Comments

THE TERMINAL

The Hollywood movie “The Terminal” is an interesting story that unintentionally demonstrates the principles of 2nd language acquisition. When surrounded with an English environment, you absorb the language from your environment. You listen to more English, read more English, write more English and speak more English.

Chinese students studying English in China are surrounded with [...]

IRON AND SILK

Watch the movie Iron and Silk on the SYSU intranet.

China is always changing but China never changes.

Front Stage culture changes rapidly.  Back Stage cultures changes at a snail’s pace.

Identify the changes in TEFL since Mark Salzman taught in China and identify those things that have not changed.

Post your comments.

[...]

What Students are Saying

STUDENTS OF HOLISTIC ENGLISH ARE WELCOME TO POST AFTER YOUR FINAL EXAM IS FINISHED AND NOT BEFORE.

Xinyang Agricultural College

“Our new spoken classroom at the school 2-302. It’s different from other classroom. New Oral indeed different from the previous classroom, very English atmosphere. We like it.” Venus Class: 06-business 1 NO: 067013119

[...]

WALK THE LINE

A chronicle of country music legend Johnny Cash’s life, from his early days on an Arkansas cotton farm to his rise to fame with Sun Records in Memphis, where he recorded alongside Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins.

What did the man in black teach you?

NOT WITHOUT

Western conflicts with Muslim culture. An American woman, trapped in Islamic Iran by her brutish husband, must find a way to escape with her daughter as well.

What did you learn from this cross-cultural story?

SOUND LABS

Chinese universities have invested heavily in sound labs to teach English listening.

Post-graduate students who have spent many hours in these sound labs know nothing about proper listening skills. They speak with each other in Chinese and off topic while someone else has the floor. Their cell phones ring and they answer them. They send [...]

LEARN VS. ACQUIRE

LANGUAGE LEARNING

The concept of language learning is linked to the traditional approach to the study of languages and today is still generally practiced in high schools worldwide. Attention is focused on the language in its written form and the objective is for the student to understand the structure and rules of the language through [...]

’10 4 GREAT LIES

INTRODUCTION

At any given moment there are twice as many Chinese learning English as there are citizens of the U.S.A. English instruction begins in kindergarten and continues into postgraduate study, for both English majors and non-English majors. Everyone in China must study English. Local variants of English such as Chinglish and Chinese English [...]

’10 MUTE ENGLISH

I have often said that when a teacher stops learning, they should stop teaching. I want to thank my SYSU Fall 2009 post grad students for introducing me to a new term, “MUTE ENGLISH.” I had never heard this before and it has piqued my interest. A Google search revealed many student comments about MUTE [...]

’10 PLAIGARISM

STUDENTS’ LACK OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AWARENESS

Martin Wolff

Sun Yat-sen University

INTRODUCTION

Intellectual Property Protection remains a hot topic in China. The west applies constant pressure on China for more enforcement and China responds with increased enrollment in law schools, retention of more prosecutors and an annual increase of [...]