Faculty Publications and Conference Presentations

Summary of the Article

This chapter aims to provide a theoretical discussion on the possibility of implementing HKE into the local ESL curriculum, with the potential benefits to both teachers and learners within Hong Kong.The discussion further extends to whether the implementation could apply to other contexts globally. Along with other chapters in this book, the discussion will be conveyed in a more practical tone, which fits the need of both language practitioners and linguists. At the end of the chapter, an activity that includes a task-based guided role-play on CS will be introduced for teachers.

Reference

Chan, K. L. R. (2022). Code-switching in Hong Kong: Key to Implement a Hong Kong English Curriculum?. In C. Palmar and M. Devereaux (Eds.), Teaching English Language Variation in the Global Classroom: Ideas and Activities from Teachers and Linguists (pp. 132-141). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003124665-17

This article is available at HKUST library.

Short Descriptions

For two Summers I did ad hoc course writing for CORE1401 and the new LABU course, to fill in the Summer WUs. After seeing CLE's curriculum plan unfolds over these two years, I wonder if it's time to establish continuity and principles in this repeated pattern of my 'ad-hoc' Summer work, and to revive a framework used in the past - Communication across the Curriculum (CxC) - for course writing/curriculum development. The main objective of this foreseeably longitudinal project is to address the need of quality materials as models of communication for teaching and learning, a need which most of us course writers have tried to fulfill during course write-up. Especially when CLE/we have started teaching multimodal communication in the new Common Core courses, a rich collection of models of hybrid genres (written-oral-visual) can reflect not only our course objectives, but also the consistency of our curriculum requirements across years and disciplines. These are the rationales behind this E-Reader project - to collectively build teaching-learning resources in a levelled reader, which may start as subject-/discipline- specific that features key learning outcomes (CILOs), yet can further expand to include cross-course learning outcomes to showcase CLE’s curricular goals (PILOs of multi-modality and competency development).

Possible Benefits

As part of a search for "reading" materials for the new Advanced Business writing course, I wish to start the ground work of building a outcomes-based E-Reader as teacher-learning resources. I hope the project might interest colleagues who teach other school-based courses and who also consider updating course materials (communication models) to align with CLE's competency-based programmes.

Deliverables

(short-term) A theoretical framework for selecting-collecting texts of discipline- and rhetoric-specific genres from multimedia, for training of written communication (intended for the Advanced Business Writing course); (long-term) A E-Reader that provides teaching/learning resources across disciplines and levels, for multi-modal communication training (of writing, speaking, visual, and hybrid communication).

Short Descriptions

This is an established community of support and practice sharing. This Community is funded by a Teaching Development Grant from the Office of the Executive Vice-President & Provost. The community comprises faculty and staff interested in enhancing the intercultural learning experiences and competence of both PG and UG students at HKUST. This community was established to address issues raised in a study of UG students’ expectations of their intercultural learning experiences in 2017.

Possible Benefits

As the community has met over the past 2 years and developed its mission and objectives, issues associated with and strategies for fostering a mindset of diversity have emerged. It is believed that without such a mindset, intercultural learning experiences will be of little value, possibly even ineffective, and that it is unlikely that intercultural competence will develop. The community will build on work already done and continue to support achievement of the University’s strategic objective to be a champion of diversity.

Deliverables

In the next academic year we propose continuing activities that have proven successful in the past, including providing seminars/workshops and training with invited speakers and trainers, as well as sharing sessions among University colleagues. Engaging students as partners in some of these activities has also proved successful, and we would continue to engage students in our activities. One of these will be the Diversity = Strength film festival and student forum to be held in October (postponed from February).

Short Descriptions

To ensure the CLE Competency-based assessment descriptors match with the university common core competency framework, our team plans to review the existing CLE Competency-based assessment descriptors. Through this process, we hope to evaluate the language used in these descriptors and determine their effectiveness and usefulness in learning and grading.

Deliverables

CLE Competency-based assessment descriptors will be the framework to assist all course leaders to develop their course specific competencies descriptors to fit in their course assignments.

Short Descriptions

I currently have a research assistant from the MAILE program and we are working on replicating one of my previous research projects in which I investigated the development of conversational implicatures (implied meaning) in second language (L2) English. Here is the link for my prior publication: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/ip-2018-0011/html We are going to do the same in L2/L3 Chinese to probe into the question of whether learners with various L1/L2 backgrounds are able to comprehend implied meaning in L2/L3 Chinese. I plan to publish an article based on this project in journals such as Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Second Language Research, and Modern Language Journal. We could also present the findings for our students in the MAILE program and at various conferences in Hong Kong.

Short Descriptions

The current study reports on a preliminary investigation of two conflations in Hong Kong English (HKE) – [n, l] conflation and [r, v, w] conflation – which have rarely been examined in previous studies wherein the two conflations were considered to exist in “free variation”, the result of the limited HKE inventories (Hung, 2000; Sewell & Chan, 2010). However, by investigating a 5791-word mini corpus composed of speeches from 29 HKE speakers, it is believed that a loose pattern exists in the two conflations. This short report hopes to trigger further investigations in the study of phonetic features of HKE – which in turn may help the development of the variety of English in different scopes of scholarship.

Possible Benefits

- Pronunciation teaching (especially to Hong Kong students)

Deliverables

- Presentation at The 20th AsiaTEFL conference (August) - Potential publication

Short Descriptions

Email has been a common and important asynchronous communication medium between students and instructors in higher education since the 21st century. These 2 years, we even have more chances to interact with students using emails because of the suspension of face-to-face classes during COVID-19 pandemic. These chances made students’ mistakes in their emails, for example, problematic word choice, idiosyncratic formatting style, improper tone, etc., further noticeable. At the same time, it is hard to identify a good sense of politeness and appropriateness in their emails as it requires them to have a certain level of pragmatic awareness and competence. Apart from the limited exposure to and proper instructions on email writing, a second language learning environment adds an additional hurdle for students to write English emails effectively. This can be a serious problem because it not only hinders student-instructor communication at this stage, but also harms students’ construction of interpersonal and interprofessional relationships later in the workplace. All these factors led to this project. This project aims to raise our students’ awareness of netiquette by teaching them the crucial skills in email writing using a series of succinct, easily-accessible, and interesting animated videos that will be created after analyzing their problems and needs. After going through the videos and consolidation exercises, students are expected to write emails effectively and appropriately, and then be able to transfer the skills learned to other contexts and audiences.

Possible Benefits

- Blended learning - Effective communication/business English

Deliverables

Approximately 20 animated videos and their follow-up exercises (correspond to the topics) will be created according to 6 stages: - Raising Awareness - Building the Foundation - Prewriting - Writing - Revising & Reminders - Additional videos based on data analysis and viewers’ requests

Despite the plethora of studies on digital multimodal composing (DMC) in recent years, there were few attempts of tapping how assessments on DMC can best be conducted to maximize students’ learning.  To narrow this gap, this study proposed a set of product- and process-oriented classroom assessment rubrics that function as self-and peer-assessment tools for students when collaborating with each other to create DMC in online EAP context.  During a four-week intervention with a veteran EAP educator, the rubric was tried out in her EAP classes as students worked in pairs to complete a DMC task. Its effectiveness was then evaluated based on the quality of student writings as well as their discussion, which was measured in terms of equality and mutuality. The product-oriented classroom assessment rubrics was found to result in marked improvement in layout, navigation and rhetoric, whilst the process-oriented classroom assessment rubrics also enhanced both the equality and the mutuality the collaborative process, as the dyads leant towards establishing a collaborative relationship during the task.   These findings underscore the importance of using assessment rubrics as a formative assessment activity to help students harness the genre of DMC from different perspectives.

Short Descriptions

To advance the pedagogy of DMC, this study proposes a set of product- and process-oriented classroom assessment rubrics that function as self-and peer-assessment tools for students when collaborating with each other to create multimodal texts in EAP contexts. Driven by the importance of reader-writer interactions in academic writings, the study first revised Jiang et al’s (2022) genre-based model for assessing DMC with reference to the importance of stance and engagement in academic discourse (Hyland, 2005) to assess the product of students’ collaboratively constructed multimodal academic blog posts. Storch’s (2002) notion of equality and mutuality were utilized to assess students’ collaborative process when engaging in DMC activities with peers. Then, the theory-driven assessment rubrics were tested and modified through classroom research during the process of guiding students to write academic blogs in an EAP course. The study aligns with the ongoing discussions related to the assessment of DMC and derives implications for appropriate classroom assessment mechanisms for DMC.

As emerging scientists learn to produce the traditional scientific research article genre and other genres of scientific writing, they develop their identity as a science writer. Their scientific thinking is developed through and reflected in the rigorous, concise, direct and consistent use of language to express precise ideas, and the clear distinction made between fact and speculation. In the process, many emerging scientists become more aware of the nuances and complexities of language style. And some are faced with the challenge of reassessing the oversimplified language rules and incomplete advice they may have learned at lower levels of education in order to produce this genre confidently and effectively.

For students and educators keen to develop their knowledge and skills regarding language styles for scientific writing, there is no short supply of published advice. Part of my recent research has involved exploring the literature and published sources advice and guidelines for developing good scientific writing styles. My book chapter summarizes how these sources address various aspects of scientific writing style including at the lexical and discourse level, expression of writer identity, demonstration of reader awareness, issues with oversimplification of language rules, misconceptions in writing style, expressions of authorial voice, changes in uses of hedges and boosters over time in science, expressions of whispers of human judgement, and use of figurative language. Some of this might be of use to fellow colleagues interested in academic writing, technical disciplines or the science remit in general.

I am keen to hear from any colleagues with interest in collaborating on scholarship in this area.

Useful reading:

de Alencar, M. S., & de Alencar, T. T. (2017). Scientific style in English (River Publishers Series in Innovation and Change in Education - Cross-cultural Perspective). River Publishers. 

Gopen, G., & Swan, J. (1990). The science of scientific writing. American Scientist, 78(6), 550-558.  

Greene, A. E. (2013). Writing science in plain English. Amsterdam University Press. 

Kirkman, J. (2005). Good style: Writing for science and technology (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203023655   

Grossman, F. (2019). Scientific objective style and author positioning in academic writing. In F. Komesu & J. Alves Assis (Eds.), Práticas discursivas em letramento acadêmico: Questões em estudo (Vol. 1, pp. 64–76). Editora PUC Minas. 

Gruber, D. R., & Olman, L. C. (2019). The Routledge handbook of language and science (Routledge handbooks in linguistics). Routledge. 

Heard, S. (2014). On whimsy, jokes, and beauty: Can scientific writing be enjoyed? Ideas in Ecology and Evolution, 7(1), 64–72. https://doi.org/10.4033/iee.2014.7.14.f 

Hyland, K. (2002). Authority and invisibility: Authorial identity in academic writing. Journal of Pragmatics, 34(8), 1091–1112. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0378-2166(02)00035-8 

Kuhi, D. (2017). Hybridity of scientific discourses: An intertextual perspective and implications for ESP pedagogy. The Journal of Applied Linguistics and Applied Literature: Dynamic and Advances, 5(2), 61–80. https://doi.org/10.22049/jalda.2018.26150.1048 

Lindsay, D. (2020). Scientific writing = Thinking in words (2nd ed.). CSIRO Publishing. 

Mercer-Mapstone, L. D., & Kuchel, L. (2017). Core skills for effective science communication: A teaching resource for undergraduate science education. International Journal of Science Education, Part B, 7(2), 181–201. https://doi.org/10.1080/21548455.2015.1113573 

Pisano, A., Crawford, A., Huffman, H., Graham, B., & Kelp, N. (2021). Development and validation of a universal science writing rubric that is applicable to diverse genres of science writing. Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education, 22(3). https://doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.00189-21  

Pope-Ruark, R. (2011). Know thy audience: Helping students engage a threshold concept using audience-based pedagogy. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2011.050106 

Poole, R., Gnann, A., & Hahn-Powell, G. (2019). Epistemic stance and the construction of knowledge in science writing: A diachronic corpus study. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 42, 100784. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2019.100784 

Scott, S. L., & Jones, C. W. (2017). Superlative Scientific Writing. ACS Catalysis, 7(3), 2218–2219. https://doi.org/10.1021/acscatal.7b00566 

Shapin, S. (2012). The sciences of subjectivity. Social Studies of Science, 42(2), 170–184. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312711435375   

Xia, G. (2017). A cross-disciplinary corpus-based study on English and Chinese native speakers’ use of first-person pronouns in academic English writing. Text & Talk, 38(1), 93–113. https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2017-0032