Faculty Publications and Conference Presentations

<p>It has long been established that parents play a key role in educational achievement. In this paper, we examine parental involvement in children’s foreign language learning and the goal of finding ways to support families as they help their children to acquire a foreign language. The study investigated the ways in which Hong Kong families do and could support their children, aged 5–8, in English learning. The nature of existing parent involvement is described based on quantitative and qualitative data obtained via questionnaires and focus group discussions with a group of parents. In order to explore what parents could do to support their children with school-based requirements for English learning, a focus group of parents participated in a workshop that focused on the practice of reading aloud to their children in English. The results show that Hong Kong parents are involved in supporting their children’s English literacy development in a variety of ways, yet they do not generally embrace culturally specific Western practices such as reading aloud; and furthermore, to adopt such practices might be problematic.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>This chapter examines the ideological construction of gender identities in news narratives in China with a view to highlight the need for enhancing media literacy in this field. Through an exploration of the intersection of journalistic and gender ideologies, the chapter seeks to illuminate the role of media framing in defining, establishing and reinforcing gender norms and roles in Chinese society. Gendered frames, for instance, of motherhood or the primacy of breadwinner role, allow journalists to simplify the complexities of the stories of men and women in their private and public spheres. A detailed qualitative study of a corpus of 12 news articles from China Daily using a textual analysis approach revealed that the news texts primarily construct ideals of manhood and womanhood. Within a patriarchal and hierarchical media, state and social structure, representations of hegemonic masculinities persist in news narratives. With regard to women, it was found that, on the one hand, voices of rural, migrant women were marginalised and, on the other, urban or modern women were commodified as objects of men’s desire in this age of consumerism. These results call for critically minded, media-literate Chinese to pay attention to the forms of transitional, as opposed to traditional, gender roles and ideologies that are emerging slowly but steadily through the news media.</p>

Hong Kong English (HKE) has been widely researched recently in the linguistics fields like phonology (e,g, Hansen Edwards, 2015a; Hung, 2000, 2012; Setter et al., 2010); however, there is a lack of research on teachers’ perception to this new variety of English. In the present study, data is collected through 92 questionnaires and 23 semi-structured interviews with current teachers of English (both natives and non-natives) in Hong Kong who teach in primary, secondary and terriary institutes. The aims of this study are to investigate the teachers’ attitudes towards HKE and their perceptions in particular to the segmental features of HKE in order to answer the research question of whether the attitudes of English teachers towards HKE may alter their teaching practices. The findings suggest that the attitudes (especially behavioral attitudes) of the English teachers may affect their teaching practices in real life classrooms, for instance, the preferences of choosing a particular English accent as the norm or model for their students to follow. Further research has to be done on the feasibility of the implimentation of HKE into the Hong Kong Education curriculum.

Are your students using PowerPoint effectively? Stimulate an challenge classes with a presentation assignment that combines PowerPoint with good organisation, timing, and creativity. The presenter introduces the presentation format called Pecha Kucha and describes successful assignments in reading and writing classes at a tertiary institution.

In this Show and Tell session, the presenter will introduce a news website and app called Newslea and will share experiences using the resource in a general academic English course for lower-intermediate students at a Hong Kong tertiary institution. This US-based resource (with Common Core references for grades K-12) comes in a free and a paid version. Students can use the resource freely, but teachers must pay a subscription to take advantage of the options to assign and track class groups and individual students –in texts folders, writing tasks, and quiz scores. Using the Common Core standards, readings focus on “central ideas,” “word meanings and choice,” “text structure,” “arguments and claims,” and other reading tasks. An interesting feature for students is the option to easily adjust the reading level: Max, 960L, 840L, 690L, and 580L. While Newslea’s intended audience is mainly native English speakers, the reading level options can be quite useful for English as a second or foreign language learners. The presenter will sum up by sharing some of the benefits and challenges of using Newslea, especially as it compares to other free reading websites and apps.

Play is a powerful tool for children and community college students to explore, experiment, experience and understand the world around them. In this session, the presenters will share their experiences with play in their content areas. First, an Early Childhood Education lecturer will give a brief overview of a Hong Kong community college program preparing future kindergarten teachers and a short summary of how children actively learn through play as noted through centuries by theorists such as Locke, Piaget, and Vygotsky. Next, an English lecturer will give examples of how the concept of "play" was adapted to language learning activities using drama (e.g., Readers Theatre), open-ended materials (e.g, Kahoot!, Socrative). The session will conclude with reflections on the success of adapting Early Childhood Education principles of play to English classes in which teachers - as observers, facilitators, and players - plan and set up physical environments for students to engage in exploring, experimenting, and experiencing with adequate, age-appropriate, and open materials.