Undergraduates are often advised to expand their discipline-specific vocabulary in order to cope with the rigor of reading and writing academic texts. For the students studying in English-medium settings, it is in their interest to acquire vocabulary in their disciplines as this is vital to academic success. While students recognize the importance of discipline-specific vocabulary acquisition, they are typically unable to do so due to their heavy work on learning and assessment tasks. With the advent of mobile technology, one way to address this problem is to create vocabulary apps. To meet this need, this paper presents a gamified, discipline-specific vocabulary learning app Books vs Brains@PolyU. It was developed to help busy undergraduates to build a repertoire of the vocabulary across seven disciplines. We explored students' perceptions and evaluation of this tool via interviews with sixteen student participants of the project. The results show that students found the tool useful and motivating, indicating the effectiveness of the app in helping busy undergraduates to build and expand their knowledge of discipline-specific vocabulary. Copyright © 2021 Hong Kong Bao Long Accounting And Secretarial Limited. All rights reserved.

While technology use is becoming increasingly common in education, teachers remain reluctant to use it and hesitant on how best to incorporate it into their teaching and practice.  There is a strong demand from institutions for English language teachers to cope with the changing landscape of teaching in the 21st century.  This explorative study investigated Hong Kong tertiary teachers’ beliefs on continuing professional development activities to enhance their teaching.  The study had a two-phase research design, with an initial questionnaire (N = 58) followed by semistructured interviews (N = 12) to unpack the participants’ hidden voices.  The findings illustrated that most teachers are enthusiastic about professional development activities, though there is a misalignment between what universities value and reward and what teachers see as most beneficial for enhancing their teaching practices.  The results suggested that professional development activities should focus on sharing good teaching practice (e.g., informal chats, mentoring) within universities rather than on rewarding attending conferences and on-off, nonintegrated workshops. Copyright © 2021 Lucas Kohnke.

This study investigated the English writing anxiety experienced by preservice English as second/foreign language teachers in Hong Kong, and its impact on their written corrective feedback (WCF). A total of 34 highly proficient preservice teachers responded to the Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (Cheng, 2004), which measured writing anxiety in three dimensions (i.e., cognitive, somatic and avoidance anxiety). Ten were selected to provide WCF to a sample student writing and receive an individual interview immediately afterwards. Over half of the 34 participants were found suffering from moderate or high levels of writing anxiety, especially in the cognitive dimension. Compared to their less apprehensive peers who adopted more indirect feedback, highly anxious student teachers had a clear preference to direct and comprehensive feedback. Their WCF practices were found affected by five factors, including their conception of English writing, concerns of teacher professional credibility and work ethics, concerns of student cognition and motivation, confidence in students’ ability, and their feedback experience as students and student teacher during teaching practicum. These factors were synthesized into a grounded-theory model of four internal forces that drive student teachers towards either a focus-on-form, direct, comprehensive approach to WCF or a broad-based, indirect and selective approach. Suggestions were made for further research. Copyright © 2020 Qin Xie and Junting Yuan.

Due to it being generally regarded as an effective pedagogic approach, the flipped classroom has been widely applied in various disciplines in higher education in many places around the world, but has rarely been used in primary English education. This research investigated teacher and student perceptions of the impact, feasibility, and potential of the flipped EFL classroom by conducting a one-year project among 277 students and eight teachers in a primary school in Hong Kong. Teacher and student reflection, roundtable discussion minutes, and trainer observation and logs were employed as means of continual data collection. The results showed that the flipped classroom improved the teacher–student relationship and teaching and learning performance, and increased teacher and student motivation and confidence. This study demonstrates the high feasibility of using the flipped classroom for primary English education and its great potential for providing students with personalized learning, developing their self-regulated learning and active learning skills. Copyright © 2021 The Author(s).

This research conducted diagnostic assessment of problems in first-year undergraduates’ English academic papers and tracked potential sources of the problems to the writing process and strategy use. Data collected include 339 term papers and interviews with 17 students. The samples were manually error tagged and marked against a detailed diagnostic checklist. The resultant textual features were then compared between two subgroups of Chinese students in the sample, namely, those graduating from local schools in Hong Kong (LS) and those coming from the mainland and sojourning in Hong Kong (MS). The analyses found both groups had the poorest performance in source integration and vocabulary use. LS used simpler words and made more grammatical errors, whereas MS attempted sophisticated vocabulary more successfully and used a wider variety of words and sentence structures. The difficulties they experienced, however, were rather similar, residing mainly at the researching, planning and formulating stages. Action control theory was introduced to interpret the self-regulatory strategies they adopted to cope with perceived difficulties during the writing process. Strategies to control goals, control resources, and control cognitive load were found to be the most typical. While these strategies could reduce their difficulties, only some seemed also to help with performance. A conceptual framework is proposed at the end to link writing products, process and self-regulatory control strategies as evidenced in the study. Four diagnoses are drawn with suggestions for practice and further research.本項研究對大學一年級本科生英語學術論文寫作中存在的問題進行了診斷性評估，並通過審視寫作過程和策略使用，追蹤了問題的可能來源。收集的資料包括339篇學期論文和十七次學生訪談。研究人員對所有文本進行了詳細的錯誤標記，然後系統地比較了來自香港本地學校 (LS) 和來自大陸並在香港求學的中國學生 (MS) 這兩個組別的文本。比較發現，兩組學生都在文獻整合和詞彙使用方面表現最差。 LS的文本中使用了更多的簡單詞彙，語法錯誤也更多，而MS運用了較多的複雜詞彙，單詞和句子結構變化也較為多樣。就寫作過程而言，兩組學生遇到的困難很相似，主要存在於1) 對寫作內容進行研究，收集整理和消化資料，2) 制定寫作計畫，和 3) 撰寫這三個階段。研究應用了行為控制理論來分析寫作中的策略使用，結果發現策略主要用於控制目標，資源和認知負荷。這些策略雖然可以幫助學生減輕困難，但只有少數有助於提高文本品質。基於本研究的發現

Integrated writing is increasingly used in language assessment programmes. As a hybrid task, it requires students to coordinate different language skills, i.e. listening, reading and writing, to retrieve information from multiple sources, and compose an essay for a specific purpose. Tapping into the varied skills that contribute to successful integrated writing is especially beneficial for low proficiency students. However, the mechanisms underlying the impact of these skills on integrated writing performance have yet to be thoroughly studied. This study sampled 103 first-year undergraduate students in Hong Kong who showed relatively low proficiency in Chinese language. They completed three independent tasks measuring their listening, reading, and writing skills; an integrated listening-reading-writing task; and an integrated writing strategy use questionnaire. The results indicated that together, the independent skills accounted for 29.5% of the variance in integrated writing performance, suggesting that integrated writing is a skill that goes far beyond the simple combination of listening, reading, and writing. Independent writing showed the strongest correlation with integrated writing, while both independent listening and independent writing exerted direct and indirect effects on integrated writing performance. However, the effect of reading on integrated writing performance was insignificant, even though the two were significantly correlated. These results offer insights into the complex relationships between the skills. The findings enrich our understanding of the construct of integrated writing, as well as suggest strategies for teaching less proficient learners. Copyright © 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

This multiple-case study investigated the experience of three preservice teachers who attempted formative assessment (FA) strategies in their English as a second language writing class during their teaching practicum in a secondary school in Hong Kong. Based on data from 17 lesson observations and 24 interviews, the study examined the three teachers’ implementation of FA strategies during cycles of pre-, while- and post-writing stages. Also analyzed are the teachers’ reflections on and their mentors’ and students’ evaluation of their FA implementation. The study found the teachers could translate their understanding of FA principles into teaching and assessment strategies appropriately, but the school’s accountability culture worked against their innovation. School mentors’ open-mindedness and support to their FA attempts were found to be crucial. The findings are discussed centering on key issues in the relational, developmental and contextual dimensions of the teaching practicum and their impact on preservice teachers’ practice and attitude. Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In Hong Kong, the revitalization of vocational education and training (VET) was best marked by the advocacy of vocational and professional education and training (VPET) starting from 2015. VPET hence is a key element in the vocationalization of secondary curriculum, which provide students with a diversified post-secondary articulation and to enhance the school-to-work transition for better employability in the future. In 2018, the Education Bureau (EDB) also launched the Vocational English Programme (VEP) Grant (EDB, 2018) at the senior secondary level to support English learning of students who might opt for a VPET development pathway, in addition to the NSS English language curriculum. Under this background, there are two main research focuses in this paper. Firstly, this paper will explore the relationship between VEP and the NSS English language curriculum and discuss the potential impact to students. Secondly, this paper will also survey other related available initiatives similar to VEP, such as the Workplace English Campaign (WEC) under the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (SCOLAR), to better illustrate the landscape of vocationalization of English learning in Hong Kong throughout the years. In the current body of literature, more attention has been dedicated to the use of English and the specialized genre in the professional settings from the English for specific purposes (ESP) perspective, with relatively less focus on a vocational context. Therefore, we consider it is essential to fulfill this gap considering the continuous development of VPET. This paper will report findings from interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders (e.g. teachers and students) to generate a more holistic understanding to the research focuses. We hope that the conclusion and suggestion in this paper could provide inspirations to map out the future development directions of English learning in the (pre-)vocational context. Copyright © 2019 Inaugural Conference

This study sets out to address the call for more ecologically valid research within the field of second language acquisition (SLA) (e.g., Spada, 2015). A considerable body of research has investigated the effects of input spacing, that is the amount of time between learning episodes, on the learning of foreign language (L2) vocabulary. This body of research has overwhelmingly demonstrated that more distributed conditions lead to better learning and retention than when there is a short gap between learning episodes (Carpenter, 2017) However, as the vast majority of this body of research has been carried out in laboratory settings with adult learners, the degree that these results necessarily generalize to authentic classroom contexts is questionable. The present study attempts to address this gap in the literature by examining the learning of L2 vocabulary within an authentic L2 learning context in an elementary school context in Hong Kong.This study followed a pretest-delayed posttest design to examine the effects on input spacing on the acquisition of L2 vocabulary, specifically English adjectives. Across four primary classrooms, participants (N=52, L1 Cantonese) were taught 20 English adjectives by their normal classroom instructors over two learning sessions. Half of these adjectives were taught following a spaced-short schedule (1 day between learning episodes), the other ten adjectives following a spaced-long schedule (8 days between learning sessions). A multiple choice post-test was administered following a 4 week delay. In contrast to the findings from previous, laboratory-based research, the results of this study found a significant advantage for the spaced-short condition, thus suggesting that previous findings of lag effects in L2 vocabulary learning might not be robust to the variabilities present in authentic learning environments. The results will be discussed further in light of previous research into distributed practice effects and theories of bilingual

In 2017, the Curriculum Development Council (CDC) issued the latest secondary education curriculum guide with the highlighted theme “Learning to Learn 2+”, which introduced “Vocational English” for senior secondary level in the “Progression of VPET with Diversification” section, along with “Applied Learning as elective subject(s)” (ApL) and “Career-related Experiences in OLE”. To support this new initiative, the Education Bureau (EDB) launched a new Language Fund Project “Vocational English Programme” (VEP) Grant for schools to enrol senior secondary students on related vocational English courses, which commenced in the 2018–2019 school year. The programme aims to boost students’ confidence and interest in English learning and prepare them better for vocational education and jobs / occupations. In this new programme, each participating school can nominate about 20 students to attend courses administered by third-party course providers. From a macro-perspective, the introduction of the VEP is a step to implement vocationalization of English which complements the advocacy of Vocational and Professional Education and Training (VPET) outlined in the latest curriculum guide. However, from a micro-perspective, the impact of VEP on the senior secondary and post-secondary level does raise some questions and concerns worth further investigation – for instance, the connection of the VEP to other VPET-related components in the “Learning to Learn 2+” curriculum; the influence of the VEP on the current senior English curriculum; and the curriculum design, accreditation and articulation of the courses. This paper discusses the potential impact of the VEP based on a thorough review of relevant policy documents and literature, together with the analysis of data from interviews with students and teachers from both secondary schools and post-secondary level institutions to triangulate their views on the VEP. The paper ends with feasible suggestions and possible implications for the vocationalization