Mediation theory facilitates teachers and students to tackle the barriers in English teaching and learning process. It offers a sound systematic theoretical fort on which teachers could rely, redefines teachers’ roles and functionings in the process of learners’ cognitive development and growing self-regulations. The famous psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978) raised notions in his ZPD theory, Feuerstein (1980) illuminates capable adults as mediators, and defined twelve main features of mediation, which has empirical study value for English teaching. Thus, through quantitative and qualitative research, this paper aims to investigate the perceptions of English teachers’ mediation between private university teachers and students, analyze and compare the similarities and differences between them. The results reveal that both teachers and students coming from the two private universities have been aware of the importance of teachers’ mediation, however, have different perceptions in the frequency of teachers’ mediation. Teachers’ actual employment on mediation is weaker than their beliefs on the importance of it.
<em>Metonymy, as a thinking way, on the basis of contiguity, uses one object to replace another object to activate the association for them in the same Idealized Cognitive Model (ICM). In other words, metonymy stresses on the mentally transformed process from the source domain to the target domain in the same Idealized Cognitive Model (ICM). Idealized cognitive models are those structures which help conceptualizing some certain entities, events and even abstract ideas in his mind in a specific cultural background. There are some main characteristics of idealized cognitive models. The most principal and prime point is that ICMs are idealized and cultural-based. What’s more important, ICMs are embodied because of the interaction between human beings and the outside world. Last but not least, ICMs are a kind of complex gestalt structure due to the compositions of many cognitive models. Later, as the media and Internet have developed dramatically, the merchants want to use a brief way to promote their products so that there appears the advertisement. Gradually, the advertisement gets into our life and then it is a part of our life. The characteristics of advertisement are brief and clear to attract most of the consumers. It is universally known that there is an AIDA principle in advertisements. “A” means attention. “I’ is interesting. “D” shows desire. “A” refers to action. In the end, not only can we draw the conclusions that the application of metonymy in advertisement can help highlight the features of advertisements so that it makes the advertisement more vivid and interesting, but also that the advertisements containing metonymy can give the customers great impressions as well as they can attach to the final destination to help the boss sell more products.</em>
Critical thinking is one of the core objectives of talent training in higher education. Meanwhile, the cultivation of critical thinking skills in foreign language teaching has become more and more urgent, and it has also been written into the national standards for the training of foreign language talents. A good critical thinking includes both a skill dimension (Critical Thinking Skills) and a disposition dimension (Critical Thinking Dispositions). Critical Thinking Skills include interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation and self-regulation. This study intends to explore the current situation of the critical thinking skills of undergraduates in foreign language majors (English and Japanese) in a Normal University, and then attempts to find out the similarities and differences in critical thinking skills between English majors and Japanese majors after years of study at college. The results show that a clear difference exists between English majors and Japanese majors in overall critical thinking skills. In particular, English majors are superior to Japanese majors. Another finding is that there are also differences between the two majors in the three core sub-skills of critical thinking skills, analysis, evaluation and inference.
Motivation is a significant factor affecting L2 learning. It is not only the source power for L2 learning, but also a continuous driving force in the long and boring L2 learning process, which acts as the important emotional factor in sustaining learners’ passion for L2. So research on L2 motivation has always been a flourishing field in SLA studies for the past five decades. Since the 1970s, more and more L2 learning researchers have turned to language learners, and learning motivation has thus become the focus of their attention. This paper summarizes the four developmental stages of second language motivation theory, combs the previous studies on L2MSS at home and abroad, and introduces the background and main contents of the L2MSS theory, as well as giving a brief comment on L2MSS as the latest development in the second language motivation research.
The psychological quality is a stable, basic and derivative psychological character, and is a dynamic organization composed of four subs -systems of cognition, personality psychology, mental health and social adaptation. Foreign and domestic scholars have done plenty of researches on the relationship between the academic performance and several main sub-dimensions of psychological quality such as responsibility, methods, initiative and confidence. Based on the previous studies, the study aims to investigate the general situation of senior high school students' psychological quality; How does English performance correlate with psychological quality and its eleven dimensions; What is the difference between high-proficient English learners and the low-proficient English learners in terms of the psychological quality and its eleven dimensions? The results show that the middle high school students have a relatively positive psychological quality; there is a positive and strong correlation between psychological quality and English performance. As for its eleven dimensions, the results show that there is a positively and strongly correlation between English performance and initiative, self-confidence, responsibility, self-control, methods, independence and persistence. There is a correlation between English performance and monitoring, frustration endurance and independence, which is not as strong as the above dimensions. And there is no correlation between English performance and thinking ability and innovation; there exist significantly difference between high-proficient and low-proficient English students in psychological quality, initiative, self-confidence, responsibility, self-control, methods, persistence, monitoring and frustration endurance. However,no difference has been found between high-proficient and low-proficient English students in independence, thinking ability and innovation.
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