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Item Chinese second language learners' speaking development during study abroad: Complexity, accuracy and fluency(Clifford Media International , Hong Kong, 2024-02-21) Guo, RongrongThe purpose of this study was to contribute to the literature on second language oral Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency (CAF) development by assessing English-speaking learners of Chinese during Study Abroad (SA) in China, which have rarely been investigated in an Irish context. Moreover, relationships between the CAF constructs and those between the sub-constructs impacted by Study Abroad (SA) were discussed. Data were collected from ten English-speaking undergraduates of an Irish university from two curricular oral tests during pre- and post- 10 months’ SA. Performance was elicited by topics, which were relative to the learning content when the learners were in the formal instruction context. To exhibit an in-depth evaluation of oral performance of instructed L2 Mandarin learners, fourteen CAF measures were analysed. The effects of SA on oral performance were explored by paired-samples t-tests. The results showed that the SA benefits oral gains in terms of speech fluidity, syntactic complexity (length and subordination), and lexical sophistication. Generalized from the analysis, trade-off effects are observed prevailingly between CAF constructs, while simultaneous improvements are present within CAF. This is attributable to the study abroad experience as well as the use of rehearsed monologue tasks in the study (Wright, 2020). It has shown that complexity and fluency were enhanced by pre-task planning (Skehan, 2009c; Skehan & Foster, 2001). Based on the findings, the study also provides pedagogical implications for the development of L2 Chinese oral performance in a university teaching setting.Item Creating a community of praxis: integrating global citizenship and development education across campus at University College Cork(UCL Press, 2022-12-13) Cotter, Gertrude; Bonenfant, Yvon; Butler, Jenny; Caulfield, Marian; Doyle Prestwich, Barbara; Griffin, Rosarii; Khabbar, Sanaa; Mishra, Nita; Hally, Ruth; Murphy, Margaret; Murphy, Orla; O'Sullivan, Maeve; Phelan, Martha; Reidy, Darren; Schneider, Julia C.; Isaloo, Amin Sharifi; Turner, Brian; Usher, Ruth; Williamson Sinalo, Caroline; Irish AidThe Praxis Project, established at University College Cork (UCC), Ireland, in 2018, seeks to assess possible models of best practice with regard to the integration of global citizenship and development education (GCDE) into a cross-disciplinary, cross-campus, interwoven set of subject area pedagogies, policies and practices. This study – the first part of an eventual three-part framework – asserts that the themes, theories, values, skills, approaches and methodologies relevant to transformative pedagogical work are best underpinned by ongoing staff dialogue in order to build communities of support around such systemic pedagogical change. This article is based on a collaborative study with the first cohort of UCC staff (2020–1), which demonstrates many ways in which staff and students realised that smaller actions and carefully directed attention to specific issues opened doors to transformative thinking and action in surprising ways. From this viewpoint, the striking need emerged for taking a strategic approach to how GCDE is, and should be, integrated into learning across subject areas.Item A conceptual restructuring of spatial motion expressions in Chinese L2(Frontiers Media, 2018-11-07) Sparvoli, CarlottaThis paper focuses on the patterns in the encoding of spatial motion events that play a major role in the acquisition of these type of expressions. The goal is to single out the semantic contribution of the linguistic items which surface in Chinese locative constructions. In this way, we intend to provide learners with an account of the spatial representation encoded in the Chinese language. In fact, Chinese grammar is often perceived as idiosyncratic, thus generating a frustration that turns into learned helplessness (Maier and Seligman 1976). We will analyse Talmy’s (2000) framework under the light of investigations such as Landau and Jackendoff (1993), Svenonius (2004, 2006, 2007), Terzi (2010). It will be shown that in Chinese locative structures, the Axial Part information is signalled by localizers and can be specified only when the Ground is considered as an object with “axially determined parts” (Landau and Jackendoff 1993). Thus, we will elaborate on present account on the localizer’s function (Peyraube 2003, Lamarre 2007, Lin 2013) by showing that the localizer highlights an axially determined part within a reference object, consistently with Terzi (2010) definition of Place, and with Wu (2015) decomposition of Place into Ground and Axial Part. Moreover, it will be shown that the preposition zài ‘at’ encodes a Locative type of Motion event (Talmy 2000), thus, it is not semantically vacuous. Other categories will be presented, such as the semantic class of positional verbs (Huang 1987). We will indicate the contexts wherein such notions can trigger the conceptual restructuring which enables adult learners to switch from L1 “thinking for speaking” to L2 “thinking for speaking” (Slobin 1987).Item The past and present of Chinese language teaching in Ireland(EngagedScholarship@CSU, 2019) Osborne, Caitríona; Zhang, Qi; Xia, YongbinChina’s booming economy is indeed one ofthe main reasons for the popularity oflearning Chinese as a foreign language (henceforth CFL). With this growing interest in CFL, Ireland is likely to be behind global trends as Chinese is not yet included as a State-examined subject at any level in the Irish schooling system. Chinese language teaching (henceforth CLT) began to develop significantly in formal UK schooling during 2004-2005 (Zhang & Li, 2010), whereas the earliest occurrence ofCLT seen in the Irish education system was in 2006-2007 when two Confucius Institutes were set up in Ireland. During this time, Mandarin Chinese was also introduced first as a subject and later as a degree in some higher education institutions in Ireland. The current study reviews the past and present of CLT in Ireland at second and tertiary level. This information, together with survey data collected among approximately 3,700 students learning CFL in Irish schools as a subject not examined by the State, provides recommendations for a future State-examined CFL course to be introduced to Irish secondary schools. These recommendations include items such as contact hours, tasks, and content to be implemented in the classroom. Further recommendations are also supplied in relation to the bridging of secondary and tertiary-level CLT. These recommendations come in light offormer Irish Minister for Education Richard Bruton's announcement that Chinese will be taught on the State-examined school curriculum as part ofthe Languages Connect strategy plan.Item Reinforced hetero-normativity: gender constructs in Chosŏn (朝鮮) Korea(School of Asian Studies, University College Cork, 2018) Cawley, Kevin N.During Korea’s Chosŏn dynasty (朝鮮; 1392-1910), strictly codified heteronormalising gender constructs emerged, which for all intents and purposes undermined the possibility of homosexuality to exist in either private or public spaces. By drawing on contemporary critical theorists such as Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray, this paper critiques the socio-historical constructs of gender identity in Korea shaped during this period. Such critiques expose the inherent inequalities of hierarchical ‘gender traditions’ that are reinforced through patriarchies, which in the case of Chosŏn, commemorated the patrilineal genealogies of (supposedly) heterosexual men from the past. I will begin by dismantling notions of gender during this period, which was manipulated and rigidly constructed by (mis)using Neo-Confucian texts and metaphysics, inherited from the Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi (朱熹, 1130-1200). Zhu’s Reflections on Things at Hand, sought to regulate the family, while his Lesser Learning, reiterated rules that facilitated the suppression of women as daughters, wives, and even mothers. While commemorating ‘great men’ and emphasising ideals of ‘good women’, a gender ideology was implanted within the social matrix and recorded from one generation to the next in genealogical records known as chokpo (族譜). This hetero-normative way-of-being was enforced in legal texts and through literature by men, which yoked women into artificially orchestrated modes of behaviour that would also be transmitted by women themselves via texts that they themselves sometimes wrote and distributed. These ideas continue to influence modern Korean society, where women still struggle to dismantle out-dated modes of social expectations, and where the LGBTQ community is only starting to assert themselves and reject ‘compulsive’ hetero-normativity.