This paper explores tow major challenges facing students using English as a language of instruction (ELI) in secondary education and discusses some pedagogical principles teachers need to apply to help students meet these challenges. The two challenges explored are: 1) learning complex curriculum content; and 2) learning the complex language of the content, with academic language becoming a focus of learning. Three pedagogical principles are discussed: 1) plan from the content; 2) integrate content and language teaching; and 3) teach the language of the content explicitly. The paper presents three examples of secondary ELI pedagogy to illustrate how the challenges can be met by applying these principles. The three examples show how ELI teachers1) model the language of the content to students, 2) elicit from students the language of the content, and 3) help students write the language of the content. In all the three examples, the ELI teachers identify the language of the content through knowledge relationships, suggesting that this can be an effective aspect of pedagogy in an ELI context. The paper uses data from four projects that researched ELI classrooms in Hong Kong and Xi’an in Mainland China.
[Copyright © 2010 The Asian Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language.]

Despite a long history of publicly-funded English immersion education, late immersion in Hong Kong is not achieving the dual goals of content and second language learning at levels that an immersion curriculum can expect. The growing importance of English in the Asia Pacific region places an urgent demand on Hong Kong, and indeed its neighbouring cities and countries, to improve language-in-education policies and practices. To support the improvement of an aspect of practice within the late immersion curriculum, this paper offers a pedagogical framework for integrating content and second language teaching and learning to guide late immersion pedagogy. The proposed framework draws on three main sources of knowledge: first, the concepts of knowledge structures, text structures and language objectives; second, some of the teaching and learning problems observed in late immersion classrooms in Hong Kong; third, extensive experience of working with teachers who have attended an in-service immersion teacher education programme.
[Copyright © 2008 The Asian Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language.]

This paper reports on the assessment of readiness and receptivity of school principals, English panel chairpersons and English teachers for the implementation of the new senior secondary curriculum (NSSC) in English Key Learning Area (KLA) in Hong Kong. Recent research ahs probed into the dilemmas and challenges faced by school administrators and frontline teachers when facing curriculum change. Such challenges exist in the management of change, the teachers’ readiness for change, and in problems with collaboration among the stakeholders. Drawing on these research findings the analysis of this paper focuses on whether such problems are also re-occurring in the implementation of change in the NSSC, and if so, considers how they can be resolved. Using qualitative research procedures four key questions were addressed: how far the school personnel understood the changes in the NSSC; the extent to which they felt they could implement the new curriculum; which factors encouraged/constrained implementation; and the possible effects of change on schools. The findings showed that schools with students of high or medium ability seemed to be more positive in terms of perceptions and receptivity at the initial stage of change, while schools dominated by cohorts of medium or low academic ability students appeared to be resistant to the shift in pedagogic arrangements. Yet all the school principals interviewed expressed their unreserved agreement with the spirit of the new curriculum.
[Copyright © 2009 The Asian Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language.]

This paper reports on a qualitative study that examined the perceptions of eight preservice English language teachers from mainland China about their English language learning experiences within an undergraduate teacher education program in Hong Kong. Based upon a framework of identity construction, and using in-depth interviews conducted at regular intervals during their freshman year, the study explored how the participants’ constructed identities as English language learners as they crossed geographical and educational boundaries to pursue higher education in Hong Kong. The study illustrates that the participants’ experienced challenges in realizing the multiple language learner identities they sought to attain and that this may have resulted in conflicts and antagonism between different identities positions. Implications for providing language learning opportunities to mainland Chinese learners enrolled in higher education institutions in English speaking environments are discussed and suggestions for future research considered.
[Copyright © 2011 The Asian Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language.]

Research into the teaching and learning of speaking in the ESL context is relatively neglected. There have been only a few studies that addressed the need to incorporate the development of strategic competence into the L2 oral classroom (e.g., Cohen, 1998; Dornyei, 1995; Konishi & Tarone, 2004). This paper will report findings from a strategy interventionist study conducted in the secondary English oral classroom in Hong Kong. Based on a psycholinguistic model of speech processing, eight strategies were identified and introduced to the treatment class in the study. A data collection method comprising stimulated recall interviews and observations that aimed to investigate respectively the learning process (i.e., covert thoughts) and the learning product (i.e., overt speech) was employed. A comparison of the findings between the treatment class and the control class which was not exposed to any strategies-based instruction supports the view that not all strategies are equal and that some are more teachable than the others. Specifically, 'Resourcing' seems to function as a 'bedrock strategy' for young L2 speakers. Possible implications for strategy instruction are made with a view to enhancing the development of strategic competence in the L2 classroom.
[Copyright © 2005 The Asian Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language.]