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摘要：Program evaluation, a crucial process in ESP, ensures adequate planning, implementation, and continuous improvement of the program. Despite its importance, the literature related to ESP program evaluation is still scarce and somewhat dated. The present paper describes a combined, updated model for ESP program evaluation and reports on how the model worked when it was applied to evaluate an ESP program in a university in Taiwan. To update the model for higher education ESP program evaluation, this research combined Hutchinson and Waters' 1987 model and the comprehensive framework for foreign language (FL) program evaluation developed by Watanabe, Norris, and Gonzalez-Lloret (2009), while also incorporating recent findings from emerging research on ESP learning and teaching that include topics such as authenticity, learner autonomy and learning transfer. When the model was applied to evaluate a university ESP program, the findings enabled the researchers to identify strengths and weaknesses of the updated model. It is the researchers' hope that the discussions of both the updated model and the evaluation process provide valuable insights into the design and implementation of ESP program evaluation. [Copyright The American University; published by Elsevier Ltd.]

摘要：This article analyzes research in second/foreign language teaching and learning conducted in Taiwan over the period 2004-2009. Representative articles published in local refereed journals and conference proceedings -- not readily accessible outside Taiwan -- are reviewed to reflect current trends in English teaching and learning. The main themes discussed include English-in-education policy and curriculum, research on English-skills development, and assessment. The analysis presented here highlights the fact that research in Taiwan not only follows international trends but also satisfies specific needs in local sociolinguistic contexts. Additionally, this paper sheds light on why the international readership of this locally conducted research remains very limited, and concludes by outlining the challenges that researchers face and the gradually shifting status of English in Taiwan in this increasingly globalized world. Adapted from the source document

摘要：This study focused on the interface between classroom assessment and learning motivation, in particular, whether and how classroom tests and grades motivated student effort. In a university in Taiwan, six English as a Foreign Language teacher interviews were conducted, and 744 student surveys, accompanied by 289 more detailed written opinions, were gathered and analyzed. It was found that teacher considerations in designing classroom tests and assigning nontest grades were associated with intentions to ensure student efforts. Students were generally alert to grade-related requirements but reacted differently. Many indicated the effectiveness of tests in inducing student effort but felt ambivalent about being pushed to study by tests and grades. Teachers should avoid actually demotivating students when their original aim was to motivate. Adapted from the source document

摘要：The General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) was developed in accordance with the Taiwanese Ministry of Education's three goals to improve learners' English proficiency, motivate English learning, and promote lifelong learning. This article used questionnaires to investigate the success of the GEPT in meeting these goals. As the GEPT is intended for Taiwanese English as a foreign language, learners from all walks of life (Wu, 2012), both student and non-student GEPT test takers were involved in this study (n = 384). Results showed that although most test takers responded that the GEPT was successful in making them feel that their English has improved, only a slight majority responded that the GEPT was successful in motivating them to learn English. Most test takers did not support the idea that the GEPT was successful in promoting lifelong learning. Probit regression was used to examine the relationships between these verdicts and variables such as test takers' background, motivational influences, feeling toward the GEPT, perceptions toward self-assessment, learner autonomy, and capacities for lifelong learning. Based on the findings, the article argues for a unique place of the GEPT in the Taiwanese context and reflects on the use of tests to promote lifelong learning of a foreign language. Adapted from the source document

摘要：The General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) is a 5-level, criterion-referenced English as a Foreign Language (EFL) testing system implemented in Taiwan to assess the general English proficiency of EFL learners. In 1999, with the aim of encouraging the general study of English and to result in beneficial washback effects on the teaching and learning of English, the Ministry of Education lent its support to the Language Training and Testing Center in the development of the GEPT. Throughout a decade of efforts, the GEPT has won popular recognition in Taiwan. To date, more than 4.3 million Taiwanese have taken the test. This article first documents the evolution of the GEPT from the perspectives of test development and validation. The article then provides an overview of how GEPT scores are used in both educational and professional domains and discusses several key issues and problems that have emerged due to the new context introduced by the GEPT. Finally, the article outlines how the GEPT will address the challenges it faces in the years to come. Adapted from the source document

摘要：Feedback to the test taker is a defining characteristic of diagnostic language testing (Alderson, 2005). This article reports on a study that investigated how much and in what ways students at a Taiwan university perceived the feedback to be useful on an online multiple-choice diagnostic English grammar test, both in general and by students of higher and lower language proficiency. Stage 1 involved questionnaire data from 68 students who rated each item's feedback according to usefulness, and Stage 2 involved interviews with five students as they read the feedback after taking the test. The data from these two stages showed students' overall positive attitude toward the feedback and students' preferences for particular feedback characteristics. The study also found that although higher proficiency test takers found the feedback to be more useful than lower proficiency test-takers, views about the characteristics of good feedback were similar regardless of level. Recommendations for improving diagnostic language test construction and validation are discussed based upon the findings. Adapted from the source document

摘要：Various language learning projects using Second Life (SL) have been documented; still, their specific learning potentials, particularly in English as a foreign language (EFL) context, remain to be explored. The current study aims to add one piece of empirical evidence on how SL can be infused into a computer-assisted language learning (CALL) course for 25 college students through task design in a limited Internet connection context. Four tasks -- orientation of SL and chatting, pedagogical activities, peer review, and an SL tour -- were designed with their influence examined. Although students' frustration about the unstable Internet connection was shown from responses of an evaluation questionnaire, they confirmed the benefits of using SL for English learning and teaching. SL provides affordances of interaction and immersion, which are conducive to their English learning, and SL can easily establish an authentic environment for communication. It is argued, as supported in the previous literature of various educational contexts, that sound pedagogy with appropriate tasks, instead of 3D virtual world software alone, guides SL applications in the multi-member community (instructors, teachers assistants, students, and other users not in this class) advancing toward language learning objectives or sense-making in student learning. Adapted from the source document

摘要：This study examined two types of classroom assessment events, the more closed convergent assessments (CA) versus the more open-ended divergent assessments (DA), to see if they influence learners differently in terms of motivation and learning strategies. Participants were 105 college freshmen in Taiwan with the same instructor placed under one listening and two speaking classes. In these intact groups, each student experienced two types of assessment, a more traditional test (the CA) and a group performance assessment (the DA). Immediately after they experienced each assessment event, participants reported on their task-specific motivation and learning strategies. Results indicated that CAs were better received by high self-efficacious students and DAs by low scorers. After controlling for self-efficacy, a comparison revealed that students reacted differently in the listening and speaking classes. More specifically, in speaking student motivation and strategy were higher for the DA than for the CA, whereas in the listening class the pattern was reversed. Local educational culture and the nature of assessment events are then discussed. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications, Ltd., copyright holder.]

摘要：This qualitative study aims to understand how English learners interpret shared space in an online multilateral English blogging context and how their interpretations of shared space contribute to their multilateral exchange experience. Twenty-four Asian learners of English from two different universities -- one in Japan and one in Taiwan -- participated in this study. These learners worked on their individual blogs and interacted on both their own blogs and on those of their partners. Data sources include surveys, online interaction records, class assignments, reflective journals, and interviews. Guided by Kramsch's (2009c) analogy of the mindsets of the structuralist and post-structuralist approaches in culture and communication, this study reported that students in this multilateral English blogging project interpreted shared space from two perspectives (a) commonality, and (b) relativity. While students who interpreted shared space from the perspective of commonality valued pre-existing shared personal interests, mutual understanding, and similar personal experiences as a prerequisite for inter-class blogging, students who interpreted shared space from the perspective of relativity tended to draw relative positions from a dialogue between their and their inter-class peers' historicity or cultural memories through re-contextualization and re-positioning. This study suggests that although students who interpreted shared space from the commonality perspective were able to engage in inter-class blogging, they faced difficulties in exploring other possibilities in relating to the blog content, the blog discussions, and the bloggers, when commonality was absent. However, for students who interpreted shared space from the relativity perspective, they were able to form relationships of possibility in mediating encounters through uses of heterogeneous semiotic resources. Future research on what barriers can hinder students' development due to interpretation of shared space and how students develop uses of symbolic resources can contribute to understanding students' construction of shared space for communication. Adapted from the source document

摘要：This exploratory study describes a framework for data-driven learning (DDL), in General (non-major) English university classes, in which learners construct linguistic corpora instead of merely consulting them. Prior related work has addressed the needs of language specialists, in particular trainee translators who are learning how to compile glossaries, rather than non-major students of English. It is argued in this article that the process of creating a corpus inculcates a sense of ownership in the learner and therefore has a motivational impetus. This is especially true, it is claimed here, when the topic of the corpus is of personal interest to the learner, or coincides with their major field of study. Learners may pursue language study for only a short period of their university career, but once the corpus is constructed, some students may be sufficiently motivated to consult it and add to it when needed. Moreover, the process of compiling the corpus may lead to the acquisition of not only language but also useful transferable skills, including information technology and problem-solving competencies. This study presents some of the motivational issues surrounding DDL in Asia and suggests corpus construction as a solution. Previous research on corpus construction by learners is reviewed. In the experiment which forms the core of this study, 90 freshmen compiled and analyzed corpora as part of a General English course in Taiwan. Of these, 19 students completed final projects based on corpora they had compiled. Their findings -- and reactions to the use of corpora compilation as a language learning tool -- are reported in a qualitative data analysis. Adapted from the source document

摘要：This study examines the motivation of 20 Japanese students of English as a foreign language (EFL) who chatted electronically with 19 Taiwanese EFL students using online synchronous chat software. In particular, we were interested in four factors that affect task-based motivation: the willingness to communicate, task attractiveness, task innovativeness, and the need to communicate in the target language. Qualitative analysis of a posttest questionnaire and the texts that students produced during their online task reveal that students were generally motivated throughout the task with respect to all four of the factors. It is suggested that well-designed online chat tasks, whereby students need to arrive at a consensus via interaction, can be very motivating to students. For teachers, electronic synchronous chat represents one more valuable tool for language teachers to facilitate interaction in the target language. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

摘要：This study investigated the impact of content-based language instruction (CBLI) on EFL young learners' motivated behaviours, namely attention, engagement, and eager volunteering, and classroom verbal interaction. Situational factors play vital roles in shaping language learners' motivation particularly in EFL contexts. While many private schools implement CBLI programmes in Taiwan as it has been proved elsewhere that such language programmes improve language learners' motivation and academic performance in ESL contexts, such as US and Canada, the effects CBLI might have on EFL young learners have never been investigated in Taiwan. Twenty-five six-year-old year one primary students participated in this study. Both classroom observation implementing Spada and Frohlich's [Spada, N., Frohlich, M., 1995. COLT Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching Observation Scheme: Coding Conventions and Applications. Macquarie University, National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research, Sydney, Australia.] Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching (COLT) observation scheme and qualitative analysis of classroom video taping revealed that learners tend to participate more actively in subject-learning classes than language-input classes and have benefited from the programme in terms of eagerness to volunteer and classroom verbal output. Although the differences of the subjects' attention level and engagement between content-focused lessons and language-focused lessons were not evident, there was a dramatic improvement in both types of lessons over six weeks. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]