Journal of English for Academic Purposes最新文献

Recent scholarship has questioned the cognitive validity of listening tests with preview, in which test-takers can see test questions before listening. This study mined student notes for evidence of cognitive processes in listening tests with and without preview, using a mixed-methods design that explored the effect of test format on notetaking behaviors. Qualitative analysis indicated that students who previewed items were more likely to systematically omit information, highlight previewed keywords, and engage in shallower structural representation. Conversely, Kruskal-Wallis tests revealed that students who listened without preview took more notes, especially of main ideas and details, and had better coverage of the lecture. However, correlation and hierarchical linear regression analyses found these notetaking achievements did not predict higher scores in the no-preview condition, while in the preview condition, only note quantity and focus on minor ideas predicted scores. Both strands of data suggest that students' cognitive processes were shaped by the format of the exam they experienced. These findings may bear on validity arguments for listening assessment and inform the way that language instructors prepare their students for academic listening.

This study explores promotional strategies in English and Chinese introductions and discussion/conclusion sections of applied linguistics (AL) research articles (RAs). Based on genre analysis, a more comprehensive and fine-grained taxonomy of promotional strategies was developed for the two RA part-genres that show a symmetrical relationship in terms of their promotional moves. A higher degree of promotion is detected in our corpus, which may be due to the increasing marketization of academia and the nature of AL. Regarding the cross-cultural variations, it is found that English texts are more promotional than Chinese ones. In the introduction, Chinese writers tend to rely heavily on the top three most frequent promotional strategies in our corpus, while English writers are inclined to justify and reinforce the significance of the research topic or claims, demonstrating a strong argumentation pattern. In the discussion/conclusion section, Chinese writers are more likely to summarize and explain their research results whereas English writers show a preference for evaluation of their research findings. Competitive research/publication contexts, national culture, audience, and disciplinary writing conventions might contribute to such differences. The findings and discussion through the lens of interdiscursivity and intercultural rhetoric have implications for EAL/ESL academic writing research and pedagogy.

Faced with the common challenge of professional development from the periphery of academia, EAP teachers in developing economies such as China also grapple with the particular hurdle of transitioning from teaching General English (GE) courses. While previous studies suggest aspects of how the teachers view the difficulties they encounter, the elicited data they use can hardly show the real actions the teachers take to identify problems, plan and evaluate changes. To remedy this oversight, this study adopts an action research design (Burns, 2010; Johnson, 2012) and explores how one teacher adapted to her new tasks in teaching EAP and coped with the transition through her personal actions.

The results show that the teacher was empowered in her struggle with the transition to EAP teaching, and such empowerment enabled her to become an active agent in the changes and implement the accommodating strategies for the EAP curriculum and students. The empowerment was also seen in her efforts not only to accumulate EAP-related experiences and bring forth creative ideas, but also to apply them in her teaching. This action research and its analytical framework help EAP practitioners to reflect on and theorise from what they encounter in everyday classrooms.

Previous studies have shown that as L2 writing develops from intermediate to advanced levels, addition is marked less often and the use of and decreases as the use of moreover, furthermore and other less frequent addition markers increases. This study goes further in that it examines first how addition is marked in different academic disciplines and genres, and secondly how addition markers and their collocates are used by Chinese students in comparison to L1 writers of English. For the first question, and in contrast to Peacock's (2010) analysis of research articles, addition markers are used more in this student writing in the sciences of Engineering, Food Sciences and Biology than in the social sciences of Business and Law, and more in the more scientific writing of lab report genres than the discursive writing of essays. Such variation reinforces the importance of genre and discipline differences in teaching second language writing. For the second question, a qualitative analysis reveals the important difference between stringing several points using addition markers and grouping points into one argument using a shell noun, or reinforcing one argument with collocates. These findings lead to specific suggestions for L2 academic writing teachers.

Our information about assessment behavior of EAP teachers constructing and using their classroom tests is so scanty that Schmitt and Hamp-Lyons (2015) believe it is hidden away from language testing community. We investigated how two different groups of Iranian EAP practitioners (discipline-area teachers and English language specialists) perceive and practice EAP assessment. We interviewed thirty teachers and examined forty test samples. Encouraged by our interview and corpus data and since achievement tests are inherently syllabi dependent, we content analyzed all undergraduate program syllabi. We found important differences pertaining to test tasks, type of knowledge to be assessed and features of good EAP tests between content specialists and English teachers. Iranian EAP teachers' assessment behavior seems to be attributable to their perceptions of goals of EAP courses as well as course objectives enshrined in syllabi contents. We discuss our findings and conclude with suggestions for EAP teacher-testers/assessment worldwide.