Drawing a line in the Taiwan Strait: 'strategic ambiguity' and its discontents

The Bush administration's continuing emphasis on US military deterrence of the PRC on behalf of Taiwan threatens to undermine the posture of 'strategic ambiguity' that the United States has proclaimed since 1979. This article argues for the retention of 'strategic ambiguity' and traces the origins of revisionist sentiment towards this effective conflict avoidance mechanism to reactions within the US foreign policy community to the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait crisis. Case studies of this crisis and its predecessors in 1954-55 and 1958 demonstrate that US military deterrence was not a decisive factor in their resolution. US and PRC initiatives and responses in the 1950s crises introduced the essential elements of 'strategic ambiguity' into the triangular relationship between themselves and Taiwan. In particular, they established a precedent for the United States and the PRC in circumscribing the issue of Taiwan so as to achieve a political accommodation.

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum: Electronic discussion and foreign language learning

Amongst the opportunities for cross-cultural contact created by the burgeoning use of the Internet are those provided by electronic discussion lists. This study looks at what happens when language students venture out of the classroom (virtual or otherwise) to participate in on-line discussion groups with native speakers. Responses to messages and commentary by moderators and other participants on the (in) appropriateness of contributions allow us to determine what constitutes successful participation and to make suggestions regarding effective teaching strategies for this medium. A case study examines the threads started by four anglophone students of French when they post messages to a forum on the Web site of the French newspaper Le Monde. Investigation of these examples points to the ways in which electronic discussion inflects and is inflected by cultural and generic expectations. We suggest that successful participation on Internet fora depends on awareness of such cultural and generic mores and an ability to work within and/or with them. Teachers therefore need to find ways in which students can be sensitized to such issues so that their participation in such electronic discussion is no longer seen as linguistic training, but as engagement with a cultural practice.

Beliefs, practices, and interactions of teachers in a Japanese high school English department

This study reveals the school culture and the teachers' professional development activities in a Japanese high school learning environment. Furthermore, it documents the relationships among the context, teachers' beliefs, practices, and interactions. Using multiple data sources including interviews, observations, and documents of teachers from an English department, this yearlong study revealed these English as a Foreign Language teachers lacked many teacher learning opportunities in their context. The study revealed that teacher collaboration only reinforced existing practices, eroding teachers' motivation to learn to teach in this specific context. The study provides evidence to teacher educators about inservice teachers and their learning environment and the significance of the relationships between the two entities. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.