This research project involved a mixed-methods study investigating language-related challenges of first-year students at an English Medium Instruction (EMI) university in Hong Kong. The two-phased sequential study employed a questionnaire survey and semi-structured student interviews. The survey and interview findings indicate that first-year students face a number of language-related academic challenges during their first year at an EMI university in writing, reading, speaking, and listening, many of which appear to stem from lower levels of vocabulary knowledge in English, unfamiliarity with academic and technical terminology, and limited exposure to varieties of English. Additionally, the findings suggest that these challenges can vary significantly based on background and first language, relating specifically to three different demographic student groups: local Hong Kong Cantonese-speaking students, Putonghua-speaking mainland Chinese students, and non-Chinese speaking local and international students. © 2023 The Author(s).

Gender stereotyping has long been an issue for gender and language research from as early as the 1970s, and analyses on gender representation in English language textbooks have been frequently conducted. However, gender representation in assessment papers, another commonly occurring genre in education, remains unexplored in Hong Kong research. Therefore, this paper was aimed to explore how males and females are represented in Territory-wide System Assessment (TSA), a territory-level assessment administered in Hong Kong, to find out if gender stereotyping is still an issue. The data of the current study include the recent 10 years of TSA Primary 3 English Language Reading & Writing papers. A total of 33 sets of TSA Primary 3 English Language Reading & Writing papers was analysed by using content and linguistic analyses for their written texts and visual analysis for visual elements. The key findings include: males and females are represented similarly in the written texts and in the visuals, and females are portrayed as involving in occupational roles more frequently than males in both the written texts and visuals. However, it is always females who were drawn to be focused on family matters, and the marital status of a female is still distinguished by the use of either Miss or Mrs. Suggestions for test paper designers and examination authorities are given and implications for future research studies are drawn at the end of this paper. Copyright ©Springer New York LLC.

The present study investigated the co-occurrence of word reading and spelling difficulties for Chinese first language (L1) and English second language (L2) and the role of morphological awareness in word reading and spelling ability across two languages. A total of 110 Hong Kong Chinese-speaking students in Grade 7, including 55 adolescents with dyslexia (28 males, mean age = 152.11 months) and 55 typically developing adolescents (27 males, mean age = 151.85 months) participated. They were assessed on the cognitive-linguistic measures of morphological awareness, phonological awareness, vocabulary knowledge, rapid naming, word reading, and word spelling in L1 and L2. Multivariate analysis of variance showed that compared with the typical students, adolescents with dyslexia had poorer performance in all L1 and L2 measures except the phonological awareness in Chinese. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that for both groups of students, morphological awareness contributed uniquely to word reading and spelling in L1 and L2; rapid letter naming contributed uniquely to English word spelling. Findings highlight the importance of co-occurring difficulties in L1 and L2 reading and spelling and that morphological awareness may play a critical role in predicting word reading and spelling across languages for Chinese adolescents with dyslexia and those without difficulty. Copyright © Sage Publications Ltd.

This paper examines the unintended consequences of state language policy and planning (LPP) that adopt subtractive approaches on teachers' subsequent receptivity to policy fine-tuning. A comparative approach is adopted in this statistical study of two strategic contexts, where the influence of the world's two leading languages—English and Mandarin—manifests in the home language conversion patterns of ethnic Chinese teachers of Hong Kong and Singapore. The interplay among state, education, and family linguistic domains provides the framework to understand how teachers exercise agency underpinned by their sociolinguistic background (childhood home language—CHL) and home language conversion preference (home language as adult—HL). The results show that teacher CHL–HL conversion preferences underlie their response to state LPP initiatives and influence LPP outcomes in the education domain. The results are theorized in terms of the prevailing values in Hong Kong and Singapore that shape teacher agency, the unintended outcomes of subtractive LPP in education, and the probable outcomes on the linguistic vitality of local and dominant languages in Hong Kong, with the interplay between future subtractive LPP and teacher agency. Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Recent research has documented the rapid growth in the number of universities offering degree courses using English as the medium of instruction (EMI) throughout Asia. While some of this research has considered the impact of EMI instruction on student learning, only limited attention has been given to the experiences of other stakeholders, such as academic staff who are expected to deliver EMI courses in tertiary institutions. Therefore, this chapter explores the perspectives and experiences of academic staff at a large EMI tertiary institution in Hong Kong. Using a framework of teacher identity, the chapter considers the role of EMI policy and practice in the ability of academic staff to negotiate multiple identities, including ‘academic economist’, ‘researcher’, and ‘teacher’, by revealing the dominant discourses that constrained and enabled their professional identity construction. The data describes the challenges that academic staff experience in constructing their preferred identities in an EMI environment and how they negotiated such challenges. Implications for policymakers wishing to support the identity construction of academic staff at EMI tertiary institutions throughout Asia and beyond are considered and suggestions for future research discussed.

This paper presents a personal picture of my long-standing association with the English language teaching and assessment situation in Hong Kong. The paper presents a 50-year retrospective of assessment in Hong Kong, through the lens of my own 35-year stint in the territory and my personal experience of English language teaching, teacher education, and assessment. I present a historical and theoretical picture of how English language examinations have moved forward in Hong Kong, and how I was fortunate enough to be involved in the big changes which were taking place in English language assessment in particular. While the picture I portray through this paper is a rather personal one, it contributes to an understanding of how assessment reform has been forward-looking, and largely successful, in Hong Kong, painting a picture of how assessment development has complemented curriculum development. I suggest that it may be instructive for educators in other jurisdictions to consider the long-term picture of development in English language assessment reform in their own country with a view to analyzing their own perspectives concerning the relative success of policy changes and large-scale reforms.
[Copyright © 2015 Brunei Darussalam : Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of Education, Universiti Brunei Darussalam.]

The present study examines how gender is represented in the visuals (or illustrations) of two English Language textbook series used in most primary schools in Hong Kong. Instead of conducting frequency counts of the occurrence of male and female characters in illustrations or the spheres of activities they engaged in as in previous textbook studies, this study involves qualitative analyses of how visualised male and female characters are represented in the selected illustrations of the analysed textbook series in terms of their hair length and clothing. The results show that human females were more often portrayed having long hair than short hair and wearing dresses than trousers in both line drawings and photographs. For the colour of clothing, although blue and pink are generally considered ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ colours respectively, less than half and only a small percentage of the human males and females were portrayed wearing blue and pink respectively. For non-human characters, again, colour is not always a reliable cue to their sex. Yet, they can be recognised as males and females by the generally accepted ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ colour and clothing items.

Teaching English as a second language in Hong Kong has been undergoing considerable change in the last two decades, from the Oral-structural Approach to the Communicative Approach, and more recently the Task-based teaching and learning. Hong Kong ESL teachers are having to rethink classroom strategies. This poses a particular problem for student teachers who have limited understanding of what this involves. Moreover, the only experience they can rely on is their own as pupils, and this has been rendered largely irrelevant at a time when the standard of English in schools in Hong Kong is said to have been declining. The speaker explores how eight student teachers who consider themselves linguistically deficient develop their professional knowledge in learning to teach ESL. Results show that the thinking, knowledge and practices of these student teachers who entered teacher education with an 'empty disk' did change critically on the course. Implications are drawn for developing TESL programmes for teaching candidates who are less competent in English.