The English Reformation in Dublin

As monarch of the lordship and (since 1541) kingdom of Ireland, King Henry VIII and his successors imposed the same ecclesiastical and religious policies they devised for England on Dublin, the most English city in Tudor Ireland. Far-reaching changes were effected to quite a remarkable degree. Yet the English Reformation failed to take root in the Irish city. This paper explores both the course of the Reformation in the capital of English Ireland and the reasons for its general failure. It also highlights some implications of Dublin’s experience relevant to continuing debates in English Reformation studies.     

The “Gongfu Finger” and Learning in the Analects

After having discussed three main features of Ni Peimin’s understanding of the gongfu orientation in reading the Analects, this essay examines the first of the key terms in the whole of the book, i.e., xue/”learning” (學) and critically elaborates how our understanding of Confucius could be deepened and enriched under the guidance of this new orientation which Ni calls the “gongfu finger.”     

英语素质教育三维促进模式实验研究

本研究是在深入了解贵州省普通初中英语课堂教学的基础上,针对其英语教学中存在的主要问题。构建了英语素质教育三维促进模式,并运用此模式进行实验。实验结果表明：三维促进模式对提高学生的英语语言能力有促进作用。     

Infant-directed speech supports phonetic category learning in English and Japanese

Across the first year of life, infants show decreased sensitivity to phonetic differences not used in the native language [Werker, J. F., & Tees, R. C. (1984). Cross-language speech perception: evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life. Infant Behaviour and Development, 7, 49-63]. In an artificial language learning manipulation, Maye, Werker, and Gerken [Maye, J., Werker, J. F., & Gerken, L. (2002). Infant sensitivity to distributional information can affect phonetic discrimination. Cognition, 82(3), B101-B111] found that infants change their speech sound categories as a function of the distributional properties of the input. For such a distributional learning mechanism to be functional, however, it is essential that the input speech contain distributional cues to support such perceptual learning. To test this, we recorded Japanese and English mothers teaching words to their infants. Acoustic analyses revealed language-specific differences in the distributions of the cues used by mothers (or cues present in the input) to distinguish the vowels. The robust availability of these cues in maternal speech adds support to the hypothesis that distributional learning is an important mechanism whereby infants establish native language phonetic categories.     

Do Chinese and English speakers think about time differently? Failure of replicating Boroditsky (2001)

English uses the horizontal spatial metaphors to express time (e.g., the good days ahead of us). Chinese also uses the vertical metaphors (e.g., 'the month above' to mean last month). Do Chinese speakers, then, think about time in a different way than English speakers? Boroditsky [Boroditsky, L. (2001). Does language shape thought? Mandarin and English speakers' conceptions of time. Cognitive Psychology, 43(1), 1-22] claimed that they do, and went on to conclude that 'language is a powerful tool in shaping habitual thought about abstract domains' (such as time). By estimating the frequency of usage, we found that Chinese speakers actually use the horizontal spatial metaphors more often than the vertical metaphors. This offered no logical ground for Boroditsky's claim. We were also unable to replicate her experiments in four different attempts. We conclude that Chinese speakers do not think about time in a different way than English speakers just because Chinese also uses the vertical spatial metaphors to express time.     

Lexically restricted utterances in Russian, german, and english child-directed speech

This study investigates the child-directed speech (CDS) of four Russian-, six German, and six English-speaking mothers to their 2-year-old children. Typologically Russian has considerably less restricted word order than either German or English, with German showing more word-order variants than English. This could lead to the prediction that the lexical restrictiveness previously found in the initial strings of English CDS by Cameron-Faulkner, Lieven, and Tomasello (2003 ) would not be found in Russian or German CDS. However, despite differences between the three corpora that clearly derive from typological differences between the languages, the most significant finding of this study is a high degree of lexical restrictiveness at the beginnings of CDS utterances in all three languages.     

英文快速阅读的眼动特点与阅读成绩的关系

该文运用眼动仪对中国大学生在快读阅读英文文本时,其眼动特征与阅读成绩的关系进行了研究。结果表明：在平均注视时间、第一次注视时间、眼跳速度、眼跳次数等方面,高低分组存在显著性差异,高分组的眼动策略更灵活,对信息的加工效率更高。     

幼儿期汉语语音意识和英语语音意识的发展

本研究选取3~5岁儿童为被试,从语音单位和操作水平两个维度研究幼儿期汉语语音意识和英语语音意识的发展。在汉语语音意识的发展上,音节意识先于押韵、首音和声调意识而发展起来,3岁儿童已经具备了一定的音节意识,并在3岁到4岁之间迅速发展。在英语语音意识的发展上,幼儿期的音节意识和末位音位意识先于押韵与首音意识而发展起来,从3到5岁表现出清晰的发展次序。首音意识在幼儿期没有发展。从任务的操作水平看,无论是汉语还是英语语音意识,幼儿在辨别任务上的成绩显著低于分析和综合任务。     

四种语音意识干预模式对小学生英文单词朗读作用的比较

采用前-后测对比组的准实验设计,将84名小学三年级学生分配到四种语音意识干预组,即:单纯的音素意识训练组、字母-音素意识二合一训练组、字母-音标-音素意识三合一训练组和字母-音标-反切意识三合一训练组,旨在比较四种语音意识干预模式对于小学三年级学生英语语音意识和英文单词朗读技能的作用。结果表明:(1)就音素合成与音素替换技能的训练而言,字母-音标-反切意识三合一训练模式,都会产生一定的优势;(2)四种语音意识干预模式,不仅能够显著地提高小学三年级学生的英文单词朗读技能,而且能够使他们将经过干预而获得的朗读技能迁移到陌生词的朗读之中;(3)虽然四种语音意识干预模式都能够显著地促进小学三年级学生的英文单词朗读技能,但是,字母-音素意识二合一训练模式的促进作用最大。     

三到六年级汉语儿童英语拼写发展及其与正字法规则意识的关系

本研究对167名三到六年级的汉语儿童进行了英语拼写测验和英语正字法规则意识测验,结果发现:(1)汉语儿童在整个小学时期的英语拼写能力都基本处于字母名称拼写策略阶段,在四年级到五年级期间,其整体拼写水平有较显著提高;(2)汉语小学儿童的英语拼写水平与其正字法规则意识显著相关,四、五、六年级儿童的英语字母可双写位置规则对其英语拼写能力具有显著预测作用。