In a teaching environment where all instructors have to teach the same class materials within limited time, from which they have to create the same test items, it is very difficult to create some space that could foster learner autonomy (LA). The purpose of the study is to examine the effects of LA on college students’ academic achievements, task perceptions, and classroom engagement at a Korean university. The study was undertaken in four sections of the same beginner level college English course over the course of a semester. A total of 84 students enrolled in the college English class participated in the study, of which 41 students were assigned to the control group and 43 students to the experimental group. The students’ learning outcomes between the control and experimental groups, their responses to the LA task, and the instructor’s observations of the students’ learning process were analyzed. The study revealed that the students in the experimental group produced significantly higher scores in their exams than those in the control group. Also, compared to its counterpart, the experimental group appeared to engage in the learning process more actively. Educational implications for promoting LA in EFL college classes are discussed.

This paper first claims that the Avatamsaka (Sanskrit) Sutra, or the Flower Ornament Sutra (大方廣佛華嚴經) is the best writing among the innumerable Sutras and other books that describe Truth. The Chinese characters in the Avatamsaka Sutra shows infinity, innumerable Bodhisattvas and the infinite Dharma body (無限法身) of Vairocana (毘盧遮那佛). Yet this dimension of the ultimate reality is not simply that of the nihilistic (虛無主義的) nothingness or void. Emptiness is the perfect emptiness with wondrous movement, and it is the most profound source (根源) of all animate existences and inanimate things. I claim that literary reading and watching films have the innate purpose (目的) of having this meditative mind, of which the most profound spiritual vision is presented as Ocean Samadhi in the Avatamsaka Sutra. In the first place, the innate (內在的) guide us to clearly see the binary structure (二元對立構造) of ego (自我). The ego is unstable between good and evil, right and wrong, decency and destitute. In order to let the audience feel free from the ego, we should take a profoundly different way than thematic approach (主題的接近). This way of understanding literary works and films is not to find the author’s intention and the main message implied in the work. Literature, film, and other arts are special areas that lead audiences outside the local, petty ego that is, into the dimension of the true self or the Transmiddle zone (領域) with special power of sensibility (感覺). As a literary text or film constructs the plot, story, and mood, it deconstructs itself (in terms of postmodernism). Ethical deconstruction would lead the audience beyond the limits of time and space into the spiritual dimension. A serious (深奧) literary text or film Great works (傑作) of literature and film direct our attention to break the shell (外觀) of our ego and encounter (直面) the source of life outside the ordinary habit of the ego. The exterior of the ego is the dimension of the pure consciousness. The unveiling process is the way in which it unlocks our spiritual sight (靈的視視) and presents with us a story of the protagonist’s failure (失敗) to flourish (繁榮) in the society (社會). The primal reality of the ego is that it is split into two, and thus fundamentally unstable. The ocean Samadhi (海印三昧) as portrayed in the Avatamsaka Sutra presents us with the vision that the whole cosmos (宇宙) and uncountable atoms are one. In this spiritual light, all phenomena in the whole universe are dependent co-arising or interdependent arising (同時發生); it is possible because everything is empty and has no stable substance. The Avatamsaka Sutra presents that the Buddha-body comprises, and thus it is truly “Emptiness (眞空) as Fullness (充滿).” Phenomena as the variances of Emptiness go through the processes of birth and death, not the Emptiness itself. It is like “empty space.” In the Hua-yen marvelous cosmos of Emptiness as fullness, one and all are interconnected with one another, and it is beyond our intellectual understanding (知的理解). In this way, Chinese characters (漢字) in the Avatamsaka Sutra (華嚴經, 大方廣佛華嚴經) describe (描寫) the infinite Dharma body (無限法身) of Vairocana (毘盧遮那佛). The ultimate truth is nondual (不二), and thus nonphenomenal (非現象的). The truth (眞理) of every existence (存在) is actually the spiritual dimension of not one, not two (不一, 不二). “Not one, not two” is the characteristic nature of the dimension beyond time and space, for it indicates the most fundamental realm (根本領域) of transcendence, where all phenomena are both separate and one.

This study investigated EFL college students’ culture-related templates of written texts along the possibility of inter-cultural transfer. We designed a case study to explore how certain cultural assumptions contribute to EFL students’ rhetorical decisions while writing an argumentative writing. The participants were four EFL college students. Multiple data sources include background questionnaires, argumentative essays, and in-depth retrospective interviews. To analyze rhetorical choices in the participants’ writing, we identified choices of argumentation subtypes, and introduction and conclusion components. We also categorized the location of the writer’s main claim and thesis statement. The interview data were qualitatively analyzed to see what rhetorical resources participants draw from the cultural/educational contexts, and which factors had influenced the participants’ rhetorical strategy. Data analyses indicate that each participant manipulated different rhetorical structures to strengthen the rhetorical impact of their writing. Indeed, the complex constellation of individual participants’ cultural resources was at play in their L2 writing. This study contributes to our understanding of the rhetorical templates of L2 texts as constructs that are always in process, and therefore adaptable and negotiable.