Matching Items (33)
Description
Many researchers have pointed out that sentence complexity plays an important role in language maturity. Using cohesive devices is a critical method to composing complicated sentences. Several grammatical researchers give cohesive devices different definitions and categories in the perspective of pure linguistics, yet little is known about the Chinese learners' acquisition situations of cohesive devices in the field of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (TCFL). Combined with these definitions and pedagogical theories, the acquisition situations of four grammatical features of cohesive devices and eleven logical relations are discussed in this thesis. This thesis expects that through discovering different features of cohesive devices among different student levels, educators of Chinese will gain a more comprehensive understanding of the acquisition orders and features of conjunctive devices. In this study, I examine the teaching orders of cohesive devices in selected textbooks from first-year Chinese through fourth-year Chinese. Three groups of students were required to complete two essays based on the same topics and prompts. Twenty-eight valid writing samples are examined in total, including ten writing samples from fourth-year students, another ten from third-year students, and eight from second-year students. The results show that there are no obvious differences among the three levels of students in their use of certain grammatical features and logical relations of cohesive devices. Students in these three levels have difficulty understanding how to connect paragraphs together fluently and accurately in their compositions. Pedagogical implications include some suggestions about designing instructional writing assignments in order to give more clearly pedagogical instructions for teaching cohesive devices. In addition, comprehensible directions that explain which logical relations should be taught every academic year are proposed.
ContributorsHan, Jining (Author) / Spring, Madeline K (Thesis advisor) / Ling, Xiaoqiao (Committee member) / Oh, Young (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Biophysics, rockets, and the state: the making of a scientific discipline in twentieth-century China
Description
This study takes biophysics--a relatively new field with complex origins and contested definitions--as the research focus and investigates the history of disciplinary formation in twentieth-century China. The story of building a scientific discipline in modern China illustrates how a science specialty evolved from an ambiguous and amorphous field into a full-fledged academic discipline in specific socio-institutional contexts. It focuses on archival sources and historical writings concerning the constitution and definition of biophysics in order to examine the relationship between particular scientific styles, national priorities, and institutional opportunities in the People's Republic of China. It argues that Chinese biophysicists exhibited a different style of conceiving and organizing their discipline by adapting to the institutional structure and political economy that had been created since 1949. The eight chapters demonstrate that biophysics as a scientific discipline flourished in China only where priorities of science were congruent with political and institutional imperatives. Initially consisting of cell biologists, the Chinese biophysics community redirected their disciplinary priorities toward rocket science in the late 1950s to accommodate the national need of the time. Biophysicists who had worked on biological sounding rockets were drawn to the military sector and continued to contribute to human spaceflight in post-Mao China. Besides the rocket-and-space missions which provided the material context for biophysics to expand in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Chinese biophysicists also created research and educational programs surrounding biophysics by exploiting the institutional opportunities afforded by the policy emphasis on science's role to drive modernization. Biophysics' tie to nationalistic and utilitarian goals highlights the merits of approaching modern Chinese history from disciplinary, material, and institutional perspectives.
ContributorsLuk, Yi Lai Christine (Author) / Koblitz, Ann Hibner (Thesis advisor) / Maienschein, Jane A (Committee member) / Tillman, Hoyt C (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This dissertation explores the history of ancestral rituals and the related political controversy in the Song China (960-1279). Considering the pivotal role played by ancestral rites in shaping Chinese identity and consciousness, this study contributes to a better understanding of how ancestral ritual has been politicized in Chinese history as a specific cultural apparatus to manipulate politics through theatrical performance and liturgical discussion. Through a contextual analysis of a variety of Song scholar-officials and their ritual writings, including memorials, private letters, and commentaries on the ritual Classics, this study demonstrates that Song ritual debates over the zhaomu 昭穆 sequence--that is, the positioning of ancestral temples and spirit tablets in ancestral temples with preparation for alternation or removal--differentiated scholar-officials into separate factions of revivalists, conventionalists and centrists. From a new perspective of ritual politics, this study reveals the discursiveness of the New Learning (xinxue新學) community and its profound influence on the Learning of the Way (Daoxue 道學) fellowship of the Southern Song (1127-1279). It examines the evolution of the New Learning fellowship as a dynamic process that involved internal tension and differentiation. Daoxue ritualism was a continuation of this process in partaking in the revivalist approach of ritual that was initiated by the New Learning circle. Nowadays, the proliferation of ritual and Classical studies crystallizes the revitalization of Confucianism and Confucian rituals in China. Taking zhaomu as a point of departure, this project provides a lens through which modern scholars can explore the persistent tension between knowledge and power by rethinking the modernization of ritual and ritual politics in contemporary China.
ContributorsCheung, Hiu Yu (Author) / Tillman, Hoyt C (Thesis advisor) / Tillman, Hoyt (Committee member) / Mackinnon, Stephen (Committee member) / Rush, James (Committee member) / Bokenkamp, Stephen (Committee member) / West, Stephen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This dissertation analyzes the way in which leaders of certain Taiwanese Buddhist organizations associated with a strand of Buddhist modernism called "humanistic Buddhism" use discourse and rhetoric to make environmentalism meaningful to their members. It begins with an assessment of the field of religion and ecology, situating it in the context of secular environmental ethics. It identifies rhetoric and discourse as important but under acknowledged elements in literature on environmental ethics, both religious and secular, and relates this lack of attention to rhetoric to the presence of a problematic gap between environmental ethics theory and environmentalist practice. This dissertation develops a methodology of rhetorical analysis that seeks to assess how rhetoric contributes to alleviating this gap in religious environmentalism. In particular, this dissertation analyzes the development of environmentalism as a major element of humanistic Buddhist groups in Taiwan and seeks to show that a rhetorical analysis helps demonstrate how these organizations have sought to make environmentalism a meaningful subject of contemporary Buddhist religiosity. This dissertation will present an extended analysis of the concept of "spiritual environmentalism," a term developed and promoted by the late Ven. Shengyan (1930-2009), founder of the Taiwanese Buddhist organization Dharma Drum Mountain. Furthermore, this dissertation suggests that the rhetorical methodology proposed herein offers offers a direction for scholars to more effectively engage with religion and ecology in ways that address both descriptive/analytic approaches and constructive engagements with various forms of religious environmentalism.
ContributorsClippard, Seth (Author) / Chen, Huaiyu (Thesis advisor) / Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava (Committee member) / Bokenkamp, Stephen (Committee member) / Tillman, Hoyt (Committee member) / Minteer, Ben (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This paper explores the development of newspapers and serialized novels in Meiji era Japan (1868 - 1912). A theoretical discussion of the role of newspapers in the evolution of culture and society provides background for an analysis of the history and development of the newspaper in Japan. The primary focus is on the rapid development of newspapers and their contribution to the extensive changes in society during the Meiji period. Newspapers both contributed to and were influenced by the development of Japanese society. Finally, the paper applies the theoretical understanding and historical perspective to the analysis of two Meiji serialized novels, one from the beginning of Meiji and one from the end of the era. These novels reveal that Meiji Japan was concerned with creating a general public and establishing an image of a "Japanese nation" that had not previously existed. Takahashi Oden yasha monogatari (1878-1879), by Kanagaki Robun (1829 - 1894), shows how society excluded groups in order to strengthen the majority of people's identification with Japanese society's norms at the beginning of Meiji. Kokoro (1914), by Natsume Souseki (1867 - 1916), uses the shared experience of the death of Emperor Meiji to pull all Japanese into an inclusive social group, and solidify the image of what it meant to be part of Japan in the modern era.
ContributorsArnold, Keith (Author) / Creamer, John (Thesis advisor) / Chambers, Anthony H (Committee member) / Oh, Young (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
ABSTRACT Much of teacher feedback research is conducted in the L1 and L2 contexts. There is a paucity of research about feedback in the Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (TCFL) context. Particularly, little is known about teachers' feedback practices and student views of teacher feedback. The present study was undertaken to fill the research gap by focusing on teachers'written feedback. Student data from surveying 38 students was interpreted with teacher data gained from interviewing three teachers. The findings indicate that teacher written feedback, which occurred in a multiple-draft writing cycle, generally accorded with recommended feedback principles. Students responded favorably to teacher written feedback. The results also reveal discrepancies between teachers' feedback practices and student perceptions of and preferences regarding teacher feedback. The results show that students wanted more written comments from teachers, though most teachers didn't prioritize written comments. Despite teachers' practices and their inclination toward offering coded indirect error correction, students in the study expressed their preferences for direct error correction. Most students are interested in receiving teacher feedback that addresses all aspects of writing rather than primarily focusing on language accuracy. The reasons that may account for the disjuncture are also discussed in the study. The study concludes that it is important for teachers to be aware of student attitudes and expectations regarding teacher feedback. Teachers should be flexible enough to provide individualized feedback. Pedagogical implications are included in the paper in the hope of shedding light on the development of effective and helpful teacher feedback.
ContributorsChen, Jinglin (Author) / Spring, Madeline (Thesis advisor) / Oh, Young (Committee member) / West, Stephen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This case study explores similarities and differences between the instructors' beliefs about oral corrective feedback and their actual practices in a summer Chinese program. This kind of feedback is beneficial for beginning college-level learners of Chinese to improve their speaking accuracy. The researcher conducted face-to-face interviews with two teachers of Chinese, focusing on their beliefs about oral corrective feedback in their language classrooms. In addition, the researcher recorded teacher-student interactions through class observation in order to analyze the teachers' actual practices of oral corrective feedback. The main findings show that the teachers hold similar beliefs on oral corrective feedback and its beneficial role in helping improve learners speaking accuracy. The fact is that they frequently provide oral corrective feedback in classroom, mostly using recasts. Implications are discussed in view of the necessity of using explicit feedback and recasts appropriately. In addition, this study demonstrates the need for specific professional development and teacher training about how to provide efficient corrective feedback.
ContributorsDong, Zhixin (Author) / Spring, Madeline K. (Thesis advisor) / West, Stephen (Committee member) / Oh, Young (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This is a comparative study of two advanced ordination rituals, Daoist chuanshou (conferral of ordination rank) and Buddhist abhiṣeka (guanding) in the mid-late Tang and Five Dynasties (763-979). I analyzed a number of not-well-studied Daoist ritual protocols in the early medieval period, and revealed that rituals recast gender and fostered monastic relations. On the other hand, relying on both canonical materials and a manuscript preserved in Japan that recorded an abhiṣeka performed during the Tang dynasty in 839 C.E., I demonstrated how the canonical prescriptions of Indian origin, with modified actions and reinterpreted meaning, were transformed to respond to the Chinese religious and social environment. Having examined the language of the texts and the step of the rituals, I interpreted how these rituals were made sense in their own religious context, and compared their frame, structure, modality, symbol, and meaning.
Ordination rite concerns the transmission of religious knowledge and authority, and the establishment of religious identity. It is in the relationship between the individual body and the community that Daoists and Buddhists found the form of apprenticeship that led to the embodiment of the community. The mastery of religious knowledge within the community––scriptures, register, mantras, and precepts, etc., was known only through the actual ritual practice. In other words, the ritual body became the locus for coordination of all levels of bodily, social, and cosmological experience via the dialectic of objectification and embodiment in the ordination rites. As the ritualized bodies, those who were ordained coherently comprised the community, which in turn remolded them with dynamically and diversely shaped identities.
Ordination rite concerns the transmission of religious knowledge and authority, and the establishment of religious identity. It is in the relationship between the individual body and the community that Daoists and Buddhists found the form of apprenticeship that led to the embodiment of the community. The mastery of religious knowledge within the community––scriptures, register, mantras, and precepts, etc., was known only through the actual ritual practice. In other words, the ritual body became the locus for coordination of all levels of bodily, social, and cosmological experience via the dialectic of objectification and embodiment in the ordination rites. As the ritualized bodies, those who were ordained coherently comprised the community, which in turn remolded them with dynamically and diversely shaped identities.
ContributorsWu, Yang, Ph.D (Author) / Bokenkamp, Stephen (Thesis advisor) / Tillman, Hoyt (Thesis advisor) / Cutter, Robert Joe (Committee member) / Chen, Huaiyu (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
This dissertation focuses on the corpus of Zang Maoxun’s literary creations in The Collection from the Fubao Hall and investigates his involvement in the cultural activities of the Jinling Poetry Society. Unearthing how Zang and this Society, as self and community, played an instrumental role in creating and sustaining a network of dramatists and drama critics in the Jiangnan region, a careful review of his poems and prose shows the extent to which text preparation, commentary, and printing were at the center of his communications with his social circle. Moreover, this dissertation unpacks Zang’s contribution to the promotion of dramatic texts through a thorough examination of his ardent editorial work in revising Tang Xianzu’s The Four Dream Plays from the Jade Tea Hall, the epitome of the southern musical drama. By using Zang’s 1618 Diaochong guan edition of his adaptations as a focal point, this dissertation compares it with three late Ming editions of Tang’s plays printed in the dual colors of red-and-black ink. In light of their innovative editorial designs, and the varying evaluations formed in their pages about Zang’s editorial work, this dissertation reveals the importance of Zang’s adaptations in the history of The Four Dream Plays’ textual transmission, as well as the interplay between the tradition of drama criticism and the new technology of multicolor printing and consequent innovation in editorial principles.
ContributorsZhang, Rachel Junlei (Author) / West, Stephen (Thesis advisor) / Oh, Young (Committee member) / Ling, Xiaoqiao (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Religions, following Max Müller, have often been seen by scholars in religious studies as uniform collections of beliefs and practices encoded in stable “sacred books” that direct the conduct of religious actors. These texts were the chief focus of academic students of religion through much of the 20th century, and this approach remains strong in the 21st. However, a growing chorus of dissidents has begun to focus on the lived experience of practitioners and the material objects that structure that experience, and some textual scholars have begun extending this materialist framework to the study of texts. This dissertation is a contribution in that vein from the field of Daoist studies. Now split between two separate texts, the Most High Scripture of the Rectifying Methods of the Three Heavens began as a 4th-century collection of apocalyptic predictions and apotropaic devices designed to deliver a select group of Chinese literati to the heavens of Highest Clarity. Later editors during the early medieval period (ca. 220-589 CE) took one of two paths: for their own reasons, they altered the Rectifying Methods to emphasize either the world’s end or its continuation. Detailed study of these alterations and their contexts shows how individuals and groups used and modified the Rectifying Methods in in ways that challenge the conventional relationship between religious text and religious actor.
ContributorsSwanger, Timothy Charles (Author) / Bokenkamp, Stephen R (Thesis advisor) / Campany, Robert (Committee member) / Chen, Huaiyu (Committee member) / Oh, Young (Committee member) / West, Stephen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019