Collaborating with universities in Hong Kong, Finland, the United Kingdom and Australia the research project outlined in this paper takes up one of the key initial findings related to the importance of children's online spaces away from school. The project brings together complementary strengths from each partner nation to assist our mutual need to understand the worlds of our young "netizens" - the new public citizens of cyberspace. Differing in social and cultural context, each setting is recognised as a strong contributor to understanding the competencies of young people's digital expertise. We work from the shared view that the arrival of Web 2.0 and 3.0 social networking tools is educationally challenging and demands futuristic thinking for sustainable education and social connectivity globally. Our research aim is to use a common research design to discover how young people are behaving in the new online spaces; what guides their decision-making; and what, if any, common values appear to emerge when results between countries are compared. Locally derived knowledge gained from samples of 12-year-olds will be subjected to cross-cultural comparisons and validation. In doing so, we make some assumptions about the homogenising process that shared global networks may be fostering. Bringing together these contributions will strengthen the decision-making process and provide new knowledge about meaning making, agency and citizenship for the twenty-first-century e-democracy. This paper reports on the conceptual process underlying the research and the research design.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10382040903251158]

This paper presents data from a largescale ethnographic study into the perceptions, concerns, and preferred lecturer strategies of one group of Hong Kong secondlanguage (L2) engineering students who were attending lectures given in English. Although such investigations often focus purely on the 'problem' dimensions students have when listening to lectures, there are aspects to the lecture event which students identify as aiding their listening comprehension. These positive dimensions of lectures are the focus of this paper, and were identified using journals, interviews, and focus groups, and categorized under language features and pedagogical features. The data presented also suggests that lecturers need to adopt specific lecturing strategies in order to make the content materials more accessible to this type of student.
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Although cultural stereotypes of Asian students as being prone to rote learning, passive and teacher-dependent have been under criticism, the issue of the extent to which Asian heritage culture impacts on Asian students' learning attitudes and behaviour warrants further investigation. This paper reports on an empirical study which compares self-directed language learning attitudes, strategies and motivation among university students in mainland China and Hong Kong. In doing so, the author aims to investigate: (1) whether there are any differences/similarities in learning attitudes, strategies and motivation between these two groups of Asian students; (2) how these differences/similarities could be explained in terms of the cultural (i.e. Confucian) traditions or situational factors such as institutional contexts and social environments. Data were collected through both questionnaire and interviews. The findings of this study suggest that institutional contexts and social environments rather than cultural traditions tend to determine students' attitudes towards, strategies in and motivation for learning English. Implications for illuminating the validity of Littlewood's (1999) 10 predictions about the forms of learner autonomy in East Asian traditions are then discussed.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434630802307890]

This paper highlights the crucial role of phonological instruction in early second language English learning. Although older learners can acquire grammar and vocabulary efficiently, younger learners appear to have a greater facility with the learning of sounds. Thus, it makes good sense to focus on articulatory skills for these early learners. By comparing the developmental norms in phonology between an L1 (Cantonese in this study) and an L2, detailed predictions can be provided to guide the process of early phonological instruction. It is important that the teaching of articulation should not be reduced to non-engaging lessons that can be characterised as 'drill and kill'. Instead, a framework for improving the articulation of children learning English as a second language is proposed. What is unique about this proposal is that it represents the first attempt in Hong Kong to specify and integrate research findings concerning developmental speech norms with existing teaching practice.
[Copyright of International Journal of Early Years Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09669760802699860]

In this study, an instrument for measuring the quality of undergraduate programmes in hospitality, tourism and leisure (HTLP) was developed and empirically cross-validated. The study considered how total quality management (TQM) and context-input-process-product (CIPP) perspectives could be integrated to develop the framework, using documentary analysis, focus groups and content validity. Survey responses from 430 full-time teachers were used to verify the instrument for HTLP (IHTLP) via exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and six standards, 12 dimensions and 63 indicators were identified. The six standards, in terms of relative importance, are curriculum and instruction; faculty; strategic planning; administrative management; student achievements; and resources. The implications for HTLP are also discussed.
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