Abstract
During the foreign language-learning, reading comprehension plays an important role of the four basiclearning skills. It is not only one of the standards to evaluate （the） whether the proficiency of Englishcomprehension is high. In the 1970s, Flavell put forward the concept the meta-cognitive, which couldstimulate many of the researchers to do the research. And it is also a heated topic in the fields of psychology,pedagogic, and linguistics. Accomplishing the reading task, the reader need combine their knowledge withtextual knowledge in the process of the planning, monitoring and evaluating. During the process, Only thereaders actively can plan,regulate and evaluate as well as adopt proper strategies can they tackle the readingproblems efficiently. Therefore, meta-cognition plays an important role in accomplishing the readingcomprehension for those English learners.
Through one year teaching experience for college students majoring in Art for nationalities, the authorfinds out that the proficiency of English of Art major students has the common character that is poor in basicskills, low activity and bad attitude, etc. Furthermore, most of them in English learning have no plans, andthey even do not know how to learn effectively. Some of the results are concluded by the factor that is loss ofthe effective strategies, such as, meta-cognitive strategies and other learning strategies. Therefore, accordingto the condition, the author bases on the meta-cognitive theory and take the two classes students majoringArt in Art college in Grade 2012 of Northwest University for Nationalities for example. And the authorconducted the meta-cognitive strategies training on them and the training content includes planning,monitoring and evaluating strategies. Meanwhile, through the training program, some of the questions willbe asked and answered: 1） Can the implication of the Meta-cognitive strategy training improve the attitudetoward English reading comprehension of Art major students in Nationalities? 2） Can the implication of themeta-cognitive strategies improve the proficiency of English learning comprehension of Art major studentsin Nationalities? During the research, the author also adopts the questionnaire and reading test to get the data,which are analyzed by the SPSS. 17.0. Seventy-five students majoring Art participate in the experiment. Afterthe comparison between the T-test and paired sample test of the pre-experiment questionnaire andpost-experiment questionnaire, it indicates that the meta-cognitive awareness and learning attitude of EC andCC have improved a lot, but as for the comparison between the EC and CC, their awareness meta-cognitivestrategies have no significant differences. Then these students are required to have the reading test. Thecomparison between the T-test and Paired sample test has proved that the English reading comprehensionproficiency of EC and CC have made big progress individually. However, the comparison between the ECand CC shows that they have no significant changes.
Accordingly, the author can conclude that meta-cognitive strategies have no significant differences forimproving the English reading comprehension of Art major students of Northwest University forNationalities. As for the above conclusion, we can indicate that meta-cognitive strategies are supposed to addto the class for Art major students little by little, because most of them are unsuccessful English learners. Ofcourse, the author suggests that teacher may teach a small part of students how to use the meta- cognitivestrategies, but the teacher should make sure that the proficiency of English reading comprehension of thesesmall part of students is best of the class. At last, the thesis talks about the reason why meta- cognitivestrategies have no significant differences for Art major students of Northwest University for Nationalities.
Then the author also gives the limitations and suggestions for further study.
Abstract
In recent years, the South China Sea issue has become a hot topic, escalatingfrom bilateral disputes into the current situation of “six countries and eight parties”.
Therefore, the issue has raised many concerns from the international community.China-Vietnam dispute over the South China Sea is particularly noticeable. Associalist countries, China and Vietnam have deep historical relations between them.
We can even say that the China-Vietnam relations enjoy unique advantages. However,Vietnam has occupied most of the Chinese islands and reefs in the South China Sea.Different from other claimants in the South China Sea issue, Vietnam has declaredclaim to the entire Spratly and Paracel Islands, playing a leading role in the SouthChina Sea issue.
Given the important influence of Vietnam on the South China Sea issue and theuniqueness of their bilateral relations, the China-Vietnam dispute has become themost complex dispute in the South China Sea issue; meanwhile, it is also a good pointto make a breakthrough from so as to solve the South China Sea issue. China andVietnam have successfully solved through bilateral consultations and negotiations theland border issue left over from the history. We have reasons to look forward to thepeaceful settlement of their dispute over the South China Sea issue.
From the current perspective, the differences between China and Vietnam arevery big, and the United States and other outside powers have never stopped theirinterference in the South China Sea issue. Therefore, it will be difficult for China tosafeguard national interests in the South China Sea by peaceful means while ensuringsmooth relations with Vietnam. However, with China's comprehensive nationalstrength growing, the cost of interference for powers outside the region in the SouthChina Sea issue will be increasingly high, and the change in the balance of power willalso be in favor of China.
The option of military means contains lots of risks, while the option ofinternational arbitration is undesirable. On this occasion, the present study holds thatthere remains a possibly pragmatic solution. This needs the non-interference of theUS on the China-Vietnam dispute. If China wants to reach this goal, China shouldtake the benefit-sharing with US to some content into full consideration. On this basis,China could regain its sovereignty over the Nansha islands through joint development,transfer of some economic benefits, increasing economic influence on Vietnameseeconomy, and widening the power gaps, etc.
If China and Vietnam could successfully solve their maritime dispute, it wouldbe a very positive example to the final solution to the South China Sea issue.
ABSTRACT
Pronunciation is an important criterion to test English proficiency. As the backboneof English phonetics, super-segmental factors play a key role in communication,realizing the functions of disambiguating, conveying information and expressing thespeaker's attitude. This study focuses on super-segmental features of senior Englishmajors in a public university in Zhejiang Province by means of ToBI labeling. Twentyeight senior English majors and three native English speakers are required to read aloudand record the same material. Five target sentences are extracted from each participant'srecording and with the help of PRAAT, the pitch contours of these five target sentencesread by each participant are produced, and after that, ToBI labeling is conducted.
The super-segmental features are studied from the perspectives of prominence,phrasing and tunes. Results indicate Aat: （1） EFL learners use prominence morefrequently, but the distinction between prominent words and unprominent words are notquite obvious,which may blur the focus of information. （2） EFL learners tend tosegment the utterance into smaller chunks with fewer words in shorter time. （3） EFLlearners tend to use various types of tunes in the utterance but level and falling tones aretwo commonly used tune types. The pitch range of their tunes is narrow, withoutobvious undulations. Possible causes are negative transfer from mother tongue Chineseand a lack of phonetic knowledge.
Pedagogical suggestions are made to improve phonetic instructions, i.e., increasingstudents' phonetic awareness, particularly their awareness of super-segmental features,and applying visual software to phonetic instructions. Limitations of andrecommendations for further studies are also presented.
ABSTRACT
Degree adverbs play a crucial role in daily language communication. However,owing to their wide varieties and similar meanings, it is hard for language learners toreally master their meanings and usages.
With the aid of AntConc 3.4.lw and based on the corpora of FROWN （TheFreiburg-Brown Corpus of American English），FLOB （The Freiburg-LOB Corpus ofBritish English） and CLEC （Chinese Learner English Corpus）， the study aims tocompare the actual use of common English degree adverbs in terms of semanticprosody between Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers. The researchprocedures consist of two steps. First, AntConc 3.4.lw is launched to extractconcordance lines of the target node words in each corpus and the semantic featuresof the node words' collocates are analyzed; then, the semantic prosodies of these nodewords are summarized and comparisons are made between the two corpora.
The results indicate that there are differences as well as similarities betweennative English speakers and Chinese learners in their use of semantic prosody.
Chinese EFL learners tend to underuse the negative semantic prosodies of fairly,highly, and totally?,overuse the negative semantic prosodies of extremely; and misusethe semantic prosody of terribly. The results also show that some problems exist inChinese learners' use of semantic prosodies of degree adverbs, and the reasons mayinclude their first language transfer, intralingual transfer, and the lack of informationabout the semantic prosody in dictionaries and textbooks.
The study has some implications for English language teaching, vocabularylearning, as well as the textbook and dictionary compiling.
