Ronghua Li

Chunlei Liu

Silence in EFL (English as a foreign language) classrooms has received increasing attention in the field of EFL education. It is widely accepted that silence in a narrow sense has a negative effect on the regular teaching activities and the improvement of EFL students’ English competence. In the context of English major education in some universities in China, students majoring in English are more likely to study for another degree. They are hence called “E+ students”. Silence is also a common phenomenon for the E+ students in the classrooms. This article is based on a case study examining E+ students’ silence in the English classrooms at one university in central China. Specifically, it examined whether silence was common in the classroom; and if so, what were the relationships between silence and learning and teaching in the classroom. A student survey was developed for the data collection. The results show that there was silence indeed in the English classrooms. Implications for both English teachers and E+ students are discussed.

Chaoming Du

This viewpoint article firstly describes the rationale for developing the English and law double major program (English plus law degree, i.e., an E+ Law program) to cultivate interdisciplinary talents at a university in central China from a historical perspective. It then compares the content and approaches between the traditional English major learning and the “E+ Law” double major learning at this university. It further discusses the difficulties confronted in the design and implementation of the “E+ Law” program as well as the strategies developed to deal with these difficulties. It is concluded that the E+ Law double major program is more advantageous than the single English or law major. Suggestions and implications are discussed.

Guifen Wang

Using a student survey, the purpose of this study was to provide a general evaluation of the undergraduate thesis design course from the perspectives of both English double major (i.e., E+) students and the English major only students at one university in central China. The participants included a total of 129 undergraduate students studying at this university. The instrument was a self-developed survey used to collect students’ general evaluation of the graduation thesis design course. The results show that students from both the E+ and the English programs generally agreed that this course had positive effects and significance on their professional knowledge construction and competence promotion. However, the results did not yield any significant differences among the three groups of students. Implications are discussed.