There has been global popularity of the Chinese language for the past three decades. With a vast market of 1.4 billion people and enormous business opportunities in China, the Chinese language as a foreign or second language is taught in more than 2,000 universities in over 80 countries and countless primary and secondary schools. Hong Kong as part of China after the handover of sovereignty in 1997, the learning and teaching of the Chinese language as a native language in Hong Kong has experienced remarkable changes throughout the years. Hong Kong used to be a British colony where the East meets the West and played an essential role in bridging the gap between Chinese and Western cultures. For historical reasons, Hong Kong tends to be a bilingual city and advocates trilingual biliterate in education, which means students are encouraged to learn and speak Cantonese (a local dialect), write traditional Chinese characters (versus simplified Chinese characters in Mainland China), Putonghua (Mandarin) and English. In general, English is used in business and public affairs as an official language and Lingua Franca whereas Chinese is another official language used in daily communication. In terms of language education, students learn Chinese because it is their first language and cultural identity while learning English has instrumental values. It is, therefore, Hong Kong society has generally prioritized English over Chinese, and students do not attach much importance to Chinese language learning. This chapter first analyzes the challenges and development of Chinese language learning and teaching in Hong Kong in the past 50 years. It also discusses the controversial issues of language education policies, including the division of Chinese language and literature, the teaching of Classical Chinese, the teaching of Putonghua, medium of instruction (MOI), non-Chinese speaking (NCS) students learning Chinese, aiming to review the Chinese language education in Hong Kong. It is hoped

This chapter addresses the limited research on equipping teachers with relevant knowledge and enhancing students' motivation in the context of Hong Kong. Previous studies in Hong Kong have primarily focused on measuring the motivation of students in specific language skills while neglecting the investigation of how to effectively train teachers in motivational strategies. To fill this gap, an intervention was conducted to examine the change in motivational strategies among pre-service Chinese teachers in Hong Kong. Adopting Dörnyei's Motivational Strategies Framework as the theoretical framework, the study utilizes pre-and post-self-report with over 116 pre-service Chinese teachers and followed up by a focus group interview. The aim is to understand their perceptions of various motivational strategies and how these perceptions are formed before and after the intervention. By taking a pragmatic approach, the study seeks to provide valuable pedagogical insights for practicing teachers and bridge the gap between motivation theories and classroom practices. Copyright © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Sin Manw Sophia Lam, John Chi-Kin Lee and Chung Mou Si; individual chapters, the contributors.

The study examines the teaching of Chinese characters in Hong Kong primary and secondary schools. Currently, the “learn character through reading text” approach is widely used, but it lacks an explanation of the connection between form, meaning, and sound. This study aims to provide a systematic understanding of word form and meaning through an etymological approach – Systematic Chinese Etymon Acquisition (SCEA). The system helps students understand Classical Chinese and recognize the different meanings of the same character in various texts. The study involved 114 Year 10 students from a local secondary school in Hong Kong. Learning materials aligned with the school's Chinese language curriculum were used for one month. Pre-and post-tests were conducted to assess the students' knowledge of Classical Chinese vocabulary, and questionnaires were administered to gather feedback on the SCEA approach. The data were analyzed using SPSS. The findings revealed that the participants' knowledge of etymology improved significantly. They demonstrated a stronger understanding of the meaning and extended meaning of Chinese characters, as well as an increased awareness of Chinese culture. Based on these results, pedagogical implications for teaching Chinese characters will be proposed. Copyright © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Sin Manw Sophia Lam, John Chi-Kin Lee and Chung Mou Si; individual chapters, the contributors.

During the coronavirus outbreaks, a policy of suspending school was implemented in Hong Kong, so that education occurred remotely, and precipitated the greater use of technology in home-based contexts. This mixed methods research project was guided by a model of teacher and student uses of technology named the passive-interactive-creative/replace-amplify-transform (PICRAT; Kimmons et al., 2020). We worked with 46 kindergarten teachers to design and implement STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) home learning inquiries during the period that school was suspended. Content analysis showed that these teachers used digital technologies to replace traditional learning scenarios, amplify the learning content, and create innovative content that had the potential to transform learning. However, many teachers still maintained a more passive orientated approach to teaching (eg, watch a video). In addition, few teachers adopted live streaming of schooling at this time, in part because of technological difficulties.Teachers also highlighted the challenges in learning with new technologies, including frequent technological difficulties, and being able to address children’s specific technological needs, as well as other factors in the home context. To address these challenges, the teachers highlighted the need for more technological support (eg, from their schools) to learn how to use the necessary technology more effectively to be able to support the creative design of learning activities. They also emphasized the importance of open communication between teachers, children, and parents in order to understand children’s needs more effectively and to facilitate exploration, creativity, and to engage in problem posing and solving. Copyright © 2024 by Information Age Publishing.

Teacher written feedback (TWF) refers to the written comments, corrections and responses offered by second language (L2) teachers on students’ writing drafts. This practice, being considered common and important in scaffolding L2 students’ writing process and improving writing products, has attracted significant research attention.Among the existing literature, two gaps have been discovered. Firstly, the majority concentrated on written corrective feedback (WCF), indicating feedback exclusively on linguistic and grammatical errors. However, in many English-teaching classes, teachers not only provide linguistic feedback, but also deliver feedback on non-linguistic aspects of writing problems, including content, organisation, genre and linguistic use. Moreover, L2 students were found to expect different aspects of TWF in their writing. Thus, research on WCF exclusively is insufficient to generate a comprehensive comprehension of TWF, does not reflect the teaching practice in authentic classes and ignores the preferences of students. Secondly, research on TWF was mostly quasi-experimental, investigating the efficacy of feedback on writing performance. This overemphasis on the written products as evidence of learning overlooks the learning that could happen during the process where students engage with TWF and the individual and contextual factors that come into play during the process. Thus, there is a call for more research on learner engagement with teacher feedback on all aspects (i.e. local, global and praises) and how various writer-related and contextual factors mediate engagement. To respond to this call, the current qualitative longitudinal case study tried to fill the gap by investigating how Chinese English-major university students with diverse English proficiency levels engaged with TWF from cognitive, behavioural and affective perspectives in a naturalistic classroom setting as well as examined individual and contextual factors that mediated student engagement