non-English Majors Research Articles

Corpus-based Study on the Use of Delexicalized Word “Thing” by Non-English Majors in L2 Writing

Corpus-based Study on the Use of Delexicalized Word “Thing” by Non-English Majors in L2 Writing

Unveiling the Scoring Validity of Two Chinese Automated Writing Evaluation Systems: A Quantitative Study

Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) has been a burgeoning industry in China, one case in point being the extensive employment of Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) systems in college English writing instruction to reduce teachers’ workload. Nonetheless, what warrants a special mention is that most teachers include automatic scores in the formative evaluation of relevant courses with scant attention to the scoring efficacy of these systems (Bai & Wang, 2018; Wang & Zhang, 2020). To have a clearer picture of the scoring validity of two commercially available Chinese AWE systems (Pigai and iWrite), the present study sampled 486 timed CET-4 (College English Test Band-4) essays produced by second-year non-English majors from 8 intact classes. Data comprising the maximum score difference, agreement rate, Pearson’s correlation coefficient and Cohen’s Kappa were collected to showcase human-machine and machine-machine congruence. Quantitative linguistic features of the sample essays, including accuracy, lexical and syntactic complexity, and discourse features, were also gleaned to investigate the differences (or similarities) in construct representation valued by both systems and human raters. Results show that (1) Pigai and iWrite largely agreed with each other but differed a lot from human raters in essay scoring; (2) high-human-score essays were prone to be assigned low machine scores; (3) machines relied heavily on the quantifiable features, which, however, had limited impacts on human raters.

Investigating Impact of Analysis Matrix Summarization Technique on Iranian University Students’ Reading Comprehension Enhancement

The present study was an attempt to investigate the effect of the analysis matrix, a type of graphic organizer, as a language improvement supportive attempt on fostering reading comprehension in an EFL academic context. The main question this study tried to answer was whether using this technique might enhance reading comprehension abilities among Iranian non-English majors. To achieve this goal, 120 nursing and microbiology majors were randomly selected from a population of the non-English majors enrolled for the Academic English course. They were divided into four groups of 30 and were randomly assigned to two experimental groups and two control groups. A pre-test of reading comprehension was administered to all groups. Then, they were taught passages to read for eight sessions with different methods; the experimental groups received a treatment of analysis matrix technique instruction while the control groups were taught with the traditional method, including no summarization instruction. A post-test of reading comprehension was finally administered to all groups. The data were analyzed using one-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) to control the effects of the pre-test on the outcomes. The results indicated a statistically significant difference due to pedagogical intervention; the two experimental groups outperformed on the post-test after being treated with analysis matrix technique for eight sessions.

Cultivation of Non-English Majors Intercultural Awareness via Appreciating Oscar Best Pictures

Language is the carrier of culture. Mastering a language is not only to learn the language itself, but to learn and understand the cultural elements that the target language embodies. College English teaching should make great effort to introduce cultural knowledge to enhance students’ intercultural awareness, which is the basis of students’ intercultural communicative competence, and intercultural communicative competence is the reality of students’ intercultural awareness. As means of teaching, film plays an important role in cultivating students’ cultural awareness, especially inter-cultural awareness. This thesis adopts methods of literature to carry out research on Oscar Best Pictures and advantages of appreciating them in non-English Majors’ culture learning and cultivating their inter-cultural awareness. The author hopes this exploration will arouse college English teachers’ and non-English majors’ thinking and attention to English culture learning and cultivation of intercultural awareness and promote more further study.

On the Practice of Cultivating Non-English Major’s Intercultural Awareness through Oscar Best Pictures

Based on the requirement of College English Teaching Guide and discussion about researches on movie teaching, this project carried out empirical research to illustrate the practical effect of appreciating Oscar best Pictures on non-English majors’ cultural learning and cultivating their intercultural awareness in the process of college English teaching. It is hoped that this exploration will serve as a stimulus for further study to arouse college English teachers’ and non-English majors’ thinking and attention to English culture learning and intercultural awareness.

A Study of Students’ Motivational Dynamics in College English Classes

Students’ motivation in learning English in class is not static but dynamic and multidimensional. This has been recognized by more and more researchers, but studies of this phenomenon are still in early stage. Besides, researches on Macau local university students’ (non-English majors) learning motivation in English class on the basis of Dynamic Systems Theory have not been found. In order to explore the features of these students’ learning motivation in English class, and find out the factors that influence their English learning, a case study is conducted to investigate the change of students’ motivation in learning English in the classroom context. It reveals that under the influence of different situational contexts and external factors, the change of students’ motivation in learning English shows individual differences, while at the same time follows some certain patterns - the attractor state. These findings may be beneficial to English teaching and learning in Macau universities, helping teachers better motivate Macau local students to learn English in class.

Application of Translation Workshop to College English Translation Teaching

Undergraduate education throughout the world has long been confronted with the challenge of making students active learners who are responsible for their own learning. It has been widely recognized that higher education needs to turn to student-centered perspective and model which emphasizes students' learning effect, or the outcomes of talent training. The traditional "teaching-centered" translation training mode adopted to teach non-English majors in Chinese universities cannot effectively improve students' translation ability, though it may assist English language learning. The teaching mode of "translation workshop", aiming at improving students’ learning effect, emphasizes the learning process and enables students to learn and improve translation skills through real translation project, which is conducive to raising students’ awareness of cross cultural communication and cultivating their sense of responsibility as translators. The experiment done in the present study proves that applying "translation workshop" to teaching Chinese non-English majors can effectively stimulate students' interest in learning, increase their participation in learning, and thus improve the effect of translation learning.

Teaching English as a Second Language in Vietnam: Transitioning from the Traditional Learning Approach to the Blended Learning Approach

Although blended learning (BL) has been utilized in English language teaching globally for the past few decades, it is a new phenomenon in the Vietnamese context. Little research has been done to simultaneously investigate how students and lecturers perceive blended learning implementation for English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching and learning in Vietnam, particularly within the higher education context. This study thus aims to investigate lecturers’ and students’ perspectives on BL implementation in an English Fundamentals course at a polytechnic in Hanoi, Vietnam. Data was collected via an online survey of 1500 non-English majors in the Fall 2019 semester and via interviews with 5 full-time EFL lecturers. The findings revealed that lecturers and students had positive perceptions of BL. For lecturers, the implementation of BL impacted their teaching approach and shifted the teaching of grammar and vocabulary from face-to-face to self-studying grammar and vocabulary using online lessons, devoting more in-class time to practicing speaking. Students meanwhile revealed that BL helped them develop self-autonomy of learning.

A Study of Non-English Majors Postgraduates Students’ Listening Anxiety and Its Countermeasures

Language anxiety is one of the important emotional factors affecting learning effect, especially in listening activities. Listening anxiety is common among English learners and can affect their academic performance. Rational use of listening learning strategies can reduce the negative impact of anxiety on English learning. This paper conducts a qualitative research on the status and causes of non-English major postgraduates’ listening anxiety through interviews, and puts forward targeted countermeasures to overcome the listening anxiety.

Does Conferencing Feedback Improve Non-English Majors’ Paragraph-Writing? A Case Study in Vietnam

Does Conferencing Feedback Improve Non-English Majors’ Paragraph-Writing? A Case Study in Vietnam

Moral Education and College English Teaching—Taking “A Space Tourist Makes His Case” Text Study as an Example

Moral Education is a major strategic deployment of the Party Central Committee to promote the development of education in the new era. It is an important strategic measure to improve the quality of Ideological and political work in Colleges and universities. It plays a very important role in the cultivation of qualified builders and reliable successors of the socialist cause. This paper takes “A Space Tourist Makes His Case” text study as an example to discuss the collaborative effect of Comprehensive English teaching and moral education for non-English majors.

Uncovering Reading Needs of Non-English Majors of Tribhuvan University

This study aimed at investigating into reading problems and needs of non-major English students of Tribhuvan University (TU), Nepal. Needs analysis (NA) plays an integral role in the process of designing and carrying out any language course, whether it is English for Specific Purposes (ESP) or general English course, and its centrality has been acknowledged by several scholars and authors. One hundred and two non-English majors and fifteen English teachers of Tribhuvan University participated in this study. Questionnaires served as the main tools for conducting an NA. The findings revealed that both the groups of participants perceived all seven sub-skills of reading as ‘important’. There is consistency between students’ perceptions of importance of subskills of reading and teachers’ perception of importance of the sub-skills. Regarding the perceived competence, teacher participants found their students’ abilities to be “not very good” or even “poor” in the subskills which they considered ‘important’ or ‘very important’. They rated their students at levels lower than the ones students did. The study also revealed that the students are poor at reading instruction booklets, company brochures and user manuals.

Exploring Teachers’ and Learners’ Attitude towards Homework: The case of English versus Non-English-Major Teachers’ Homework Practices

Homework assignments provide a channel of communication between students and teachers especially in an EFL context where there is little exposure to English language out of the classroom context. Thus, exploring attitudes and homework features may provide teachers with useful information to know how to plan their homework assignments to improve students’ learning opportunities. This study aimed to explore both teachers’ and learners’ attitude towards homework; the difficulties faced by both teachers and learners with regard to homework as well as the assignment characteristics of English-major versus Non-English-major teachers. The study participants were 120 randomly selected adult male and female EFL learners and 81 EFL teachers. The data were collected through questionnaires and subsequent semi-structured interviews. SPSS 24 software was used to analyze the questionnaire data and interviews were recorded, transcribed, coded and categorized for further analysis. The results indicated that students had positive attitudes towards homework assignments. There was no significant difference between students’ attitude towards homework given by English Major (EM) and Non-English Major (NEM) teachers. The data showed that teachers do feel that homework is essential to students’ language development. Similarly, there was no significant difference among EM versus NEM teachers in their attitudes toward homework. The results revealed the following reasons for the difficulties that teachers and learners faced in assigning/doing homework assignments respectively. Those reasons varied from not learning the required concept, not knowing the instruction, not enjoying homework, not paying attention when homework assignments were presented, not understanding homework instruction, copying homework or cheating, the absence of related and meaningful tasks, parents’ lack of knowledge, lack of word power and grammar, to anxiety and stress of homework. The findings illustrated that there were some differences between EM and NEM teachers in terms of amount, skill area used, and degree of individualization in their homework assignments. The results of this study offer a number of pedagogical implications for teachers, curriculum developers, and institute managers.

Analysis of Learning Strategy on the Improvement of the Listening Comprehension Ability of Non-English Majors in Engineering Colleges from the Perspective of CSE: A Case Study of NCEPU

In today’s world of increasingly frequent global cooperation and communication, English has become an indispensable communication tool. In the process of communication, listening comprehension skills are especially important to have an oral output. For a long time, the public English courses in engineering colleges and universities don’t have enough listening course settings for non-English majors, which cannot meet the needs of non-English learners since they also have to obtain cutting-edge scientific information, such as from relevant scientific lectures. In 2018, China’s Standards of English Language Ability (CSE) was officially released, which provides a comprehensive, clear and detailed description of the characteristics of each listening comprehension level(Guo Xiaoting, 2018). In December 2019, the scale was officially docked with TOEFL scores, highlighting the scale’s role as an ability assessment standard for English learners (Qiu Chenhui, 2019). In this paper, a questionnaire survey was conducted on the English listening comprehension ability of non-English majors of North China Electric Power University, using CSE as the assessment standard. It tries to draw out existing questions and proposes relevant strategies for practical research, and then test these strategies’ effectiveness through Eviews software.

Does Conferencing Feedback Improve Non-English Majors’ Paragraph-Writing? A Case Study in Vietnam

Corrective feedback in learning English as a foreign language (EFL), especially in writing skills, has been investigated for years. Feedback is in various modes, including direct, indirect, electronic, and conferencing between teachers and students. The current study attempted to apply teacher-student conferencing feedback to a class of non-English majors of low English proficiency levels at a local college, located in Can Tho City, South of Vietnam. The study aimed to determine: (1) Does conferencing feedback improve the target students’ writing skills? (2) How do these students react to conferencing feedback? Answers to these questions are useful because they are supposed to provide more insights into the existing knowledge about the nature of conferencing feedback regarding its potential to be applied in different cultural contexts. The data-collecting instruments of pre-post tests and pre-post questionnaire surveys were employed. There were five conferences between the teacher and the participants during the intervention program. The results showed that conferencing feedback enhanced the participants’ English writing performance through the intervention. It also gained their positive attitudes demonstrated in the post questionnaire. Thereby, discussions and recommendations are provided.

Emergency remote teaching of English as a foreign language during COVID-19: Perspectives from a university in China

Given the circumstances of the global pandemic, universities around China and across the globe have suspended face to face (F2F) classes and transitioned to emergency remote teaching (ERT). University students in China have been the first to go through the whole semester’s ERT including College English, a compulsory language course for almost all the first- and second-year students of non-English majors. This article adopted a mixed-methods design, a survey followed by a qualitative visual method, gathered data on students’ experience about ERT of College English and presented an investigation into detailed interactive process of the classes. The data analysis on the learners’ engagement and the feedback from the learners provided a summary of the key threads of ERT classes. This study demonstrated that students held an extrinsic goal orientation, which did not differ from their face-to-face learning experience. ERT granted students more opportunities for interaction with their instructor and peers, while collaboration among students were limited. The research results can be connected to the larger fabric of global language teaching in crisis context, provide empirical lessons to educators, and help instructors with their future decision-making about technology-supported activities.

A Survey of the Use of English Vocabulary Mnemonic Strategies by Non-English Majors

Vocabulary can be regarded as an absolutely necessary part of language learning. Since the late 1970s, there have been a great lot of researches by native English learners on English vocabulary mnemonic strategies. Recently, many experts who are in the field of second language acquisition have been studying and researching all kinds of mnemonic strategies. But few researches focus on the study of the use of mnemonic strategies by non-English majors. Therefore, this investigation study focuses on the use of mnemonic strategies and the relevance between the strategies and the vocabulary grades. This study will investigate some subjects by means of a questionnaire survey to collect explicit data. And by analyzing the relevance between the strategies and the grades, this study can provide some effective suggestions about vocabulary learning. According to the research, the strategy used most frequently is repetition strategy. Because of the influence of traditional language learning theory, most students choose to use repetition strategy. And we can get that students should try more strategies to memorize words and teachers also should introduce more strategies to students.

Study on Warm-up Activities in College English Class

This paper aims to analyze the effects of warm-up activities in college English teaching on non-English majors and tries to probe how teachers implement warm-up activities in college English class. It is based on a qualitative study design in which questionnaire is used as the data collection procedure. The participants of the questionnaire are 143 college students all from non-English major, and 121 valid questionnaires are returned. According to the analysis of the data collected by the questionnaire, findings are categorized and discussed within the scope of the study.

A Study on Mobile Language Learning Strategy of Non-English Majors in a Chinese Private University

This quantitative study investigated the mobile language learning strategy of non-English major students among a Chinese private university. A total 107 students were selected and the results showed that the students had a moderate level of mobile language learning strategy and in each sub-strategy. No significant difference was found in the uses of language strategy between the male and female students.

Intercultural teaching approaches and practices of Chinese teachers in English education: An exploratory mixed methods study

Integrating intercultural competence in foreign language classrooms has been emphasized in China, yet scant explicit guidance currently exists on how to teach intercultural competence in college English courses. This study aimed at comparing and contrasting intercultural pedagogical approaches used by instructors in English courses for non-English majors, as well as teaching feedback provided by students enrolled in such courses. This study applied a sequential exploratory mixed research design. Methods such as face-to-face interviews and teaching and learning related document analyses were utilized to collect data, and generated qualitative and quantitative data. Three-dimensional meta themes emerged in mixed analysis, categorizing pedagogical approaches and teaching styles of individual instructors. Student feedback revealed learning experiences and difficulties of the teaching approaches.