Members of four teams comprising local and international exchange (IE) students, who had undertaken service-learning (SL) projects in Hong Kong, were interviewed about factors influencing cohesiveness within their teams. They indicated that a major barrier was language-related and could result in the withdrawal or exclusion of IE students. Students also identified three factors that fostered cohesiveness. These were: (1) local students’ willingness to conduct meetings in English; (2) local students’ readiness to provide interpretation and translation at external meetings; and (3) the willingness of IE and local students to establish reciprocal and empathetic relationships. Students reported that the benefits were improved English language skills, greater flexibility and broadened horizons. We offer suggestions about to prepare local and IE students to work together on SL projects. Copyright © 2019 The 3rd International Conference on Service-Learning (ICSL).

Academic presentation (AP) is the most common type of oral tasks for academic studies. It is not only a means for speakers to exchange their ideas with (and gain feedback from) members in the academic communities but also provides speakers with an opportunity to develop higher-order thinking skills, through the process of which construction of new knowledge takes place. Regarding its unique roles, speech functions, linguistic and discourse features, recent scholarly discussion and research findings on academic presentation suggest that AP should be taught as a genre, and yet there is still a scarcity of research-based pedagogical instruction or instructional materials designed for EAP contexts. To be able to deliver quality presentations, ESL/EFL learners, as new comers of the academic communities, not only have to face the linguistic and cognitive demands, but also develop new identities and roles that are often very different from their L1 cultures. This chapter discusses the needs of ESL/EFL learners and their challenges in developing academic presentation competence in EFL contexts, such as Hong Kong. Following on a review of the knowledge, skills and strategies pertaining to the development of academic presentation competence and a discussion about current EAP practices, a pedagogical framework for EAP settings, comprised of designated tasks and evaluation measures, is proposed. Copyright © 2018 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

This study aimed to develop a corpus-aided pronunciation teacher-training programme and examine the effectiveness of a corpus-aided pronunciation teaching approach in English classrooms in Hong Kong. A workshop was conducted for 86 participants to introduce several English learner corpora. After the workshop, eight volunteer participants, pre-service teachers in Hong Kong, were paired off, entered into a seven-stage corpus-aided pronunciation teacher programme and attended interviews. One pair was selected to give a trial lesson, and 13 primary school students were invited to evaluate this lesson. The results revealed that the training provided sufficient knowledge about corpus-aided pronunciation teaching and task design. The pre-service teachers expressed a strong willingness to use corpus data as examples to raise students' awareness of commonly mispronounced sounds. They agreed that the flipped instruction component was effective. Of the 13 primary school students, 83.33% agreed that they learned how to pronounce the target sounds correctly, and 75% were able to identify their mispronounced sounds via the corpus-aided teaching method. The findings will not only provide pre-service teachers with examples of corpus-aided pronunciation lesson plans and materials but also contribute to integrating the flipped classroom approach into teacher education programmes. Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Phonology in second/foreign (L2/FL) listening has not received much attention from scholars and teachers. This article reports on a mixed-methods study which set out to fill this gap by exploring the effectiveness of explicit instruction in phonology and the use of songs to enhance English-as-a-L2 (ESL) learners' listening abilities in Hong Kong. ESL learners (n = 92) aged 17-20 participated in a three-month experiment. Data from pre-, post-listening tests and semi-structured interviews were collated. The findings demonstrated the efficacy of L2 phonology instruction in improving learners' L2 listening. More remarkably, the positive effect was augmented when the instruction was coupled with phonological analyses of song lyrics. However, using songs alone for gap-filling exercises (as is commonplace in L2 classrooms) was not found to be effective.
[Copyright of International Journal of Applied Linguistics is the property of John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.]

This paper investigates the representation of social values and their ontogenetic development in English as a foreign language textbooks in Hong Kong. Adopting a social semiotic approach, it considers social values in textbooks as semantic categories which are constructed by complex semiotic discursive resources, and develops an explicit framework to model what values are selected and how the values are constructed. Analysis of 19 textbooks from Primary 1 to Secondary 4–6 shows that the social values change from the personal domain (e.g. good hygiene and healthy lifestyle), through the interpersonal domain (e.g. politeness and respect), to the altruistic concern for all mankind. The result also suggests that the textbooks are more concerned with the didactic education of good citizens than with cultivating children's critical thinking. The analytical framework and the findings can be used for the explicit instruction and critical analysis of social values in English language teaching.
[Copyright of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education is the property of Routledge.]

English as a second/foreign language education (ESL/EFL) in the supplementary setting is under-researched despite its prevalence worldwide. This quantitative study investigated the effects of supplementary and mainstream ESL/EFL education on eleven facets from learners' secondary-level and tertiary-level perspectives. In addition, we examined learners' perception of the usefulness of supplementary and mainstream classes in equipping them for the use of English for different purposes in the tertiary setting. 203 participants studying at two tertiary institutions in Hong Kong completed a 72-item questionnaire. The MANOVAs conducted revealed significant main effects of education settings (i.e. supplementary/mainstream) and education levels (i.e. secondary-level/tertiary-level) as well as interaction effects of these variables on learners' perception. There were also significant differences in learners' views of the usefulness of the two education settings in preparing them for the use of English for specific purposes at tertiary level. This article culminates with a discussion of these findings and implications.
[Copyright of Studies in Educational Evaluation is the property of Elsevier Ltd.]

This presentation discusses the infusion of IELTS exemplars and standards descriptors into instructional materials to promote assessment for learning. The discussion is based on teachers’ experiences of a Year 2 English course offered in a university in Hong Kong which requires students to attain a specified IELTS standard before graduation. To help students to attain the required IELTS exit requirement, IELTS exemplars and standards descriptors are incorporated into the training materials. Drawing upon students’ responses, this presentation will suggest practical ideas for developing instructional materials by (a) effectively helping students approach and overcome difficulties in comprehending standards descriptors with specific reference to their own language problems, and (b) achieving the above through interactive in-class activities to help teachers use proficiency standards to develop meaningful curricular materials and assessment practices. It is hoped that the outcomes of this project can counterbalance ‘instrumentalism’ (in achieving standards) and ‘learning’ in academic settings where testing is a policy concern. Copyright © 2017 Asia TEFL.

As part of a package of measures designed to enrich the English language learning environment in Hong Kong schools, the government has recruited up to 700 native-speaking teachers of English (NETs) to join the predominantly non-native speaking Chinese staff teaching English in the local secondary schools. To get an accurate assessment of the operation of the NET scheme, an evaluation project entitled The Monitoring and Evaluation of the Native-speaking English Teacher Scheme (MENETS) was commissioned by a language and research funding body of the government. This large scale research project, involving some 100 schools, employs three major methods to achieve its investigative purposes: assessments, questionnaires, and case studies. In this paper, the presenter will focus on the quantitative measurement of the ESL learners' spoken & written language production before and after increased exposure to a native speaker model.

This article will present the findings of an interventionist study designed to examine the effects of oral communication strategy teaching (OCST) on learners’ performance and on strategy use. Two classes in the secondary ESL classroom in Hong Kong participated in the study; one class received 16 hours of OCST and the other served as a comparison group. In weeks 1, 10 and 20, data were collected from the learners’ performance in group work discussions, self-report questionnaires, observations of learners’ strategy use, and stimulated recall interviews. The findings indicate that the treatment class generally outperformed the comparison class. In addition, there was corroborating evidence from the multi-method approach to support the view that young L2 learners tend to rely on ‘bedrock strategies’ in oral communication tasks. The findings will be discussed with respect to explicit and implicit learning and to a match between the cognitive/linguistic demands of strategy use and the learners’ proficiency level. Finally, the distinct advantages of using a multi-method approach to gauging the effects of OCST are appraised.
[Copyright © 2006 Centre for Language Studies of the National University of Singapore.]