Noun of locality acts as an indicator to identify the relationship of object location. Anderson (1971) and Lyons (1977) established the Localist Hypothesis and the Localism in the 70s’. They realized that spatial concept can derive other related vocabulary, particularly the extended meaning and metaphor, It plays an important part in the human cognition. When people try to express their spatial concept, direction, shape, or location of the object will be considered. However different culture of people will have very different spatial and locality concepts. Comparative analysis is employed for different meanings and usages of “shang(上)/up/on/in” and “xia(下)/down/under” as words of locality which are commonly used in Chinese, but are often misused by the L2 students (they are the Pakistani primary students in this study) due to the variety and asymmetry of “shang, xia” in their culture, including the two-dimension concept, three-dimension concept and the mechanical movement concept. Based on our analysis, we examine their literal learning difficulties, and to identify their misunderstanding and misuse of locality “shang, xia” on spatial concept. From the result of error analysis, it did reveal the very different spatial and locality concept of Pakistani students with that of the Chinese Hong Kong students. Through the contrastive analysis from linguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives of both languages and culture, it helps us to provide strategic help for the non-Chinese students with focus!

Studies on cognitive process pose a breakthrough in the research of writing in recent decades. Most of them are first language studies and concentrate on the stage development of the process writing, that is to observe the behavioral level of performance of the student. However, related research in helping student aware of improving his writing skills right at the moment of composing is still lacking. This exploratory study is undertaken to investigate the transformation strategies of spoken Cantonese to written English by secondary students in Hong Kong. Students who started extended writing in Form I will be studied, and the major method to gather data is think-aloud---protocol analysis. The subjects will be asked to write a narrative essay that he is familiar to. The whole writing process will be audio-taped, and the resulting protocol will be transcribed and analyzed in comparison with the text produced. The think-aloud protocol is the intended representation of the thought of the subject during writing, while the written text is the executed representation. The discrepancies of the two representations involve the process of transformation by the subjects during writing. With the knowledge, we could have more insights on locating areas to help students the learning of second language to improve the proficiency, on the issue of medium of instruction, and on striking a better balance of our language policy as well. Some possible pedagogical implications are presented.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]