This article draws on a longitudinal study of four Chinese students' English learning experiences during their college years and explores the ways in which EFL learning has influenced their sense of national identity. The study captures the changes they have experienced in constructing identities over a prolonged period in the context of mainland China where strong sense of national identity has been historically promoted and where there is currently unprecedentedly close interaction between local cultures and western cultures. Drawing on interviews and diary studies as the primary data source, this study identifies a three-stage development in the national identities of the college students that proceeds from initial admiration of English-speaking cultures, to antagonism towards alien things, before then reaching a stage of conciliation between the national and the global. The findings suggest that China's deeply-rooted culture of collectivism and altruism plays a role in shaping English learners' national identity and that the learners also demonstrate considerable agency in constructing national identities at different stages of English learning.
[Copyright of Changing English: Studies in Culture & Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13586840903557076]

This paper reports on an ethnographic field research conducted in Beijing in 2007, with an attempt to examine the cognitive and affective orientation dimensions of a group of Hong Kong students toward the Beijing 2008 Olympics and their negotiation of national identity. In 1997, China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong under the principle of 'One Country, Two Systems,' continuing a long history of Hong Kong people struggling with their national identity. Study tours to Mainland China had been arranged as an extension of national education, with the Beijing Olympics as the main theme. With field notes and focus groups, this study found that the tour provoked in the students an interesting mixture of pride and skepticism and also reinforced their 'insider/outsider' identity crisis. This article concludes that the debate over the use of Beijing Olympics as national education reflects an intrinsic paradox of the principle of 'One Country, Two Systems.'
[Copyright of International Journal of the History of Sport is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09523360903556899 ]

This article explores the motivation to learn German for learners already proficient in English as a second language. Discussed are parts of the findings of an empirical study investigating the motivation of 12 Chinese students to study German as a major at a university in Hong Kong. The data collected for the duration of two academic semesters through interviews and diary entries indicated that language learning was seen as a practice through which students attempted to attain a certain kind of individuality. By drawing on Foucault's concept of ethical self-formation, an alternative theoretical framework was designed to analyse the students' reason for learning German, which were investigated under the four themes characteristic of Foucault's ethical self-formation: (a) what parts of the learners' selves are concerned with learning German? (b) what ethical values and beliefs do learners attach to their learning German? (c) how do learners apply German in their daily life? and (d) what are the learners' goals for learning German? Given the significance, the learning of an additional language was ascribed to the development of the students' selves, the article recommends a pedagogy that stronger integrates aspects of self-formation into language teaching.
[Copyright of International Journal of Multilingualism is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2010.503897]

The Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) is widely used to assess the vocabulary size of second-language learners of English. The test assesses learners' knowledge of words of different frequencies within general English and of high-frequency words within academic texts. We used the VLT to measure the English vocabulary size of Chinese university students of English in Hong Kong where a large vocabulary is required for academic and professional success. Students achieved high scores for high-frequency words but scored poorly for low-frequency words. We consider the possibility that the low scores reflect a deficit of the test: words were selected on the basis of frequency counts from dated word lists of American words and at the lower frequency levels may not be representative of current Hong Kong English. We compiled a corpus of 14.7 million words of Hong Kong English. Cross-checking revealed a number of VLT words that do not occur in the corpus. We argue that these words are not required by English speakers in Hong Kong and that the lowest word frequency levels of the VLT should be revised to reflect modern Hong Kong English.
[Copyright of Language and Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500781003642478]