The study investigated the occurrences of pragmatic transfer of Korean EFL learners at three proficiency levels in their performance of refusals. Forty native speakers of Korean, 37 native speakers of English, and 22 beginning, 43 intermediate, and 46 advanced Korean EFL learners participated in this study. The subjects completed a written discourse completion test, which elicited refusals …
Critical thinking is essential in higher education and professionally. This project arose from concerns about a perceived lack of critical thinking development in Chinese students in a joint Australia-China Business diploma program taught in China in English. Using the Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (Chinese Version) as an exploratory tool, the majority of the 8 joint program stud…
Definitions of ‘holism’ in applied language studies need to remain broad enough to allow for true epistemological diversity and reject prematurely coherent impermeable systems that do not reflect the present state of knowledge in our field. In Part 1 of this two-part paper, I focus on definitional issues arguing that the atomistic parts of any whole are related within a complex, but flu…
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of English-medium instruction in the context of Taiwanese tertiary EFL and content area education. Due to the prevalence of globalization, English has gradually become the only language of instruction in academia, especially in Asia such as Taiwan. It is thus believed that this English only policy would greatly benefit students’ L2 …
This study is set in the globalising context of international companies relocating their businesses to Vietnam in increasing numbers. Drawing on qualitative research methods, including semi-structured interviews, observations and post-observation discussions, it explores how a sample of fourteen information technology graduates communicate in English at the workplace and to what extent the Engl…
Situated in the Chinese EFL context, this study was conducted to explore the developmental trajectories of the lexical verbs employed in academic writing of three Chinese novice science researchers. Three corpora were used to keep track of the use of lexical verbs over time in terms of the richness in variation and sophistication. Semi-structured interviews were used to interpret the trajectori…
This study explored the communication needs of those in secretarial positions in a bicultural academic office. Needs analysis was employed, using a combination of ethnographic and autobiographical methods to investigate insider views, with the ultimate goal of determining how to teach secretarial English. The research site was the English department of a university in Central Taiwan. The data c…
This paper is a Case Report describing a triangulation of 1) action research, 2) the application of my own previous field research, and 3) direct argument, undertaken in a university in Japan in order to inculcate a more informed and accepting attitude towards the implementation of ESP programmes among both peers and administrators. I undertook these actions in response to initial administrativ…