Academic enculturation, or the socialisation into a target academic community, is a crucial event in the trajectory development of aspiring scholars. It is a protracted process subject to the interplay of a constellation of factors. With the aim of uncovering potential contributors to positive enculturative outcomes, this paper reports on the case of Wang, a home-trained, home-based Chinese scientist who earned full professorship at the relatively young age of 36. An in-depth, semi-structured interview is conducted in which Wang gives retrospective accounts of significant experiences in his journey. A range of supplementary information, including representative publications, an up-to-date list of scholarly achievements, and his personal webpage at the official institutional website, is also collected to corroborate and add nuance to Wang’s self-told story. Data are analysed using the method of inductive content analysis and discussed within the framework of situated learning theories. Varying extents of mutual engagement with/as the master and mutually facilitative dual engagement in target communities are found to characterise Wang’s enculturative success. Implications are drawn on how similarly positioned novice researchers can be supported in their quest for enculturation during and beyond graduate studies.

In the past few decades, plagiarism has engendered increasing concern 111 academia. Previous studies have investigated the issue from various perspectives, including students' and teachers' understanding of plagiarism, potential causes of plagiarism, teaching practices that could educate students against plagiarism, and institutional policies on plagiarism. However, most of these studies have been conducted 111 Anglophone or English-as-second-language (ESL) contexts, while English-as-foreign-language (EFL) contexts such as China have received far less attention. As a result, little is known as to what criteria for plagiarism are held in Chinese academia, to what extent these criteria concur with those widely accepted in the Anglo-American academic context, and how Chinese academic institutions are responding to issues related to plagiarism. As an attempt to address these gaps, the present study adopts a mixed-methods approach to investigating Chinese university English teachers' perceptions of and attitudes towards plagiarism, and the impacts of teaching experience, overseas educational experience, and levels of education thereon.

To achieve this aim, this study utilized a textual judgment task, a paraphrasing practices survey, and semi-structured interviews to collect data from 108 Chinese university English teachers. The teachers' responses to the textual judgment task, including judgments on different rewritten versions of the same given paragraph, ratings of rewritten versions that they identified as guilty of plagiarism, and open-ended justifications provided for their judgments, were analyzed to explore their understandings of intertextuality, attitudes towards recognized transgressive intertextual practices, as well as their criteria for plagiarism and proper paraphrasing. ANOVAs were run to determine whether levels of education, overseas academic training, and teaching experience had an impact on the teachers' knowledge of plagiarism and how knowledge of plagiarism, academic background and teaching experience would relate to their stance on recognized plagiarism. Writing samples in the paraphrasing practices survey were examined for patterns in these teachers' textual appropriation behaviors, such as whether they would borrow strings of consecutive words from the original paragraph provided. Chi-square tests were run on a measure of verbatim copying from the original text to identify possible influences on the teachers' textual borrowing practices. Responses in the interviews were analyzed to reveal their professional experience of plagiarism, including previous plagiarism-related academic training, dealing with student plagiarism, teaching of plagiarism knowledge, as well as knowledge and understanding of institutional policies on plagiarism.

Several major findings emerged from this study. First of all, in general, the teachers' knowledge of plagiarism, stance towards plagiarism, and textual appropriation practices showed that their perceptions of plagiarism were more similar to those of Anglo-American teachers than those reported in previous studies. Arguably, this is partially attributable to these teachers' exposure to English academic writing and the need to deal with student plagiarism. It also suggests the trend that Anglo-American conceptions of plagiarism and intertextual conventions are becoming increasingly accepted in the Chinese academic community.

Second, the statistical analyses revealed different contributing factors to the teachers' knowledge of plagiarism, stance towards recognized plagiarism, and paraphrasing practices. Inconsistent with findings of previous studies, none of the variables examined was found to impact knowledge of plagiarism, suggesting the complexity of the issue. Years of teaching experience was found to be significantly correlated with plagiarism stance, in that the more experience one had, the more lenient s/he would become towards plagiarism. This points to the need to re-educate teachers, update their knowledge of plagiarism and strengthen their awareness of the seriousness of the issue. Whether a respondent had overseas academic experience proved to be a significant predictor of paraphrasing practices, with those who had overseas experience being less likely to appropriate strings of three or more words from the original text, suggesting the positive influence of exposure to the Anglo-American conventions of plagiarism and source use.

Third, Chinese universities in general did not seem to attach as much importance to the issue of plagiarism as Anglo-American universities do. The interviewees reported an absence of an institutional framework on plagiarism and a lack of teacher attention to the issue. To effectively prevent plagiarism, not only should policies and regulations be established, but sufficient support be provided to both teachers and students on teaching about plagiarism and avoiding plagiarism, respectively.

These findings point to the conclusion that although Chinese university English teachers seem to demonstrate a good understanding of plagiarism and acceptable paraphrasing practice, Chinese universities are not serving their role effectively in educating students about (il)legitimate intertextual practices. More institutional and pedagogical efforts are called for to draw attention to the issue from students and staff alike, and to ensure that norms of plagiarism are effectively and explicitly communicated to students.

With English widely perceived and adopted as the most prestigious language medium for the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge, academics using English as an additional language (EAL) who wish for their research to reach the global audience arguably encounter the potential language hurdle on their way toward successful international publication. Extensive research has been conducted on the challenges and coping strategies of EAL scholars writing from various contexts. Despite the burgeoning literature, though, certain topics, such as how language professionals fit into science scholars’ quest to become internationally published, remain relatively under-researched. With a view to addressing this gap, the present study directed attention to China as a representative EAL context with a native language that is linguistically distant from English, a sizable population of science scholars, and fast-growing numbers of scientific publications. More specifically, it investigated Chinese science scholars’ English academic writing and publishing practices, with a particular focus on the linguistic mediation rendered by language professionals that entered into the creation of academic texts and the collaboration and interaction between the science scholars as the original authors and language professionals as their text mediators.

Drawing upon the overarching theoretical framework of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and in particular the theory of relational agency situated within and informed by the premises of CHAT, this study employed a qualitative-heavy, mixed-methods design and collected multiple layers of data from the two groups of stakeholders in the linguistic mediation process, i.e., science scholars and language professionals. A total of 151 questionnaires were completed by respondents from both populations on self-reported perceptions and practices concerning English academic writing and publishing and adoption/provision of language support; the responses were tabulated with descriptive statistical procedures. Follow-up interviews with participants purposively sampled from both groups probed into questionnaire responses and enquired about experiences in soliciting/offering linguistic mediation; transcripts were examined using the method of deductive content analysis. Manuscripts that had undergone linguistic mediation, sourced from a small subset of language professionals, were analyzed to track textual interventions initiated by the mediators and for evidence of author-mediator interaction. The text mediating process was found to be a mutually reciprocal one: in addition to being a facilitator to the scholars’ international publication efforts, it also benefited the language professionals by helping them acquire academic literacy that could feed into their own teaching and research and derive a sense of mission from their engagement in the publication success of others. The joint action of bringing manuscripts up to publishable standards, which necessitated both sides giving play to their respective core expertise while leaving space for the other party to exercise their expertise, was noted as co-constructed, context-dependent, and subject to interpersonal dynamics between authors and mediators.

This study is expected to contribute to the line of inquiry on English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) by offering insights into the contribution of linguistic mediation to Chinese science scholars’ international publication. It sheds light on the significance of promoting communication and cooperation between science scholars and language professionals, especially English language teachers from the same institutional context, so as to mobilize the latter as a readily available yet largely under-used source of language support. The knowledge gained on language professionals’ experiences and perceptions as text mediators informs initiatives for their on-the-job development and curriculum design for English teacher/translator-training programmes, to boost their academic research competence and better equip them for the roles of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) instructors and academic translators/editors.

Arguably the first thing that a reader notices of a news item, the headline serves the semantic function of providing pertinent information and the pragmatic function of appealing to target addressees. Moreover, it often embodies the stance of the news writer or the news agency on a particular issue and could program the reader’s perception and interpretation of the ensuing news story in a pre-determined direction. In view of the distinctive significance of headlines in news discourse, in this paper, we analyze how the headlines of The Economist, an elite newsmagazine, frame China in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. The sample of headlines was examined for their structural components, syntactic features, as well as linguistic characteristics, and compared with a selection of the outlet’s headlines on COVID responses of certain other countries. Through identifying the framing patterns adopted in the headlines and unpacking the ideological overtones encoded therein, this systematic analysis has illuminated the role and effects of the tactful employment of language in constructing country image and striking a balance between purported impartiality and ideological dispositions. Its findings and implications are expected to contribute to scholarship on media framing and inform the practice of journalistic writing.

Given the emergence of English as a global lingual franca, English proficiency has become necessary for workers in many sectors and therefore should be given special attention in vocational education and training. While there is no shortage of research on vocational education and training in general, this body of work lacks a focus on English language education. In view of this gap, this study adopts a desk research approach to examine research published in journal papers, book chapters, dissertations, and websites to provide an overview of vocational English language education in Singapore, and examines how policy makers, educators and researchers in Singapore and beyond may benefit from the knowledge of Singapore’s practices. The findings of this study are presented with a focus on 1) Singapore’s language policy; 2) historical changes in English language education in Singapore schools; and 3) vocational English language education in Singapore’s secondary schools, the Institute of Technical Education (ITE), and other institutions. This success story of the city state can offer practical reference to other nations, particularly in addressing issues of diversity resulting from a multilingual and multiethnic population and also the varied ability of students in the education system.