The production-oriented approach （POA） has been developed over a decade. It is driven by the need to improve English classroom instruction for university students in China （Wen, 2016）. It is also motivated by the ...The production-oriented approach （POA） has been developed over a decade. It is driven by the need to improve English classroom instruction for university students in China （Wen, 2016）. It is also motivated by the aspiration to enhance the quality of foreign language education in other similar pedagogical contexts outside China. A volume of research has been done by Wen Qiufang and her research team, to formulate the theory of POA and to test its effectiveness in classroom pedagogy （e.g. Wen, 2016, 2015; Yang, 2015; Zhang, 2015）. At the moment, the POA is still at an early stage of theory building and almost all empirical research is done in the Chinese context. In order to improve the quality of this theory and to make it intelligible to the international academic community, a one-day symposium was held in Beijing Foreign Studies University on May 15, 2017. The symposium was entitled ＇The first international forum on innovative foreign language education in China： Appraisal of the POA＇. In the forum, leading experts in applied linguistics were invited to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the POA and the directions for its future development. The symposium was the first attempt for the POA research team to discuss its latest work with international scholars. This Viewpoint section collects the responses of four experts who participated in the symposium, listed in alphabetical order. The collection of articles covers three topics related to the POA： its pedagogical application, its use for teacher training, and its research. Alister Cumming is Professor Emeritus and the former Head of the Centre for Educational Research on Languages and Literacies, University of Toronto, Canada. His article focuses primarily on POA research as an exemplary case of design-based research. Rod Ellis is Research Professor in the School of Education at Curtin University, Australia. He discusses POA in terms of pedagogy, teacher training and research, with both critiques and constructive suggestions. Paul Kei M展开更多
Our study aims to take a closer look at China's current information literacy(IL) program standards at secondary schools and to analyze their level of success and/or failures in a comparative way with those of the ...Our study aims to take a closer look at China's current information literacy(IL) program standards at secondary schools and to analyze their level of success and/or failures in a comparative way with those of the United States in terms of fulfilling their each other's mission-oriented mandates. Our research findings show that China's current IL standards of high schools contain a disproportionate emphasis on information technology(IT). Moreover, the stipulations of these IL standards are narrowly construed and without being solidly grounded on a broad and comprehensive educational perspective. We also suggest that there are two underlying causes for this set of unsound IL standards in China.Firstly, there is a lack of collaboration between two major competing forces engaged in the curricular development and research of IL in China: Those professionals in educational IT discipline vis-à-vis those in Library and Information Science. Secondly, library professionals have a very limited influence on major socio-cultural policies, even at their own institutions. As a result, this paper recommends the following three possible measures,which may help remedy this situation strategically: 1) Establishing a set of new IL curriculum standards based on an IL-centered educational perspective; 2) establishing a teacher-librarian's training program to promote school librarians' role in IL education; and 3) strengthening the research and development of an online IL education program and an accompanied evaluation mechanism.展开更多
With a Critical Discourse Analysis approach, this essay reveals four types of discourses: discourse of examination, instruction, technology and regulation. Based on the analysis of power relation among those discourse...With a Critical Discourse Analysis approach, this essay reveals four types of discourses: discourse of examination, instruction, technology and regulation. Based on the analysis of power relation among those discourses, a vivid picture of teachers' identity at training-school has been clearly sketched. That is, teacher at training-school is a puppet acting as not only the transmitter of specific knowledge, but also the supervisor of rules and spokesman of institution.展开更多
文摘The production-oriented approach （POA） has been developed over a decade. It is driven by the need to improve English classroom instruction for university students in China （Wen, 2016）. It is also motivated by the aspiration to enhance the quality of foreign language education in other similar pedagogical contexts outside China. A volume of research has been done by Wen Qiufang and her research team, to formulate the theory of POA and to test its effectiveness in classroom pedagogy （e.g. Wen, 2016, 2015; Yang, 2015; Zhang, 2015）. At the moment, the POA is still at an early stage of theory building and almost all empirical research is done in the Chinese context. In order to improve the quality of this theory and to make it intelligible to the international academic community, a one-day symposium was held in Beijing Foreign Studies University on May 15, 2017. The symposium was entitled ＇The first international forum on innovative foreign language education in China： Appraisal of the POA＇. In the forum, leading experts in applied linguistics were invited to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the POA and the directions for its future development. The symposium was the first attempt for the POA research team to discuss its latest work with international scholars. This Viewpoint section collects the responses of four experts who participated in the symposium, listed in alphabetical order. The collection of articles covers three topics related to the POA： its pedagogical application, its use for teacher training, and its research. Alister Cumming is Professor Emeritus and the former Head of the Centre for Educational Research on Languages and Literacies, University of Toronto, Canada. His article focuses primarily on POA research as an exemplary case of design-based research. Rod Ellis is Research Professor in the School of Education at Curtin University, Australia. He discusses POA in terms of pedagogy, teacher training and research, with both critiques and constructive suggestions. Paul Kei M
文摘Our study aims to take a closer look at China's current information literacy(IL) program standards at secondary schools and to analyze their level of success and/or failures in a comparative way with those of the United States in terms of fulfilling their each other's mission-oriented mandates. Our research findings show that China's current IL standards of high schools contain a disproportionate emphasis on information technology(IT). Moreover, the stipulations of these IL standards are narrowly construed and without being solidly grounded on a broad and comprehensive educational perspective. We also suggest that there are two underlying causes for this set of unsound IL standards in China.Firstly, there is a lack of collaboration between two major competing forces engaged in the curricular development and research of IL in China: Those professionals in educational IT discipline vis-à-vis those in Library and Information Science. Secondly, library professionals have a very limited influence on major socio-cultural policies, even at their own institutions. As a result, this paper recommends the following three possible measures,which may help remedy this situation strategically: 1) Establishing a set of new IL curriculum standards based on an IL-centered educational perspective; 2) establishing a teacher-librarian's training program to promote school librarians' role in IL education; and 3) strengthening the research and development of an online IL education program and an accompanied evaluation mechanism.
文摘With a Critical Discourse Analysis approach, this essay reveals four types of discourses: discourse of examination, instruction, technology and regulation. Based on the analysis of power relation among those discourses, a vivid picture of teachers' identity at training-school has been clearly sketched. That is, teacher at training-school is a puppet acting as not only the transmitter of specific knowledge, but also the supervisor of rules and spokesman of institution.
