Abstract
As the era of information and globalization trend continues to develop, the way peoplelive and learn has undergone deep changes. Developing new talents with innovative spirit andpractical abilities as well as lifelong learning skills has become the re-orientation of talentscultivation method in colleges and universities. In the field of foreign language teaching,reading ability development is usually a top priority among a variety of skills, especially incollege English teaching. In today's college English reading, traditional teaching methods stilldominate most of the classroom. This always entails poor results, and learners' comprehensiveability is low, which have to be improved and amended.
Problem-based Learning, hereinafter referred to as PBL, is applied in the medical field,in recent years; it is widely used in the field of education. It is a learner-centered teachingmethod, which helps learners to develop problem-solving skills through joint problem solvingactivities conducted by learners groups. It is a creative teaching method that meets the currenttalents cultivating requirements. More and more theoretical researches on PBL at home andabroad are published, but the application of PBL in the college English reading teaching israre. In the thesis, guided by PBL, two non-English-majored parallel classes with learners arechosen as experimental class and controlled class respectively. A semester long contrastiveexperiment is conducted, during which the experimental class was given PBL readingteaching method, while the controlled class was guided by traditional teaching method. In theresearch, a thematic unit in the college English reading course was taken as an example, andmethods like questionnaires, pretest, posttest, interview and other ways are applied to supportthe experiment. The data collected in the research was then processed through SPSS dataanalysis software in order to present more reliable results. By doing all this, we aim to explorea more effective approach to college English reading teaching.
It is proved that the method has a positive effect on cultivating and improving learners'reading skills and reading comprehension ability and improving learners' cultural recognitionand cultivating autonomous learning ability, creative thinking skills, peer collaboration and soon. It provides theoretical and practical references for institutions of higher learning in termsof college English reading teaching. However, there are many shortcomings of this study, andwe sincerely hope that the study will play the role of catalyst and attract more scholars andteachers to conduct a more in-depth study and research.
Abstract
In C-E translation, the original subjects are the preferred candidates for the targetsubjects. But for the linguistic and cultural differences between Chinese and English, there areother options for acceptable English texts. This thesis,with the introduction of Toury'sdescriptive translation studies, and the cases of Hong Lou Meng and its two English versions,is meant to explore translational norms in the English subject selection. In this thesis, both thequantitative and qualitative approaches are adopted. First and foremost, from the analysis ofthe ST and TTs, this thesis has generalized the strategies adopted by the translators in theEnglish subject selection. Secondly, this thesis made a contrastive study between the two TTsto find the differences and similarities between the two English versions in the English subjectselection. Through analyzing the cited examples from the perspective of Toury's translationalnorms,this thesis explores the decision making process of the translator which gives anaccount of the norms of the English subject selection.
From the perspective of Toury's translational norms, based on the analysis of the twoversions of Hong Lou Meng, a conclusion is drawn that the English subject selection isaffected by the preliminary norms, initial norms and operational norms, which influence thetranslators' subject selection at macro and micro levels.
The English subject translation governed by initial norms is related to the source normsand target norms. Based on a contrastive analysis of the TTs, this thesis finds that since Yangand Hawkes are with different background of native language, the former tends to subjecthimself to the norms realized in Chinese （source language）， but the later to the norms ofEnglish （target language）。 Therefore,in the subject selection, Yang's translation is towards theST norms, then his TT is adequate; Hawkes's translation is towards the target culture norms,then his TT is acceptable.
The English subject selection governed by preliminary norms, to a certain extent, isrelated to the translation policy, including different social backgrounds, politics,culturalbackgrounds and the purpose of translation. From our analysis,it is concluded that underdifferent historical backgrounds and different purposes of translation, different sets oftranslational norms are applied in the TTs regarding subject selection. In Yang's version'sversion,he tends to keep close to the ST sentence structures and subjects,which reflects thathis translation strategies are influenced by his political, historical background and purpose oftranslation. On the other hand, Hawkes who is relatively free from the political factor andcaters to readers' interest tends to reconstruct the ST sentence structures and replace theoriginal subjects more often. Therefore Hawkes's version is reader- friendly.
The English subject selection governed by operational norms is related to matricialnorms and textual-linguistic norms realized in English. With respect to information status（related to the textual theme） in matricial norms of English subject, the translator tends tochoose the sentence elements in ST with high information status as subjects in the TT. Withthe respect to the adequacy and grammaticality of English in textual-linguistic norms, thetranslator tends to reconstruct the sentence in ST, such as,nominalization of Chinese verbs,the explicitness of reference or cohesion devices in Chinese and even the utilization of typicalEnglish sentence patterns.
All in all,under the operational norms of the information status of English subjects andthe adequacy and grammaticality of English, the translation strategies of the English subjectselection employed in both versions are generalized as: （a） subject equivalence between STand TT; （b） subject addition in TT; （c） subject replacement in TT; and （d） subject pruning inTT. Furthermore, in practice of these techniques, the translator may adopt different strategiesbecause of his subjection to the ST norms or TT norms, or even to the different translationpurposes. From the contrastive analysis of Yang's version and Hawkes's version, it is foundthat Hawkes subjects more to the English norms so that his version is a reader-friendlytranslation, while Yang subjects less to the target norms but more to the source norms, whichrenders his translation an adequate one. The translators' subjections contribute to the differentchoices of subjects in the two versions. For instance, there are more cases of addition ofsubjects, pruning of subjects and replacement of subjects in TT in Hawkes's version than inYang's version.
Abstract
Over the past 20-30 years,researches on pedagogy turn their focus from “how toteach” to “how to learn”, and, at the same time, learning strategy remains an importantfield of second language acquisition. The highest level learningstrategy--meta-cognitive strategies which can help learners become effectivelearners has been widely studied. These studies get involved in every aspect ofEnglish learning: listening,speaking, reading and writing. But these studies mainlytook university students as the research subjects; they rarely research preparatoryschool students,especially National Minority Preparatory School student. NationalMinority Preparatory School students are a group of special university students. Dueto geographical and economic factors, their basic knowledge is poor. They are eagerto improve their learning efficiency and want to become effective learners. Reading isan important input of second language acquisition. Effective reading can improvelearners' learning motivation and learning effect. So as a National MinorityPreparatory Schoolteacher, to find out how to improve national preparatory schoolstudents' English learning efficiency, and whether meta-cognitive strategies trainingcan help them read well become the author's focus of research.
This study takes meta-cognitive as the breakthrough point and meta-cognitivetheory as a guide to discuss the relevant on meta-cognitive strategies and Englishreading teaching. Through the analysis of the psychological and metal development ofNational Minority Preparatory School student and related reading theory the presentpaper attempts to research for a relativity between National Minority PreparatorySchool students and meta-cognitive strategy, and apply the meta-cognitive strategiesto reading, by means of questionnaire and reading test materials to get experimentaldata and SPSS to analyze data. By doing this, we can testify the hypothesis.
The experimental results show that the meta-cognitive strategy training has moreobvious role in promoting National Minority Preparatory School students' Englishreading competence.
Abstract
English business letters have already become an indispensible part of international trade.
Its main role is to transfer information of both parties accurately, to promote businesscommunication and to maintain good cooperation between two parties.
Based on the theory of Halliday's interpersonal metafunction, this thesis takes 120English business letters in six categories as study data, using quantitative and descriptivemethods to study how interpersonal meaning is realized in six categories of English businessletters. This research is done from perspectives of mood and modality in interpersonalmetafunction. Analysis from perspective of mood includes type of mood and subject; analysisfrom perspective of modality includes modal expressions, types of modality, modality valueand modality orientation. Modality has four expressions: finite modal operator, modal adjunct,expanded predicator and metaphor of modality.
This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one introduces research background,research significance, research methodology and structure of the thesis. Chapter two isliterature review. In this chapter, business English, English business letters, languagemetafunctions and interpersonal metafunction are reviewed. Chapter three is theoreticalfoundation. This chapter illustrates language metafunction and their realizing forms,especially interpersonal metafunction. Chapter four is data analysis and discussion. Thischapter studies realization of interpersonal metafunction in English business letters fromperspectives of mood and modality. Chapter five is the conclusion.
The research finds that different categories of English business letters have commonfeatures in realizing interpersonal meaning; meanwhile, each category of English businessletters has its own realizing forms in realizing interpersonal meaning, and there existdifferences in aspect of type of mood, subject, modal expressions, type of modality, modalityvalue and modality orientation. The conclusion of this thesis can be applied in teaching ofwriting English business letters, helping students understand English business letters betterand effectively solve problems in commercial communication in order to promote businesscooperation. However, there are some limitations in this thesis: firstly, categories of Englishbusiness letters in his thesis can't contain all circumstances; secondly, larger corpus will proveaccuracy of the conclusion more precisely.
Abstract
Vocabulary teaching is vital in the process of learners' ESL learning. However, studentsstill tend to mechanical or rote-learning in this aspect. To address such a problem in thepresent situation, new and creative teaching methods are in great need. The author chose thetopic from the perspective of the requirements for English vocabulary in the New EnglishCurriculum for Senior High School and the present situation of vocabulary teaching andlearning in China and put forward the view of applying narrative approach to senior highschool English vocabulary teaching, based on the theory of narrative approach.
Narrative approach is an idea about language teaching which proposes that a certainteaching process of language items, such as a text, a paragraph, a language point, agrammatical item, should be designed and presented in a narrative way. The application ofnarrative approach can create an authentic situation, which makes the students devoted to thesituation constructed through narration, and adequately exert their mental abilities such asemotion, imagination, creation, etc. and finally acquire language in the cognitive activitiesintegrated with real-life. Meanwhile narrative approach also refers to a teaching method andcovers all kinds of specific teaching techniques. It integrates the factors of approach, methodand technique into one entity.
The author conducts a teaching experiment in order to testify the effect of the approach invocabulary teaching. To be more accurate, the experiment is designed to solve the followingquestions:
1. After the implementation of the narrative approach, will the students' learning interest andattitudes be improved in the experimental class?
2. Will the narrative approach improve the students' vocabulary competence and theintegrated competence more than the traditional teaching method?
The author chose two parallel groups for comparison. 125 senior high school students whocome from two classes of grade one in Huairen High School Shanxi Province are selected asthe research subjects. The teacher applies narrative approach to the experimental class （EC）while the traditional teaching method to the control class （CC）。 During the experiment, thepre-test is given to both classes and the post-test is given after 3-month experiment to thesame subjects. Besides, the author made a survey of students in the experimental class via aquestionnaire at the end of the experiment. Finally, the author adopts the SPSS.17.0 toanalyze the experimental data and conducts the T-test for independent sample. The data showthat there exist no obvious differences between the EC and CC regarding vocabularycompetence and integrated competence before the experiment while there exit differencesbetween them both in vocabulary competence and integrated competence after the experimentwhich implies the bigger improvement of experimental class compared with the scores of thecontrol class. The students of experimental class show greater interest in vocabulary learningand they learn English more actively.
The results of the study show that the application of narrative approach can improve thestudents' vocabulary competence and integrated competence to some extent. The research isassumed to shed some implications on senior high school English vocabulary teaching.
Meanwhile, it provides some suggestions for further research. The author's application ofnarrative approach to the senior high school vocabulary teaching is only an attempt and, to acertain degree, of some originality. However, it inevitably has some limitations due to thelimited samples in the experiment and the limited time for the experiment.
Abstract
As we all know, English writing has still been one of standards to measure learners'English level, and it has become an important teaching task for English teachers. However,due to the poor learning condition, it is quite difficult for Chinese rural students to improvetheir English writing faculty under the influence of native language. As a result, students oftenworried about English writing and even some students lose confidence in it, which deeplyaffects their English learning. In order to solve this problem, the author aims to help studentsovercome grammatical errors caused by native language transfer into English writing in ruraljunior high schools, which based on inter-language theory, error analysis theory. After settingup a theoretical foundation, the author designs an experiment on the grammatical errorscommitted by the rural students in their English compositions.
In this experiment, the author prepares to collect some grammatical errors from ruraljunior high students' English writings, to classify these errors, to analyze the causes for theseerrors, and to explore the effective way to help students overcome these grammatical errors.
During the teaching process, the writer applies error correction approaches and guidesstudents to correct grammatical errors by themselves. Furthermore, the author tries toencourage students to read widely, to recite the authentic English passages, to raise theirwriting interests, and to boost their awareness of cross-linguistic and cultivate languagesenses and learn how to think in English.
Quantitative and qualitative methods are applied in this study. The subjects are selectedfrom two classes of Junior 2 students from Wu Chang First Middle School （N=103） who aredesigned randomly as one experimental class （class 1） and one controlled class （class 2）。 Thequestionnaire is applied in this study, which makes the study more reliable and scientific. Thequestionnaire is designed to find out what types of grammatical errors are often committed byrural junior students, and which part is the most difficult in English learning and study howthe Chinese thinking pattern affects rural students in their writings. In the pre-test, all thesegrammatical errors from both two classes are collected and classified. The score of Englishwriting is marked by an experienced English teacher and the author. The grading criteria ofthe compositions can refer to the one of high school entrance exam （the full score for theEnglish exam is 150, while the full score of English writing is 25）， which is also applied inthis experiment and provided in appendix C. The experiment lasts for sixteen weeks. In thepost-test, the data from these two classes are collected again and analyzed by means of SPSS16.0, which aims to test the significant difference of English writing level between the twoclasses. In the two classes, score of English writing achieved by the experimental class ishigher than that by the controlled class; it can demonstrate the new teaching method can helpstudents overcome the grammatical errors caused by negative transfer, and vice versa.
Abstract
Nowadays, it is a very normal phenomenon that English teachers pay moreattention to knowledge implanting in the English grammar class, and the learners lackof the learning enthusiasm, especially for the poor English learners. However, most ofthe English teachers ignore the training of quality in their English classes. On thecontrary, they pay more attention to knowledge, in which way leads to themonotonous teaching approach and boring class atmosphere. In this way, some of thelearners who are not interested in English learning don't like learning English, evenbecome tired of learning English, especially for English grammar. That influencesEnglish teaching quality to a great extent. The class like this is in need of immediatechange. In an efficient English class, we need affective communication betweenteacher and students. And teachers' active treatment to students plays an importantrole in helping learners grasp knowledge and improve their comprehensive languageapplication ability.
This paper combines the content and factors of affective teaching and sometheories, such as humanism, Affective Filter Hypothesis, to analyze the function ofaffective teaching for the poor learners in middle school with the help ofquestionnaires. In view of the realistic English teaching present situation, the authorwill give some suggestions on English affective teaching. For example, combinestories with games to arouse students' learning enthusiasm and initiation in Englishlearning. Maybe more praise can give the learners more confidence to learn andarouse their learning motivation.
Through experiments and questionnaires, we got the results that affectiveteaching can arouse the poor learners' learning enthusiasm and motivation, eliminatetheir learning anxieties, and promote their comprehensive language applicationability.
