Faculty Publications and Conference Presentations

<p>Sentence-level writing errors seem immune to many of the feedback forms devised over the years, apart from the slow accumulation of examples from the environment itself, which second language (L2) learners gradually notice and use to varying degrees. A computer corpus and concordance could provide these examples in less time and more noticeable form, but until now the use of this technology has assumed roughly the degree of language awareness most learners are aiming at. We report on attempts to make concordance information accessible to lower-intermediate L2 writers. These attempts capitalize on some newly available opportunities as concordancing goes online. Our report: (1) makes a case in principle for concordance information as feedback to sentence-level written errors, (2) describes a URL-link technology that allows teachers to create and embed concordances in learners' texts, (3) describes a trial of this approach with intermediate academic learners, and (4) presents preliminary results.</p>

英美等西方國家在20世紀60、70年代進行的課程改革以失敗告終，失敗的經驗顯示如果學校的組織、管理等結構不改變的話，課程變革也無法順利實施。因此，隨之而來的就是大規模的學校重構、學校改進等策略的實施。在這個過程中，變革的焦點又偏向了學校結構的改變而忽略了與學生的學習最密切相關的課程與教學的變革。因此，本文擬以課程實施的不同取向為基礎，分析學校改進所應採取的實施取向。

本実践研究は、実践的コミュニケーション能力の基礎を養う手だてについて、実際の授業の分析を通して検証するものである。実践事例としては、実践的に英語使っての国際交流会の実践について言及する。　　国際交流会では、これまで学習してきた英語を使って交流することで、英語を自然な状況で使う機会を仕組むことの値打ちを確認できた。

<p>There have been recent calls from the government (e.g., Education Commission 2000) for the development of lifelong learning skills in university students. At the same time, however, there have been strong calls from sectors of the business community, along with the government, for students to demonstrate that they have reached 'acceptable' levels of English on leaving university. Many university language courses in Hong Kong, while paying lip service to the need to promote learner responsibility, give learners little chance to control their own learning, and use the limited course time available to prescribe set communication tasks in an attempt to improve performance levels. This chapter reports on a course for first-year engineering students at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) that took a different approach.</p>