Construction of Input-Comparison-Output (ICO) Intercultural Mode for Sustainable Development in EFL Education
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The abstract should be clear, concise, and informative, giving the reader an overview of the study and its significance. I don't think the abstract has accomplished this. The initial statements in the abstract must reflect the article's title and the subject of the study, but this is not the case. There are no hypotheses and the methods are not clearly stated. The review of the literature appears insufficient. Since this study lacks research questions/hypotheses, it is unclear what the results indicate. The references must be updated to recent investigations.
English language must be improved, so I recommend the upgrade of it, for a better understanding of the text.
Line 9: quality are equally important, must be is
From lines 53 to 59, there is another font and dimension of the text.
From lines 140 to 152, there is another font and dimension of the text.
Author Response
Dear Prof.
Please see the attachment, than you.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
1. the abstract has major flaws. It seems like the abstract for a research proposal but not a fully completed research. There is no information about the results obtained and practical implications. Moreover, no information about the methodology, including participants, instruments, and data collection and analysis procedure.
2. There are major flaws in language and writing. A professional English language editor should edit the manuscript. There are lots of grammatical errors and mistakes.
3. The introduction section did not provide enough information about the problem in the local setting where the study was conducted, China. The author should mention the problems which motivated him/her to conduct such a study.
4. In the method section, the author should add another heading called "research design" and discuss the study's design and justification for its suitability for this kind of research.
5. in section 2.2, the author did not specify selection criteria and demographic information about the selected participants, their level of education, etc.
6. in section 2.4, the author should provide more details about the questionnaire and interview. The validity and reliability of the questionnaire should be explained. Moreover, it should be explained if the questionnaire is self-developed or adopted from another source. If adopted, the source should be provided. Further, more, interview questions should be listed and explained how their validity and reliability were tested and how they were developed.
7. The results are not well-developed. The author just used descriptive statistics, which put the validity and reliability of the findings under question. Using inferential statistics is recommended.
8. In general, the manuscript should be reformulated and restructured as the headings and sub-headings are not reader-friendly and consistent. The author is recommended to restructure the methodology section through the following subheadings ONLY. research design, participants (population and samples), instruments, data collection, and analysis.
The language needs extensive improvement so it is recommended to be edited by a professional English language editor
Author Response
Dear Prof,
Please see the attachment, thank you.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The current study focused on integration of the Chinese culture into EFL teaching for the cultivation of the students’ ICC. The findings of quantitative data suggest that the learning of Chinese culture facilitates the EFL learning. The current study is comprehensive. However, there are some points that demand significant improvements.
1. I would think on the title of the article. The usage of abbreviation without any indication on it is unacceptable in the title. I managed to decode it only when I read section 2.1 (line 81).
2. I would use another shortening for the first language culture. The readers may associate the usage of C1 with the level of learning language on accordance with the CEFR.
3. In the Introduction section, the authors should pay attention to the information presented in the Table 1 (very difficult for comprehension and needs to be reorganized).
4. The information concerning the structure of the paper (line 63-70) is redundant as the authors follow the IMRAD principle.
5. Materials and Methodology section needs improvements. There is missing information on Participants: - methods of sampling; - participants invitation and instruction (e.g. reaching participants, return rate), - description of research sample (age, background) - ethical considerations; Why do the authors use only random selection. In the random selection, the results will be always different and may be under-analyzed or overgeneralized.
6. I have strong doubts concerning the results interpretation. It is not clear how number of average words of a paper and average scores illustrate the efficiency of the ICO cultural model. I am really lacking the results presentation/ the comparison of data in table 5 is doubtful to justify that “the new teaching method played a crucial role….” Would the authors please add more supportive information in the Background section?
7. The next point is about the interpretation of sample data. The authors recruited 58 undergraduate students to participate in the study, and then when it came to the data exploration with the help of the interview, they interviewed only three on the WeChat. My concerns about the validity of the presented results. Moreover, the questions are similar towards the questionnaire based on Byram’s three dimensions of ICC. The results are so obvious without any scientific proofs. This part of data interpretation needs to be further clarified.
8. In the Discussion the authors repeat some very general statements, but they do not justify it well in other authors concepts/research (f.ex. line 218 However, the teachers tend to pay more attention to English language and its culture itself instead of the Chinese culture. What kind of teachers? Line 232 the teachers can…. The students can …. I would recommend the authors to compare their own research results with other authors’ findings deeper.
9. The part conclusion needs reconsideration. I would suggest adding future research direction and better highlighting the usefulness of your research from both a theoretical and practical perspective. Exclude references that sound as the result of the authors’ research.
Language needs corrections:
f. ex.: line 12: the authors recruited two groups of students to participated a teaching experiment; one is an experimental group and the other is a control one;
line 24: Realizing the unity of instrument and humanity is Chinese educational policy in EFL education
Table 1: skills Of interpreting and relating;
line 79: Two groups were recruited to participate in the program to attempt to try out a new teaching method.
line 212: The strategies t students’ ICC according to the program
line 271: , by which people interact each other by defining.....
line 307. Moreover, the conclusion the program strengthened Byram’s 307 concept
Author Response
Dear Prof.,
Please see the attachment, thank you.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
line 12: to participated a teaching experiment (grammar check is needed)
Dear authors. You should not write simple digits for the references -[1], [4], etc. A reader does not need to visit the reference page to see who was/is the scholar. Instead, in the sentence it should be mentioned that (e.g.) Byram M. and Risager K. [1] mentioned that ..... This remark is for the entire text.
line 50 According to Liu’s survey, one of reasons for the “aphasia” of Chinese students attributed to the students’ ignorance of the Chinese culture and their inability to express the Chinese culture well in English [9]. (the sentence evidently need an auxiliary verb)
It is necessary to say who suggests what, who argues, who supports/contradicts and so on. In this very way we can see only descriptions, narrative sentences which mostly sound as slogans or mottos.
Line 90 undergraduate students as subjects are recruited selected (they are either recruited or selected
Line 92 the ICO cultural mode. some data are collected (we consider that the end of a sentence with a period demands a capital letter for the next one)
Line 92 some data are collected and the results would be analyzed through questionnaires (by using these different tenses do the authors want to state that there are no results? We understand that the results WOULD be analyzed later).
The authors shall never use any form of contractions (don’t, didn’t) unless it is a citation or quote. (e.g., see line 141)
Line 205 Chinese scholars have achieved greatly… (one can achieve SOMETHING, but cannot achieve HOW)
Line 212 The strategies t students’… (it is important to know who are the t students.
Discussion does not represent any discussion at all. It is a compilation of scholars’ quotes and citations.
Line 271 people interact each other (we consider that a preposition is lacking here)
Line 276 The results shows (we shall not agree with this grammar)
There are absence of space between words and digits and vice versa, e.g., line 279 portfolio[27,9]. (It is not the only flaw.
Refreences – that is a wrong word.
It was not very easy to understand the concept of manuscript, mainly for the flaws, but also for grammar and other errors.
Author Response
Dear Prof.,
Please see the attachment, thak you.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
In a controlled experiment, we compare a control group, and an experimental group is identical in all respects except for one difference – experimental manipulation. Experimental research design is a framework of protocols and procedures that are created to conduct experimental research with a scientific approach using a set of variables. You didn't have the response if the hypotheses are confirmed, and also the variables are missing. Although the results of this experiment may represent an important contribution to this field of study, they need to be analyzed and presented in a more clear fashion before that conclusion can be made. The experiment is not correctly conducted.
Author Response
Dear Prof.,
Please see the attachment.
Thank you.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
1. In the previous comments, I asked the author to discuss the findings and practical implications at the end of the abstract, but it was not done in thee next revision and the aythor only used the general statement of "The findings of the research are novel and initiative, which can be used as references for further intercultural teaching in the EFL education". The findings should be clearly and briefly stated in one or two sentences. Moreover, it is uncommon to use citations in the abstract. Try to delete the citation and use abbreviations limitely in the abstract.
2. in section 3.2, design of the study, the author should discuss if qualitative, quantitative, experimental, or any other type of research was used. Moreover, justification should be provided for the design used for the current study.
3. in the heading 3.5, delete "and method". It should only discuss the instruments.
4. in section 3.5.1, nothing was stated about the validity of the questionnaire. Moreover, when the questionnaire is self-developed, factor analysis must be conducted to ensure the appropriateness of the questionnaire.
5. You used parametric tests such as independent sample t-test but you did not provide any statistics about normality of the scores to show that parametric instead of non-parametric tests should be used for the current study. Moreover, when you use t-test, provide effect size (Cohen d) to show how effective the difference might be.
6. try to extract themes from what the interviewees claimed in the interview, then support each theme through extracts of the interviews and justify and discuss the claims.
proof reading is required
Author Response
Dear Prof.,
Please see the attachment.
Thank you.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
I see that he manuscript has been sufficiently improved (it looks like a new manuscript as the authors added the new part (Literature review) and supplementary information to warrant publication in Sustainability. But I feel that the authors really need more time to reconsider information.
First, the logic chain to support this research problem may be not clear. What does it mean intercultural talents for sustainable development? What is comprehensive competence?
Second, Introduction part (line 49 -65 ) repeats the information in the abstract (line 16-28). The information concerning methods is repeated in Literature review (line 72).
Picture 1 Byram’s Model of ICC needs formatting and right location as well as Tables.
The study should be correctly designed and technically sound.
English Level: the English language is not always understandable. Moderate editing of English language is required. (f.ex. line 84 …. advocates the development of intercultural awareness is based on the understanding of language and culture to elaborate the relationship between linguistic patterns …
Line 268 ….According to Table 5, there is not any obvious difference between the two items,….)
Author Response
Dear, Prof.,
Please se the attachment.
Thank you.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
With all the respect to the work done to improve the manuscript, we regret to inform that there a still a lot of errors:
lines 35-37 In China, the objective of the EFL education in changing, from cultivating the students’ language capacity to comprehensive competence. (no verb detected here).
Some lines in Abstract and lines 52-65 are almost fully repeated.
line 107 suggests Byram's thinking, however we can see other scholars' names.
line 139 Few studies focus on the effectiveness of the Chinese cultural in the EFL education.
lines 145-147 The authors conducted an empirical study for the students’ ICC development among 58 undergraduates at the universities where they teach in China. (Seems that the sentence needed to have other word order).
line 187 Ther are?
lines 178-179 and 201-202 have the same idea (repetition).
multi-repetition of the 58 questionnaires
The interpretation of Table 4 is the repetition/rendering of the table itself.
lines 326-327 In my spare time, I spend more time
line 342 Chinese educators and scholars have achieved greatly (what did they achieve?)
Conclusion should be made based on the experiment/research but not on scholar's ideas.
The authors have done a lot to improve the manuscript. However, there are some serious gaps in the language and the way the manuscript is written.
The present style work is better that it was. Nevertheless, there are flaws that the authors could not overcome.
Author Response
Dear Prof.,
Please see the attachment.
Thank you.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
The article has been improved, but I suggest that the study's conclusion and methodology must be revised in terms of objectives that should be stated more clearly.
The article has a lot of spelling errors, that should be revised before publishing.
Author Response
Dear Pfro.,
Please see the attachment.
Many thanks.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear AUthor,
Thanks for the revisions you made. The manuscript has now been improved significantly; however, it needs some more amendments, including:
1. in the "method" section, you need to add two more headings, including "Data Collection Procedure" and "Data Analysis Procedure" as the last headings in this section. Move any relevant information in other parts of the "method" section to the relevant new sub-headings.
2. I could not see the themes extracted from interview data as headings in the interview section in Results. If you have any reason not to include them, let me know.
Author Response
Dear Prof.,
Please see the attachment.
Many thanks.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
Dear authors
You have done your best and thouroughly improved the manuscript.
Author Response
Dear Prof.,
Please see the attachment.
Many thanks.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
