This paper examines a new first-year EAP course in a Hong Kong university. It utilizes teacher and student reflections to understand the course’s strengths and weaknesses, aiming to enhance its design and delivery. The study employed a qualitative approach whereby textual analysis was used to interpret the data collected in the form of written teacher reflections, written student reflections, and notes of teacher reflective dialogue. The thematic categories for coding the data were established based on the course’s main learning outcomes: Effective Learning, Spoken Language, and Written Language. Findings reveal that teachers were more critical of the course compared to learners. Teachers expressed dissatisfaction with the pedagogical approach to Effective Learning unit, insufficient time provided in the course to teach solo speaking, and the inability to cover too many organizational and linguistic features in the writing unit. Students, however, did not have much to reflect on about Effective Learning, had mixed views about Spoken Language with some worried about reading from notes, and wrote extremely positively about their learning of Written Language. Nonetheless, their views provide valuable insights for course improvement. Consequently, the paper advocates for a reflective pedagogy approach to EAP that considers both teacher and student reflections to enhance teaching and learning outcomes. © 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The launch of the 3 + 3 + 4 education reform in Hong Kong has posed challenges to as well as created opportunities for tertiary institutions. It has invariably led to reviews of the effectiveness of their existing English language curricula and discussions among language practitioners in the tertiary sector as to what kind of English curriculum and assessment would serve the needs and interest of the new breed of senior secondary school graduates, who have had only six years to study English in the new education system as compared with seven years in the old system. This chapter reports on the pedagogical and assessment strategies adopted by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) to embrace these challenges, and the findings of a pilot study conducted to investigate the consequential validity of a post-entry language assessment used at HKUST. Consequential validity is often associated with test washback. In Messick’s expanded notion of test validity (Messick 1989), the evidential and consequential bases of test score interpretation and test score use are considered as crucial components of validity. It covers not just elements of test use, but also the impact of testing on students and teachers, the interpretation of test scores by stakeholders, and the unintentional effects of the test. This chapter reports the findings of the pilot study and discusses their implications for the use of PELAs.