Faculty Publications and Conference Presentations

This mixed-method (questionnaires and interviews) study investigated the attitudes towards HKE of teachers of English at different levels of institutes in Hong Kong; the study includes both Local English Teachers (LETs) and Native English Teachers (NETs). By analyzing both qualitative data and quantitative data from 100 questionnaires and 28 individual interviews, it is shown that both NETs and LETs had a generally positive attitude towards HKE although LETs showed a "bi-polar attitude" when it comes to using HKE in class. Results also showed that NETs and LETs had different foci in pronunciation teaching and their teaching may be altered by their attitudes towards HKE. Further research should be done from teachers' perspective because teachers play an influential role in executing teaching plans; their attitudes towards language may affect their students in long term.

Students at different levels of education are often required to write analytically. At middle or high school, they may need to write (for example) an analysis of the causes of an accident. At university, they may need to write analytical essays to examine the relationship between two concepts or ideas. However, many students find writing analytically a daunting task. They tend to be more familiar with descriptive writing, having learned how to write stories for many years, and may be at a loss about what to do when they are asked to produce a familiar text type. Some weaker students may even fail the task simply because they lack the necessary writing skills. To help them solve this problem, I have developed some tasks which aim to prepare students to write an analytical report about a disaster. I have used the materials with my university classes, with positive response. I will now describe the procedure for each task and outline the rationale for the design.

对于英语学习者来说,动机是提高学习积极性的重要内在动力,也是增强学习效果的重要因素。高职非英语专业的学生,由于自身及客观的因素,普遍存在英语学习动机缺乏,学习自律性不强等问题。基于这种现状,以广东轻工职业学院中外合作办学项目的非英语专业学生为研究对象,结合国内外动机研究成果,分析他们英语学习动机的特点,以期为提高大专非英语专业学生的英语学习动机提供切参考。

This chapter discusses the development of English-in-the-Discipline (ED) courses offered to students of four disciplines: Education, Information Management, Speech and Hearing Sciences, and Applied Child Development at The University of Hong Kong. These courses aim to help students develop their critical reading, report writing, and oral presentation skills for disciplinary studies and academic purposes. Students conduct a small-scale research project on a self-identified topic in their discipline, interview information-rich professionals, and present their findings in the form of a research report and an academic oral presentation. As developers of these courses, we present the course design principles (e.g., genre and experiential learning approaches, and assessment for learning) and sample teaching materials. In light of student feedback, we reflect upon the strengths of the courses in developing students’ academic literacy for university studies and the challenges we experience in relation to (a) specificity in disciplinary communication, (b) collaboration with subject teachers, and (c) language teachers’ expertise in teaching ED courses.

This chapter draws attention to Language Massive Open Online Courses (LMOOC) designers might be able to anticipate possible participant behaviour or connector types and other engagements that may occur, accounting for various participants' perceived learning and assessment strategies within networked learning. A mixed-methods approach was used, including an analysis of discussion forum activity, online surveys, and clickstream data. These were used to analyse how participants create, define, and experience their roles in LMOOCs. The chapter reveals that participants positioned themselves within the discussion forums in various ways to connect and engage in the course. Four main themes emerged: influential connector, moderate connector, peripheral/distant connector, and dormant connector. While formal tasks can be established for peripheral, dormant, and silent connectors, the design should recognize that some participants will look for ways to cross boundaries and connect with other participants in an LMOOC to adapt to their language-learning goals.

As established by Halliday (Halliday and Matthiessen 2014),1 systemic functional linguistics (SFL) models language in social context and recognises three general social functions for which language is used: (a) enacting our social relationships; (b) representing our experience to each other and (c) organising our enactments and representations as meaningful text. These are known as the ‘metafunctions’: the interpersonal metafunction enacts relationships; the ideational metafunction represents experience and the textual metafunction organises text. When discussing the three metafunctions, Halliday (1978: 113) points out that ‘the textual function has an enabling function with respect to the other two; it is only in combination with textual meanings that ideational and interpersonal meanings are actualized’. The textual metafunction is realised by the choices a speaker or a writer makes in combining the ideas and reality that he or she wishes to express (ideational), along with the relationship that he or she hopes to project and develop (interpersonal). The organisation of the ideational and the interpersonal plays a key role in developing what it is we mean and how we relate to those with whom we want to interact through language. Halliday (1977: 181) states that the function of the textual metafunction is: specifically that of creating a text, of making the difference between language in the abstract and language in use in other words, it is through the semantic options of the textual component that language comes to be relevant to its environment.