Faculty Publications and Conference Presentations

Short Descriptions

To foster an Open Feedback Culture in the CLE, this project will analyse ideas and data received from a survey and workshop collected and run in April 2022. This project team will analyse data and further feedback from the workshop and conduct research into best practices for sharing feedback and creating an open feedback culture within the CLE.

Deliverables

1. Analyse data and feedback collected from Feedback survey and workshop in April 2022. 2. Research best practices or successful strategies to encourage open feedback culture, and share common best practice feedback strategies derived from CLE colleagues and our research.

Short Descriptions

This semester I gave a scholarship talk on the benefits of using film in the classroom which include but are not limited to improving speaking and listening skills, acquiring vocabulary (especially colloquial vocabulary), stimulating thought and discussion on a wide variety of subjects, and promoting awareness of other cultures and people. In that talk I stated that with the ubiquity of the screen, films are easier than ever to watch and to utilise in the classroom. To follow up on my talk, I would like to investigate to what extent film is being used in the CLE and whether our courses could make better use of it to engage our students.

Possible Benefits

To better inform our teaching by investigating how film could be better used to engage with learners and to successfully promote learning outcomes.

Deliverables

A short talk or workshop at the Summer EYE

Short Descriptions

This project aims to share my experience and expertise in English language curriculum design with educational practitioners, in particular, the teachers at CLE, who are engaged in ELT materials writing, course design and review, and curriculum development and evaluation.

Possible Benefits

The project benefits not only CLE teachers and their counterparts who are engaged in course and/or curriculum design, but also educational practitioners who are involved in daily teaching by providing them with a comprehensive overview of all the corresponding theories, approaches, methodology and common practice, and insights which generate new ideas.

Deliverables

The tentative planning is that the book comprises 7 to 8 chapters. It is expected to compile the draft of two chapters each year.

Here is a link to my paper: 

Incorporating competencies into LANG 4031.docx  

Sarah Carmichael

Short Descriptions

Aim: to map the existing CILOs onto key competencies for LANG courses (CMO1-4, PS03) at the 4000-level, following the consensus reached in the Curricular Coherence Document for the implementation of competencies at different levels in UG English courses (vertical coherence).

Possible Benefits

Students and teachers in LANG 4031 can see a coherent learning pathway form Year 1-4 and have a clear picture of what underlying competencies are being developed in LANG 4031. Other 3000 and 4000-level courses may use this as a reference in their own integration of competencies.

Deliverables

A course overview which puts the competencies into the context of this course and previous LANG courses in a format which is transparent to both students and teachers. Re-written assessment rubrics which reflect the competencies. Course materials include reference to the competencies being developed in the lessons.

Short Descriptions

The main focus of this study is investigating introvert and extrovert university students’ perception of the use of interactive digital tools (such as Padlet and Mentimeter) in a face-to-face English for Specific Purposes (ESP) class after all classes in the university had been switched to online mode for three semesters. The pandemic has given educators various opportunities to use interactive digital tools in class, especially in an online environment. It is interesting for educators to explore the potential of such tools when classes are back face-to-face. This research thus offers the students’ perspective to using interactive digital tools in a face-to-face classroom. While a lot have been said about introvert students responding positively to digital learning online, the students’ perception of their own personality collected in the survey and the impact digital tools have on their contribution to class may shed some light about the potential of interactive digital tools in a post-pandemic era.

Possible Benefits

Psychology for learning and teaching is one of the areas that has been less talked about at the CLE but is an area of interest I discovered earlier in this semester. This study will be presented in a conference that is one of the less common conferences dedicated to the psychology of language learning and teaching. While this study is based on a reflection on the use of interactive digital tools in my own classrooms, it is interesting to hear the students’ voice in relation to the psychological aspects. In a so-called ‘post-pandemic’ era, the discussion of whether we should keep the practice of using interactive digital tools in class and how it affects student with different personalities to learn is definitely worth discussions in the CLE.

Deliverables

Presentation at the International Conference on Psychology of Language and Language Learning in July 2022

Study Focus

This study presented at the Psychology of Language and Language Learning on July 28, 2022 in London was to investigate introvert and extrovert university students’ perception of the use of interactive digital tools (such as Padlet and Mentimeter) in a face-to-face English for Specific Purposes (ESP) class after all classes in the university had been switched to online mode for three semesters.

Subjects and Methods

The subjects of the study were business students in LABU2040. The basic tool for data collection was an anonymous online survey, which included 3 required multiple-choice questions and 3 open questions (2 required; 1 optional) about the effects of interactive digital tools on their amount of contribution to the class discussions, their perception of the role of interactive digital tools to the sharing of ideas and whether the students considered themselves introvert or extrovert. The survey results were then analyzed qualitatively, particularly on the effect the use of interactive digital tools had on the amount of contribution to the class among introvert and extrovert students, their perception of a language class with and without digital tools and most importantly, the implication to educators about how interactive digital tools can be used (or not) to cater for the needs of the introvert and extrovert students.

Result highlights

•The use of interactive, digital tools resulted in an increase in the amount of contribution from students and the number of students who contributed to the class activities. They allowed anonymous responses to be given, making some students more comfortable sharing their thoughts.

•Introvert students tended to feel less pressured with the use of the digital tools and participated more in class without having to volunteer. They have expressed that this is an alternative that let them become more confident and ready.

•Extrovert students also said that the tool let everyone participate in class, even for shy people or when they are tired. They pointed out that the digital tools enable the ideas to be visualized and retrievable after class.

The pandemic has given educators various opportunities to use interactive digital tools in class, especially in an online environment. It is interesting for educators to explore the potential of such tools when classes are back face-to-face. This research thus offers the students’ perspective on using interactive digital tools in a face-to-face classroom. While a lot has been said about introverted students responding positively to digital learning online, the student's perception of their own personality collected in the survey and the digital impact tools have on their contribution to class may shed some light on the potential of interactive digital tools in a post-pandemic era.

Through my recent action research I adopted an exploratory and emic approach to learn about science student perceptions of scientific writing styles and issues in reader-writer relationships.  

The action research involved 167 volunteer UG science students. Their perspectives were collected in three stages through the semester of various UG science courses. In stage 1 a 10-question open comment online survey probed students’ beliefs about writing style and reader awareness in the context of scientific reports and published papers, and encouraged students to critique various sources of publicly available online guidelines for scientific writing style. In stage 2 a 25-question Likert scale online survey was used to attempt to quantify student views on common themes emerging in stage 1. This elicited the extent to which students considered important key concepts in writing style, the reader-writer relationship, and personal epistemology about the science. In stage 3 multiple informal group discussions enabled students to qualify and expand on responses provided in the previous stages.    

The findings have implications for pedagogy, materials and course design. These are detailed in a forthcoming book chapter. 

In particular my findings might be of use to the science team as they look to reviewing the current curriculum. With the recent implementation of the new UG LANG302x courses, our UG curriculum now focusses on science communication with the public, while the PG curriculum remains focussed on scientific communication with scientists. I believe that bridging the gap between these different UG and PG focuses is now an important consideration for CLE in the coming few years – especially to support our research-oriented undergraduate students and for postgraduates without a solid writing background. 

My findings led to the following recommendations for our science curriculum: 

1. The core competency of audience awareness can be more deeply embedded across the curriculum, particularly in the writing components of courses not just the speaking components, given its heavy emphasis throughout the literature of scientific communication to both lay and expert audiences.  
     
2. Materials can be designed to elicit the parallels between the reader experience and writing style more explicitly, and designed to raise awareness of the active role played by the reader in the reader-writer relationship.  
    
3. Materials can be designed to encourage students to interrogate their prior knowledge, in order to extend it, rather than relying on oversimplified rules learned in earlier years of their education. 
    
4. Discourse-level analysis of writing style (not just lexical-based advice) can be foregrounded at earlier levels of undergraduate study.  
    
5. The use and merits of published papers and lab reports as model genres for learning about writing style can be questioned. Selected samples can be more rigorously selected and more purposefully analysed. 
    
6. CLE colleagues can work with departmental faculty across the curriculum to integrate learning-to-write tasks and writing-to-learn tasks coherently and consistently into existing programmes of study, through embedded modelling, feedback and practice, both directly and indirectly. 
    
7. Focussing on communicating with the public can be a relatable way to develop transferrable skills in audience awareness. Reproducing assignments for different audiences – public versus expert – can be a useful route to raising awareness of the key skills. 

Short Descriptions

This study aims to investigate the acquisition of Cantonese as a 3rd language to improve the teaching and learning of the sound system, the morphology, the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of Cantonese.

Possible Benefits

Many individuals have challenges in acquiring Cantonese. Some don't even bother to start learning it. This project may encourage more students and faculty to take up Cantonese.

Deliverables

A number of research articles may be published in journals such as Second Language Research, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, etc.

Short Descriptions

While the three most discussed issues of the second language (L2) acquisition in Mandarin pronunciation are consonants, vowels, and tones (Chen & Tam 2020; Li 2017), learners can also have difficulties with rhythms and intonations. Such phonological features can also affect the comprehensibility and effectiveness of speech. Developed from my classroom teaching observations, this study aims to further the understanding of the patterns and errors made during the production of the prosodic focus of L2 Mandarin utterances by Cantonese speakers. Prosodic focus is achieved by means of prosody, for example, fundamental frequency, duration, and intensity (Wu & Xu 2010; Xu, Chen, & Wang 2012). It includes nuclear stress, emphatic stress, and contrastive stress (Lambrecht 1996; Feng 2013). Gu (2016), by conducting production experiments with target sentences containing nuclear stress or emphatic stress, including the stress in yes–no questions, found that L2 errors in fundamental frequency of Mandarin utterances produced by Cantonese speakers can be ascribed to negative transfers from their first language. However, the experiment did not involve contrastive stress or wh-questions. Based on my observations, some students fail to produce a “natural” performance when contrastive stresses appear in sentences, indicating possibly different patterns in Cantonese and Mandarin. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how Cantonese speakers produce prosodic focus in their Mandarin utterances by conducting a production experiment. Two groups of students, native speakers of Mandarin or Cantonese, respectively, will be recruited. The research questions will include the following: 1. How do speakers produce contrastive stress or stress the wh-questions in their native languages, either Mandarin or Cantonese? 2. How do native Cantonese speakers produce contrastive stress or stress the wh-questions in Mandarin? 3. Are there any differences between the Mandarin utterances produced by the two groups, and if so, why?

Possible Benefits

The potential outcomes of this study will have pedagogical implications for Cantonese learners that will improve their L2 Mandarin prosody, especially their ability to apply “natural” stress in contrastive sentences and wh-questions.

Deliverables

Preliminary findings will be presented within the CLE, if the situation allows conducting face-to-face experiments by summer 2022. The research will also be submitted to external conference and/or academic journals for publication at a later stage.