Intercultural rhetoric has been studied in the context of second language writing for many decades. This article looks at the topic from a new perspective and offers an experimental study of the effects of intercultural rhetoric on reading comprehension. The experiment was set in Hong Kong, China, and assessed the reading comprehension (using a rational cloze design and quantitative and qualitative recall protocols) of 490 school students who were presented with four rhetorically different texts. Results suggest that the rhetoric of the students' first language (Chinese) had clear effects on reading comprehension.
[Copyright of Reading Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02702710903054949]

The Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) is widely used to assess the vocabulary size of second-language learners of English. The test assesses learners' knowledge of words of different frequencies within general English and of high-frequency words within academic texts. We used the VLT to measure the English vocabulary size of Chinese university students of English in Hong Kong where a large vocabulary is required for academic and professional success. Students achieved high scores for high-frequency words but scored poorly for low-frequency words. We consider the possibility that the low scores reflect a deficit of the test: words were selected on the basis of frequency counts from dated word lists of American words and at the lower frequency levels may not be representative of current Hong Kong English. We compiled a corpus of 14.7 million words of Hong Kong English. Cross-checking revealed a number of VLT words that do not occur in the corpus. We argue that these words are not required by English speakers in Hong Kong and that the lowest word frequency levels of the VLT should be revised to reflect modern Hong Kong English.
[Copyright of Language and Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500781003642478]

The aim of this study was to investigate vocabulary knowledge and growth across two different language-learning programmes in Hong Kong. The two programmes compared were English immersion programmes (IM) and regular English second-language programmes (RL2). While previous research has identified an overall advantage to IM with respect to language development, comparatively little research on vocabulary development in IM has examined the potential interaction between different types of words (in terms of frequency levels) and different types of vocabulary (passive versus active). Furthermore, very little work has compared these two specific educational contexts in Hong Kong with respect to vocabulary growth. Therefore, three different aspects of vocabulary were measured: passive, controlled active and free active word knowledge at different word-frequency levels in grade 7 and grade 9 students in both IM and RL2. The Vocabulary Levels Tests measured students' knowledge of passive and controlled active vocabulary, whereas students' writing was analysed with the Lexical Frequency Profiles to estimate their free active vocabulary knowledge. Overall, IM students outperform their counterparts in RL2 concerning their knowledge of different types of vocabulary at various frequency levels. IM students also experience a more rapid growth in their vocabulary knowledge, especially for the most frequent 2000 words and academic vocabulary. Such findings support the claim that IM can provide a more favourable context for L2 vocabulary learning than regular L2. The results of the present study are discussed in terms of wider implications for vocabulary learning and the effectiveness of the IM programmes implemented in Hong Kong.
[Copyright of Language and Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500780903576125]

Extensive Reading (also known as ERS or the Extensive Reading Scheme) in many Hong Kong schools is viewed, organised and promoted in very narrow and limiting terms. Traditionally, ERS is enacted in the selection and reading of a book followed by the completion of the relevant book card. This paper challenges the prevailing paradigm and encourages teachers to transform their ERS lessons by adopting approaches that will activate and enhance pupils' engagement with the ERS books and ultimately reap long term benefits in EFL/ESL learning. These approaches include making the aesthetic and affective dimension integral to ERS as well as the promotion and adoption of a Vygotskyian social interaction framework in the structure and design of the activities. A description, examples and illustrations of the activities to promote the two approaches are provided for classroom practitioners.
在香港, 學校對於廣泛閱讀計劃 (又作ERS) 的看法、編排及推廣, 各方面仍停留在很狹窄的層面。傳統上, 所謂的ERS, 是先取出書本, 然後閱讀圖書, 最後把有關的資料填在圖書咭上。這文章的目的是挑戰現有的模式, 並鼓勵老師對他們的廣泛閱讀課堂作出改變, 採用不同的方法務求令學生投入於廣泛閱讀的書本中, 以便最終能為學生帶來在英語學習上的長遠得益。這些方法包括: 1) 在課堂活動中加入ERS 固有的美學及情感的原素。2) 採用並推廣Vygotsky 理論中互動社會作用的構想。本文將會就上述兩個方法, 加以詳細描述, 並舉出一些活動和例子, 以供老教師參考。
[Copyright of New Horizons: The Journal of Education, Hong Kong Teachers' Associationl is the property of Hong Kong Teachers' Association at http://www.hkta1934.org.hk/]

This is a report on an action research project which investigates the extent to which dictation can help pupils learn English as their second language in a local government-subsidized Chinese primary school. It documents a teacher-initiated, classroom-based action research which turned English dictation exercises from the traditional types into innovative ones in three upper primary classes. Respondents came from a sample of 97 average-ability pupils from three primary four to six classes in the school. The researcher compared pupils' perspectives before and after the study and reported the consequent changes in pupils' perceptions of their dictation lessons. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected through two sets of structured questionnaires, two semi-structured interviews and teacher's class observation.
[Copyright of Hong Kong Teachers' Centre Journal is the property of Hong Kong Teachers' Centre at http://www.edb.org.hk/hktc]

This study examined the roles of sub-character processing, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and orthographic knowledge, measured using twelve different tasks hypothesized to indicate these four broad constructs, in Chinese character recognition and English word reading among 536 Hong Kong Chinese kindergartners, second- and fifth-graders. The twelve tasks generally showed an increase in performance with grade level. Confirmatory factor analyses comparing alternative models of these four constituents of Chinese word reading revealed a dynamic pattern of children's latent linguistic or reading processing skills development: The best-fitting model of kindergartners' processing was one that included two broad constructs, broadly termed metalinguistic processing and orthographic processing. In contrast, second-graders showed a fine-grained sensitivity to four distinct skills of sub-character processing, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and orthographic knowledge. Finally, the latent processing skills of the fifth-graders converged into phonological and orthographic processing. The contributions of each of these initially specified constructs, i.e., sub-character processing, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and orthographic knowledge, to Chinese word reading varied across each separate grade in regression analyses. The sub-character processing construct was uniquely associated with kindergarten Chinese word reading only. In contrast, the morphological awareness construct was uniquely associated with Chinese word reading in both second- and fifth-graders. The orthographic knowledge construct was uniquely associated with word reading across ail three grades. However, the phonological awareness construct was not uniquely associated with Chinese word reading in any of the groups of children, though it was uniquely associated with English word reading, even with Chinese character recognition skill statistically controlled. These findings

Having language delay--one of the common neurodevelopmental difficulties during childhood--does not only imply an impairment in communication in the 1st few years of life. Previous studies have suggested that language problems have long-term implications for social, emotional, and intellectual development. Researchers have found that early identification and intervention of speech and language delay yields better treatment effects. However, unlike most of the motor developmental assessment tools, language assessment tools are not readily transferred across cultures because of the different linguistic features and the developmental stages of such features in a particular language or dialect. The present study presents an empirical example of the initial development of a culturally sensitive screening protocol, using vocabulary size as the indicator to minimize the effect of linguistic differences.
[Copyright of Journal of Genetic Psychology is the property of Psychology Press . Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00221320903217994 ]