The present study investigated the executive functioning of working memory, inhibition, shifting, and planning in Chinese adolescent readers with dyslexia and how they related to Chinese (L1) and English (L2) reading comprehension. Fifty-seven Hong Kong Chinese students at Grade 7 were compared with 57 typically developing readers of chronological-age-matched controls on their performance on working memory, inhibition, shifting, planning, vocabulary knowledge, rapid naming, and reading comprehension in Chinese and English. Results from the multivariate analysis of variance showed that readers with dyslexia performed worse than the typical readers in executive functioning, vocabulary knowledge, rapid naming, and reading comprehension. Hierarchical regressions indicated that working memory, inhibition, and vocabulary knowledge were significant predictors of reading comprehension in L1 after controlling for age, IQ, and group membership. Furthermore, working memory, inhibition, shifting, vocabulary knowledge, and rapid naming contributed uniquely to reading comprehension in L2. Taken together, these findings suggest executive functioning difficulties in Chinese readers with dyslexia and highlight the differential contributions of executive functioning to Chinese and English reading comprehension; working memory and inhibition appear to play an important role in reading comprehension across different languages. Copyright ©Springer Netherlands.

Teacher collaboration is generally believed to relate positively to student performance. Although many researchers have investigated the influence of teacher collaboration on student performance, much of this work is confined to Western educational contexts. This study used data from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2011 to test the influence of teacher collaboration on student performance in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Results of multi-level models suggest that teacher collaboration is not a significant predictor of student performance in those countries. This study contributes to the literature on teacher collaboration by providing counter evidence to the relationship between teacher collaboration and student performance in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Copyright ©Routledge.

This study sought to investigate the impact of world Englishes (WE) and English as a lingua franca (ELF) research on Hong Kong's ELT curricula and textbooks over the past four decades in three areas: (1) language standards, norms and models; (2) language and intercultural awareness; and (3) strategies for international communication. Based on qualitative and quantitative content analysis, the findings suggest that WE/ELF research has influenced Hong Kong's English language education mainly by accommodating to the changing role of English (from a colonial to international language) and the evolving language use contexts, but there has been little engagement with the pluricentric view of language varieties and variation. The paper offers suggestions to initiate changes that could better accommodate WE/ELF research in the gradual ELT development. Copyright ©Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

In recent years, reflective writings have been increasingly incorporated into the higher education curriculum to enhance students' deep learning and to help assess their experiential learning outcomes. However, as reflective practices gain momentum worldwide, an under-researched question arises regarding whether teachers know how to assess reflection. Drawing on a teacher assessment literacy framework, this study explores how six novice university teachers in Hong Kong understand the assessment of reflective writings from three dimensions. Findings reveal that although teachers demonstrate a strong understanding of assessing reflection in a conceptual dimension (e.g. purposes and approaches of assessment), practically and socio-emotionally, teachers lack adequate knowledge and awareness to perform satisfactory assessment of reflection. The study subsequently discusses how and why certain dimensions of assessment literacy in reflection are prioritised in Hong Kong higher educationand provides a range of implications to improve future reflection practices and research. Copyright ©Routledge.

This article describes the steps we went through in designing and validating an item bank to diagnose linguistic problems in the English academic writing of university students in Hong Kong. Test items adopt traditional item formats (e.g., MCQ, grammatical judgment tasks, and error correction) but are based on authentic language materials extracted from a manually error-tagged corpus of target students' essays. A total of 257 items were developed to assess 25 high-frequency and grave linguistic errors. To validate test items and calibrate their psychometric qualities, four parallel tests were assembled and given to 338 students. Rasch modeling was conducted to examine item dimensionality, DIF sizes, fit indices, reliability, and difficulty. The results supported the validity and reliability of the remaining 219 items in the bank. Moreover, we investigated the effects of item formats and target errors on item difficulty and item-measure correlations and the relations amongst error difficulty error frequency and prevalence. The item bank approach to developing diagnostic tests was found useful insofar as it provided more precise information about knowledge gaps than the corpus-based textual analysis and had the potential to pinpoint high priority areas for remedial instruction. Copyright © Routledge.

In this article, we report on an action case study on the use of mobile-assisted peer feedback to improve second language (L2) speakers' English performance. Drawing on the learning-oriented assessment (LOA) framework (Carless, 2007), the study made in-class use of a newly developed mobile app with the provision of peer feedback. The study was conducted with 25 Business School students in an English for Specific Purposes course at a Hong Kong university. A mixed-methods approach was adopted, including a questionnaire survey, a focus group discussion after the class and a teacher journal. In addition to the participants' general attitudes, two broad themes were found in relation to the participants' learning experience, namely the use of peer feedback and the affordances and constraints of technology. Results showed that students generally agreed on the positive effects of mobile-assisted peer feedback (e.g. real-time and anonymous feedback), while they recognized some limitations such as the small screen size of their phones and the limited number of given rubrics. Finally, we discuss the implications from different perspectives based on the reported themes. Copyright © Sage Publications Ltd.

Traditional grammar pedagogy conceptualizing grammar as rules of thumb fails to provide learners with comprehensive, accurate, or systematic knowledge on the system. The present classroom-based study aims at investigating application of an alternative pedagogical grammar method integrating the pedagogical framework of systemic theoretical instruction and the linguistic framework of cognitive grammar to instruction on the English tense system. Four instructional sessions were conducted in an English language classroom in a Hong Kong secondary school, and impacts of the pedagogy on students' grammatical production were examined by means of tests and focus group interviews. The pedagogical approach was discovered to exert limited impacts on students' controlled and free grammatical production statistically, yet the effect size of the pedagogy on students' grammatical production was large. Several factors ought to be taken into consideration in application of the pedagogy to second language grammar instruction. Copyright © Chinese American Educational Research and Development Association.

Digital technology plays a crucial role in modern second/foreign language education. Enormous changes in technology and the growing emphasis on 21st century skills raise a concern about English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ competencies in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) more than ever. In response to the mounting concern, this study investigates pre-service EFL teachers’ readiness in the use of CALL in the Hong Kong context. It explores the experiences and self-efficacy of participants with respect to the evaluation of the current English teacher education curriculum for CALL at a university in Hong Kong and factors affecting the participants’ acceptance and willingness to use CALL. In-depth interviews were conducted with six pre-service EFL teachers to reveal the reality of the teachers’ attitudes, perceptions and experiences regarding the use of technology. Findings provide insights into the significance of language teacher education in CALL and ways for fostering pre-service EFL teachers’ knowledge and skills in the implementation of CALL. Practical implications are made for effective teacher training for CALL in EFL contexts.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge.]

Morphological awareness (MA) was defined as “awareness of morphemic structures of words and the ability to reflect on and manipulate that structure” (Carlisle, 1995, p.194). MA is viewed as a multi-faceted construct, including aspects like inflectional, derivational and compounding morphology. It has been identified as a crucial metalinguistic awareness influencing children’s literacy outcomes. Though a growing body of evidence has shown positive the effects of MA instructions, it remains relatively unclear regarding what components of MA instructions uniquely contribute to literacy outcomes. This study adopted randomized controlled trial design and examined the effects of English morphological instructions on improving word reading, reading comprehension and spelling skills in 29 Hong Kong Chinese third graders who speak English as a second language. Students were randomly assigned into three groups: a) derivational morphology group (n = 10), b) compounding morphology plus derivational morphology group (n = 10) or c) business-as-usual group (n = 9). All children received intervention for 8 hours (two 30-min sessions per week for 8 weeks) and were administered a battery of linguistic and cognitive tasks, including non-verbal intelligence, inflectional, derivational and compounding morphology, vocabulary, word reading, spelling skills and reading comprehension at pretest and posttest. The results of the study would be discussed in the presentation. The findings may shed light on the causal role of morphological awareness on literacy development as well as the optimal manner in teaching morphological awareness. Copyright © 2020 ARWA.

This paper investigates the application of Sydney School genre-based approach (Rose and Martin, 2012) for developing critical literacies in L2 settings. Genre-based pedagogy was originally developed in Australia to provide disadvantaged learners with more accessible instruction of academic literacy and its potential to improve students' critical thinking skills remains considerably under-investigated. With comparative case studies of one Secondary 6 class in a Thai bilingual secondary school, one Secondary 4 class in an EMI school in Hong Kong, and one Secondary 6 class in a Content and Language Integrated Learning program (CLIL) in Sweden, where English is not the medium of everyday communication, the paper explores the affordances of the genre-based pedagogy to improve secondary students’ critical literacies in L2 English regarding gender issues in the EMI Social/Liberal Studies curricula. Results indicate that a) the Sydney School genre-based pedagogy is effective for enhancing students' ability to express critical thoughts in L2 English in the three cases and b) it is important to adapt Sydney School genre-based pedagogy to the specificity of the L2 settings. The paper therefore proposes that more lexical and grammatical support should be offered to ESL secondary students for development of critical thinking in the social science classrooms. Copyright © 2015 The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. All Rights Reserved.