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Foreword: - Dr. Paul Robertson

Welcome to the winter 2008 edition of the Chinese EFL Journal. This Journal is the sister Journal to the long established Asian EFL Journal, Linguistics Journal and Asian ESP Journal. The journal has begun to deal with an area that has been overlooked for too long, and a very important area, namely the development of the English language across China. The journals above receive a vast amount of submissions from China which reflects the growing importance that English learning and the teaching of English is having across the PRC. Being a new journal we invite anyone interested in assisting the CEJ establish itself. There is of course a great deal of work which requires a large team of Editors, proof readers, web helpers and so on to get every edition on line. We look forward to hearing from you if you would like to join this new venture.

We introduce 7 articles in our first edition. The first article by Hong Wang and Liying Cheng describes the Rolling Project conducted in the College English Department at a major provincial university in China from 1998 to 2000. The purpose is to explore the change process, the subsequent challenges presented to the main stakeholders in the university, and the impact that this English language curriculum innovation has brought about to the then prevalent cultures of teaching.

The next  article by Chanmei Yan discusses problems that may occur in English teaching in China and explores strategies to deal with them. The third paper by Xiuqin Zhang raises concerns about cultural differences between the East and West that often result in misunderstandings between Chinese students and Western teachers. The next paper by Yang Xueqian reports on an experiment designed to test whether Chinese EFL learners are affected by discourse organizations when listening in English.

The fifth paper by Li Hua is a case study conducted with 24 EFL teachers from 6 different high schools in Guangdong to explore their beliefs and practices in their work place, and how their reflection changed their beliefs and their practice in a Chinese context. discourse organizations when listening in English. In a study by Liu Han and Hu Xiaoqiong,  it is shown both in quantitative and qualitative study that more skilled listeners have less cognitive difficulties than less skilled listeners in terms of perception, parsing and utilization and use more strategies than less skilled listeners in listening comprehension.

The final paper by Wenhua Hsu offers a conceptualized framework with content-based instruction, genre awareness, group work in continuous simulation and a courseware approach embedded, outlining the pedagogical procedures on which the framework is based.

We look forward to seeing you as a regular reader or contributor to this new journal.

Paul Robertson
Asian EFL Journal