How does one teach composition to Chinese college students of English? How does one teach thera to discover ideas for themselves and to put these into English patterns of thought and organization? Can the discovery of...How does one teach composition to Chinese college students of English? How does one teach thera to discover ideas for themselves and to put these into English patterns of thought and organization? Can the discovery of ideas really be taught? Is there a method of teaching whereby the scientific process of writing can be cornbined with the creative art of composition?展开更多
The paper compares and contrasts how Chinese ESL students and American students work on a same descriptive English writing assignment that requires critical thinking. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the si...The paper compares and contrasts how Chinese ESL students and American students work on a same descriptive English writing assignment that requires critical thinking. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the similarity and difference between English composition teaching in China and English composition teaching in America in regarding to incorporating critical thinking, as reflected in the use of this assignment. The study uses descriptive analysis of student writings as well as quantitative analysis of questionnaires, student grades given both from the author and several other researchers who are invited to participate in the study. The cognitive abilities in critical thinking basically consist of logical thinking, dialectical thinking, and creative thinking abilities. The study reveals that Chinese students＇ works generally flow well and they use a language that is coherent and clear. However, the study also reveals that Chinese students have difficulties in implementing critical thinking at English composition learning, and the difficulties lie in creative and dialectical thinking. To cultivate critical thinking, we need to employ affective strategies, meta-cognitive strategies-macro-abilities, and cognitive strategies-micro-abilities. The paper concludes by giving concrete examples in the area of cognitive strategies-micro-abilities in order to cultivate critical thinking.展开更多
In this paper I present some aspects of the controversy surrounding the semantics/pragmatics boundary and offer a possible solution in the form of Default Semantics. First, I present a brief introduction to Paul Grice...In this paper I present some aspects of the controversy surrounding the semantics/pragmatics boundary and offer a possible solution in the form of Default Semantics. First, I present a brief introduction to Paul Grice’s approach to meaning as intentional communication. Next, I address the problem of the unit og which truth conditions should be predicated, assuming after Grice that the most successful approach to meaning has to make use of truth conditions. Further, I extend the discussion to some aspects of neo-Gricean pragmatics, most notably the issue of pragmatic processing that contributes to the truth-conditional representation and the proposed shortcuts through this processing in the form of default meanings. In the main part, I present the theory of Default Semantics (Jaszczolt 2005a), assess some arguments in favour of such an interactive theory of meaning that combines information from various sources, and address the issue of compositionality of meaning so conceived. In the final part, I apply the theory of Default Semantics to expressions with future-time reference in English in order to demonstrate the advantages of a framework that combines various types of information about utterance meaning in one, merged semantic representation. The main advantage turns out to be, in this domain, the unified treatment of all expressions with future-time reference.展开更多
文摘How does one teach composition to Chinese college students of English? How does one teach thera to discover ideas for themselves and to put these into English patterns of thought and organization? Can the discovery of ideas really be taught? Is there a method of teaching whereby the scientific process of writing can be cornbined with the creative art of composition?
文摘The paper compares and contrasts how Chinese ESL students and American students work on a same descriptive English writing assignment that requires critical thinking. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the similarity and difference between English composition teaching in China and English composition teaching in America in regarding to incorporating critical thinking, as reflected in the use of this assignment. The study uses descriptive analysis of student writings as well as quantitative analysis of questionnaires, student grades given both from the author and several other researchers who are invited to participate in the study. The cognitive abilities in critical thinking basically consist of logical thinking, dialectical thinking, and creative thinking abilities. The study reveals that Chinese students＇ works generally flow well and they use a language that is coherent and clear. However, the study also reveals that Chinese students have difficulties in implementing critical thinking at English composition learning, and the difficulties lie in creative and dialectical thinking. To cultivate critical thinking, we need to employ affective strategies, meta-cognitive strategies-macro-abilities, and cognitive strategies-micro-abilities. The paper concludes by giving concrete examples in the area of cognitive strategies-micro-abilities in order to cultivate critical thinking.
文摘In this paper I present some aspects of the controversy surrounding the semantics/pragmatics boundary and offer a possible solution in the form of Default Semantics. First, I present a brief introduction to Paul Grice’s approach to meaning as intentional communication. Next, I address the problem of the unit og which truth conditions should be predicated, assuming after Grice that the most successful approach to meaning has to make use of truth conditions. Further, I extend the discussion to some aspects of neo-Gricean pragmatics, most notably the issue of pragmatic processing that contributes to the truth-conditional representation and the proposed shortcuts through this processing in the form of default meanings. In the main part, I present the theory of Default Semantics (Jaszczolt 2005a), assess some arguments in favour of such an interactive theory of meaning that combines information from various sources, and address the issue of compositionality of meaning so conceived. In the final part, I apply the theory of Default Semantics to expressions with future-time reference in English in order to demonstrate the advantages of a framework that combines various types of information about utterance meaning in one, merged semantic representation. The main advantage turns out to be, in this domain, the unified treatment of all expressions with future-time reference.
