Faculty Publications and Conference Presentations

<p>Traditionally, there has been a disconnect between theoretical linguistics and pedagogical teacher training. This book seeks to bridge that gap. Using engaging examples from a wide variety of languages, it provides an innovative overview of linguistic theory and language acquisition research for readers with a background in education and teacher training, and without specialist knowledge of the field. The authors draw on a range of research to ground ideas about grammar pedagogy, presenting the notion of Virtual Grammar as an accessible label for unifying the complexity of linguistics. Organised thematically, the book includes helpful ‘Case in point’ examples throughout the text, to illustrate specific grammar points, and step-by-step training in linguistic methods, such as how to analyse examples, which educators can apply to their own teaching contexts. Through enriching language teachers’ understanding of linguistic features, the book fosters a different perspective on grammar for educators.</p>

The field of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) developed to address the needs of students whose mother tongue is not English. However, the linguistic competence required to achieve academic success at any university where English is the medium of instruction is a challenge for all students. While there are linguistic features common to academic literacy as a general genre, closer investigation reveals significant differences from one academic field to another. This volume asks what good writing is within specific disciplines, focussing on student work. Each chapter provides key insights by EAP professionals, based on their research in which they bring together analysis of student writing and interviews with subject specialists and markers who determine what 'good writing' is in their discipline. The volume includes chapters on established disciplines which have had less attention in the EAP and academic writing literature to date, including music, formal linguistics, and dentistry, as well as new and growing fields of study such as new media.

作为汉语文学最早的诗歌总集,《诗经》中蕴含的语言艺术直接体现了诗歌韵律的本质要求:重复1。无论是叠字、叠句还是重章叠唱,都在不同的韵律单位实现着重复,形成鲜明的诗体美感。其中,《诗经》四言句内部的重复与韵律层级中的音节和音步直接关联,是研究《诗经》韵律的重要切入点。

<p>This study explores hedging and boosting as impression management strategies in the discourse of Chinese and U.S. corporations. The analysis has been conducted on the CEO's letter to shareholders of 100 Chinese and 100 U.S. corporations to reveal pronounced variations in the frequencies and pattern of use in the two resources. First, substantially more hedges and boosters are used in the U.S. discourse in comparison to the Chinese, thus, demonstrating a greater effort invested in persuasion in the U.S. texts. Second, the U.S. texts use significantly more boosters than hedges, whereas the Chinese texts show a roughly balanced use of the two resources. Lastly, the two sets of texts have authorial stances that project distinctly different impressions. While the U.S. discourse conveys conviction and certainty, the Chinese discourse imparts more caution and tentativeness. These findings are attributed to a number of dissimilarities in the belief systems of the Western and Chinese cultural models. The results point to possible implications on the effectiveness of the CEO's letters in cross-cultural business contexts.</p>

<p>This study examined the optimal learning schedule for second language vocabulary within an authentic classroom setting in Hong Kong. Following a pretest, treatment, delayed posttest design, fifty-two primary school students (Cantonese first language) studied 20 English adjectives over two learning episodes under spaced-short (1-day interval) or spaced-long (8-day interval) learning conditions. The spacing of the vocabulary items was manipulated within-participants, and learning was assessed on a multiple-choice posttest, administered following a four-week delay. In contrast to previous laboratory-based findings, the results here indicated superior learning of the items presented under the spaced-short format, suggesting that lag effects might be attenuated by age, learning context and teaching procedure.</p>

<p>This paper analyses Kongish Daily, a Facebook page that trans-scripts local news in Hong Kong into a creative and dynamic mix of Cantonese in traditional Chinese characters, Romanisation and made-up characters, simplified Chinese, pinyin, English, Hong Kong English, other phonetic symbols, emoji and other signs and images. We trace the origin of the site and rationale for the Facebook page, and analyse it as a translanguaging phenomenon. The main objective is to understand the political motivations for the Facebook account and the social critique it offers through its dynamic translanguaging practice. In particular, we want to highlight the subversive nature of the translanguaging practice. Methodologically, it develops the participatory linguistics framework, which transformed our own understandings of the phenomenon as well as the cultural politics of translingualism and social media in Hong Kong.</p>

<p>This research report presents the preliminary findings of mixed-methods study examining the beliefs of trainee teachers regarding a number of ‘learning myths’, e.g., learning styles and multiple intelligences. Using a cross-sectional experimental design, survey data were collected from 65 pre-service teachers enrolled in a high-profile Bachelor of Education program as to their beliefs in a number of myths about teaching and learning. 18 participants then took part in semi-structured interviews. The results indicate that trainee teachers’ beliefs in education myths and misconceptions may not change over the course of a five-year ‘evidence based’ teacher preparation program. Further, the qualitative results suggest that beliefs in learning myths might become further entrenched over the course of study as a result of being actively promoted by faculty throughout the program.</p>

<p>Zhong, Yin and Chu-Ren Huang. 2020. Sweetness or Mouthfeel: A corpus-based study of the conceptualization of taste. Linguistic Reseatdi 37(3): 359-387. The sensory lexicon plays a pivotal role in bridging our cognitive system to the physical world. In this role, it has been the focus of recent interdisciplinary investigations on cognition, language, culture, and their interactions. Recent studies on linguistic synesthesia and sensory modality exclusivity showed unequivocally that cross-modality usages of sensory words are the norm rather than the exception. Given the dominance of cross-modality uses, the null hypothesis that the five senses are separate but equal modules merits a closer examination. In this paper, we focus on the gustatory quality of sweetness because of its universal appeal as well as the well-attested cultural influence on the gustatory lexicon. Based on an analysis of online food reviews containing descriptions of desserts, we show that mouthfeel, a multisensory concept, is strongly preferred over sweetness. Mouthfeel is associated with words from all the sensory domains, including both sensory and abstract (eg, mental state) concepts. The highly non-exclusive characteristic of gustatory sensation suggests that it might be the most connected sensory modality, and the cross-modality expressions indicating personal preferences further imply the subjective propensity of the gustatory sense. Our study adds to the existing literature the interrelationship among sensory modalities through language use, and further sheds light on the interactions between language, cognition, and culture.</p>

<p>This study examined the acquisition of English plural marking, i.e. the plural-s marker on nouns without quantifiers (lexical plural marking) and nouns in contexts with quantifiers (phrasal plural marking). It was carried out within the framework of Processability Theory. There were ten participants involved; they were young adult Indonesian learners who learned English as a second language in a formal context. Data collection was carried out at two points in time within one semester, namely at the beginning and the end of the semester. At each point of time, the participants were assigned translation tasks from Indonesian into English. The translation tasks aimed specifically to elicit the targeted morphological structures based on the PT hierarchy. The data were analysed by using distributional analysis; the findings were then examined by means of implicational scaling on the basis of the emergence criterion, the purpose of which is to determine the acquisition points of the morphological forms under scrutiny. The research finding demonstrates that the development of plural marking of the participants follows the sequences as predicted in PT; each participant first acquires plural –s marker on nouns without quantifiers, and then they acquire that marker on nouns with quantifiers.</p>