Faculty Publications and Conference Presentations

ChatGPT has become a worldwide phenomenon since its release in November 2022 with many speculating its potential to transform how texts are composed in different discourse domains. Business and professional communication is one domain that ChatGPT and other AI driven language processing tools can be used to assist with the construction of different texts. Persuasion is a key objective of many genres of business communication, and metadiscourse—language which refers to the subject matter—has been shown to be an essential element of persuasive discourse. The present study aims to explore the use of metadiscourse in persuasive texts constructed by ChatGPT. The income statements of a selection of S&P 500 companies were fed into ChatGPT and instruction given to compose persuasive CEO’s letters to shareholders. Specifically, interactional metadiscourse (Hyland, 2005) is examined in the generated texts, which is a category of resources that encodes explicitly writer-reader interaction and a writer’s evaluation of the propositional content. The findings show that interactional metadiscourse is an integral component of the discourse generated by ChatGPT which is consistent with prior studies of these resources in the CEO’s letter to shareholders. ChatGPT’s potential as a valuable tool is highlighted. It can help business professionals to enhance their interaction with stakeholders by using appropriate metadiscourse markers, and it can provide a template which can be modified and adapted according to the writer’s purpose, audience and genre expectations. ChatGPT could be particularly useful for L2 writers of English who may struggle with the linguistic and rhetorical aspects of persuasive communication in a second language. However, ChatGPT may have limitations in capturing context-specific nuances and it may not be able to account for the ethical and social implications of persuasive communication leading to the generation of texts which are misleading or biased.

<p>The Learning League project aims to study the improvement of language self-efficacy among English as a foreign language (EFL) university students in Hong Kong after delivery English language classes to secondary school students in a 12-week programme. The project adopts a blended learning approach, utilizing the learning-by-teaching pedagogy and gamification to enhance students' motivation and English speaking skills. 13 university students were recruited as student tutors. They received teaching training before teaching English to 63 secondary school students. English speaking-related weekly tasks and selected materials were provided to the student tutors to complete and read before they taught. The language self-efficacy of university students were measured using language self-efficacy scale (Wong, 2005). The programme evaluation showed positive results for the university students' English speaking skills and language self-efficacy.</p>

<p>The present project aims to break the physical limitation of job interview practices for students in LABU2060 Effective Communication in Business, the last required CLE course of the Business School's program at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). The pandemic has intensified the need for incorporating emerging technologies, e.g., virtual reality (VR), in Higher Education. A VR job interview mobile application was implemented in LABU2060 in 2022. Surveys, field observations and focus group interviews were conducted within HKUST. It was found most students were satisfied with the usability and their learning experience gained through using the application in the 2D mode. Students participated in the field tests, utilizing the application in the VR mode (N=17). The findings revealed that the VR job interview application successfully helped students practice and prepare for their job interviews. Students preferred the VR mode to the 2D mode thanks to the immersiveness and authenticity of the VR job interview practices.</p>