Suchergebnisse

As the primary and immediate learning context, schools are underrepresented in learner autonomy studies. Scholars' concerns over the intricate nature of schools lead to inadequate attention on the medium of learner autonomy development. To fill this research gap, a convergent mixed method design included a self-developed questionnaire, and four semi-structured interviews were employed to examine the non-English major sophomores' learner autonomy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The triangulation of quantitative and qualitative evidence yielded that between a public and a private university, there was a statistically significant difference in English as a foreign language (EFL)s' motivation for autonomous learning during the COVID-19 lockdown. But other than the degree of motivation, no difference was captured regarding EFLs' belief and knowledge of autonomous English learning, as well as their metacognitive knowledge. Overall, EFLs were confident about their capacity to do autonomous English learning but engaged in a few systematical autonomous English learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the results, discussions over Chinese EFLs' learner autonomy and possible explanations for the motivation differences are included. Pedagogy implications and limitations are elaborated on at the end. Plain Language Summary Using a mixed method design, this study reveals the English as a foreign language (EFL) learner autonomy and the role of schools in differentiating it, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The triangulation of quantitative and qualitative data yielded that despite mainfesting confidence in their capacity for autonomous learning, Chinese EFL learners did not engage in active, systematic autonomous language learning during the lockdowns. The motivation for autonomous English learning differed between universities, with learners from the less prestigious private University Qiu demonstrating more motivation than EFLs from the top public University Nan. The study contributes to understanding EFL learner autonomy during a challenging time of school lockdowns and their motivation issues. It highlights the discrepancy between learners' self-reported autonomy and engagement in independent language learning. Additionally, it challenges the assumption that learners from prestigious universities would exhibit higher motivation for autonomous learning, showing that motivation can vary depending on the university context.

AbstractPrevious research on Chinese tense indicates that Chinese has either null tense or no tense. However, the present study suggests that the conclusions of previous studies regarding Chinese tense are either against the syntactic truth or illogical. The present study provides new evidence to support that Chinese has two independent tense elements,zaiandguo, which clearly indicate present and past tense, contrary to the traditional assumption that they are aspectual markers. From the perspective of grammaticalization, bothzaiandguowitnessed grammaticalization from the spatial concept to the temporal concept. The semantic evidence shows thatzaiandguoare semantically different from the aspectual markerszheandleand convey the meaning of time location. The fact that bothzaiandguoare allowed in negation but not permitted in non-finite structure provides syntactic evidence that they are tense markers. However, the present study also suggests there can be two differentzaiandguo;zaiandguoused separately and independently andzaiandguoused withzheandle.In the latter case,zaiis a time adverbial andguois an aspectual marker. The existence of independent tense markers in Chinese also shows that Chinese may have at least four different mechanisms to anchor tense.