This paper explores the intricate relationship between identity and language use in a multilingual university context by analyzing a Filipina international student’s narrativized accounts of her experiences in a Hong Kong university. The findings suggest that the international student’s identity negotiation and language practices vary markedly across contexts and appear to be shaped by different language regimes operating in different in-class and out-of-class spaces within the university. The study also reveals that various language ideologies mediate the international student’s situated identity negotiation and language use, including ideologies pertaining to the relationship between language and ethnicity, the relationship between English proficiency levels and the local/non-local student categorization, and the hierarchization of different varieties of English. Overall, the study argues for the need to attend to the complex and dynamic interplay between identity negotiation, language use and language ideology in understanding the international student’s experiences in a multilingual university context. Copyright ©2024 Routledge.

One of the driving forces for a wider adoption of English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) in higher education is that students may demonstrate improvements in English language proficiency through an increased English exposure from content learning. However, to what extent previous English exposure has an impact on students' learning experiences remains unanswered. This paper contributes to filling this gap by analysing quantitative data of 73 undergraduate science students from Hong Kong, classified by their prior English language exposure. Students completed a survey exploring their perceptions of their (1) exposure to EMI prior to university admission and the actual language use in classrooms; (2) English abilities in different learning activities; (3) English language challenges; and (4) learning strategies. Results showed that students' perceptions of EMI learning varied with their levels of English exposure prior to university admission. Despite encountering more difficulties in using English among first-year students with lower-level English exposure, all students perceived the importance of English skills in science education and adopted different learning strategies to overcome the EMI study challenges. Copyright ©2024 SAGE Publications.

Despite the rapid growth of English medium instruction (EMI) in higher education, little research has been conducted to pinpoint the challenges faced by students. This quantitative study explored the challenges posed by the secondary–tertiary transition to first-year students with different English proficiency levels in EMI higher education institutions. In addition, we also investigated students’ perception of the usefulness of supplementary and mainstream education in preparing them for those challenges. 91 participants studying at two tertiary institutions in Hong Kong completed a 52-item questionnaire. The questionnaire included items in relation to three major aspects of challenges: ‘academic studies and skills’, ‘socialization’, and ‘college/university life adaptation’. It was found that students with low proficiency regarded all three aspects as significantly more challenging than the high proficiency ones in their first-year studies. However, despite the different proficiency levels, students similarly perceived mainstream education to be significantly more useful than supplementary education in preparing them for those transitional challenges. The findings together suggest that more English support is needed for low-proficiency students at the tertiary level and argue that mainstream education plays an essential role in assisting students in this secondary–tertiary transition. Implications are discussed in terms of the benefits of having a general English course as perquisite for low English proficiency students before they enroll in English for Academic Purposes courses, and the development of a variety of tasks with more emphasis on communication and collaboration at the secondary level to support them in this transition. Copyright ©2024 Springer.

While language teachers play a crucial role in fostering critical thinking in students as a means of strengthening their capabilities in problem-solving, informed decision-making, and effective communication, integrating critical thinking (CT) into classrooms can be challenging. This challenge is particularly prominent for teachers of English as a foreign-language (EFL), where orientation to exams and traditional teaching methods tend to prevail. Guidance and support from language teacher educators during the pre-service stage is therefore crucial, in order to equip language teachers not only with the solid knowledge and skills required to integrate CT into their pedagogy, but also with the resilience and sensitivity to determine when CT should be introduced to their students. This qualitative case study examines the attempts made by two language teacher educators in a pre-service EFL teacher education program in Hong Kong, focusing on their beliefs and practice in preparing language teachers to be critical thinkers who would be capable of effectively teaching CT in their future language classrooms. Data was collected from classroom observation and semi-structured interviews with the two participants over one academic semester. Qualitative and inductive analysis of the data revealed that both teacher educators held a strong belief in the crucial role of CT in language learning, teaching, and teacher education. Through the CT instructional strategies of triggering, exposing, guiding, and extending, they incorporated CT into their teacher education courses, with the goal of fostering a pedagogy oriented toward CT in their student teachers. The study concludes by providing insights for stakeholders interested in adopting CT-integrated language teacher education in EFL contexts. Copyright © 2024 College of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Chengchi University.

This chapter explores the influence of technology on the pedagogical strategies instructors employ to enhance student outcomes at an English-medium instruction (EMI) institution in Hong Kong. As an integral component of course delivery, technology presents both opportunities and challenges in EMI settings. This interpretive qualitative study involves nine students and three instructors, who volunteered to participate in semi-structured interviews. The findings indicate that technology is pivotal in bridging and enhancing learning outcomes. The students strongly preferred instructors who incorporated technology into their teaching, adopted student-centred approaches that facilitated language-learning autonomy, and offered clear guidance on digital tools. The study also identifies the need for professional development focused on using technology purposefully to support instructors’ learning goals. The findings offer valuable insights and recommendations for students, instructors, and institutions aiming to integrate technology into EMI environments effectively. Copyright © 2025 selection and editorial matter, Xuyan Qiu and Rui Yuan; individual chapters, the contributors.

The present study aimed to develop and validate a questionnaire assessing parents' beliefs about, and attitudes toward, supporting young children's English as a second/foreign language development -- Parent English Language Belief and Attitude Questionnaire (PELBA-Q). The PELBA-Q was piloted with 173 parents of kindergarten-aged children and further validated with a sample of 278 parents in Hong Kong. A series of exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to explore the factor structure and evaluate model fit, which resulted in a 20-item questionnaire with four factors (i.e. Perceived Importance of the Home Environment; Perceived Child's English Language Ability and Self-Efficacy; Normative Beliefs; and Control Beliefs). The convergent and divergent validity of the PELBA-Q were also established by examining the relationship between the PELBA-Q and parents' home practices and family characteristics. The PELBA-Q had satisfactory model fit indices and demonstrated good reliability and validity. The findings showed that the PELBA-Q could potentially be used as a sound assessment tool for measuring parents' beliefs and attitudes on young children's English as a second/foreign language development and could contribute to greater understanding of how parental beliefs and attitudes may influence home practices and children's English language learning outcomes. Copyright ©2024 Routledge.

In bilingual education programmes, teachers, particularly content subject teachers, play an important role in helping students master content knowledge and the target language simultaneously. In this regard, teachers' language awareness, which will affect their pedagogical practices, is crucial. Collaboration between content subject and language teachers is argued to be effective in enhancing teachers' language awareness and strategies of integrating content and language teaching. This study explored this by investigating 12 secondary schools in Hong Kong which implemented partial or full English Medium Instruction, with a specific focus on how cross-curricular collaboration was implemented, and whether this may have promoted teachers' language awareness and practices. With questionnaires, interviews, classroom observations and artefacts, the study observed that teachers were generally aware of the difficulties students encountered when learning content subjects through English, and content subject teachers tended to recognise their roles of incorporating language teaching into content lessons. Such self-reported language awareness was corroborated by the various strategies integrating content and language teaching in the observed ­lessons. These findings demonstrate a cyclic relationship between cross-curricular collaboration and teachers' language awareness -- teachers' language awareness is essential to make cross-curricular collaboration happen, and it is further reinforced after teachers collaborate with each other. Copyright ©2024 Routledge.

The way in which different cities teach children to read in Chinese may have an impact on the skills they later utilize to acquire English word reading skills. This study examined the relative contributions of several cognitive–linguistic measures to English word reading for Chinese students learning English as a second language in two Chinese cities, one whose school system teaches Pinyin (Beijing) and one whose school system does not teach Pinyin (Hong Kong). Students in grades 2–3 completed measures on Chinese morphological awareness (MA), Chinese phonological awareness (PA), Pinyin writing, and English word reading. In the Beijing group, it was found that PA (β = 0.334, p < 0.01) and Pinyin (β = 0.257,p < 0.05) were significant predictors of English word reading. In contrast, in the Hong Kong group, only MA (β = 0.263, p < 0.05) was found to be a significant predictor of English word reading. The difference in predictors could be due to the availability of a phonological tool (Pinyin) for the Beijing students when learning Chinese, while the Hong Kong group may have relied more heavily on learning using MA and rote memory techniques. Overall, the results from this study provide data supporting the benefits of having a phonological tool like Pinyin for Chinese children when learning to read in English. Copyright ©2024 MDPI.

A growing number of studies have explored the ways how teachers contingently respond to students' unexpected responses or a lack of student responses in second language classrooms. From a sociocultural perspective, teacher contingency involves a departure from the lesson plan in local response to the unexpected or unforeseeable actions in the classroom interactions (van Lier, 2001). This study adopts translanguaging as an analytical perspective in order to examine how a teacher employs various resources to contingently respond to students' initiatives and reformulate his utterances in order to prompt student participation. The data are based on a larger linguistic ethnographic project in a Hong Kong English-Medium-Instruction secondary history classroom. This paper reconceptualizes the notion of teacher contingency and argues that the process of how the teacher contingently responds to the unexpected outcomes that arise in real-time interactions is a process of translanguaging. Such a process requires the teacher in orchestrating the available linguistic and multimodal resources to construct pedagogical actions on the spot, instead of being planned in advance. Copyright ©2024 Oxford University Press.

A key pedagogical goal in any classroom is to engage students in learning. This study examines how an English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) teacher employs available resources to engage his students in the classroom for promoting participation, keeping the lesson moving forward and meeting the pedagogical goals. The data for this study is based on a intensive fieldwork in an EMI secondary history classroom in Hong Kong. Multimodal Conversation Analysis is deployed to analyse the classroom interactional data. The classroom analysis is triangulated with the video-stimulated-recall-interviews that are analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The study's crucial theoretical contribution is that it broadens our comprehension of an EMI classroom as an integrated translanguaging space, which may involve various fluid and mobile translanguaging sub-spaces. This paper aims to illustrate the process of engaging students affords the teacher to create different translanguaging sub-spaces at a whole-class level and at an individual level. It is argued that creating these translanguaging sub-spaces requires the teacher to mobilise available resources for catering for the different needs of all students, which promotes interaction and inclusion in the classrooms. Copyright ©2025 Routledge.