In this chapter, the author, educated and trained in the UK, shares his experience of teaching first language Chinese students in Hong Kong. There is little doubt that there are many talented students in Hong Kong, who are industrious and are driven towards their work. However, at the same time, students from local Hong Kong schools may also appear as quiet and introverted compared with their Western counterparts, and they tend to keep themselves to themselves. Although not unique to Hong Kong, it is not uncommon for a teacher to meet with total silence when raising a question or inviting comments in Hong Kong classrooms. However, this does not necessarily mean students are mentally disengaged but, rather, just being reluctant to speak out. Hence, the question is, why do Hong Kong students appear to be shy? Silence may not be golden in a classroom environment nowadays, where enquiry-based learning is becoming more accepted in Hong Kong international schools. Whereas, Hong Kong students from local schools are still being bounded by traditional Chinese classroom culture, in which the teacher would do most of the talking, while the students maintain their attentive nature and intensive learning required of them. This is further exacerbated by the lack of confidence some students have in their use of English. Foreign teachers wishing to teach in Hong Kong need to adapt their Western teaching model and have an appreciation of the differences of language structure and cultural backgrounds. Copyright © 2017 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

The perception of falling standards in education, and in second language teaching in particular, has been a constant refrain for the past 20 years as changing needs and practices affect economic processes and manpower requirements.Within this context, this article deals with the establishment of language standards ('benchmarks') for teachers of English in Hong Kong. The article deals with two separate but linked notions: first, the notion of which model of the English language should be used as the standard model for English language teacher benchmark assessment in Hong Kong; second, the level of language ability that will be decided upon in order to establish the proficiency standards expected of teachers of English. The article first describes the background to the setting of language standards for teachers of English in Hong Kong. It then examines the selection of and justification for the model of English selected as the 'minimum standard'. The following section considers the level of language ability agreed upon as the standard that teachers of English need to attain. The article concludes with an examination of the extent to which the standards that have been agreed upon match the needs of the major stakeholders in the standard-setting process. Copyright © 2002 John Benjamins Publishing Company.

This study investigated the effects of two vocabulary instructional approaches on Chinese EFL primary school students (n = 31) to vocabulary learning, extended and incidental instructions, with using a between-subject design. Student's general intelligence and initial English ability were entered as covariates. The extended instruction featured multiple encounters to vocabulary, providing opportunities to apply as well as encouraging active and deep processing. The incidental instruction featured natural exposure to the words and learning vocabulary through readings. The instructional effects on student's vocabulary knowledge were assessed by three measures: target word mastery, expressive definition as well as word association. Extended instruction showed an advantage in building up vocabulary breadth in students compared to incidental instruction. Both instructions seemed inefficient on enhancing depth of vocabulary knowledge. Implications of present findings are discussed and directions about future research are suggested. All rights reserved.

The current paper examined the effects of A Balanced Reading Approach for Children Always Designed to Achieve Best Results for All (ABRA), a web-based literacy programme developed by the the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance (CSLP) at Concordia University, on primary school children in Hong Kong. The participants were 249 Primary 1 students from two low social economic status schools in Hong Kong and the two schools were well-matched on many demographic characteristics. All participating students were pre-tested in the fall and post-tested in the following spring. After adjusting for pretest differences, the treatment school scored significantly higher than the controls on three of the six outcome measures at post-tests: phoneme-grapheme correspondence (ES = +0.22, p < 0.05), phoneme segmentation (ES = +0.46, p < 0.00), and nonsense word fluency (ES = +0.22, p < 0.06). Both treatment and control students scored similarly on word reading, listening comprehension, and initial sound fluency. The outcomes of the study provides some promising evidence of the effects of ABRA on Chinese primary students in Hong Kong, especially on the enhancement of phonological skills, thus leading to early success in the formative years of learning English as a Second Language (ESL). Practical implications are discussed.
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As one of the essential skills for success in work and studies, English communication is often made a key component in the GE curriculum of tertiary study programmes. In addition to the provision of required English proficiency courses, many tertiary institutions have established English centres of some description to promote English learning on campus. Yet from students' perspective, what kinds of programmes and activities should be offered, and how they feel about these initiatives is not very widely discussed in the existing literature. This paper aims to address these questions with practical experiences gained from a project to establish an English language enhancement centre by one self-financing tertiary institution in Hong Kong. Funded by the Quality Enhancement Support Scheme (QESS), the centre, titled the Centre for Academic and Professional Language Enhancement (CAPLE), was set up in March 2016. Cognizant of the benefits of life-wide learning, independent learning and collaborative peer learning, CAPLE offers a series of workshops and various kinds of English and culture learning activities that adopt these pedagogical approaches. Centre usage figures and user feedback were continuously collected for evaluative purposes. Data collected through student diaries, online surveys, usage records of the online programmes and other resources and a focus group interview showed varying levels of popularity of different types of workshops/activities, suggesting there is a need for programme designers to have a more realistic view about students' actual English learning needs and learning motivation. Recommendations are made accordingly for more economical use of resources.
[Copyright of English Language Teaching is the property of Canadian Center of Science and Education]

Self-efficacy beliefs regarding the teaching of English language in reading, writing, listening, and speaking were assessed in a sample of 55 prospective Chinese teachers who were trained to teach English as a second language in Hong Kong. These teachers reported that their sense of self-efficacy in teaching speaking and writing seemed to go together, whereas their sense of self-efficacy in teaching reading emerged as relatively distinct. Prospective teachers with teaching-practice experience did report significantly higher scores on self-efficacy in teaching speaking-writing than those without teachingpractice experience. Implications of the findings for efforts to enhance teaching performance through enhancing teaching self-efficacy are discussed. The use of information technology such as blog-based teaching portfolio is suggested to provide an avenue through which prospective teachers' self-efficacy beliefs could be closely examined to provide insights into the changes of self-efficacy in relation to teaching effectiveness. Copyright © 2010 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

The use of English as the language of international communication has increased dramatically and this has been accompanied by a growing trend for the teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL) to young learners all over the world. However, young EFL learners are doubly disadvantaged because of their relatively limited exposure to English as well as their cognitive immaturity. Given that there is a dearth of research-based evidence documenting the teaching and learning of a foreign language by young learners in Asian contexts, this paper draws upon a multiple case study of three Hong Kong kindergarten teachers and examines the pedagogic conditions within which the teaching of English took place. Data were collected through teacher interviews and classroom observations. Constraints and limitations in pedagogical conditions were identified and these were felt to contribute to both a product-oriented pedagogy and relatively low levels of children's engagement in learning English. The product-oriented pedagogy was also recognized for having digressed from the rhetoric of the curriculum guidelines. Challenges facing Hong Kong and its Asian counterparts in teaching English in an EFL setting are highlighted for further research and discussion.
[Copyright © 2013 臺灣師範大學英語文教學中心 & Airiti Press Inc.]

The English and Chinese reading proficiency of 1376 Grade 4 students in 24 Hong Kong primary schools were assessed using measures developed for the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study. Students' parents provided information about home reading activities (HRA) aimed at supporting their children's reading prior to them entering school ("early home reading activities", EHRA) and during Grade 4 ("home reading activities"). Results indicated that EHRA was a stronger predictor of reading performance in both Chinese and English than HRA. Moreover, 'typical' HRA such as reading books, telling stories and singing songs were found to be predictive of reading performance in both Chinese and English. In English, in addition, playing word games or character puzzles were also activities beneficial to reading performance. Together, these results provide evidence for the beneficial effects of traditional early childhood activities at home such as book reading, telling stories and singing songs for reading performance in later primary school in children's first as well as second language.
[© Australian Council for Educational Research 2017]

The integration of popular culture into English language learning has recently been formalised in the Hong Kong New Senior Secondary curriculum, with the development of critical reading indicated as one of the key objectives. Whether and how students respond to popular culture texts is, however, under-researched. The present paper reports findings from a study that investigated how a group of 33 senior secondary (Grade 11) students from three schools representing different levels of academic performance in Hong Kong conducted reading of an authentic print English advertisement. In small groups, the students articulated in Cantonese, their first language, an analysis of the text including its purpose, target audience, and intended impacts. Insights from Stuart Hall's three major decoder positions (dominant reading, oppositional reading, and negotiated reading) were drawn on to conduct a qualitative content analysis of the students' reading. The findings showed that three-quarters of the students irrespective of their English proficiency levels displayed evidence of critical consumption of the text, but many seemed to have constructed oppositional or negotiated reading positions due to their failure to appreciate linguistic creativity, and spontaneous evaluation of the visual images. The authors argue that language curricula in schools should strengthen students' critical multimodal literacies.
[© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group]