In this article, the author reflects on her continual journal in regard to improving her teaching skills. She opines that this journey is a story that could resonate with other colleagues to whom teaching is also critically important but to whom it does not come naturally. She describes lessons she learned in her early years of teaching, and she…

Listening is very important. Conversations will take place only when we can understand what our interlocutor says; listening is also an important input. Yet, many of my students got frustrated in listening. Being a teacher, I tried to rethink about what I did in my listening classes and did some literature review. As a result, I found that there…

Explains that at the core of an effort to teach journalism in English to students in the People's Republic of China is the question of whether there is a point to exposing western values to students. Includes an American journalist's experience teaching in an English-language journalism program at a Chinese University and his search for an answer…

The initiation of a national examination system in the People's Republic of China has had a marked impact upon educational policies. An historical overview of the Chinese educational system, the nature of the national examination, and implications of curricular change are used to support the assumption that curricular change can have profound…

The author provides a few personal impressions from his visit to the People's Republic of China concerning middle school science education, particularly the physics curriculum; the typical, working-week schedule of a physics teacher; the status and morale of teachers, in general; and the Chinese viewpoint of the examination process and gender…

Ongoing evaluation occurs during the progression of an action and is widely used as a means of judging the progress and achievements of language programs. This article focuses on the ongoing evaluation of an English-as-a-Foreign-Language program in China and the roles of the teachers and learners in the process. (Author/VWL)

Uses classroom anecdotes to illustrate how social forces limit literacy as a tool enabling students to think for themselves. Defines literacy as involving knowledge, learning, and culture. Appeals to teachers to enhance learners' inventive and analytical skills by putting them in touch with their own intelligence and intuition. (TES)

Expectations that Chinese college and university staff and students have concerning English-speaking western educators who are recruited to teach in China were studied. The role that the western educator expects to play in China was also assessed. Attention was focused on the perceptions held by eight Chinese scholars studying in the United States…

Suggests that the communicative approach plays a role in English language teaching in China, but that aspects of this approach must be applied selectively partly because of the educational environment there. The article argues that the approach embodies significant Western culture-specific assumptions regarding learning processes. (15 references)…

This feature is a collection of brief essays recently written by Japanese and Chinese gay youth, followed by commentary from several leading educators and scholars. Akihiko Komiya's "Difficulties Japanese Gay Youth Encounter" provides excerpts from the stories of six gay youth and their everyday lives, based on their letters in…

Seven widely-used high school world history textbooks were analyzed to test the proposition that alternative political and economic systems, such as American democracy and Soviet communism, are treated neutrally, as if they are morally equivalent. This proposition has been advanced by leaders in the U.S. Department of Education as a criticism of…

Considers some of the complexities of text, ownership, memorization, and plagiarism. The article suggests that plagiarism needs to be understood in terms of complex relationships between text, memory, and learning as part of an undertaking to explore different relationships between learning, literacy, and cultural difference. (49 references)…