Exploring Chinese college EFL learners' AI technology acceptance driven by computer self-efficacy.

This study compared language learning strategies used by Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learners in Australia and English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in China through Oxford’s (1990. Language learning strategies: What every teacher should know. Boston: Heinle and Heinle.) Strategy Inventory of Language Learning (SILL) questionnaire survey. Two cohorts of learners, namely Australian CFL learners (N=101) and Chinese EFL learners (N=100), participated in this study. It was found that the most frequently used strategies by the Chinese EFL learners were compensation strategies and the least frequently used strategies were memory strategies while the most frequently used strategies by the Australian CFL learners were social strategies and the least frequently used strategies were affective strategies. Australian female learners used slightly more strategies than male learners, but no difference was found in the strategies used by the Chinese EFL male and female learners. No significant difference was found either in the strategies used by learners of different grade levels, regardless of whether they were Chinese EFL or Australian CFL learners. Scores of some individual categories significantly differed between the three levels of the Australian CFL learners and the four levels of the Chinese EFL learners. In general the Chinese EFL learners used more strategies when compared with those used by the Australian CFL learners. Pedagogical implications of the findings were also discussed. This study contributes to the research in language learning strategies in that it considers the typological distance between learners’ L1 and the target language for the first time. It also has clarified the seemingly inconsistent findings in the literature in terms of memory strategies use by Asian learners (Chinese learners in this case): when compared with other categories of strategies, memory strategies were used the least frequently by the Chinese EFL learners; when compared with learners from other cultural backgrounds such as the Australian or American, the Chinese EFL learners used memory strategies more frequently.

The suggestion speech act has not been as widely studied as other speech acts such as requests and apologies, and fewer studies of suggestions have focused on Chinese EFL learners as a target group. This study, based on the spoken data of the Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners (SWECCL) and the online Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE), aims to investigate how Chinese EFL (English as a foreign language) learners make suggestions in English, through comparing the linguistic features of suggestion speech act as well as suggestion strategies used by Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers. Results show that (1) Chinese learners used significantly more modal verbs, explicit performatives and conditional structures than native English speakers, whereas native English speakers used more Wh-questions and Let’s structures than Chinese learners, and (2) in terms of suggestion strategies, the Chinese EFL learners resembled native English speakers in the use of direct suggestion strategies, but the Chinese EFL learners used significantly more conventionalized indirect suggestion strategies than native English speakers.

Revising is an important part of the writing process, especially when writing in a foreign language (FL). FL learners who routinely revise inadequacies in their texts after receiving feedback tend to develop better writing skills than those who do not (Boubekeur, 2015). To help FL learners achieve a desirable revision quality in writing, providing various types of feedback about their writing is of great importance (Lee, 2017). However, as providing detailed and high-quality writing feedback to individual students requires a considerable amount of time and effort on FL teachers, it is not always practical in FL instructions (Myer et al., 2023). In particular, in the context of College English teaching in China, where an English teacher normally teaches 60 to 80 learners, it is not always feasible for English teachers to provide writing feedback to every student on a regular basis. The recent development of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) such as ChatGPT may either supplement or complement teacher feedback in helping Chinese learners of English as a FL (EFL) revise their English writing (Escalante et al., 2023). The present study aimed to compare: 1) the effect of teacher versus ChatGPT feedback on Chinese university EFL learners’ English essay revision; and 2) Chinese university EFL learners’ perceptions of teacher versus ChatGPT feedback in terms of usefulness and ease of use. A quasi-experiment was conducted among 73 Chinese university EFL learners. The students came from two intact College English classes (n=36 and n=37 respectively) taught by the same English teacher. A pre-test of essay writing task found that the two classes did not differ on English writing proficiency (F(1, 71)=0.17, p=.68, ?2=.05). One class received teacher feedback whereas the other class received ChatGPT feedback on narrative essay writing. Students were required to revise their essays using the feedback they received during one English class. Upon completion of the essay revision, they were surveyed about their perceptions of the usefulness and ease of use of the feedback by filling out a Likert-scale questionnaire. The results of one-way ANOVAs showed that students who received ChatGPT feedback obtained significantly higher scores of their revision than their peers who received teacher feedback (F(1, 71)=8.74, p<.01, ?2=.11). However, students in the teacher feedback class perceived that the feedback was more useful (F(1, 71)=6.50, p<.05, ?2=.08) and easier to use (F(1, 71)=14.36, p<.01, ?2=.17) than those in the ChatGPT feedback class. To encourage students to use ChatGPT feedback in helping them revise their English writing, it is important to foster positive perceptions of the ChatGPT feedback. Some useful strategies may include: 1) teacher modelling how to use ChatGPT feedback for students, to make students familiar with the format of ChatGPT feedback, which may enhance students’ positive perceptions of ease of use. 2) guiding students to explore different aspects that ChatGPT feedback can cover, which may foster students’ positive perceptions of the usefulness of ChatGPT feedback. The present study only adopts quantitative methods, future research may use semi-structured interviews to provide a rich description of Chinese EFL learners’ experience of using teacher and ChatGPT feedback in their English essay writing.

It is of great difficult for EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners to acquire collocation. This research investigated V + N collocation production of Chinese middle school university EFL learners based on TECCL (Ten-thousand English Composition of Chinese Learners) corpus, aiming at discovering the difficulties in collocation usage. In the study, collocations in the writing samples were identified manually and evaluated by dictionaries, corpus and native speakers as right or wrong. Collocation accuracy was figured out and errors were examined. Therefore, difficulties in collocation usage were discovered. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively to yield the following three findings: first, middle school students and university students respectively produced 79% and 83% correct collocations among their collocation production. Second, collocation accuracy did not improve significantly as overall L2 (second language) proficiency increases. Third, wrong choice of verb and noun was the largest problem for Chinese EFL learners. The results also suggested that L1 (first language) influence and deficiency in L2 knowledge affected collocation usage. Based on these findings, pedagogical implications were discussed.

The present study investigated foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) and foreign language enjoyment (FLE) of 492 Chinese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in their online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected. The quantitative data revealed that the participants reported higher levels of FLE than FLCA in online learning and that FLE was negatively correlated with FLCA. FLE was more strongly predicted by teacher-related variables (i.e., teachers’ friendliness, their familiarity with teaching platforms, their joking, English accent, and frequency of speaking English in class), while FLCA was mainly predicted by learner-internal variables (i.e., relative standing among peers and online interaction with the teacher). The qualitative data confirmed that Chinese EFL learners’ FLE was strongly linked to the teacher, while their FLCA to the learners themselves. Based on these findings, the study provided pedagogical implications for online EFL teaching and learning.

This study investigated the effects of entrenchment, preemption, verb semantics, and morphophonological constraints in Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners’ retreat from the overgeneralization errors of English dative alternations. Two groups of Chinese EFL learners rated the acceptability of 66 dative verbs in their well and ill forms. The results demonstrated that Chinese EFL learners were simultaneously sensitive to the multiple cues from entrenchment, preemption, semantic, and morphophonological constraints, indicating that Chinese EFL learners restricted the generalization of the dative alternation by utilizing both the statistical verb-bias information and semantic properties of the dative verbs. Moreover, the sensitivity of Chinese EFL learners to these constraints increases with the improvement of their English proficiency. These results validated the usage-based approaches to second language acquisition and provided an answer to the “Baker’s Paradox.”

This study explored the effects of entrenchment, preemption, and verb semantics on Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners’ ability to retreat from overgeneralization errors in English transitive and intransitive constructions. Two groups of Chinese EFL learners were required to rate the acceptability of 60 transitive and intransitive verbs within their respective constructions. The findings revealed that Chinese EFL learners were sensitive to entrenchment, preemption and semantic constraints. This indicates that these learners restricted the generalization of transitive and intransitive constructions by relying on statistical verb-bias information and semantic constraints. Moreover, the awareness of these constraints among Chinese EFL learners substantially improved as their English proficiency advanced. The study’s findings highlight the importance of frequency and distributional information in language learning, demonstrating that learners used statistical patterns to guide their grammatical judgments. These findings support usage-based approaches to second language acquisition and shed light on the “Baker’s Paradox”

Errors, as linguistic manifestations of cognitive challenges in interpreting, have attracted considerable attention in the fields of teaching, practice, and assessment. This paper examines the nature of interpreting errors among Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners and explores their relationship with gender differences and interpreting performance, using the parallel corpus of Chinese EFL Learners-Spoken (PACCEL-S). The findings indicate the following: (1) improper speech flow was the most frequent and dense type of error, followed by grammatical errors and semantic deviations, while information default occurred least frequently. These patterns can be attributed to deficiencies in learners’ language proficiency, interpreting skills, and emotional regulation; (2) only grammatical errors showed a statistically significant correlation with gender, suggesting that gender-related differences in communication psychology may influence interpreting performance; (3) semantic deviation, information default, and improper speech flow were all significantly and negatively correlated with interpretation scores, whereas grammatical errors showed no significant correlation with these scores. These results suggest that English proficiency assessments may tolerate a certain degree of grammatical errors in interpreting tasks. Situated within the context of interpreting education, this study extends research on interpreting errors, enriches interpreting pedagogy and assessment, and deepens our understanding of the challenges faced by Chinese EFL learners.

The present study investigates Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners' intonation pattern of exclamatory sentences. The results show that both Chinese EFL learners and English RP speakers (Received Pronunciation) adopt a falling (H*L) tone of a sentence to realize the exclamatory intonation. However, before the last H*L in an intonational phrase, a rising tone and the pitch contour enlargement can be observed. This study also shows that the final boundary tone of Chinese EFL learners is mostly realized as low (L%), and the same pattern can be found in English RP speakers, whereas the initial boundary tone of Chinese EFL learners is mostly high(H%). Moreover, Chinese EFL learners' pitch range of exclamations is wider than that of English RP speakers, and Chinese EFL learners intend to use more pauses in a sentence.

This linguistic study investigates the lexico-grammatical features of Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners’ argumentative essays. The study utilizes corpus linguistic methods and natural language processing tools to analyze 1460 writing samples from an online learner corpus. Variations in linguistic complexity and sophistication of clause, phrase, and syntactic sophistication across different proficiency levels were examined using AntConc, Multidimensional Analysis Tagger, and TAASSC. The results indicate significant variances in lexico-grammatical complexity and sophistication features between low and high proficiency levels. The study revealed that proficiency levels of EFL learners had varying effects on clausal complexity, phrasal complexity, and syntactic sophistication. The study also identifies limitations in the natural language processing tool used for extracting target indices in argumentative essays. Overall, these findings have implications for EFL teaching, learning, and assessment, and for improving NLP tools.

This research aims to analyse the use of amplifiers in academic writing of Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners with a comparison to that of native speakers. By analysing the frequency and features of amplifiers in Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays and Ten-thousand English Compositions of Chinese Learners, it is noticeable that Chinese EFL learners’ limited variety of vocabulary might lead to the high frequency of certain amplifiers. Pedagogically, raising learners’ awareness on the inappropriate use of amplifiers in academic writing is a necessity. The instruction on using intensifying adverbs authentically should be emphasized in Chinese EFL classes.

This research aims to analyse the use of amplifiers in academic writing of Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners with a comparison to that of native speakers. By analysing the frequency and features of amplifiers in Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays and Ten-thousand English Compositions of Chinese Learners, it is noticeable that Chinese EFL learners’ limited variety of vocabulary might lead to the high frequency of certain amplifiers. Pedagogically, raising learners’ awareness on the inappropriate use of amplifiers in academic writing is a necessity. The instruction on using intensifying adverbs authentically should be emphasized in Chinese EFL classes.

The present study investigates Chinese EFL (English as a foreign language) learners' intonation pattern of yes-no questions on the basis of AM theory. According to our study, American speakers adopt a low-level (L*) or low rising tone (L*H) on nuclear accents no matter the nuclear accent is on the medial or final part of a sentence. By contrast, Chinese EFL learners apply a high-level (H*) or falling (H*L) tone when a nuclear accent falls on the medial part of a sentence but a falling (H*L) or low rising tone (L*H) when it is on the final part. The final boundary tone of Chinese EFL learners can be either high (H%) or low (L%) while American speakers mainly apply the H% boundary tone. Besides, Chinese EFL learners' pitch movements of nuclear accents in yes-no questions are similar to those of statements.

Chinese EFL learners’ use of mobile dictionaries in reading comprehension tasks

Using the self-paced reading, this paper investigated the role of verbs or constructions when Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners try to understand an English sentence. Previous researches on the main determinant in English sentences comprehension had two different views. Healy and Miller (1970) held that the verb is the main determinant of sentence meaning, while Bencini and Goldberg (2000) held that the construction is directly associated with sentence meaning. However, studies from English as a second language may provide a clue of the main determinant of English sentence meaning. The paper classified English resultatives into four types: the Subcategorized Object Resultative, the Non-subcategorized Object Resultative, the Fake Reflexive Resultative and the No Object Resultative. The paper investigated high-level Chinese English learners’ understanding of the English resultative constructions which have the same surface structure but different deep structures (the first three types). The result showed that the acquisition of subcategorized object resultatives is better than non-subcategorized object resultatives. Therefore, this paper argues that although the construction has a suppressing impact on the verb, the basic determinant of English sentences comprehension by Chinese EFL learners is the verb.