Bilingual Teachers’ Contextualization in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language in Australian Schools

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript explored the practice of contextualization in teaching Chinese as a foreign language among a cohort of bilingual language teacher-researchers from a social constructivist perspective. In the introduction, the author discussed the necessity of the research in terms of the concept of context, the role of context, and related research. However, there are still some problems with the structure and content of the manuscript.

The specific comments are as follows:

1.      Introduction

It is recommended to explain reasons for viewpoint shifts about context, i.e., from a static to a dynamic viewpoint

2.      Literature review

This section is mostly an explanation of keywords. Please add some reviews of relevant empirical studies.

3.      Methodology

I suggest using Methodology directly as the title.

Please provide evidence for coding and classifying.

4.      Results

I suggest providing details about the results of student responses.

5.      Discussion

The authors did a good job of using the literature to support their findings. However, if possible, it would be better to list several papers that are inconsistent or contradictory to the results of the study and explain the reasons for the inconsistency.

It is recommended to point out the limitations of the study.

6.      References

 

Please add the following references.

Gong, Y., Lai, C., & Gao, X. (2022). Language teachers’ identity in teaching intercultural communicative competence. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 35(2), 134-150. https://doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2021.1954938

Gong, Y., Gao, X., & Lyu, B. (2020). Teaching Chinese as a second or foreign language to non-Chinese learners in mainland China (2014-2018). Language Teaching, 53(1), 44-62. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444819000387.

7.      Please do a copyediting before resubmitting the revised version.

Author Response

Please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

a) page 1: Not background but Introduction

b) the discussion is not related to literature review

 

There is a need for: 

- A better construction of the subsections, mainly for methodology.

- Extensive editing of English language and style required.

- More extensive and accurete references-literature.

Author Response

Please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The introduction and the literature sections should be appropriately named and structured. The manuscript starts with background, which must be named as introduction and the following section should be named as literature review, clearly outlining the relevant research. 

Reseach questions must be written. 

The methodology section should be subdivided into research design, participants, data collection, and data analysis. 

Results and discussion sections should be organized around the research questions. 

Conclusion section should be expanded. 

Limitations and suggesitons for further research must be dicussed separately. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

I think this paper addresses an important and interesting topic, which is also a suitable issue to the journal. Methods were in general well employed, and findings/results well analysed. That said, there are still a few minor points that the authors may need to further address before this ms can be fully acceptable for publication. Below are some of my suggestions.

1. More needs to be illustrated as to how the discussed issue can contribute to our understanding of sustainability, particularly in the realm of language education. This should be further highlighted in the opening section.

2. The concept of context has been very elaborately illustrated and discussed within the BACKGROUND section. May I suggest make such discussion a separate section? In other words, the BACKGROUND section may be split into an introduction section and a literature review section, in the latter context being the focus of discussion. The authors may also need to first provide an overview of their discussion on context, more explicitly describing the relationship between the various sub-topics that have been discussed in the current submission. The discussions in the current form seem to stand quite independent of each other, not able to form a coherent argument to better situate the study that follows.

3. The methods section needs more details to be added, e.g., how the participants were approached and specifically contacted (including how ethical issues were handled); how content analysis was specifically conducted to sort out the themes (this is largely unknown now).

4. The structure of the presentation of the results section may need to be introduced earlier. The appearance of the sub-headings such as forms and activities seems a bit abrupt. The authors may consider mentioning them as early as in the literature review section as an explicit framework of analysis -- at least these concepts can be mentioned as potential useful for analysis.

5. The discussion needs to be better synthesised to bring out more theoretical contribution.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Accept in present form

Reviewer 3 Report

can be published.