Search Results (38)

This study explores how artificial intelligence (AI) technologies can be theoretically integrated into literature curriculum development, using the works of Anton Chekhov and Lu Xun as illustrative case texts. The aim is to reduce barriers to language and cultural understanding in literature education and increase the efficiency and accessibility of cross-cultural teaching. We used natural language processing (NLP) techniques to analyze textual features, such as readability index, lexical density, and syntactic complexity, of AI-generated and human-translated “The Chameleon” and “A Madman’s Diary”. Teaching cases from universities in China, Russia, and Kazakhstan are reviewed to assess the emerging practice of AI-supported literature teaching. The proposed theoretical framework draws on hermeneutics, posthumanism, and cognitive load theories. The results of the data-driven analysis suggest that AI-assisted translation tends to simplify sentence structure and improve surface readability. While anecdotal classroom observations highlight the role of AI in initial comprehension, deeper literary interpretation still relies on teacher guidance and critical human engagement. This study introduces a conceptual “AI Literature Teaching Model” that positions AI as a cognitive and cultural mediator and outlines directions for future empirical validation. Full article

Programming education has become increasingly vital within global K–12 curricula, and large language models (LLMs) offer promising solutions to systemic challenges such as limited teacher expertise and insufficient personalized support. Adopting a human-centric and systems-oriented perspective, this study employed a six-week quasi-experimental design involving 103 Grade 7 students in China to investigate the effects of instruction supported by the iFLYTEK Spark model. Results showed that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in programming performance, cognitive interest, and programming self-efficacy. Beyond these quantitative outcomes, qualitative interviews revealed that LLM-assisted instruction enhanced students’ self-directed learning, a sense of real-time human–machine interaction, and exploratory learning behaviors, forming an intelligent human–AI learning system. These findings underscore the integrative potential of LLMs to support competence, autonomy, and engagement within digital learning systems. This study concludes by discussing the implications for intelligent educational system design and directions for future socio-technical research. Full article

The research on teaching scaffolding for preschool children’s oral language development (OLD) has become an important topic in the academic world. However, there remains a lack of evidence-based research on the integration of scaffolding strategies integrated into creative art contexts to support children’s creative expression and language production. In this study, a qualitative case study was conducted to analyze the non-participatory observation and artwork analysis of five-year-old children’s drawing activities in a kindergarten in China based on socio-cultural and scaffolding theories. Three types of core scaffolding strategies were summarized. The findings reveal that the three strategies work together dynamically within the children’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): (1) the visual prompt strategy enriches the vocabulary diversity of metaphors, adjectives, and ordinal words; (2) dialogic narrative co-construction effectively improves narrative coherence across exposition, rising action, climax, and resolution; and (3) emotional engagement strategies foster a safe expressive environment, promoting the integration of affective vocabulary with intrinsic motivation. Accordingly, a three-dimensional integrated “visual-linguistic-emotional” scaffolding model was constructed, emphasizing the practical guidelines of simultaneous scaffolding and gradual scaffolding withdrawal during the warm-up, creation, and sharing sessions of the drawing activity. This study expands the application of scaffolding theory in unstructured art contexts, and provides a systematic practical framework for the design of cross-contextual language support strategies and teacher training in preschool education. Full article

In China, educators are encouraged by administrators to assume instructional and language strategies to align with their students’ needs so as to enhance classroom communicative effectiveness, with students’ perceptions of teachers’ behavior being a salient factor in this process. This study, based on communication accommodation theory, examines how students’ perceptions of teachers’ behaviors influence reports of positive classroom outcomes. Using structural equation modeling, we analyzed responses from a sample of 422 university students in Shanghai. The results showed that the students’ perceptions of teachers’ communication accommodation behaviors, such as verbal and nonverbal tactics, teaching content, and emotional support behaviors, significantly and positively impacted students’ learning effectiveness, teacher credibility, and communication satisfaction. Furthermore, teacher credibility partially mediated the relationship between perceptions of accommodation and learner effectiveness. The findings offer practical insights for educators by suggesting that strategic adaptions of communication accommodations behaviors can promote students’ learning outcomes. Full article

The importance of content knowledge (CK) for effective teaching and student learning is widely recognized. However, there is still a lack of detailed understanding of the CK held by early childhood education (ECE) teachers, particularly those teaching English as a foreign language (EFL). To fill this gap, our study utilized a qualitative approach, specifically stimulated recall classroom observation, to examine the various categories and subcategories of CK among Chinese EFL teachers in kindergartens. Six EFL teachers participated, two with English backgrounds and four with ECE backgrounds. Our findings highlight the multifaceted nature of CK in ECE EFL teaching, identifying three categories: knowledge of first language (L1) acquisition, knowledge of second language (L2) acquisition, and knowledge of linguistics. Notably, there were significant differences between the teachers with English and ECE majors, particularly in the most frequently mentioned CK subcategory and in how L1 is learned. This study not only illuminates these differences but also provides valuable insights for future research and practical applications in ECE EFL teacher education. Full article

Learning management systems (LMSs) have received substantial global attention and have undergone extensive research, with most discussions focusing on users’ acceptance and continuation of LMS use in the higher education sector. However, research is scarce in terms of identifying the factors that are advantageous to K-12 students’ learning and satisfaction when using LMSs for language learning. This study aims to examine the impacts of internal and contextual factors on secondary students’ learning satisfaction and English achievement when using LMSs. Data were collected from 289 students through an online survey. The results of the structural equation modeling showed that satisfaction had the most significant impact on English achievement. Furthermore, both internal and contextual factors, including technology self-efficacy, interest, task value, teacher support, and technology facilitation, positively impacted learning satisfaction with LMSs. In addition, teacher support exerted the strongest impact on satisfaction, followed by interest and technology self-efficacy. However, only internal factors, such as interest and task value, were positively associated with English achievement. Neither teacher support nor technology facilitation significantly impacted English performance. Given the increasing availability of LMS usage, the findings of this study can facilitate the more effective implementation of LMSs in China and globally. The study contributes to the theory and practice of LMSs use in K-12 English education. The limitations and implications of the study were discussed as well. Full article

Many scholars have portrayed technological advances as conducive to English language teaching and learning, without questioning their possible colonial assumptions about languages and literacies. Drawing on critical pedagogy and Global South epistemologies, I reconceptualize decolonization as a humanizing project in the contact zones between English and non-English languages. This poetic autoethnography, informed by my memories of my own experience as an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learner in China, alongside a wide range of artifacts from a senior seminar course in an international college in a Thai private university, illustrates how educational technologies can be decolonized by producing (and publishing) emergent translanguaging literature that repositions teachers and students from marginalized backgrounds as co-creators of new knowledge about languages and literacies in the global context. Full article

The recent growth and sustainability in online education have led to a greater demand for language teachers to accept online teaching and a heightened focus on language teachers’ emotions in an online setting. Based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), this study attempted to investigate the relationship between English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ acceptance of online teaching and their emotional labor in online teaching. A questionnaire was distributed to 338 EFL teachers working at 19 middle schools and 24 high schools in China, and 10 teachers were interviewed. Following a series of analyses of the data, a structural relationship model integrating acceptance of online teaching and online teaching emotional labor strategies was developed and tested. The results indicate that EFL teachers’ acceptance of online teaching significantly predicts three emotional labor strategies in online teaching. Specifically, EFL teachers’ acceptance of online teaching positively influences deep acting and expression of naturally felt emotions, while negatively affecting surface acting. The obtained results address important theoretical, methodological, and practical gaps by examining the interplay between acceptance of online teaching and emotional labor in the context of online language education, a dimension that previous studies have largely overlooked. Full article

This article, drawing on recent research on Language Other than English (LOTE) programs in China’s universities, examines the impact of multilingual education policy on the professional development of LOTE teachers. We argue for the mediating roles of LOTE programs as they carry the influence of education policy on teacher development. In other words, LOTE programs may influence the way in which education policy impacts teacher development. Specifically, LOTE programs seem to play three mediating roles: (1) How education policy is perceived and understood by the program designer or/and coordinator impacts how LOTE teachers who engage in the program are influenced, (2) how educational resources are allocated to teachers teaching in the LOTE program impacts teachers’ professional development, (3) how teachers actually position themselves in the LOTE program as opposed to their identities positioned by education policy and the university administration impacts their professional development. In a word, the influence of multilingual education policy on the professional development of LOTE teachers may be mediated by such meso- and micro-level factors as administration, resource, and identity work. Full article

The unexpected outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic forced most teachers across the globe to switch their teaching from traditional face-to-face to online without having received adequate preparation and knowledge related to online teaching. To better comprehend teachers’ willingness to conduct emergency remote teaching during the worldwide crisis, the current study was designed to examine teachers’ intentions and, in particular, the factors affecting their behavioral intentions to teach online, by contextualizing the research in the English language teaching settings in China. The research model was developed based on an extended technology acceptance model (TAM) by adding subjective norm, self-efficacy, technological complexity, and facilitating conditions into the original TAM. The data were obtained from a total of 287 respondents including 228 (79.4%) female teachers and 59 (20.6%) male teachers via online questionnaires. The questionnaire was developed by adapting previously validated instruments and then refined by two educational technology experts in order to better suit the current study. The empirical findings, using structural equation modeling (SEM), showed that the extended TAM was valid in predicting English language teachers’ intentions to teach online during the pandemic normalization. At the same time, the findings suggested that teachers’ intentions were influenced significantly by attitude, facilitating conditions, and self-efficacy; language teachers’ attitude toward online teaching was significantly affected by both its perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use; perceived usefulness had a significant association with perceived ease of use and subjective norms; and perceived ease of use was significantly impacted by self-efficacy and facilitating conditions. Perceived usefulness was not suggested as a significant determinant of English language teachers’ intentions to adopt online teaching. Despite some limitations, the study has several implications from the perspective of theory and practice. The more factors with a higher influence should be determined from different perspectives in future research. Full article

Drawing on Wigfield and Eccles’s motivational theory, which is acclaimed for explaining individual behavioral intentions, this study investigated the extent to which different forms of motivation (i.e., self-efficacy, task value, and intrinsic and extrinsic motivations) predicted student behavioral feedback engagement (i.e., action on teacher feedback and feedback seeking) in English learning. The participants were 276 male and female students who were enrolled in a second-year full-time English language and literature program at two Chinese universities. Multiple regression analyses showed that task value emerged as the only motivational variable that significantly predicted both students’ action on teacher feedback and feedback seeking. Intrinsic motivation significantly predicted action on teacher feedback, whereas extrinsic motivation and self-efficacy significantly predicted feedback seeking. Pedagogical implications for endeavors to support students in their engagement with feedback in learning English as a foreign language in China are discussed. Full article

Sustainable development is a widely discussed topic. English language education plays the dominant role in China, but the education of languages other than English (LOTEs) is more important for sustainable development. Based on a case study of German language education, this paper draws SWOT analysis to discuss the current foreign language education in China associated with sustainable development. We find that there are four current trends in the sustainable development of foreign language education in China: promotion of sustainable multilingual education, cultivation of sustainable citizens, integration of cultural values for sustainable development and digitalization for sustainable foreign language education. There are also challenges and new perspectives. A rational and systematic policy of multilingualism should be planned. In order to cultivate sustainable citizens who are able to respond to various global problems, the curricula, teaching materials and examinations for LOTE teaching at secondary schools and universities should be co-designed to work with each other. In order to integrate cultural values effectively, more suitable teaching materials should be developed and published, and teachers need to be trained for practicing these contents in class. Digitization in teaching, research and learning should be promoted. Full article

The relationship between technology and society is an ever-changing dynamic, but one in which education is a key domain. In educational practice, the use of computer technology has increasingly become an inseparable part of teaching students in numerous ways across the world. The COVID-19 global pandemic accelerated this dramatically, with online teaching environments becoming the sole way for students to access education for extended periods of time. This shift to online teaching also required that teachers learn new skills and deal with new challenges. Based on mixed-methods research conducted with 20 teachers from an established content and language integrated learning school in mainland China, this research paper investigates the different challenges and problems that were faced by content and language integrated learning teachers in their experiences of online teaching and, in tandem with wider content and language integrated learning and technology-enhanced language learning literature, develops some potential solutions for future use. Full article

This study aimed to investigate the factors that affect the continuance intention to use technology among English teachers in China, mainly by examining the direct effects of help seeking, interest, effort regulation, growth mindset, facilitating conditions, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use on continuance intention (CI), and the indirect effects the above factors have on continuance intention through self-efficacy. The study sample comprised 459 English language teachers from junior secondary schools in different regions in Western China. A questionnaire that involved the above variables was used, and it was validated using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. The results revealed significant direct effects of help seeking, effort regulation, growth mindset, facilitating conditions, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use on the continuance intention to use technology. However, the results showed that interest did not have a direct effect on the continuance intention to use technology. The findings also demonstrated that growth mindset, interest, effort regulation, help seeking, and perceived usefulness did not indirectly affect the continuance intention to use technology through self-efficacy. Nevertheless, the findings indicated that facilitating conditions and perceived ease of use did have an indirect effect on the continuance intention to use technology through self-efficacy. In light of these findings, some suggestions and recommendations were presented. Full article

The outbreak of COVID-19 has impacted conventional educational practice in universities worldwide. Chinese universities are no exception. WeChat, a social application widely used in China, has been considered a viable tool for language education. However, the perspectives of Chinese university students and English language teachers in terms of using WeChat for English vocabulary learning and teaching during the pandemic remain unclear. The aim of the present study was twofold: First, it explored Chinese university students’ and language teachers’ opinions of adopting a self-developed WeChat-assisted lexical-learning program (the WALL program) during COVID-19. Second, it gathered their evaluations of the WALL program. To achieve the aim, two sets of semi-structured interviews were used to gather qualitative data about five students’ and three English language teachers’ perceptions at a university in northern China. The results first revealed that the eight participants showed overwhelming opinions in support of adopting the program for vocabulary learning and teaching during the pandemic. In addition, it received mostly positive evaluations. However, the program had two main drawbacks: distracting learning environments and uncertain learning effects. The present study then made recommendations for future WeChat-based language learning and teaching programs. The findings are expected to provide pedagogical insights for tertiary educational institutions, practitioners, and students in the chosen context in order to deal with the future design and implementation of sound MALL-based approaches. Full article