As an essential higher-order capacity for foreign language learners, meta discourse awareness provides vital support for fostering high-quality foreign language professionals. Drawing on the findings from the research on English-Chinese discourse contrastive analysis, this paper proposes a content framework and its implementation strategy for cultivating meta discourse awareness. The framework operates at the micro, meso and macro levels, and comprises five key factors, namely structural awareness, semantic awareness, genre awareness, critical awareness and intercultural awareness. To implement the framework, the metacognition driven input-output strategy is adopted. With metacognition in the central organizing position, the strategy emphasizes clear goal orientation and self-regulatory ability development through discourse input and output. Its core lies in the bidirectional adjustment by teachers and learners via continuous reflection and feedback, thereby facilitating the effective transfer from English-Chinese discourse knowledge to intercultural discourse processing competence.

Amid the expansion of professional interpreter education, the developmental features of learners' interpreting competence and core sub-competence needs investigation. Adopting methods of testing, retrospective think-aloud and diary logging, this longitudinal study examines 55 interpreting learners at the MTI level over one academic year study. It reveals that: (1) the developmental trajectory of learners' strategic competence in Chinese-English consecutive interpreting is complex and dynamic, characterized by jumps, non-linearity and fluctuation. The overall number of interpreting strategies used increases in a curve, and the types of strategies remain the same. (2) The critical period for the development of learners' strategic competence in Chinese-English consecutive interpreting occurs between the third and seventh months of learning, with varying acquisition times for each strategy. These findings are expected to provide empirical evidence for constructing theories on interpreting strategic competence development as well as designing effective ways to interpreting strategy training.

Speech perception is a cognitive process that integrates visual and auditory modalities. Observers process prominent information through visual (e.g. facial expressions) and auditory (e.g. prominence) cues. Based on the McGurk effect theory, this study investigates Chinese EFL learners' audiovisual perception of English and Chinese prominence by measuring reaction time and accuracy. The results reveal that the congruent audiovisual cues have the strongest effect on prominence perception. It is easier for EFL learners to judge Chinese prominence than English prominence, showing native language advantage. Under audiovisually congruent conditions, EFL learners' audiovisual perception patterns of English prominence closely approximate those of native speakers. It is faster and easier to detect prominent words in the non-final positions of a sentence than those in the final position. The study provides foundational data for human-computer interaction research, offering practical application value in fields such as intelligent education and medical rehabilitation.

Intelligent chatbots are emerging technological tools for second language acquisition, though their effects on language acquisition remain controversial. Using meta-analysis, this study examines the overall and moderating effects of 35 experimental and quasi-experimental studies on application of intelligent chatbots to second language acquisition in the past decade. The results show that: (1) the overall average effect value is 0.677, exhibiting a large effect on language learning; (2) the moderating variables such as learning stages, teaching cycles, intelligent chatbot features (including interfaces and interaction modes), and second language skills produce significant effects on language learning, while learning situations have no moderating effect. The study provides implications for applying intelligent chatbots to second language teaching.

In the new era of high-quality educational development, this paper explores from theoretical and practical dimensions the multifaceted value of literary literacy in foreign language education, highlighting its distinct roles in improving language proficiency, deepening cultural understanding, and fostering critical thinking. Addressing common issues in current teaching practices, including the overemphasis on skills at the expense of humanities and fragmentation of course structures, the paper uses classic literary works as examples to demonstrate the pathways for integrating literature teaching with disciplines such as history, philosophy, and sociology, in the hope of providing enlightenment for cultivating interdisciplinary talents with both linguistic and cultural competencies.

This study employs a self-paced reading experiment to examine how context types and foreign language proficiency affect the processing of metaphors in a foreign language. The results show that for positive metaphors, both the metaphorical and literal meanings are accessed simultaneously, whereas for ironic metaphors, the metaphorical meaning is accessed after the literal meaning, indicating a staged processing characteristic. Although both positive and ironic metaphors are non-literal, their cognitive mechanisms differ in that ironic metaphors require more cognitive resources from EFL learners. Regardless of metaphor types, advanced learners process metaphors faster than low proficiency learners, while the relationship between language proficiency and metaphor processing is dynamically mediated by cognitive abilities.

This paper proposes a theoretical framework for multimodal construction of transcultural Chinese discourse, and applies it to analysing the national image promotional videos Perspectives (2011) and PRC (2023). Analysis shows that there are two forms of transcultural Chinese discourse systems. The former mainly relies on implicit evaluation, focusing on inclusiveness and internal diversity of Chinese culture; the latter highlights explicit evaluation, emphasizing interconnection and coexistence among different cultures. The paper suggests that research on transcultural multimodal Chinese discourse is of great significance for cultivating high-quality multidisciplinary talents specializing in foreign languages and international communication to enhance the efficacy of China's global communication.

Implicature constitutes a central topic in L2 pragmatic research. The present study, using a self-paced reading task, explores the influence of different types of implicature on L2 implicature processing among Chinese English learners with varying English proficiencies. The linear mixed effect model results show that: (1) types of implicature significantly influence L2 processing, and the respective processing costs of indirect refusals, indirect opinions and ironies increase successively; (2) there are significant differences between advanced and intermediate learners in processing L2 implicature, the former coming out with higher accuracy and shorter response time, and the latter with lower accuracy and longer response time. These findings partially support the conventionality effect, and reveal the pragmatic inferencing mechanisms in L2 implicature processing across different levels of English proficiencies.

As a vital medium for cultural inheritance and knowledge imparting, textbooks play a significant role in communicating the discourse with Chinese characteristics. Addressing current challenges in the international communication of the discourse with Chinese characteristics, China and the World: Progressive College English innovatively explores effective approaches to integrating the discourse with Chinese characteristics into college English textbooks. Through theme-based text organization, a blended print-digital format, and original exercise design, together with a comparative China-global perspective and multidimensional communication strategies, the textbook aims to cultivate students' ability to tell China's stories well in English, thereby facilitating the global communication of the discourse with Chinese characteristics.

This study explored teacher engagement in using artificial intelligence to develop new-form teaching materials for foreign language writing. Following a case study approach, the study analyzes the engagement process of two college English writing teachers. The findings reveal an evolving three-phase engagement pattern: digitalization of input materials, adoption of blended teaching methods, and ecologicalization of writing classrooms, shaped by individual and contextual factors. The study further proposes a teacher engagement model for AI-supported new-form teaching materials development, aiming to provide theoretical and pedagogical insights to the field.

With its rapid advancement, artificial intelligence (AI) is gradually replacing the instrumental value of the discipline of foreign languages and literatures, but not the ontological value. However, AI has prompted the discipline to engage in deep reflection on its shortcomings in substantive aspects of development, thereby accelerating its substantive and innovative development. To meet national strategic demands, the discipline should establish an independent system of global knowledge and scholarship while cultivating high-level talents equipped with interdisciplinary literacy and creative thinking. In the AI era, the discipline of foreign languages and literatures should aim to construct China's independent knowledge system and talent cultivation system, actively embrace and skillfully utilize AI technologies, and deepen the development of knowledge production, academic innovation, discourse construction and talent cultivation across its five major research areas under the concept of “New Humanism”, in order to demonstrate its irreplaceable value.

Based on a questionnaire survey among 237 Chinese non-English major undergraduates, this study employed structural equation modeling to investigate the predictive effects of controlvalue appraisals on second language (L2) academic achievement and the chained mediating roles of L2 grit and academic emotions (enjoyment, anxiety, and boredom) in between. The results are as follows: (1) within controlvalue appraisals, only value appraisals exerted a direct predictive effect on English academic achievement; (2) control appraisals fostered L2 enjoyment, which subsequently exerted a positive predictive effect on achievement, whereas value appraisals triggered L2 anxiety, negatively predicting achievement; (3) control appraisals had an indirect predictive effect on English academic achievement by the chained mediation of L2 grit and academic emotions. The study corroborates the hypothesized quadripartite relational chain comprising “appraisal-driven, trait-shaping, emotion-triggering, and achievement-enhancing” mechanisms, revealing the mediating roles of academic traits and emotions in linking “evaluation to academic performance”.

AI-enabled educational revolution has reshaped education models, and has shifted foreign language teachers' roles to “learning facilitators” and “human-machine collaborators”. This paper reviews policies, curricula, and research trends regarding AI in education in Asia, Europe and the Americas, and analyzes the applications and challenges of AI in education across different cultural contexts. Based on the analysis, it proposes a human-centered approach to enhancing foreign language teachers' AI competency, emphasizing ethics and digital inclusion. The stepwise pathway aims to support teachers' professional development and improve the quality of education in the AI era.

This one year longitudinal study involves two cohorts of undergraduates at a Chinese university: 2 673 students from the 2022 cohort and 2 272 students from the 2023 cohort. It uses a self-developed GenAI-powered personalized adaptive learning system ZJU E-Lang, and examines its role in improving EFL listening and reading abilities from the perspectives of learning outcomes and students' perceived effectiveness. The findings indicate that the GenAI-powered system significantly enhanced students' English listening and reading abilities. However, a clear novelty effect was observed, with substantial progress during the first half of the year followed by a slowdown in the second half. Students' perceptions of the GenAI-powered system varied by discipline, but disciplinary backgrounds did not interact with GenAI-facilitated learning effects. The positive effects of the GenAI-powered system in supporting language learning provide enlightenment for the deep integration of human intelligence and artificial intelligence in foreign language teaching.

Playing an important role in learners' L2 writing development, engagement with feedback is jointly affected by individual factors and environmental factors. The application of automated writing evaluation (AWE) system has furnished L2 writing pedagogic practice with a new environment of integrated feedback. This study examines the impact of the integrated feedback environment on learner engagement and L2 writing performance. The findings reveal that: (1) integrated feedback significantly outshines teacher feedback in improving learner engagement and consequently L2 writing performance; (2) in the integrated feedback environment, cognitive engagement has the greatest impact on learners' L2 writing performance, followed by behavioral engagement and affective engagement, and regarding cognitive engagement, the use of metacognitive strategies significantly contributes to a valid prediction of learners' writing performance.

The precise educational assistance in the new era focuses on the practical needs of local teachers and is committed to promoting their professional development. Based on the TPACK model,and taking into account the professional development needs of teachers, the “Artificial Intelligence + Rural English Teacher Training” project achieves remote real-time interaction and self-study assisted by artificial intelligence through refined and career-oriented planning, and a regular course learning system established on an online platform. It also provides comprehensive practice activities, such as public lesson studies, and intensive onsite learning in the offline teaching week each semester. The precise assistance to foreign language education in the new era should deeply explore the needs of teachers, construct a three-dimensional knowledge model, dynamically adjust the content of assistance, and gather the strength of all parties to assure its effectiveness.

Grounded in the self-regulated learning theory and blended learning theory, this study constructs an AI agent-assisted blended autonomous learning model of foreign languages, aiming to maintain the balance between the technological empowerment and development of autonomous learning abilities. This model emphasizes dynamic alignment of learning objectives and content, interactive design of learning methods and organization, and continuous improvement of learning assessment and feedback, and is implemented through a “planningexecutionreflection” cycle. An interpreting teaching experiment demonstrates that the model significantly improves students' interpreting performance, which is positively correlated with learning stages, while technology acceptance and feedback mechanisms reveal phased cognitive adaptation needs. Based on the experimental findings, the study provides recommendations for optimizing the model implementation, including collaboratively setting goals, explicitly teaching strategies and coordinating emotional support.

The development of China's higher foreign language education has always been closely aligned with national strategies. This paper begins with a concise review of the evolution of higher foreign language education since the reform and opening-up, revealing the historical logic behind its service to national strategies. On this basis, it argues that the new connotation of higher foreign language education has shifted toward playing a foundational and strategic supporting role in pursuing the cause of building China into a leading country in education. Against the backdrop of national rejuvenation and digital-intelligent technological transformation, the paper proposes for higher foreign language education a trinity of development coordinates, grounded in “Chinese perspective, mutual learning among civilizations, and AI integration”. Through systematic self-innovation and accelerated transformation, higher foreign language education should commit to cultivating new-type foreign language professionals capable of meeting the critical national needs, and proactively respond to the requirements of the times within the broader context of “advancing the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts through a Chinese path to modernization”.

Fostering moral ethics through education and developing students' disciplinary and cross-disciplinary competencies is a key agenda for cultivating talents for the “Four New Disciplinary Initiatives” and a core component of curriculum reform. This paper focuses on the development of AI-enhanced College English courses. Taking a national excellent course as an example, it introduces an AI-enhanced College English course integrating AI technology with the course content. Through functions such as the construction of multi-dimensional knowledge and competency graphs, human-computer collaborative teaching and learning, full-cycle support from virtual teaching assistants and virtual teachers, and intelligent data feedback, the course promotes the cultivation of College English language and interdisciplinary competencies geared towards the “Four New Disciplinary Initiatives”, thereby realizing the transition from knowledge acquisition to intelligence growth in College English teaching.

The continuous deepening of college EFL curriculum and teaching reform has imposed new requirements for teachers' knowledge, ability and competence, potentially creating a professional identity transformation dilemma for college EFL teachers. Following the Activity Theory approach, this study adopts the case study method, and analyzes the contradictions and tensions that are exposed in the transformation of the participant college EFL teachers' professional identity, typically from a General English language teacher to a teacher of English for Academic Purposes. Data analysis shows that they encounter four-level contradictions in the transformation process, with the secondary level ones being the most apparent. They employ various mediating tools including others, cultural artifacts and strategic activities, and exert their agency such as seeking learning opportunities to resolve the contradictions. The study has both theoretical and practical implications for college EFL teachers' professional development.

The 2024-2035 Master Plan on Building China into a Leading Country in Education calls for accelerating the development of a high-quality education system, and establishing an independent knowledge system of Chinese philosophy and social sciences. In line with the goal of building a leading country in education, the discipline of foreign languages and literatures and related programs should keep pace with the times, strengthen the guiding role of innovative theories, and promote interdisciplinary integration to construct an independent knowledge system for the discipline. They should adhere to a needs-based approach to enhance the relevance of foreign language programs, align with national development strategies to broaden both the scope and depth of cultivating internationally competent interdisciplinary talents, and implement political and moral education by developing a system of high-quality original teaching materials. At this new historical juncture, higher foreign language education should remain committed to national priorities, seize historical opportunities, rise to challenges, and break new ground in development.

Based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and teacher professional development theories, this study developed and validated a model of AI technology integration impacts on foreign language teachers' professional resilience. Analysis of the survey data from 329 Chinese university foreign language teachers revealed that AI technology integration (technological complexity, role transformation, work demands) had a significant impact on teachers' professional resilience (cognitive appraisal, emotional regulation, behavioral coping). Among these factors, role transformation exerted the most pronounced impact, and emotional regulation was most affected. Organizational support and individual adaptability not only significantly buffered the impacts of AI technology integration respectively, but also demonstrated a significant synergistic moderating effect. The study provides empirical evidence and implications for the development of related theories and practice of teacher professional development.

Based on 11 670 job ads collected through data mining, this study conducts multiple textometric needs analysis of translation-related jobs in Chinese markets in terms of language competence, domain-relevant knowledge and instrumental competence. The findings reveal that in the context of the new development pattern, there is a marked increase in the needs for translation talents' domain-relevant knowledge in emerging fields, and instrumental competence. Job positions and language requirements reflect the cluster effect of business activities in a specific region. The recruitment requirements for translation talents with undergraduate and postgraduate degrees are homogeneous, except for the difference in domains and positions. Accordingly, the study offers suggestions for translator training in China concerning talent levels, educational resources, and industry-academia collaboration.

This study adopted a systematic review approach and analyzed the research methods employed in empirical studies in the field of applied linguistics from the perspective of complex dynamic systems theory (CDST). It summarized and discussed the research designs, participants, timescales and data collection methods, as well as data analysis methods. The analysis showed that the domestic and foreign CDST studies were featured with trends toward interdisciplinarity, paradigm integration and methodological innovation, though they differed in participant selection and design implementation.Domestic studies were primarily based on small-scale quantitative designs, focusing mainly on second language development at the tertiary level, with relatively limited data collection and analytical methods; in contrast, international studies involved larger sample sizes, covered learners at different educational stages, and used more diverse methods of data collection and analysis. It is suggested that future research should enrich theoretical perspectives, adopt integrated designs, and employ interdisciplinary methods to further reveal the dynamics and complexities of complex systems.

Based on the dynamic assessment theory, this paper constructs a translation technology teaching assessment model. Designed to develop translation technology competence, the assessment model embodies the construction principles of process orientation, integration of teaching and assessment, multiple interaction and technical support, and includes the essential elements of assessment contents, methods, assessors and tools. The paper further instantiates the assessment model by incorporating the above-mentioned elements into the four teaching stages of a computer-aided translation course, namely teaching guidance, training reinforcement, project collaboration and effect testing. It shows the applicability of the assessment model, and provides useful reference for the translation technology teaching assessment.

This study, targeted at English relative clauses and recruiting Chinese EFL learners as the subjects, examined whether aligned output induced by the continuation task facilitated L2 learning. It was found that: (1) the subjects aligned with the preceding text, as manifested in their more production of relative clauses for the text containing the structure than for the text without it, and the aligned output was found to facilitate learning and retaining of the structure; (2) when completing the same reading material with relative clauses, the subjects learned and retained the structure better when there was aligned production of the structure in their continuations than when there was not. These findings indicate that the continuation task facilitates L2 learning mainly due to its alignment effect with aligned output playing a crucial role. Given the status quo of foreign language teaching in China, it is contended that learning by extension should not only enhance learners' spontaneous alignment, but also raise their awareness of conscious alignment to maximize aligned output in the continuation task.

The present study, through a questionnaire survey among 929 Chinese non-English major freshmen, examined the influences of emotional intelligence upon L2 willingness to communicate (L2 WTC), and the mediating roles of language mindsets and enjoyment in between. It was found that emotional intelligence could not only predict L2 WTC positively, but also exert an indirect influence upon L2 WTC through a multiple mediation via language mindsets and enjoyment, which gives support to the chain hypothesis, i.e. “emotional intelligence→learners' beliefs→academic emotions→motivated behavior”. The results suggest that the more capable L2 learners are of managing emotions and handling interpersonal relationships, the more willing they would be to communicate in an L2; furthermore, higher emotional intelligence could stimulate learners to view language learning more positively, and invoke more positive emotions in the process of learning, thus motivating them to engage in L2 communication more actively.

This paper centers on the development of the “Key Content Foci” section of the Guidelines for Integrating Moral Education into College Foreign Language Teaching. It details the questionnaire survey and the discrepancy needs analysis based on the key content foci of moral education through courses, and explains the five aspects of the key content foci. From the perspective of curriculum theories, it further illustrates the relationship between the Guidelines for Integrating Moral Education into College Foreign Language Teaching and the College English Teaching Guidelines, with the purpose that the two guidelines can provide better guidance to college foreign language teaching in the New Era.

This paper introduces the background of virtual teaching & research centers, and sketches foreign language virtual teaching & research center projects approved by the Ministry of Education in 2022. It then gives an overview of the development of the Virtual Teaching & Research Center of College English Curriculum Development. Based on the proposed virtual community of practice model, the paper further illustrates its intended implementation from the aspects of theoretical basis, organizational management and community of practice.