An action research on the establishment of a Community of Practice on technology-enhanced language learning and teaching at tertiary level.

This study aims to explore how an effective cross-institutional Community of Practice (CoP) can be established to promote technology-enhanced language learning and teaching (TeLL&T) at tertiary level, as there is an urgent need for establishing such CoPs due to the large-scale implementation of technology-enhanced language learning and teaching in recent years. In this study, an action research design was adopted, and a five-stage procedure has been identified for the establishment of the CoP on TeLL&T: (1) Investigation of students' and teachers' needs in TeLL&T through surveys and interviews; (2) Identifying a critical mass to form the CoP; (3) Constructing the CoP website to provide a platform with rich TeLL&T resources; (4) University students and teachers sharing their good practices of TeLL&T through various means; (5) Evaluation of the CoP activities. Different evaluation surveys were conducted among university students and teachers to evaluate the effectiveness of the CoP activities. Findings of evaluation surveys suggest that the CoP activities were well received. This study also illustrated the challenges and solutions of creating and maintaining a substantial CoP on TeLL&T. It is hoped that the findings will shed some light on how to establish an effective CoP on TeLL&T at tertiary level.

Acoustic Analyses and Intelligibility Assessments of Timing Patterns Among Chinese English Learners with Different Dialect Backgrounds.

This paper includes two interrelated studies. The first production study investigates the timing patterns of English as spoken by Chinese learners with different dialect backgrounds. The second comprehension study explores native and non-native speakers' assessments of the intelligibility of Chinese-accented English, and examines the effects of the listeners' language backgrounds on their perceptions of Chinese-accented English. The results showed that the Hong Kong (HK) group performed better in unstressed syllable duration compared with the Taiwan (TW) and Beijing (BJ) groups. The results also revealed that all six listener groups achieved at least 78% intelligibility, with the native speaker accent achieving the highest rating, followed by the HK, TW, and BJ accents. A shared first language (L1) background may have little or no impact on intelligibility. The speech properties might prevail over the shared L1 effect. All listeners perceived inappropriate word-stress shift and consonant cluster simplifications to be the most unintelligible features.