua/

because /kua/ is a real syllable. Attempting to make just the contrast we wanted while controlling every other

variable resulted in tiny, skewed samples.

To deal with this problem, my lab and I began to run megastudies. The first one collected acceptability

judgments on all 3000+ fake syllables that can be written in , and since speakers also differ from each other in various ways, we tested a large number of them as well (over 100). Later megastudies did the

same for 3000 disyllables (formed of fake syllables) and 3000 fake compounds (formed of real characters).

Statistical analyses of our megastudies have so far helped distinguish between closely related variables (e.g.

phonotactic probability vs. neighborhood density) and revealed effects of, and interactions among, variables

like handedness, first language, working memory capacity, and gender. Since a psycholinguistic megastudy

collects a representative sample of language processing without any pre-set factors, it is essentially a tool for

generating a corpus. Recognizing this, we have put all of the raw data from our megastudies online for the

world to explore freely.

If we truly want to understand the nature of human language, however, it won't do to stick to just one

language, or even just two or three. For example, a study comparing Mandarin and English cannot tell us why

their speakers process syllables differently, since these two languages differ in too many ways (from syllable

inventories to writing systems). Thus in our latest project, we are building a web-based system to collect

acceptability judgments from as wide variety of languages as possible. As it grows, this system should begin

to make it possible to perform statistical analyses that factor out confounding variables across languages as

well as within them. Hopefully our system will inspire similar projects in the nascent science of typological

psycholinguistics.

4

Sunday, May 31, 2015 Session: Auditorium, the University Hall, 15:00-16:00

Two Sides of a Coin Named one: Unifying Plural Markers and Numeral Classifiers:

One-Soon Her

National Chengchi University, Taiwan

English has a number of plural markers (PMs) that distinguish a plural form from its unmarked singular form, e.g., book-books, cow-cows, box-boxes, man-men, woman-women, child-children, ox-oxen, wolf-wolves, datum-data. Mandarin Chinese, on the other hand, has close to a hundred numeral classifiers (Cs) that seem to classify nouns according to semantic features, e.g., wei for people, zhi for animals, tou for large mammals, duo for flowers, ben for books, ding for hats, jian for houses and rooms, shou for songs. Conventional wisdom thus sees Cs and PMs as two distinct formal categories with drastically different functions, i.e., Cs signify Ns semantic category while PMs indicate Ns number being larger than one.

In this talk I explore a seemingly far-fetched idea that C and PM in fact belong to the same category and serve the same function (e.g., Greenberg 1990[1972], Sanches and Slobin 1973, Borer 2005, and Her 2012a). I demonstrate that the apparent function of categorization of Cs is merely a side effect, as their primary function is two-fold: formally, to serve as a multiplicand 1 and cognitively, to profile, or highlight, an inherent semantic aspect of N. PMs apparent function of marking n, n>1, is likewise a derived secondary function that has taken on a life of its own, and its underlying formal function is also to serve as a multiplicand 1. Thus, in essence, Cs and PMs also serve exactly the same function to mark count nouns.

This unifying account has several significant consequences. First of all, the mathematical foundation for this unification, i.e., Cs and PMs function as a multiplicand 1, or /1/ (Her 2012a) suggests that languages with either Cs or PMs should also employ multiplicative numerals, e.g., san-bai and three hundred (3102). This is indeed confirmed as a statistical implicational universal, based on a database of 350 classifier languages my research team has established and Haspelmaths (2013) database on 291 languages in terms of PMs. More importantly, the formal unification of Cs and PMs implies that the two should be mutually exclusive on N. To validate this prediction, we cross-reference Gils (2013) database on 140 classifier languages and Haspelmaths (2013) database on 263 plural-marking languages and find 22 languages that have both Cs and PMs. There are 10 languages out of the 22 that seem to violate the prediction and allow C/PM co-occurrence on N. I then set out to account for these 10 (apparent) exceptions, Mandarin included, by formally distinguishing two kinds of PMs: grammatical PMs, i.e., those that involve grammatical agreement, and semantic PMs, i.e., those that do not. All of these 10 languages have semantic PMs. This study thus adds considerable support to the C/PM unification hypothesis.

Finally, I offer an account for the typological distinction between classifier languages and plural-marking languages in view them as two different manifestations of the same abstract concept, the former based on meaning, and the latter based on sound. The talk concludes with a discussion on the studys implication on a universal mass/count distinction in the lexicon.

5

Abstracts of Presentations

6

Saturday, May 30, 2015 Session: 101, 10:40-11:10

Combining liberatory and communicative goals in a content-based EFL

class

Charles A. Brown

Hokkaido University, Japan

Educator and theorist Paulo Freire notes the oft-enacted role of education in sustaining regimes

of hegemonic power. He argues that the mission of education should be the unseating of such

political establishments through fostering conscientizao or critical consciousness among students.

In language learning, scholars have touted the content-based approach as involving language learners

in meaning-based activities that engage their interest and make powerful connections across and

beyond the curriculum. In this presentation I report on the creation and teaching of a course designed

to meet both of these liberatory and content-based communicative objectives for English language

learners at a Japanese university. English language learners in East Asian contexts reside within,

make meaning of, and navigate a complex learning terrain combining social, political, ideological,

and pedagogical issues. This course addressed its dual goals by basing course content upon such

issues and attempting to raise learners' consciousness about them by encouraging students to

critically reflect upon them and to share their feelings in class discussions and presentations. In

teaching the course, I especially invited students to consider how these issues impact them personally.

These issues included 1.) the role of English as an international language and who wins and loses by

virtue of the power of English, 2.) the role of localized varieties of English in English education, 3.)

the role of the native and non-native speaker in language teaching, 4.) practices of high-stakes

English assessments and their effects, 5.) fairness and equity in English education. These issues were

selected because of their importance in fostering a more critical view of English education as well as

for their articulation with the lived experience of this group of learners. I report upon the success of

this course by considering several outcomes. These include the amount, quality, and equity of

language use among the learners, critical engagement, course feedback from students, and the

insights into learners' lives that I myself gained as an educator by virtue of engaging these issues in

class discussions. I conclude by considering the overall success in this effort as a dual

communicative and liberatory exercise.

7

Saturday, May 30, 2015 Session: 101, 11:10-11:40 Effects of Peer-review Training on Students Commenting and Revision

Quality, Categories, and Incorporation Rate

Ming-Tzu Liao

National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan

This study intends to examine the effects of peer-review training on college students

commenting and revision quality, categories, comment incorporation rate, complexity, and fluency in

assigned heterogeneous peer groups. It also probes the above-mentioned factors between the control

(peer review without training) and the experimental (peer review with training) groups. Finally, the

students reactions to the peer-review training are investigated.

Forty-three sophomores of English major in an Intermediate English Writing course in National

Kaohsiung Normal University in Taiwan participated in this study. The data collected included the

pre- and post-questionnaires, follow-up semi-structured interviews, six argumentative writing essays

and revised drafts, students comments on peer review worksheet of the argumentative writing,

reflective journals, and the researchers observation notes and reflective journal on each class

meeting and individual conference. In addition, to gauge students revision quality, commenting

quality, and revision types, the scoring rubric for students writing performance on argumentative

writing, the coding scheme for students written comments, the scoring rubric for peer review

worksheet, and the taxonomy of revisions were used.

This study took two semesters. After introducing the purpose and importance of peer review,

the instructor guided the students in experimental group to go through the procedures of peer review

training through workshops and then peer-group sessions. Each of the peer-group sessions was

assigned three students. Their pretests (Essay 1, first draft) and posttests (Essay 6, first draft) were

assessed by two independent evaluators using the scoring rubric.

8

For data analysis, the number of revisions on different types, the number of comments incorporated

into subsequent revisions, and the scores from the peer-review worksheets, the students revisions

based on peer reviews before and after the training, and their pre- and post-tests were compared. In

addition, the scores of the subjects first revision (second drafts) in the first and the six writing cycles

were rated and compared to examine their revision development. Moreover, the scores received on

global and local aspects in their comments were compared. Paired-sample t-test was performed to

see if there is any significant difference in all of the afore-mentioned items before and after the peer

review training and between the control and experimental groups, with a significant level of 0.5. Text

analysis was used to assess the students drafts of essays and comments on the peer-review

worksheets to obtain the specific types of revision, and categories of comments to understand the

tendency of their revisions and commenting behaviors. The follow-up interviews were tape-recorded,

extracted, transcribed, coded, categorized, and analyzed. Moreover, students written comments in

the first writing cycle and the six writing cycle were compared to find the differences in tone and

usage.

9


Using process-based writing instruction to change student attitudes

about writing

Deborah Kraklow & Jason Slimon

Ming Chuan University, Taiwan

Many university students of English as a Foreign Language encounter significant difficulties

when trying to become proficient writers. While accuracy and correctness are important, asking

students to write standardized pieces that emphasize correctness over meaning can lead to stress and

frustration. The purpose of this research is to determine whether teaching students the steps of the

writing process might help them become more engaged and effective in their writing.

A qualitative study with 60 students explored the change in writing attitude over a year of

process-based instruction. A syllabus addressing the writing process was designed to give students a

process-based experience of writing. At the beginning of the course, students were asked to write

briefly about their feelings and beliefs about writing. Then, instruction about the writing

process--with detailed exercises demonstrating the steps of that process--was provided throughout

the course. Students were guided through the various steps of the process as they practiced

generating ideas, organizing the ideas, and drafting a document. The revision step of the writing

process then brings grammar and word choice back into focus after students have had a chance to

explore their ideas, helping students to see grammar as a tool for making their ideas more

understandable.

At the end of the course, students were again asked to write about their feelings and beliefs

about writing. Specifically, they were asked if their ideas about writing had changed. Preliminary

results indicate that the majority of students understood the writing process and found it more

effective in expressing their ideas. These results suggest that students become more interested in

writing when specific writing strategies are offered for generating and expressing ideas.

Further research could explore how the implementation of more process-based writing

instruction could lead to stronger writers who are less fearful of writing and more willing to engage

in learning through academic writing.

10


Cross-linguistic influence on color perception: The case of Japanese

children in a partial English immersion school

Shogo Sakurai

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

This study explores how learning English as a second language can influence color perception

of Japanese children in a partial English immersion school. In the case of Japanese, there are two

distinct color terms for blue: ao for a darker shade and mizuiro for a lighter shade; whereas in

English there is only one basic color term blue to cover both regions. The only existing study by

Athanasopoulos et al. (2011) examined how Japanese-English adult bilinguals perceive the

distinction of ao and mizuiro in comparison with Japanese and English monolinguals by using a

non-linguistic task and found that the bilinguals perception of the two regions of blue is in between

that of Japanese and English monolinguals. In order to expand this particular domain of research, the

current study semi-replicated the method and procedure but made a few modifications: (1)

implementation of both a non-linguistic task and a linguistic task and (2) using Japanese children in a

partial English immersion school as subjects. The target populations (10 Japanese-English 2nd

graders (JE 2nd) and10 Japanese-English 5th graders (JE 5th)) and the control groups (12 English

monolingual 2nd graders (E 2nd) and 10 English monolingual 5th graders (E 5th)) were asked to pick

the most typical blue from Japanese ao and mizuiro regions combined (a linguistic task) and to judge

similarity/difference of pairs of blue which were manipulated by color group (ao and mizuiro) and by

distance (one or two lightness steps apart). The results revealed that JE subjects unanimously chose

ao for typical blue while E subjects more randomly picked from both ao and mizuiro. For similarity

judgment, the significant main effect of color group was found for JE subjects but not for E subjects.

The developmental differences between JE 2nd and JE 5th were attributed to color group, distance,

and English proficiency levels. The current study thus bolsters the claim that learning a second

language in a partial immersion school for just a few years can affect fine color perceptual difference,

but it also revealed that learning a second language may not affect crude color categorical difference

in choosing typical blue.

11


Do students display qualitative differences in their L1 and L2

expressions of critical thinking?

Jasmine C.M. Luk

The University of Hong Kong, China

Critical thinking (CT) is a buzzword for 21st century education and global survival and has

been widely promoted in basic and higher education all over the world. As a cosmopolitan city in

Asia, Hong Kong has included CT in the school curriculum since 2001 as one of the essential generic

skills to be developed across subjects including English language. CT is deemed crucial to the young

generations given the potential perils brought forth by the information explosion as a result of

fast-paced advancements in information technology. Education policy-makers generally believed that

CT helps students to draw out meaning from given data or statements, generate and evaluate

arguments, and make their own judgement. However, how students do critical thinking in English as

a second language (L2) that is seldom used outside school, and yet, holds high social value has been

under-researched. The present paper aims to report initial findings from a study that investigated how

a group of senior secondary students (Grade 11) in Hong Kong expressed critical thinking in written

English and Chinese (the students' L1). The data came from more than 100 students at different

levels of academic performance from twelve schools in Hong Kong. They were engaged in writing a

review based on either an English and a Chinese texts taken from free tabloid local newspapers. Half

of the students wrote in English and half wrote in Chinese. The hypothesis is that the students should

be more able to express critical thinking in Chinese. An initial analysis of the content and discourse

of the written data from the students generally support the hypothesis. Most students were better able

to express their ideas and arguments in more intelligible Chinese than in English. However, the data

also revealed that most students were not able to identify the underlying authorial intent and the

social implications of the texts on their readers even in their Chinese writing. Implications of the

initial findings for the development of CT in school education will be explored. Key words: critical

thinking; argumentation in L1 and L2; Hong Kong senior secondary education; critical reading of

texts

12

Saturday, May 30, 2015 Session 101, 14:10-14:40

Non-native writers and Native writers Use of Lexical Bundles:

Functional Stance Analysis of Academic Writings

Yu-Chen Cheng

National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan

Lexical bundle, defined by linguistics, is a string of co-occurring words appears frequently in a

given register. It helps shaping the meaning in a more efficient and thorough way. In this article, we

narrow down the scope to one functional sub-category of lexical bundle: stance. Stance provide

framing words that either note certainty of an information (epistemic bundle) or a speakers attitude

toward an incident (attitudinal/ modality bundle). Stance is crucial in academic writing because it

express authority, hedging which are major components in constructing relationship between writers

and readers (Herbel-Eisenmann et al., 2010).

This study adopts a corpus-driven approach to investigate stance bundles used by native and

non-native writers. 4-word lexical bundles were extracted from native and non-native corpus, each

formed with 30 doctoral dissertations with a size of 1.8 million and 1.6 million words respectively. A

stance delineation done by Biber and colleagues (2004) was then used to further analyze each stance

bundle. Result showed that, comparing to native writers, non-native writers produced less stance

bundles in both types and tokens and had problems in using epistemic bundles to hedge their

statements. The findings were drawn both quantitatively and qualitatively. This paper concludes by

stating pedagogical implications and future research suggestions.

Keywords: Lexical bundles, stance, hedging, corpus-based research, academic writing, native and

non-native speakers of English

13


Language Choice of Taiwans Indigenous Minority Groups

Ying-Hwa Chang, Dorinda Tsai-hsiu Liu, Paul Jen-kuei Li, Ji-Ping Lin

1Academia Sinica, Taiwan; 2Shih Hsin University, Taiwan

This interdisciplinary research discusses the language choice of the indigenous minority groups

in relation to different mixed-race patterns in their traditional communities in Taiwan based on the

ideas from linguistics, sociology, and geography. There used to be a residential boundary between

ethnic groups in Taiwan. In the past few decades, the society underwent a process of social

decompartmentalization in that it is hard to find a pure mono-ethnic group in an aboriginal

community of Taiwan. Thus, inter-ethnic interaction plays a key role in explaining many changing

patterns in an aboriginal society of Taiwan. Inferred from Blaus macro-structrual account, it is

assumed that the minority group shifts to the linguistic variety of the majority if the two ethnic

groups do not differ significantly in their social status.

Accordingly, this study proposes that in a mixed-ethnic community the higher proportion of the

population of an ethnic group is, the better its language is conserved, and vice versa. Using data from

the 2013 population census of Taiwan, this study explores three Taiwans indigenous peoples

differing in population size: (1) Small size: Kavalan people (1,312); (2) Medium size: Saisiyat

people (6,252 persons); and (3) Large size: Rukai people (12,556). Within each selected indigenous

people, two traditional communties with different mixed-race ratios are chosen to examine if there is

any difference in their language maintenance. For example, in a Saisiyat community, its population

structure appears as a mixed-ethnic pattern mainly with Saisiyat, Atayal, and Chinese people. We

choose two traiditional communities of Saisiyat: (1) Tungho: with 51.19% of Saisiyat people; and (2)

Taai: with 34.21% of Saisiyat people. Based on the analysis of our questionnaire survey data, we

shall examine if the Saisiyat language is better maintained in Tungho community than in Taai.

Furthermore, we shall check how the factor of gross population is associated with the population

structure of mixed race.

This study proposes that an ethnic group with a larger gross population has an advantage for its

language conservation even when this ethnic group has a smaller proportion in some speech

communities.

14


Examining Resistance to Internationalization within Higher Education in Taiwan: Case Studies

Rakesh Ramanujum & Timothy R. Fox 1Dominican 1International School, Taiwan; 2National Ilan University, Taiwan

In 2005 Taiwans Ministry of Education argued for the internationalization of higher education,

which the government agency identified as a major reform issue demanding special attention.

Central to this policy, the MOE announced, is the foreign student whose presence is a key indicator

of a nations educational competitiveness and global influence. As part of its policy of

internationalization, the MOE has been encouraging universities across Taiwan to use English as

the instructional language, open graduate programs that would attract foreign students, and transform

the campus into a friendly environment replete with bilingualism, counseling, and simplified

administrative efficiency. While these are the stated encouragements from the top, what is the

reality of this policy as it has been or is currently implemented at ground zero, where foreign

students live and study side-by-side with local classmates? How well is the MOEs

internationalization policy doing as it crosses the borders from idea to actual practice? These are the

questions addressed by the co-presenters of this research project, themselves former foreign students

now employed as academics in Taiwan. The co-presenters will discuss the findings of their

interviews with a number of foreign students currently in Taiwan, a qualitative research project that

will derive from these case studies the suggestion that the MOEs policy is not necessarily achieving

optimum implementation due to a variety of social, cultural, and linguistic factors. The researchers

will examine how the diverse national, cultural, and racial backgrounds of the students and the

attitudes of administrators, professors, and local students may influencenegatively or

positivelythe successful integration of the international student into the domestic learning

environment. Examined here will be the unacknowledged resistance to the greater use of English as

a medium of instruction, and the perception on the part of many international students that the

actions (or lack of) and non-verbal cues of local professors and classmates are less than welcoming.

The co-presenters will suggest the likely sources of domestic resistance that make difficult the goal

of helping education cross national, cultural, and social boundaries.

Keywords: Internationalization, foreign student, case studies, Ministry of Education (TaiwanROC)

15


Cognitive, Academic, and Cultural Benefits of Foreign Language Instruction: A Research Synthesis

Becky H. Huang, Peter Sayer, Paige Vetter, Shikun Li

The University of Texas at San Antonio, USA

Learning a foreign language (FL), particularly at a young age, has become a global trend.

Although the education policy documents of many countries emphasize non-linguistic benefits, such

as cultivating positive attitudes toward FL languages and cultures (e.g., Commission of the European

Communities, 2003; Mexico: SEP, 2011), most of the empirical research on the long-term outcomes

of FL education focus on linguistic benefits. The current study aimed to address this gap and to

provide a systematic synthesis of the existing empirical studies on the non-linguistic benefits of FL

instruction. The current study surveyed empirical studies on the non-linguistic benefits of FL

instruction that were published in English during the past 50 years. We conducted our search in

major research databases with a set of keywords related to foreign language learning context and

non-linguistic benefits. We then screened the identified studies based on our inclusion criteria. Three

non-linguistic themes emerged through an iterative process: cognitive, academic, and cultural

benefits. We found a total of 33 studies that examined these benefits of FL instruction. Six of these

studies investigated cognitive gains, which were operationalized as cognitive flexibility or

meta-linguistic awareness. Results from these studies showed positive impacts of FL instruction on

cognitive flexibility in both elementary school students and adults (Ghonsooly & Showqi, 2012;

Landry, 1973, 1974), but mixed results on metalinguistic awareness (Alderson et al., 1997; Brooks &

Kempe, 2013; Roehr, 2007). Another six studies focused on cultural benefits, which were defined as

positive attitudes toward FLs and cultures. Although four of these studies found that FL instruction

facilitated learners positive attitudes toward foreign cultures (Kennedy, 1998; Mantle-Bromley,

1995; Otwimowska-Kasztelanic, 2011, Su, 2011), two observed no significant differences between

FL learners and non-learners (Byram et al., 1991; Ingram, 2001). Finally, we found 21 studies that

examined academic gains ranging from native language vocabulary, reading, math to standardized

academic/aptitude assessments. Although the results were mixed for FL learners across elementary

and middle grade levels, some studies found positive effects on standardized tests among high school

FL-learning students. Implications for future research and for FL instruction and policy will be

discussed.

16


Between Stress and Stimulator: Simulation-based Learning in the

English for the Military in Taiwan

Andrew M. L. Chou

Kai-nan University, Taiwan

Simulation as a means of training is publicly known to have emerged from the military in

history. However, simulation-based learning in the military may be relatively less understood as a

result of isolation from the outside world. This is particularly true when it comes to learners distinct

ideological background as well as their utilitarian values toward English communication that has

been emphasized in the English for the Military. What could be the general attitude, either critical or

reflective, of the military students regarding the culture-related ESP that was featured by

interventionist approach? Inferences from the General English learners may not be of much help. A

review of literature indicated that there were controversial views on the issues of learners perception

and methodologies, and these controversies needed more exploration, given the emphasis of

3Ccross-cultural competencein current international contexts. To address these concerns, the

paper brought forward a three-dimensioned operational definition of simulation, and took a cognitive

approach to test cluster sampling of 110 respondents that were in the English for the Military courses.

This was followed by 34 targeted respondents, and their responses in records were questioned in

details through interviews from a whole class of English training program, spring 2013, provided by

Language Center, National Defense University Republic of China. The overall field test lasted for

two and half years. This ended with findings that there existed a positive perception of

simulation-based learning in the course of English for the Military for its contribution to the

cross-cultural understanding. The findings also called for a second thought of the current

much-emphasized interventionist approach in use in the military classes, reflection over the nature of

pedagogy versus technologies in application given the budgetary restraints, and timely awareness of

the course of English for the Military, a branch of English for Specific Purposes (ESP)

Keywords: English for the Military, ESP, simulation-based learning, 3C

17


The Effect of Language Input and Output on CFL Classroom

Interaction

Hsuanpo Wang, Chen-hsing Lin, Yia-shun Tsai, & Jian-hung Lin


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!!

18


L2 Chinese words recognition and acquisition

Meichun Liu

National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan

L2

L2

L2 Top-down

MaCelland(1989)

19


Noticing, Feedback, and Self-monitoring in Online Instructed EFL

Learning:

Yun-Ruei Ku

Ohio State University, USA

Nowadays the widely extended use of computer-assisted learning for a variety of languages makes

learners who live in remote areas possible. In Taiwan, students in these areas are provided the

opportunity to access educational resources via the computer. Ranging from elementary school to

junior high school English learners who live in non-metropolitan areas have profited from the project

of online tutoring for after schools learning administered by the Ministry of Education. This paper

investigates two online English teaching classes with one fifth-grader and one seventh-grader

respectively in order to explore the effects of noticing and interactional feedback on English as a

foreign language learning under the environment of online classroom. Learners noticing was

assessed and analyzed through a set of mediums such as classroom observation, teaching journal,

online teaching reports (including supervisors feedback and introspective comments), and learner

post-course questionnaire. The results suggest a complex and positive relationship among learners

noticing, interactional feedback, self-monitoring and how well both learners acquire English as a

foreign language in the online classroom.

Keyword: Distance learning, Computer-mediated learning, Noticing, Interactional feedback,

Monitoring, English as a foreign language

20


English Verb Complementation Errors: An Overlooked Problem for Chinese-Speaking EFL Learners

Chiu-Yueh Lai, Robert Reynolds 1National Chi Nan University, Taiwan / National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan; 2National Chi Nan

University, Taiwan

As Palmer (1987) observes: Learning a language is to a very large degree learning how to

operate the verbal forms of that language, and, except in the case of those that are related historically,

the pattern and structure of the verb in each language seem to differ very considerably from those in

every other language (p. 1). The enormous structural differences between Chinese, an isolating,

analytic language, and English, an inflecting language, thus ensures that when Chinese-speaking

EFL (English as a foreign language) learners have trouble mastering English, the problem usually

lies in their failure to properly operate the verbal forms of English.

Verb complementation can be defined as a phrase or clause which follows a verb and

completes the specification of a meaning relationship which the verb implies (Quirk et al., 1985, p.

1150). Thus, for example, He deceived his father. is a grammatically correct sentence whereas He

deceived. is not. This is because He deceived. violates the complementation pattern of the verb

deceive, which requires a noun phrase as its object in order for its meaning to be complete; in

contrast, He deceived his father. satisfies this requirement.

Research on EFL verb errors usually focuses on tense and aspect (e.g., Huang, 2008). Verb

complementation errors often go unnoticed, and research on these errors is scanty. English verb

complementation errors made by Chinese-speaking EFL learners, however, are multitudinous and

multifarious. This paper uses a corpus of Chinese-speaking EFL learners errors in English verb

complementation (Lai, 2013), and a grammaticality judgment questionnaire on English verb

complementation completed by Taiwanese college students to discuss four common but often

overlooked types of EFL verb complementation errors: errors in transitivity (e.g., *If you have any questions, feel free to contact with me.), intransitivity (e.g., *Please reply my email as soon as possible.), ditransitivity (e.g., *We warned him the danger, but he would not listen.), and that-clause complementation (e.g., *I wish that you have a Happy New Year.). Several explanations for the errors are proposed, including interlingual interference, intralingual overgeneralization, and

idiosyncrasies of individual verbs (Brown, 2007; Levin, 1993).

Keywords: EFL, error, English verb complementation, interference, overgeneralization

21


Language Assessment: Perspective Differences between Graduates and

Professors

Yuh-Yun Yen, Tzu-Ying Chiang, Sri Handayani, Guan-Hong Lu, & Tzu-Ting Lu

National Chiayi University, Taiwan

The importance of language proficiency has been gained widespread emphasis for the past few

decades in the world. In this study, it aimed to investigate the different perspectives on language

assessment between professors and graduate students through interviewing 9 graduate students and 3

professors in a graduate school. Through the results, it is shown that there were some differences on

language assessment between graduate students and professors. Some suggestions will be provided

for professors in graduate school when they assess their graduates language proficiency

.

Keywords: language assessment, language proficiency

22


Bilingual acquisition of null objects and the incomplete acquisition

hypothesis

Chao-Ting Tim Chou, Acrisio Pires 1Taipei Medical University, Taiwan; 2University of Michigan, USA

Heritage language acquisition is defined as childhood linguistic acquisition of a home

language in a bilingual speech community where the home language is not the dominant societal

language. Montrul (2008) and others propose that heritage speakers fully acquire their dominant

language, but fail to completely acquire the home minority language (i.e. the incomplete acquisition

hypothesis, IA). In this project, we examine this hypothesis, focusing on the grammatical knowledge

of null objects by heritage Chinese speakers. It is well-known that Chinese allows both null subjects

and null objects, in sharp contrast to English. The prediction of the IA is that heritage Chinese

speakers in an English speech community would allow much fewer null objects than monolingual

Chinese speakers due to incomplete acquisition of the grammatical knowledge regulating the

occurrences of null objects. We designed two experiments to test this prediction: a

picture-verification task (PVT), and a story-telling production task. Due to space limitations, only the

design and test conditions of the PVT are briefly discussed below.

We tested two groups of speakers in our experiments: 20 heritage Chinese-English speakers

living in the USA and 13 native monolingual Chinese speakers. Participants listened to pre-recorded

Chinese utterances over headphones and simultaneously saw pictures displayed on a computer screen.

The Chinese sentences contained verbs like shake that are potentially ambiguous (i.e. can be either

transitive or intransitive). Importantly, when the utterance does not contain an overt object NP (as in

John is shaking), verbs like shake can still be interpreted as transitive in Chinese, provided that the

context in the accompanying picture allows this interpretation (e.g., a picture showing John shaking a

box); by contrast, the transitive interpretation is unavailable for these verbs in this context for

English, precisely because English lacks null objects. Subjects were asked to judge whether the

picture they saw matched the utterance they heard. The statistical analyses of the experimental

results show that there are no significant differences between monolingual and heritage subjects,

casting doubt on IA that heritage speakers grammatical knowledge is expected to be qualitatively

different from that of native speakers.

23


Exploring tertiary-level Muslim Uyghur students identity construction in multilingual learning in Mainland China

Xiaoyan Guo

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China

Informed by poststructuralist approaches, a wealth of research have so far been carried out on

cross-boundary ethnic minorities language learning relating to identity construction in Anglophone

nations over the past two decades, whereas limited attention has been granted to indigenous

minorities identities linking with language learning in within-state movement context. Attempting to

fill this gap, this study explored how a cohort of tertiary-level Muslim Uyghur elites from Xinjiang

constructed ethnic and national identities through multilingual learning and practice in an eastern

metropolis. Drawing upon data gathered from interviews, observations, followed-up interviews, and

diaries, and focusing on learning and use of heritage language (Uyghur), national language (Chinese

or Putonghua), and English, efforts were thrust upon analyzing their ethnic and national. Emergent

findings showed that participants, even though assumed core ethnic identification, developed

multidimensional, overlapping, diffused and even contradictory identities through multilingual

learning and practice in the host contexts. Specifically, Uyghur students ethnic identity experienced

resurgence in the contrast of two sets of cultures indexed by Uyghur and Chinese, and in both inter-

and intra-group peer interactions, particularly in the latter where a gulf traversed among Uyghur

students, respectively labeled as minkaomin and minkaohan, due to their different Chinese

educational backgrounds exerted great impact in heightening their ethnic consciousness. In the mean,

they gained a renewed and expanded understandings towards their ethnic identity through cultural

reflections and deepening inter-ethnic socialization with dominant Han counterparts. The long-term

Chinese learning and its related culture facilitated the cultivation of ethnic students national

awareness, and in particular they had high recognition for cultural aspect of Chinese identity. Yet,

the ongoing Chinese identity tended to be ambivalent and dimmed when ethnic and national

conflictions and struggles arose. In addition, English as international language empowered ethnic

elite students transcending both ethnic and national memberships to imagine themselves international

community and a global identity. The study implies that it might do ethnic students justice to respect

them as multilingual speakers and acknowledge their multiple identities as an ongoing enterprise

within the educational settings.

24


Please thank you: Pragmatic failure in non-native professionals request e-mail discourse in an intercultural academia

Pi-Hsia L

Providence University, Taiwan

With the advance of computertechnology, electronic mail has become a powerful written

communication tool inacademic settings, functioning as the mechanisms of intercommunication

among themembers in workplaces. In globalized academic circles, English becomes the means of

communication among the members fromdifferent cultural backgrounds. Hence, bicultural or

multicultural workplacesusually require professionals to use English in their work environment.

Thispaper investigates how professionals, i.e., secretaries, in an intercultural universityacademic

office made requests to their faculty by e-mail. Under theasymmetrical relation between faculty and

secretaries in the work context, forthe professionals, making requests to faculty involves not only a

highlyimposing act but also a psychological struggle. Tounderstand the linguistic behaviors of the

request e-mail discourse by themembers of the target academic context, i.e., faculty and secretaries,

authentice-mail data were collected spanning a period of five months. The e-mail dataconsisted of

240 English e-mail messages that three secretaries, including onenovice secretary and two senior

secretaries, sent to faculty members. 80 e-mailmessages that foreign faculty sent to secretaries were

collected to compare thestrategy use and politeness realization between secretaries and foreign

faculty.The e-mail requests were then analyzed and coded with regard to the degree ofdirectness

(direct requests, conventionally indirect requests, or hints),internal modification (lexical/phrasal

downgraders and upgraders), and external modification (mitigating supportive moves and

aggravating moves added to thehead act). The perception survey and post-interview were

administered afterwards. The participants of the perceptionquestionnaires were five foreign teachers

(3 female, 2 male), five localChinese teachers (3 female, 2 male) and three female secretaries. A

post-interview with interviewees was conducted for further clarification and elaboration. The

findings reveal that senior secretaries, the novice secretary and foreign teachers used different

strategies to make requests. The novice secretary used less internal modification, i.e., downgraders

and upgraders. The use of time intensifiers wasonly used by senior secretaries. Pragmatic failure was

sometimes found in the novice secretarys request e-mail discourse, which seems to characterize

struggles to express politeness in a hierarchical work setting.

25


The Different Usage of Apology of Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan: From

the View of Gender and Social Status

Tim Ye


The purpose of the present study is to investigate usages of Mandarin Chinese apologies by

college students and working people. Virtually, all linguistic communication involves linguistic

speech acts (Searl, 1975). That is, human interactions do not consist of purely linguistic expressions,

but rather performances of certain type of acts, such as requesting, refusing, apologizing, or making

statements (Wei, 2011). Speech act is what people set out to accomplish when they speak.

Apologizing is chosen to be investigated because it can solve the face threaten and aims to maintain

social harmony (Brown and Levinson, 1987). Furthermore, research on speech acts has shown that

apologies are among the most frequently used speech acts in peoples daily affairs (Gass and Neu,

1996; Spencer-Oatey, 2000). Different culture can have different apology strategies including verbal,

non-verbal, offering repair and so on, but this study only focus on verbal use of apology. However,

many researchers have studied apology in English, while little attention has been paid to Mandarin

Chinese. Hence, this study examines the apology use in Mandarin Chinese. The participants were 20

college students and 20 working people in Taiwan. Half are males and half are females. The material

for this study consisted of a Discourse Completion Test in Mandarin Chinese including 10 items in

which respondents completed the dialogues, thereby providing an apology. After finishing the data

collection, their recording were transcribed and analyzed. In conclusion, males prefer to offer repair,

females prefer to concern people. Moreover, working people prefer to provide a feasible solution.

Therefore, it can be seen there are some differences not only between males and females but also

between students and working people when they use apology strategies. This is what we need to

prepare college students before leaving school.

26


A pragmatic study on the narrative strategies of Chinese and

Japanese weblogs

Chia-Ling Hsieh, Yi-Xiu Lin


With the expansion of social networking websites, weblogs have gained widespread popularity

as a new form of online communication. Previous studies have described weblog discourse as highly

conversational and interactive. However, little attention to date has been paid to the pragmatic

functions of weblog narratives. This paper explores this issue by contrasting personal travel stories

posted on Chinese and Japanese weblogs. Similarities and differences are also examined to discuss

the influence of culture on language.

A random sample of 100 travel stories were collected from the top 25 travel weblogs of the two

most representative blog service platforms, PIXNET (http://www. pixnet.net/blog) in Taiwan and

FC2 (http://blog.fc2.com) in Japan. The content analysis shows that both Chinese and Japanese

webloggers narrate with exposition strategies. Nevertheless, the two languages differ in the

preference of strategic types. Chinese often provides background information (e.g. The archery courses are free), personal advice (e.g. I would suggest a jacket), and evaluation (e.g. I personally think its quite a bargain) while narrating. Declarative sentences are frequently used with emphatic elements to enhance reader engagement (e.g.

Its so touching and pleasant). Japanese prefers to provide objective information rather than subjective opinions. Reader interest is intensified solely via linguistic devices such as

conjectures and interactional sentence-final particles (e.g. The sea is so beautiful, isnt it).

The results indicate that the common narrating features can be attributed to the open nature of the

Internet. With an awareness of the audience, webloggers tend to chronicle their journeys by using

reader-oriented strategies. Chinese allows for a greater freedom in self disclosure than Japanese.

Such cross-linguistic difference reflects culture as a factor that determines pragmatic conventions.

The findings may provide new insight into the study of collectivistic and individualistic cultures,

suggesting the emergence of a new communication culture in the Internet society.

27


Effects of English Comics Reading on Junior High School Students

Reading Comprehension

Zi-yu Tai


The English reading texts and tasks assigned in school fail to motivate and benefit some

students learn to read. Recently, support has grown for using comics and graphic novels to enhance

literacy instruction. This study was conducted to survey the effects of comic reading on junior high

school students English reading performance.

There were sixty-one 8thgrade students in Taipei Municipal Hong Dao junior high school

participated in this study. They were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. A

pre-testtreatment programpost-test procedure was designed to determine whether there existed a

significant difference between the results of two groups. The intervention began after the pre-test

was done. In the experimental group, English comic books were used as supplementary reading

materials, such as The Adventures of Tom Swayer, The Arabian Nights, Around the World in

80 Days, and The Little Prince. The intervention teaching included sixteen classes, last for eight

weeks. After the intervention program, both the experimental and the control groups were tested by

the post-intervention test. A standardized test as GEPT test was chosen. It included 20 multiple

choice questions. Each question had a score (5 points) and wholly 100 points was specified to each

test. A t-test was used to analyze the two sets of scores from the post-test and pre-test. Moreover,

these subjects overall attitude toward English reading class, such as the teaching program and

reading materials before and after the intervening teaching program, were also investigated.

The result showed that there was a positive effect of English comic reading on students reading

performance. Thus, this finding was hoped to encourage English teachers to integrate students

favorite genre comics into reading and literature instruction. Through this interesting

genrecomics, supplemented with motivating instructional activities and worksheets, it will lead to

students voluntary literature reading and enhance their reading comprehension ability. Finally, the

priority is to create more independent, active, and interactive EFL readers through comic reading.

Key words: comics, EFL, reading comprehension, voluntary literature reading

28


Taiwanese EFL College Students Perspectives and Performance on

Collaborative Writing

Ming-Tzu Liao, Yu-Hsin Ma


The purpose of the present study is to investigate the perspectives and performance of EFL

college students on collaborative writing process. Specifically, it examined students frequency and

focus of their oral interactions in the process of collaborative writing and students attitudes toward

writing collaboratively. Moreover, it explored the differences of implementing collaborative and

individual writing on the performance of college students English expository writing.

The participants of the study were 20 English major sophomores of National Kaohsiung Normal

University. During the eighteen-week collaborative writing project, all of the students first answered

the pre-study questionnaire on their attitudes toward collaborative writing. Then the students

received instruction on the essay writing and wrote one piece of expository essay. Students were

given a choice to write in pairs or individually. All pair work was audio-recorded and all completed

written work was collected. Afterwards, the students were required to answer the post-study

questionnaire on their performance and benefits of the collaborative writing process. Some students

were also interviewed after class. Finally, all of the data collected during the study were analyzed

either qualitatively or quantitatively.

29


Association Teaching Method of Chinese Characters in Teaching

Chinese as a Second Language

Hsuanpo Wang, Chen-hsing Lin, Yia-shun Tsai, & Jian-hung Lin


!

!

30


Symposium Them:

syntactic, semantic and communicative development

Mandarin Question Acquisition and Theory of Mind Development

Yu-Li Chung, Jenny Yichun Kuo


Symposiast 1

There are two kinds of questions. One is yes-no question and the other is wh-question. In

English, yes/no questions are used most frequently by children at the very beginning. Wh-questions

are more difficult to produce, because they involve Aux and wh- movement. In Mandarin, there is no

wh- movement. There are two devices for yes/no questions. A-not-A form and particle question

(Li & Thompson, 1981). One of the goals of this study is to find out which question type is acquired

earlier by Mandarin speaking children.

People ask questions when they believe other person may know what they dont know, which is

theory of mind. It reflects childrens knowledge that people can have different beliefs about in same

situation. (M. Jeffrey Farrar, Hyeonjin Lee, Young-Hee Cho, Jennifer Tamargo, HyeKyeung Seung,

2013). Thus, the other goal of this study is to investigate the relationship between Mandarin question

acquisition and theory of mind development by Mandarin speaking children.

The data were spontaneous speech, question a elicitation task, and three tests of theory of mind. .

There were total sixty participants aged from 3 to 6. The result showed that Taiwanese preschoolers

tended to ask more yes/no questions than wh-questions. In addition, preschoolers who had theory of

mind produced more questions than those who had no theory of mind. There is a positive correlation

between theory of mind development and question acquisition. This study has important implication

for the study of language and cognitive development.

31


The Development of Wh-Words as Indefinite in Child Mandarin

Chieh-chih Cheng & Yi-ching Su

National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan

Symposiast 2

In addition to interrogative interpretations, wh-words in Mandarin Chinese such as sheiwho

and shenme what can have existential indefinite, universal interpretations, and the free choice

interpretation (Huang 1982; Cheng 1994; Li 1992; Lin 1996; Giannakidou and Cheng 2006). In this

study, we compare the development of the indefinite readings ofwh-words in the conditional

construction headed by the morpheme zhiyao so long as (as in (1)) and the interrogative

interpretation (as in (2)) by preschool Mandarin-speaking children.

(1) Zhiyao you shei/ shenmeren tiao-guo le langan,

so long as have who jump-over PFV fence

wangzi jiu de-dao hua

prince then get flower

So long as someone/anyone jumps over the fence, the prince gets flowers.

(2) Zhiyao wangzi tiao-guo le langan, shei /shenmeren

As long as prince jump-over PFV fence who

jiu de-dao hua ?

then get flower

Who will get flowers so long as the prince jumps over the fence?

A question-statement task was conducted to 32 children from age 4;6 to 6;3, and the results

showed that in the question condition, children interpreted the test sentences as interrogative 100%

of the time, but in the statement condition, they considered wh-wordsshei and shenmeren who as

indefinite only 44% and 23% of the time, respectively. The preliminary results demonstrate clearly

that the interrogative interpretation is the default for wh-words by Mandarin-acquiring children, and

the non-interrogative readings are acquired later after the language-specific licensing environment is

mastered.

32


The discourse-pragmatic functions of hao okay and dui right in

Mandarin-speaking childrens peer conversation

Kanyu Yeh & Chiung-chih Huang


Symposiast 3

This study aims to investigate Mandarin-speaking childrens use of two frequently appearing

discourse markers hao okay and dui right when interacting with their peers in order to

examine how their use of these markers may reflect their communicative skills and the

characteristics of peer interaction. The data included 237 minutes of 5-year-old Mandarin childrens

conversations with their friends while playing. Schiffrins (1987) model of discourse structures was

used for the analysis.

The results showed that Mandarin-speaking children at age five have acquired several discourse

functions of hao and dui. They used hao as an agreement marker and an acknowledgement marker in

the exchange structure; they used dui to show their agreement in the exchange structure and to mark

topic transition in the ideational structure. The childrens use of the various functions

of hao and dui reflected their communicative and social competence. These uses indexed their

collaborative or supportive stance toward one another, which may further help them establish and

maintain their relationships with their peers (Wang et al., 2010). However, the children have their

limitation in using these markers. They have not developed the ability to usedui as backchannels,

which has been shown to be among the last acquired communicative skills (Hess & Johnston, 1988).

It is concluded that Mandarin-speaking childrens use ofhao and dui not only demonstrates their

communicative skills but also reflects the particular nature of peer interaction.

33


The interplay between demonstrative comprehension and cognitive

development: a cross-linguistic investigation

Joleen Chiaying Chu & Utako Minai

Kansas University, USA

Symposiast 4

The current study examines childrens acquisition of demonstratives, such as this and that, to

explore the relationship between language and cognition. Demonstratives are

context-dependent: this picks out the closer entity, while that picks out the entity further away.

Crucially, the distance of the entity is determined by the speakers perspective, so listeners need to

incorporate the speakers perspective in order to successfully interpret demonstratives (Diessel,

2012). However, past research shows that children use an egocentric perspective when interpreting

demonstratives, and often fail to incorporate perspectives that are different from their own (Clark &

Sengul, 1978; Zhao, 2007). De Villiers (2007) proposed that childrens egocentric interpretation

reflects childrens still-developing Theory of Mind (ToM). Childrens Executive Function

(EF) development is also associated with their perspective-taking ability in conversations (e.g.,

Nilsen & Graham, 2012). Additionally, childrens ToM and EF development are suggested to be

interrelated (Devine & Hughes, 2013). Therefore, EF may also be related to childrens demonstrative

comprehension. Taken together, childrens demonstrative comprehension may be related to their

ToM and EF development. The current study directly tested this hypothesis by investigating both

English-speaking and Chinese-speaking children. We conducted a multi-task study, with two

linguistic tasks measuring childrens demonstrative comprehension, and two cognitive tasks

measuring their ToM and EF respectively. The results from both English- and Chinese-speaking

children suggest that childrens successful comprehension of demonstratives may be related to their

ToM development. However, the role that EF plays in demonstrative comprehension still requires

further exploration.

34


Tongue twisters as a teaching technique facilitating morphological

awareness and vocabulary development in the preschool and early

primary school child

Marina Tzakosta

University of Crete, Greece

Tongue-twisters are language/ word games which are used cross-linguistically in order to help

children develop clear speech as well as practice in the pronunciation of difficult words (Brown

2014). They usually take the shape of short 2- or 4-verse texts in which certain sounds and their

combinations appear repeatedly (examples in (1) and (2)). Often, repeated rimes, sounds and other

phonological structures appear in non-words. In this paper, we claim that the use of tongue-twisters

is not limited to the development of clear speech or fine pronunciation, rather, their use is related to

the acquisition of complex linguistic mechanisms relevant to the development of the

morphophonological system and the vocabulary of the preschool and early primary school child.

Therefore, tongue twisters can be perfectly used in language teaching.

More specifically for Greek, at the phonological level tongue-twisters reinforce comprehension

and production of complex segments and consonant cluster, syllabic structures and accentual patterns

of the target language. At the morphological level, tongue-twisters help pupils comprehend word

internal structures and acquire word formation mechanisms. Finally, tongue-twisters contribute to

vocabulary development since word formation mechanisms familiarize children with the function of

semantic grids, the formation of word families and the use of the metaphor.

The above underline the pedagogical and teaching/ learning value of tongue-twisters since the

latter constitute compact language course. In other words, tongue-twisters give teachers/ educators of

preschool and early primary school education the chance to teach various language topics in parallel.

Given this nature language twisters are ideal tools for the teaching not only of mother but also

second languages. Here we will further present tongue-twisters activities that can be used for

teaching mother and second languages in preschool and early primary school education.

(1) Aspri petra kseksaspri < a stone whiter than white

Kai apo ton ilio kseksasproteri < and whiter than the sun

(2) O papas o pahis efage pahia faci < the fat priest ate fat beans

Giati papa pahi efages pahia faci? < why did the fat priest eat fat beans?

35


Meta-thinking in Chinese-Subtitled U.S. Television programs:

Annotations and Authenticity

Chi-hua Hsiao

Tunghai University, Taiwan

This study examines a linguistic feature of the translation work conducted by the underground,

volunteer subtitle groups in China, that is, annotations in the Chinese subtitles for U.S. television

(TV) programs. A number of detailed accounts explain subtitlers task and how it is different from

that of translators in general; one of the major distinctions is the spatiotemporal limit on-screen (Daz

Cintas and Remael 2007; Fawcett 1996; Gottlieb 1994; OShea 1996; Rosa 2001). Subtitles on one

screen generally occupy a maximum of two lines (Gottlieb 1998:245), and one line should have

3540 characters (Ivarsson & Carroll 1998). This limit is based on the number of words an average

viewer can read when watching audiovisual programs, which is slower than when reading printed

texts. This study takes a sociolinguistic perspective and focuses on a phenomenon that is

distinguished from what scholars in translation studies and translation practitioners have discussed

on subtitling as described above. In the underground subtitle community composed of volunteer

Chinese youth and young adults in China, translators often create annotationsnotes representing

information not linguistically coded in the original TV programsto Chinese subtitles. The

phenomenon is called subtitles with annotations (zimu jiazhu).

Chinese scholars in linguistics, translation studies, and communication studies have investigated

subtitlers strategies in creating annotations and the kinds of information that require annotations (Jin

2007; Wei 2012; Yao 2010). While the functions of annotations have been recognized, the practice

of constructing annotations and audiences interpretations of annotations have yet to be discussed.

This study addresses this lacuna by considering how subtitlers provide annotations on the basis of

36

their evaluations of audiences linguistic and cultural competence, soundtracks, images, and body

language represented in the media programs. This inquiry is founded on ethnographic work

performed from 2011 to 2012 in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Taipei. I worked with three subtitle

groups who translate U.S. TV programs and moviesFengruan Group, YyEts Group (also known as

Renren), and DouBan K.W. Taking a sociolinguistic approach, I argue that annotations reveal the

backstage of subtitlers knowledge and expertise (Goffman 1959). In annotating, the subtitler

engages in a performative act that constitutes a public (Gal and Woolard 2001). Through this act, the

subtitler illustrates his or her intimate knowledge to audiences. Subtitlers also create a sense of

involvement for audiences, as they clue a community of like-minded individuals in on subtitlers

detailed knowledge of contemporary English vernaculars and popular cultures. This sharing of

subjective stances blurs the boundaries between the public and the private. Subtitlers not only enact

the transparent production of knowledge but also invite audiences to propose different interpretations

of the translation texts, annotations, and English dialogues. The phenomenon of creating annotations

is thus not just a linguistic choice. Rather, annotating is an illocutionary act that epitomizes subtitle

groups pursuit and dissemination of authentic information through translation.

37


Synchronic Variation: Silent l vs. Spelling Pronunciation in Modern

English

Tzu-wen Pan


The fact that there is a lack of consistency in the relationship between English spelling and

pronunciation has often intrigued not only second/foreign learners but also native speakers. One of

the conundrums that literate learners of English may encounter is the existence of silent letters in

English. Silent letters, as the name implies, are letters which are not pronounced. In modern English,

l is silent in a number of words, such as balm, calm, salmon, calf, half, calve, halve, folk, holm, could,

would, to mention just a few. Although some pronunciation references (Celce-Murcia et al., 1996;

Jones, 201; Wells, 2008) offer pronunciation principles on silent l, they are limited in that the rules

are overly general and exclude the exceptions. Moreover, despite that words may exhibit silent l,

variants of spelling pronunciation (e.g. [klm] for calm) have been recorded in pronunciation dictionaries (Jones, 2011; Wells, 2008); however, further analysis is needed to verify the extent to

which words with silent l is acquiring spelling pronunciation.

This study investigated the linguistic environments of the English silent l and analyzed the

variation in pronunciation, focusing on the /l/-less (silent l) vs. /l/ (spelling pronunciation) variation.

The data were retrieved from the third edition Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, (LPD), which

records not only the main (recommended) pronunciation but also alternative variants recognized in

common educated use; thus allowing for the analysis of variation. Results reveal that l tends to be

silent in -alm-, -olm-, -alf-, -alv-, -alk-, -olk- environments and in -ould modal verbs, though there are

exceptions, i.e., where the expected environments do not produce silent l (e.g. realm) and where

silent l is found in unpredictable environments (e.g. colonel). Moreover, spelling pronunciation

variants are found especially among -alm-, -alk-, and -olk- words, which may indicate a tendency in

Modern English to recover the l in pronunciation. Finally, it is suggested that while learners of

English can benefit from pronunciation rules, the exceptions and variations in pronunciation should

also be taught to students, so that they have a fuller understanding of the language.

Keywords: English pronunciation, silent letter, spelling pronunciation, language variation.

38

Sunday, May 31, 2015 Session 101, 10:20-10:50

Performance assessment research on faithfulness, expressiveness,

elegance in English translation

Li-Yuan Tseng1, Hsin-Zuan Chen2, To-ken Lee2, & Shu-Ping Gong1

1National Chiayi University; 2Huafan University, Taiwan

Strong developments in technological translation theory and relative research were made in the

second half of the 20th century. However, translation assessment is not common and there remains a

certain degree of restriction in the domestic translation evaluation instrument. This study aimed to

establish a translation evaluation chart featuring improved objective appropriateness, exactness and

validity. Part of the process involved interviewing an experienced English teacher to gather opinions

on the evaluation result of the Faithfulness, Expressiveness, Elegance Rubric to improve to the

translation evaluator and enhance the abilities of translators by providing feedback and application.

The design of the translation Rubric originated from Liu Mi-qings six-step translation. The

treatment group referred to the translation evaluation chart designed by the researcher but the control

group did not. The translation evaluation test was based on the appraisal concepts of the Programme

for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Performance Assessment and the result was as

follows. First, the designed Faithfulness, Expressiveness, Elegance Rubric was framed by an

Analytical Rubric, and the theoretical basis of the evaluation standards was framed by Yen Fus

Faithfulness, Expressiveness and Elegance and complemented by other translation theories. Second,

the experimental result found that whether the participants referred to the Faithfulness,

Expressiveness, Elegance Rubric made no significant difference to the evaluation result. Third, the

problems the participants faced were insufficient as a guide to understanding vocabulary, grammar,

and the application of translation skills. Fourth, the statistical result indicated that the order of the

following three standards, Word Meaning Expression, Word Order Corresponding, and Word

39

Embellishment had a high degree of correlation, was difficult to achieve, and could be used to guide

the students to proceed through translation. Fifth, the interviewee demonstrated approval of the

teaching application of the translation rubric, and that the detailed numerals of the evaluation could

be used as the basis for proving their translability. However, she expressed that if the evaluators

wanted to apply the Rubric, different ones must have consensus. The conclusion was that the

Faithfulness, Correctness, Elegance Rubric and the questions on the concepts of Performance

Assessment and PISA situations, and later assessment and statistical analysis, can enhance the

participants translation ability and provide teachers or students with more feedback. This would

improve potential application in teaching and learning in turn. The experimental result had ideal

reliability and validity in an academic sense. In applying the rubric, the evaluation standards and the

application are separatebut both have corresponding charts. The researcher simplified the

evaluation process by using the interviewees opinions. Additionally, judging by the opinions of the

interviewee and consequential modification of the Rubric, the evaluators had to have consensus for

the standards in executing the Performance Assessment.

Key words: translation evaluation, Performance Assessment, PISA, translation theories

40


English-Chinese Comparison of Rhetorical Structure of Research

Article Abstracts: A Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) Analysis

Shih-Peng Shih

National Chung Cheng University

Although several studies have investigated the structure of abstracts and research articles in

different fields. Most of them either did not adopt any discourse analysis theory in their analysis or

somehow misuse or overgeneralize the term rhetoric structure to include academic writing style

such as the IMRD model (Golebiowski, 2009). Rhetoric Structure Theory (RST) is a theory first

proposed by Mann and Thompson (1988) for the descriptive study of discourse structure. It is used

for describing the discourse structure with the specifying of rhetorical relations. This study intends to

fill the research gaps by investigating the rhetorical structure of ten set (with 5 five set from

experimental type of research articles, and the other five from theoretical type of research articles) of

English-Chinese bilingual research article abstracts in the field of linguistics and comparing their

differences under the framework of RST. It is found that different types of abstracts prefer certain

kinds of rhetorical relations and rhetorical structure. And the linguistic differences between Chinese

and English play a crucial role in the distribution and pattern of rhetorical relations and rhetorical

structure.

Keywords Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST), rhetorical relations, contrastive analysis, discourse

analysis, text analysis

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A Semantic Examination of the Mandarin Morpheme HOU4

Siaw-Fong Chung


Using a Mandarin morphemehou4 back, this paper inspects meaning groups constituted by

sentences containing this morpheme. Eighty-five different types of lexical items (such as (1) below)

containing the Mandarin morphemein the constructionX (e.g., , , , etc.) were

retrieved from the Sinica Corpus. These items were then categorized into meaning groups.

(1) (a) [backyard]

(b) [backup]

(c) [youth]

(d) [later generation]

For meaning clusters, 44.71% of the lexical items were to express SPACE, 50.59% to express

TIME/ORDER while a remaining 4.71% express others (special names).

[Figure 1]

The components of each of the meaning clusters are given below.

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Tet as a Degenerate Verb in Sixian Hakka

Yan, Shu hong


This paper focuses on Sixian Hakka Tet, as exemplified in (1), which is different from tet come to have as a postverbal modal proposed by Chung (2012) in two aspects. On the one hand, Tet has no such verbal movement as the three types of postmodal tet. Chung (2012) claims that the dynamic one goes through V0-to-ModDyn0-to-v0 movement and the other two deontic ones through (I) V0-to-v0-to-Moddeo0 and (II) v0( zo)-to-ModDeo0 movements, respectively. Nevertheless, Tet cannot undergo (I) movement, as the ill-formed sentence suggests: *Amin sha-tet ning. Besides, Tet has no (II) movement for lack of an overt v zo. (1) Amin Tet ning sha.

Amin TET people admire

Amin got admired by someone.

(2) Amin siid-tet-log ng-von fan. (Chung 2012) Amin eat-TET-RES five-CL rice

Amin can [will manage to] eat five bows of rice.

On the other hand, Tet has a get meaning like the verb tet get in (3). Yet, it is not a verb because of no requirement of the attachment of do reach, as compared in (1) and (3). (3) Gi tet-do id-bag-van. (Chung 2012)

He get-ACHI one million

He got one million dollars.

In addition, we find that Tet is similar to the passive marker bun give in (4) for the subject has no control over the whole event. In (4), bun give behaves as the passive marker bei in Mandarin Chinese. It locates in v position, making the sentence passive and experiencing an A'-movement (Huang 1999). Nonetheless, unlike bun give, Tet is a not passive maker. It can take both the negative markers mo none and m no, while bun give only takes

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ICAL2015 Abstracts 2