Investigating explicit and implicit L2 knowledge and learning: Replications of Erlam (2005) and Roehr-Brackin and Tellier (2019)

This paper makes the case for close and approximate replications of Erlam (2005) and a conceptual replication of Roehr-Brackin and Tellier (2019). The two studies recommended for replication are informed by research on explicit and implicit knowledge, learning and teaching. They are ecologically valid classroom studies with either adolescent or child learners as participants and thus investigated as yet relatively under-represented populations in the field of instructed second language acquisition (SLA). Erlam (2005) identified a levelling effect of a particular method of explicit instruction, while Roehr-Brackin and Tellier (2019) showed that language-analytic ability has a role to play even in younger children's language learning. The researchers’ approaches duly reflect the need to take into account cognitive individual learner differences when working in intact classrooms. As the findings of each of the original studies have potentially profound implications for theory and practice in the field, replication is deemed both timely and desirable. In order to facilitate this endeavour, the key features of the original studies are summarised, and specific proposals on the methodological characteristics of suitable replication studies are put forward.

Between Party, People, and Profession: The Many Faces of the ‘Doctor’ during the Cultural Revolution

During the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–76), Chairman Mao fundamentally reformed medicine so that rural people received medical care. His new medical model has been variously characterised as: revolutionary Maoist medicine, a revitalised form of Chinese medicine; and the final conquest by Western medicine. This paper finds that instead of Mao’s vision of a new ‘revolutionary medicine’, there was a new medical synthesis that drew from the Maoist ideal and Western and Chinese traditions, but fundamentally differed from all of them. Maoist medicine’s ultimate aim was doctors as peasant carers. However, rural people and local governments valued treatment expertise, causing divergence from this ideal. As a result, Western and elite Chinese medical doctors sent to the countryside for rehabilitation were preferable to barefoot doctors and received rural support. Initially Western-trained physicians belittled elite Chinese doctors, and both looked down on barefoot doctors and indigenous herbalists and acupuncturists. However, the levelling effect of terrible rural conditions made these diverse conceptions of the doctor closer during the Cultural Revolution. Thus, urban doctors and rural medical practitioners developed a symbiotic relationship: barefoot doctors provided political protection and local knowledge for urban doctors; urban doctors’ provided expertise and a medical apprenticeship for barefoot doctors; and both counted on the local medical knowledge of indigenous healers. This fragile conceptual nexus had fallen apart by the end of the Maoist era (1976), but the evidence of new medical syntheses shows the diverse range of alliances that become possible under the rubric of ‘revolutionary medicine’.

Subtitling Taboo Language: Using the Cues of Register and Genre to Affect Audience Experience?

Using French-English/English-French examples, this article puts forward the hypothesis that, in the film genre of social realism (depicting low socio-economic groups), subtitlers use linguistic and visual cues which are embedded in genre to trigger audience reactions to representations of taboo language. Examples of the subtitling of taboo language are drawn from three films and the hypothesis above will be explored along three main interrelated axes: i) the value of treating subtitles as an entire system; ii) the relationship between the specific film genre of social realism (depicting low socio-economic groups) and audience perceptions of taboo language use; and iii) discourse representations through register and its effect on characterisation. Nuances are brought to evidence from existing research which argues that the choices relating to taboo language made in the oral to written mode shift are subject to politeness restrictions in terms of register, and that these choices have a homogenising/levelling effect on characterisation (Lambert 1990; Taylor 2006a; Mailhac 2000 for example).

Preparation of 1D cubic Cd0.8Zn0.2S solid-solution nanowires using levelling effect of TGA and improved photocatalytic H2-production activity

One-dimensional (1D) cubic Cd0.8Zn0.2S solid-solution nanowires, which exhibit enhanced photocatalytic H2-production activity, were prepared based on the “levelling effect” of thioglycolic acid (TGA).