I am particularly excited to read your report on your action research because it is so refreshing and inspiring to read about your professional values while you are still relatively new to the profession of teaching. I wish you all the delight an excitement that I continue to experience after thirty years as a professional educator, twenty-three years of that time teaching languages in schools in England. You offer such sensitive insights into the language learning context you experience in China. How far removed this is from my own teaching world in some ways - and yet I can see great similarities - many of the challenges and delights when students learn echo in my reflections!

I do feel that your abstract does not yet do justice to the content of your report and I warmly invite you to work with other members of your research group to develop its scope and depth.

I congratulate you on focusing on a research question that is informed by and informs your everyday experience as a teacher at Guyuan Teachers' College. Might I suggest you locate your own research in relation to some of the language teaching and learning texts and web based resources I have suggested - you can find them on the web page I have dedicated to responding to your group. I think you might particularly enjoy reading 'Invisible Children' and other books that I have suggested to extend understandings about student motivation.

What appeals to me particularly in your writing is your justification for selecting certain students to assist you to see if your teaching improves, as you undertake action research. I am also drawn to what I perceive as a sensitive empathetic awareness of your students' language learning problems, grounded in an understanding of your own history as a language learner. Your comments about the requirements of the New Curriculum help me to understand why you have selected certain teaching strategies , especially those relating to group work - do look at the website of the centre for language learning and Research for more ideas - I found their pathfinder books quick and easy to access as a busy language teacher.

Your observation about 'honour' enables me to gain more insight into student motivation and Chinese culture in your teaching context. How distinct keeping a quiet dignity for the sake of honour from simply keeping quiet out of ignorance or laziness. In England we have some problems motivating students, especially some boys, to learn foreign languages!

You display a profound understanding of your class as individuals - a quality of insight that has currency far beyond language learning and your own teaching environment in China. In your writing you communicate a a growing capacity to communicate your ability to reflect. Now - a challenge and suggestion - how about including some photographs in your text as a focal point to open discussion in your teachers' group and in an international forum? Thank you for providing me with such enjoyable writing to engage with, Gong Lixia.

Finally, I want to share my excitement about the criteria you have selected to determine whether your teaching has improved and I urge you to use your professional values as living standards of judgment in addition to these criteria. Do take a look at Jack Whitehead's writings on using our values as living standards of judgment at http://www.actionresearch.net