Some observations on using motion pictures to teach Business English. THE USE of motion pictures or other captioned films as part of teaching English as a foreign language has markedly increased in recent years in China. Because of this, we undertook a four-year experiment to determine how effective the use of English-language movies has been in the teaching of business. From this experiment it became clear that a cavalier use of movies in effect misused them. The appropriate and effective use of motion pictures requires a range of elements: (1) movies that are at one and the same time educational, informative, and entertaining; (2) a workbook linked to such movies that enables students to get ready beforehand; (3) most importantly, a range of classroom activities to induce and elicit timely and optimal output from the students, so as to make talking and writing about communication easier and more effective. Activities such as dubbing, story retelling, acting, discussing, debating, and role playing are only a few of the effective techniques a teacher can employ to engage the students.
A review of the needs and opportunities of Chinese university students learning English, with a particular focus on the work of a ‘Foreign Expert’ in a Henan college.
The present study aimed to explore pause types and their fillers in Russian and Chinese native speech compared to the speech of Chinese bilinguals speaking Russian with a focus on universal and language-specific patterns. An acoustic study of 8 subjects has been performed: 4 Russian males speaking Russian, and 4 Chinese males speaking both Chinese and Russian. Acoustic measurements were performed using PRAAT and included pause count, pause duration, pitch direction, vocalic fillers formant values, and their duration. Descriptive statistics were used to determine count, mean, minimal, and maximal values. The results demonstrate that first, silent and filled pauses were used by all subjects with the preference for the silent pause strategy. For all Chinese subjects, the pause rate was considerably higher in native speech than in non-native Russian speech. Second, the universal pause fillers were [a]-like, [am]-like, and [m]-like ones. Simple fillers like [ɤ], [o] were language-specific for Chinese subjects. Another language-specific feature was the wide use of vowel groups by Chinese subjects. Finally, vowel + nasal (velar and forelingual) sequences like [ɤŋ] were language-specific for Chinese subjects.
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