This edited book offers concrete information and useful suggestions to graduate students who are ... more This edited book offers concrete information and useful suggestions to graduate students who are seeking employment at institutions of higher education in North America and other parts of the world. This book also targets entry-level faculty members who are exploring increased participation in professional activities. The book features critical turning points in career trajectories, demystifies hidden institutional structures, and illuminates blind spots that are critical for career success. The authors are scholars from nonnative-English-speaking and/or racially minority backgrounds in the fields of applied linguistics and teaching English to speakers of other languages. The firsthand suggestions offered by these authors are also applicable to non-minority professionals and those in other related disciplines. Furthermore, the book assists faculty mentors and administrators to understand the unique challenges and issues faced by minority professionals. Distinctive features of the bo...
Turkish Online Journal of English Language Teaching, 2016
This paper stems from the presidential keynote speech I gave at the 2015 TESOL International Conv... more This paper stems from the presidential keynote speech I gave at the 2015 TESOL International Convention with in Toronto, Canada last year. The theme for the 2015 TESOL International Convention was "Crossing Borders, Building Bridges."
Abstract The present chapter addresses L2 word recognition in relation to both the writing script... more Abstract The present chapter addresses L2 word recognition in relation to both the writing scripts' characteristics and learners' reading proficiency. In addition to a literature review, it presents two studies that examined these issues. The first study on the reading of English-...
Abstract: This study investigated the word recognition processes of readers of Chinese as a nativ... more Abstract: This study investigated the word recognition processes of readers of Chinese as a native language (L1) and as a second language (L2), focusing on the effects of two factors, word familiarity and word structure difficulty (complexity of orthographic symbol), on ...
MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. *Chinese; Difficulty Level; Foreign Countries; *Language Processing; Lang... more MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. *Chinese; Difficulty Level; Foreign Countries; *Language Processing; Language Research; Native Speakers; *Orthographic Symbols; *Seco:A Languages; Vocabulary Development; *Word Frequency; *Word Recognition This study investigated the word recognition processes of readers of Chinese as a native language (LI) and as a second language (L2), focusing on the effects of two factors, word familiarity and word structure difficulty (complexity of orthographic symbol), on reading accuracy and response time. Subjects were in three groups: (1) 14 adult native Chinese readers; (2) 14 high-proficiency L2 readers; and (3) 14 intermediate proficiency L2 readers. All subjects completed a context-free word recognition task on computer, matching a character seen only briefly with one of four characters shown afterwards. There were 192 trials in the experiment. All words used were selected according to printed frequency (high/low) and orthographic structure (simple/complex as re...
This paper analyzes the results of a survey of needs in English, completed by seventy Chinese vis... more This paper analyzes the results of a survey of needs in English, completed by seventy Chinese visiting scholars and graduate students at a Canadian university. It is the first attempt to carry out a needs assessment among Chinese students in Canada by a ...
Twenty-nine years ago, as a young EFL university teacher full of dreams, I left China, going acro... more Twenty-nine years ago, as a young EFL university teacher full of dreams, I left China, going across the ocean to Canada to pursue my goal of getting a graduate degree in TESOL and Applied Linguistics. As the only graduate student from China in that prestigious Canadian graduate school, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) / University of Toronto, I encountered all kinds of challenges in addition to cultural shock during the first few months. The terminologies in the field were all very foreign to me. "Comprehensible input," "UG," "SLA"-I had never heard these terms. Even the daily interaction with Canadians was definitely not Small Talk to me. Whenever someone initiated a "small talk" with me, my heart started jumping fast. "Small talk" always felt like "stressful talk" as my English learning in China was based on grammar-translation, literature-translation and memorization. With persistence and good learning strategies, I overcame one barrier after another and became the first Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from mainland China to graduate from OISE. OISE is one of the leading institutions in ELT in the world where many well-known ELT scholars have taught and / or studied, like
... working closely with native speakers of English, placed less value on developing their own co... more ... working closely with native speakers of English, placed less value on developing their own communication skills in English than on gaining academic skills and knowledge in ... Furthermore, Chinese teachers who had studied in an English-speaking country seemed to have ...
This edited book offers concrete information and useful suggestions to graduate students who are ... more This edited book offers concrete information and useful suggestions to graduate students who are seeking employment at institutions of higher education in North America and other parts of the world. This book also targets entry-level faculty members who are exploring increased participation in professional activities. The book features critical turning points in career trajectories, demystifies hidden institutional structures, and illuminates blind spots that are critical for career success. The authors are scholars from nonnative-English-speaking and/or racially minority backgrounds in the fields of applied linguistics and teaching English to speakers of other languages. The firsthand suggestions offered by these authors are also applicable to non-minority professionals and those in other related disciplines. Furthermore, the book assists faculty mentors and administrators to understand the unique challenges and issues faced by minority professionals. Distinctive features of the bo...
Turkish Online Journal of English Language Teaching, 2016
This paper stems from the presidential keynote speech I gave at the 2015 TESOL International Conv... more This paper stems from the presidential keynote speech I gave at the 2015 TESOL International Convention with in Toronto, Canada last year. The theme for the 2015 TESOL International Convention was "Crossing Borders, Building Bridges."
Abstract The present chapter addresses L2 word recognition in relation to both the writing script... more Abstract The present chapter addresses L2 word recognition in relation to both the writing scripts' characteristics and learners' reading proficiency. In addition to a literature review, it presents two studies that examined these issues. The first study on the reading of English-...
Abstract: This study investigated the word recognition processes of readers of Chinese as a nativ... more Abstract: This study investigated the word recognition processes of readers of Chinese as a native language (L1) and as a second language (L2), focusing on the effects of two factors, word familiarity and word structure difficulty (complexity of orthographic symbol), on ...
MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. *Chinese; Difficulty Level; Foreign Countries; *Language Processing; Lang... more MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. *Chinese; Difficulty Level; Foreign Countries; *Language Processing; Language Research; Native Speakers; *Orthographic Symbols; *Seco:A Languages; Vocabulary Development; *Word Frequency; *Word Recognition This study investigated the word recognition processes of readers of Chinese as a native language (LI) and as a second language (L2), focusing on the effects of two factors, word familiarity and word structure difficulty (complexity of orthographic symbol), on reading accuracy and response time. Subjects were in three groups: (1) 14 adult native Chinese readers; (2) 14 high-proficiency L2 readers; and (3) 14 intermediate proficiency L2 readers. All subjects completed a context-free word recognition task on computer, matching a character seen only briefly with one of four characters shown afterwards. There were 192 trials in the experiment. All words used were selected according to printed frequency (high/low) and orthographic structure (simple/complex as re...
This paper analyzes the results of a survey of needs in English, completed by seventy Chinese vis... more This paper analyzes the results of a survey of needs in English, completed by seventy Chinese visiting scholars and graduate students at a Canadian university. It is the first attempt to carry out a needs assessment among Chinese students in Canada by a ...
Twenty-nine years ago, as a young EFL university teacher full of dreams, I left China, going acro... more Twenty-nine years ago, as a young EFL university teacher full of dreams, I left China, going across the ocean to Canada to pursue my goal of getting a graduate degree in TESOL and Applied Linguistics. As the only graduate student from China in that prestigious Canadian graduate school, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) / University of Toronto, I encountered all kinds of challenges in addition to cultural shock during the first few months. The terminologies in the field were all very foreign to me. "Comprehensible input," "UG," "SLA"-I had never heard these terms. Even the daily interaction with Canadians was definitely not Small Talk to me. Whenever someone initiated a "small talk" with me, my heart started jumping fast. "Small talk" always felt like "stressful talk" as my English learning in China was based on grammar-translation, literature-translation and memorization. With persistence and good learning strategies, I overcame one barrier after another and became the first Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from mainland China to graduate from OISE. OISE is one of the leading institutions in ELT in the world where many well-known ELT scholars have taught and / or studied, like
... working closely with native speakers of English, placed less value on developing their own co... more ... working closely with native speakers of English, placed less value on developing their own communication skills in English than on gaining academic skills and knowledge in ... Furthermore, Chinese teachers who had studied in an English-speaking country seemed to have ...
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