Using the discourse model for negotiation of meaning developed by Varonis and Gass (1985), this study investigates the quality of the negotiation of meaning by eTandem partners in a videoconferencing-supported multimodal environment, and the facilitating effects of such an environment on L2 acquisition. To achieve this, three case studies were chosen from the interaction between15 pairs of Mandarin and English students, to represent three levels of Mandarin proficiency of the dyads, namely, the low, intermediate and high levels. Data were examined and corroborated both qualitatively and quantitatively to reveal the interaction patterns of the dyads and the extent to which the multimodality of the videoconferencing environment contributes to learning. Recommendations are also drawn from this research.
To better assess high-standard farmland development projects, this paper built an evaluation system containing three indices: soil efficiency, infrastructure efficiency as well as economic and social efficiency, which were measured after the development of high-standard farmlands. By combining the matter-element extension theory with the TOPSIS model, the authors built a high-standard farmland development evaluation system to assess the soil efficiency, infrastructure efficiency, economic and social efficiency as well as the overall efficiency after completion of a high-standard farmland development project. the authors found the weight of the index for infrastructure efficiency to be 0.46, with the degree of similarity to the optimal solution reaching 1.0, thus it is rated excellent in terms of its impact on the overall efficiency evaluation; the weight of economic and social efficiency was 0.37, with its degree of similarity being 0.29, thus rated good accordingly; while the weight of soil efficiency was 0.17, with its degree of similarity being 0.00, thus it had the least impact on overall efficiency. The sequencing result by the TOPSIS model showed that the effective depth of soil had the highest impact on soil efficiency, meanwhile the road access rate influenced infrastructure efficiency the most, and public satisfaction mattered most in terms of economic and social efficiency.
This article highlights the pivotal role of genre in text production and identity construction by an analysis of three high-stakes genres of public communication by presidents of the top universities in China, Peking University (PKU) and Tsinghua University (THU). A brief review of the Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) research on identity indicates that the current approach did not take into account the role of text structure as an important means of identity construction, which can be attributed to flaws in the SFL theorization of genre. In view of this, the Genre as a Nexus of meaning making (GaN) model is proposed, followed by a reinforced analytical framework of text analysis encompassing Halliday (and Matthiessen)’s functional grammar and Martin (and Rose)’s discourse semantics, which is subsequently deployed to study the texts of concern from an SFL vantage point. The results indicate that not only are different aspects of the university represented in the different genres, but the generic structure of the texts is indispensable in the university’s identity construction. Moreover, the comparison of the genres with those in other culture and of the results with previous research underscores culture’s powerful impact on genre and the universities at the forefront of globalization.
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