Fluent speakers of a target language choosing to enrol in beginner-level courses at tertiary institutes could be considered unfair. In this paper, however, based on data obtained from in-depth qualitative interviews with 12 students at a Hong Kong university, we show that fluent speakers of Japanese – a widely-spoken foreign language in Hong Kong – were motivated to engage in learning activities during beginner Japanese lessons, as those lessons constituted 'safe houses' in which the participants shaped subversive identities against the perceived institutional dominance (GPA-oriented system) of the university and negotiated security. Our key findings related to the participants' L2 motivations are three-fold. First, perceived ease pertained to the participants' motivations to enrol in the course. Second, the participants were motivated to 'outsmart' the university's dominant GPA-oriented system and 'cash in' their accumulated effort to achieve fluency in Japanese, 'converting' it into good grades. Third, the participants showed motivation because they believed beginning Japanese lessons to be sites in which they could feel secure, due to being able to speak Japanese and extend their Japanese-related social networks. This paper concludes with implications for L2 motivation research and suggestions for language teachers who are faced with such fluent speakers in beginner-level language classrooms.
[Copyright of Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development is the property of Routledge.]

This paper reports an investigation of Chinese-speaking and English-speaking children's general visual perceptual abilities. The Developmental Test of Visual Perception was administered to 41 native Chinese-speaking children of mean age 5 yr. 4 mo. in Hong Kong and 35 English-speaking children of mean age 5 yr. 2 in. in Melbourne. Of interest were the two interrelated components of visual perceptual abilities, namely, motor-reduced visual perceptual and visual-motor integration perceptual abilities, which require either verbal or motoric responses in completing visual tasks. Chinese-speaking children significantly outperformed the English-speaking children on general visual perceptual abilities. When comparing the results of each of the two different components, the Chinese-speaking students' performance on visual-motor integration was far better than that of their counterparts (ES = 2.70), while the two groups of students performed similarly on motor-reduced visual perceptual abilities. Cultural factors such as written language format may be contributing to the enhanced performance of Chinese-speaking children's visual-motor integration abilities, but there may be validity questions in the Chinese version.
[Copyright of Perceptual and Motor Skills is the property of Ammons Scientific Ltd. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.2466/10.24.27.PMS.114.2.433-445]

The gendered speech in a foreign language has been found to pose barriers for learners due to different gender norms associated with their mother tongue and the foreign language. The problem is especially serious with the masculine and feminine forms of speech in the Japanese language, as these are strongly linked with social inequality between men and women. While a number of previous studies have been conducted on feminine style of Japanese and foreign language learners, still little is known of masculine speech of Japanese and foreign professionals who use Japanese in their intercultural work contexts. The present paper investigates attitudes towards the use of masculine Japanese among Hong Kong professionals. It includes the finding that, unlike in monolingual contexts, in multilingual contexts masculine Japanese was perceived among the respondents as projecting not only the quality of Japanese masculinity but also of group solidarity and native speaker status in the language and culture. While the respondents felt that it could be an effective device for constructing their professional identity, the decision to use it appeared to involve a careful analysis of their professional contexts and identity considerations. The implications of the analysis for teaching Japanese as a foreign language are discussed.
[Copyright of Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434630802147932]

Subordinate femininity associated with feminine Japanese has been found to pose barriers for foreign language learners of Japanese, especially among Western female learners of Japanese. The present study investigates attitudes towards the use of both masculine and feminine Japanese among non-native professional speakers of Japanese. The latter's experiences can enlighten language educators in their efforts to help struggling learners cope with using language loaded with traditional gender roles and gender inequality. Data from interviews with male and female professionals who use Japanese in the courses of their work in Japanese companies in Hong Kong were used to study the problems posed by 'masculine' and 'feminine' Japanese for foreign learners of Japanese. It was found that Hong Kong professionals often use masculine and feminine Japanese in order to gain native-speaker status in the language. The study has implications not merely for the teaching of Japanese as a foreign language but also for the teaching of gendered aspects of foreign languages generally, especially when professional identity and status are involved.
[Copyright of Language, Culture and Curriculum is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07908310802287681]