Journal Articles
Defining language goals in EMI: vocabulary demand in a high-stakes assessment in Hong Kong
- Defining language goals in EMI: vocabulary demand in a high-stakes assessment in Hong Kong
- Language and Education, 2023
- Routledge
- 2023
-
- Hong Kong
-
- 1997.7 onwards
-
- Unknown or Unspecified
- Despite the rapid growth of English Medium Instruction (EMI) programmes around the globe, the language goals in such programmes have not been clearly defined, making it difficult to evaluate their success. Accordingly, our paper reports on a study that attempted to identify the language goals, operationalised as the vocabulary expected of learners, by investigating the under-explored area of EMI assessment. We sampled a corpus of 16 sets of examination papers in two subject areas, namely, Biology and Geography, spanning eight years in Hong Kong. The examination papers, analysed for their vocabulary profiles, indicated that students were expected to learn beyond the K3 level (the most frequent 3,000 words in English) and master mid-frequency words (K4−K8) as well as academic words. Our findings suggest that the less frequent words were not often shared by the two subjects. Analysing academic words also enabled us to showcase how some words were common across the two subjects while others were more subject-specific. Pedagogical implications are discussed, highlighting the need for teachers and students to attend to target language goals in EMI, and to consider the subject-specific nature of vocabulary items in EMI. Copyright © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
-
- English
- Journal Articles
-
- 09500782
- https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/en/bibs/c02ab4d8
- 2023-09-19
Recent Journal Articles
Learning strategies for Chinese character handwriting by CSL students in international schoolsJournal Articles
Primary school teachers' classroom-based e-assessment practices: Insights from the theory of planned behaviourJournal Articles
Language choice and code-switching in bilingual children’s interaction under multilingual contexts: Evidence from Mandarin-English bilingual preschoolersJournal Articles
Pathways to early science literacy: Investigating the different role of language and reading skills in science literacy among early primary school childrenJournal Articles
Examining the complex connections between teacher attitudes, intentions, behaviors, and competencies of SEN students in inclusive educationJournal Articles
ADPS: A prescreening tool for students with dyslexia in learning traditional ChineseJournal Articles
Advertising a school’s merits in Hong Kong: Weighing academic performance against students whole-person developmentJournal Articles
The effects of generative AI on initial language teacher education: The perceptions of teacher educatorsJournal Articles