The purpose of this study was to explore junior high school students¡¦ attitudes toward learning English and achievement in learning English, and analyzed the significant differences between student came from different backgrounds, students¡¦ attitudes toward learning English and achievement in learning English. Stratified sampling was conducted to recruit 470 junior high school students who are 2nd graders in Kaohsiung city. All participants completed the questionnaire of ¡§attitudes toward learning English scale¡¨ which was developed by the investigator. Descriptive statistics, independent t-tests, one-way ANOVA, spearmann¡¦s rank correlation test and chi-square test assessed the similarities and differences among groups. The initial findings were as follows: 1.The attitudes toward learning English of junior high school students are good. 2.Huge gaps are found in low and high achievers¡¦ achievement in learning English. 3.Female students¡¦ attitudes toward learning English are significantly higher than male students¡¦. 4.Students with longer time spending in learning English showed significantly higher scores in attitudes toward learning English scale than those who spent fewer time in learning English. 5.Students came from families with higher educated parents presented significantly higher scores in attitudes toward learning English scale than those who came from families with lower educated parents. 6.Students who received more support from family members presented significantly higher scores in attitudes toward learning English scale than those who were lack of support from family members. 7.Number of years of learning English showed significant effects on the attitudes toward learning English scale. The more time students spent in learning English, the better achievement they accomplish. 8.Students who attained private English tutoring presented significantly higher scores in attitudes toward learning English scale than those who only learned English from formal school education. 9.There were significantly positive correlations among students¡¦ attitudes toward learning English and achievement in learning English. Results hopefully contribute to further researches in student¡¦s attitudes toward learning English and achievement in learning English. Suggestions are provided to parents as well as school teachers.

Abstract The great advancement in biotechnology makes huge influence on our modern life; how to improve the ability of our future citizens to accommodate the upcoming technology is one of the key issues in science education today. This study developed a set of experimental teaching modules ¡V The great future of the biotechnology ¡V for the junior high students for this purpose. There were two parts of this experimental teaching module: the first one was a hands-on learning course, in this activity students operated the basic biotechnological instruments and derive their own hypothesis. Another was a role-playing public hearing, debating about ¡§We should prohibit the importation of genetic modified food¡¨. Twenty-five eighth grade gifted students in the Kaohsiung municipal Kuo-chang junior middle high school were chosen as the sample to participate this research. Based on the questionnaires and the learning portfolios of the students, we found that students highly affirm this kind of learning. They reflect that the activities have helped them to gain the scientific knowledge, scientific learning process and skills, and the positive scientific attitude. The ability of the oral presentation, communication, judgments, problem-finding and evaluation ability have been enhanced through this learning process. The teaching module is also good for developing the strategy of corporation team work, considerate, and democratic. Activities like this teaching module are highly recommended to incorporate into the regular curriculum.

The main purpose of this study was to explore the relationships among adolescents' quality of attachment, emotional intelligence, and adjustment. The participants were 997 eighth-grade students from 11 junior high schools in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The data were collected by means of questionnaires, and the employed instruments comprised Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (Chinese version), Inventory of Adolescent Emotional Intelligence, and Inventory of Adolescent Adjustment. The applied analysis methods included descriptive statistics, one-way MANOVA, canonical correlation, and discriminant analysis. The main findings in this study were as follows: 1.The adolescents' gender was not related to their adjustment. 2.The adolescents' birth order was not related to their adjustment. 3.The adolescents' socioeconomic status (SES) was not related to their family adjustment, but it was related to their school adjustment though the correlation was weak; moreover, both the mid-SES and the high-SES adolescents outperformed the low-SES ones in school adjustment. 4.The adolescents' quality of attachment was positively related to their adjustment, and their attachment toward mother had the strongest relation to their adjustment. 5.The adolescents' emotional intelligence was positively related to their adjustment; more specifically, "motivating oneself" and adjustment had the highest correlation. 6.The quality of attachment and emotional intelligence could jointly predict the adolescents' adjustment. While "mother attachment" was the best predictor to the adolescents' family adjustment, emotional intelligence was the best predictor to their school adjustment. "Mother attachment" was the best predictor to the adolescents' adjustment as a whole. Finally, after discussion, some suggestions were proposed for parents, teachers, educational authorities, and further studies.

The purposes of this study are to inquire the individual class students' gender- role stereotypes and to understand the influence of gender equity education curriculum on gender- role stereotypes existing among seventh grade students. The subjects are one class (18 females, 20 males) of 7th grade students in Junior High School in Kaohsiung City as the case group. Showing students¡¦ changes of gender-role stereotypes in gender equity curriculum offers some implications on adolescent¡¦s gender equity education program in the future and to draw up a well teaching project eventually. The study adopts qualitative and quantitative methods to explore subjects¡¦ gender-role stereotype condition and reaction about gender equity education curriculum. The former of which is major method including observation, interview and document analysis. The latter of which administered questionary to subjects. In this study, the gender equity education curriculum met for one 1 hour period a week, for 14 weeks. Teacher¡¦s introspection connects with student¡¦s performance would be the feedback to help researcher adjusts teaching strategy once a week. From this process the final conclusions as following: (1) Junior high school students cultivate their gender-role stereotypes with social structure and people's expectation. (2) The conflict between gender is derived from unfair evaluation comes from gender-role stereotypes. (3) Girls accept flexible gender-role behaviors, but boys don¡¦t. (4) Students are used to rationalize the social gender separation, so it is difficult for them to have gender equity view. (5) Students can enlarge their scope of gender roles by reading stories and watching. (6) After gender equity education, students have more criticize ability about gender equality concept than before. Finally, based on the research results and my introspection, we can provide valuable suggestions to school education and further study plans.

This study examines the correlation between the self-perceptions of junior high school students in Kaohsiung city and their academic performance in each major subject area taught under Kaohsiung city¡¦s nine-year compulsory education system. Key research objectives include: Examine the influences of personal variables on junior high school student self-perception and academic performance within the 9-year compulsory education system; and determine correlations between the self-perception and academic performance; and offer practical suggestions can better assist junior high school students to cultivate self-perceptions that are both active and positive. The authors used the ¡§Self-Attitudes Questionnaire¡¨, revised by Mr. Wei-fan Kuo, as a primary data-gathering tool. The subjects of this research were junior high school students (grades 7 through 9). After categorizing schools as ¡§large¡¨, ¡§medium¡¨ or ¡§small¡¨ (based on student population), the authors chose target schools by randomly selecting three (3) from each category. Finally, a computer was used to select at random one class from each of the nine selected schools. Data collected for this study included completed self-attitude questionnaires and students¡¦ semester grade reports. The authors employed one-way ANOVA, Pearson product-moment correlation, gradual multiple regression, and T-Test analysis methodologies to test hypotheses. Research Findings: At present, the overall rating for self-perception among junior high school students studying in Kaohsiung Municipality is higher than the national average. The sex of respondents was found to affect self-perception significantly in all categories and at each level of academic performance. Differing social / economic backgrounds of families had a significant impact on self-perception in all categories and at each level of academic performance, and Study results indicate that level of self-perception is a regressive predictor of academic performance. Based on the above findings, the authors offer the following practical suggestions: I.The academic curriculum should foster the development of a positive and active sense of self-perception in students; II.Effectively managing the factors that influence students¡¦ self-perception can effectively assist in the prevention / rectification of self-perception problems. III.Students coming from families in lower social or economic strata should be afforded special attention and support. IV.Educators should note and attend to the differing needs of individual students in the classroom.

ABSTRACT Human Resources Management of Elevating Service Quality of Junior Service Personnel and Customers¡¦ Degree of Satisfaction ¡V Using the Junior Service Personnel of Banks in Kaohsiung City as the Scope of Case Study In 1990, the restriction on the establishment of new banks was lifted, and 16 new private-operated banks came into existence, extending the competitive market dimension of the financial service industry. This would absolutely throw a revolutionary impact upon banks. Furthermore, since Taiwan was acceded to the global WTO in 2002, large foreign-based financial institutions have entered Taiwan local financial market with tremendous capital and advanced services and products. In the foreseeable future, they will bring up unprecedented pressures of operation and survival upon the banks in the financial service industry that has an annual productivity of 1200 billion dollars. This research began with the human resources management perspective that is performance oriented and development oriented and set out to investigate the relevancy and objective of the case junior financial and service personnel who worked under the operation of this management dimension system, through the conveyance of personal service quality, to achieve the elevation of overall service quality and customers¡¦ degrees of satisfaction. After literature investigation and the compilation and review of relevant theories, a questionnaire survey was conducted, and by using PZB model as the basis, the obtained data underwent a factor analysis and the SPSS 12.0 for Windows XP software package was used to conduct statistical analysis of these data. Then Kaiser Varimax of main factor analysis was used as the rotation axis to extract the dimension factors of this research. Finally, one-way ANOVA and canonical correlation were used to analyze and investigate the differences between the variables and correlations, which would be used as the viable theoretical foundation of the hypotheses of this research. In addition, after conducting statistical analysis of the data about the case banks, this research found that in the two aspects of human resources management, the junior employees had higher degrees of approval of development orientation that those of performance orientation, which seemed to overthrow the long-standing traditional concept ¡V using ¡§performance orientation¡¨ of realistic or tangible feedback as the prime basis for selection. On the contrary, although the junior personnel work in the employment market of unfavorable and competitive financial service industry of various kinds, this research has found that as a matter of fact, junior personnel of banks still have high degrees of approval of ¡§development orientation¡¨ and vision for ¡§development orientation,¡¨ in spite of the threats posed by the WTO globalization and the waning trend of the ¡§golden bowl.¡¨ This seems to provide bank management, amid celebration, with a new thinking of establishing better and forward human resources management procedures and regulations related to loyal, committed and competent employees.

Dictionary use has played an important role in English learning. Researches showed that dictionary has facilitating effects on vocabulary learning, writing and reading comprehension. However, not all dictionary users can benefit from the use of dictionaries. In fact, dictionary use is not as easy as what we thought, but dictionary skills instruction does not receive much attention in spite of the prevalence of dictionaries. The purpose of this study is to carry out dictionary skills instruction in English classrooms and to assess the effects of dictionary skills instruction on reading comprehension of junior high EFL students in Taiwan. The subjects in the study were 40 second-year junior high students of two classes from Tainan Municipal Cheng-gong Junior High School. Each class was randomly assigned to the experiment group or the control group. The experiment group received dictionary skills instruction in English classes, and the control group did not. First, the 40 subjects were asked to fill out a questionnaire about their dictionary use backgrounds. Then, they were asked to take a pre-test on their dictionary skills and local reading comprehension. After the pre-test, the experimental group received dictionary skills instructions during each class time for about 20 minutes. The instruction lasted about 3 weeks in the beginning of the second semester. Finally, the 40 subjects were asked to take a post-test on their dictionary skills and local reading comprehension. The major findings of the current study were summarized as follws: 1. Generally speaking, among the ten dictionary skills investigated in the current study, junior high EFL students in Taiwan encounter problems more or less. The problems include understanding short forms, labels, and grammar codes of the dictionary, getting familiar with the alphabetical orders, making use of guide words, scanning a dictionary page, distinguishing a homograph, removing regular inflections, removing affixes of derivatives, scanning nearby entries or seeking in the addendum, recognizing compounds or idioms, and finding the right meaning of a polysemous. 2. In addition to these problems, the frequent application of ¡¥Kidrule strategy¡¦ made the situation worse. The participants were very likely to pick any Chinese fragments ¡¥near¡¦ the target words (or other words with similar spellings.) and misinterpret the fragments as the meanings of the target words. 3. Most of the above mentioned problems could be reduced after receiving dictionary skills instruction from their English teacher in a short time. Only the ability to distinguish a homograph can not be improved merely through the teacher¡¦s instruction in a short time. It seems that, to distinguish homographs, the participants¡¦ grammatical knowledge played a more important role than the dictionary skills instruction. As for the using of guide words and the removing of inflections, these two skills can be improved without the teacher¡¦s instruction. 4. According to the study, the use of dictionaries with proper dictionary skills instruction and enough practice could make a significant difference in the performance of local reading comprehension tasks.

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