New social annotation practices have the potential to become a “signature pedagogy” for educators in literary studies, because social annotation encapsulates both the expected learning outcomes and the underlying value commitments of literature education. We give an account of a project conducted by colleagues at the Education University of Hong Kong, during which colleagues explored social annotation technologies in literary studies courses. After implementing social annotation in our courses, instructors held roundtable discussions, collected surveys and conducted focus group interviews. Basing our interpretation of these data on Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory of reading and writing, we propose that social annotation can help students engage with literary texts more effectively by showing them how to move toward an aesthetic mode of reading. Students participating in social annotation, moreover, understood its application to literary studies in ways that directly reproduced Rosenblatt's account of literary interpretation. Copyright © 2020 The Author(s).

The exam-oriented education system in Hong Kong has created a language learning environment that is largely confined to traditional classroom settings, which may not take best advantage of students' abilities to relate what they have learnt in class to real-life scenarios. Such learning environments may have implications for the way second language learners learn a new language. Numerous studies suggest that drama activities used in language classrooms can enhance second language learning. These studies put forward tasks that generate pleasant and rewarding experiences, enhance confidence and subsequently increase motivation to learn a language. By focusing on students studying in a beginning French course at a tertiary institution in Hong Kong, this article reports on how drama activities make a target language more enjoyable and easier to recall. Classroom observations and interviews with students (N = 30) revealed that learning French via drama had a number of positive effects on second language learners especially in terms of their confidence. The learning of French through drama may provide a language learning environment that enables students to apply their French language skills more effectively in real-life situations. Copyright © 2019 Adam Mickiewicz University Press. All rights reserved.

Jacques Rancière has given us a strong ethical framework for the use of drama in education, but his model is incomplete. In Hong Kong, an examination-driven system often conflicts with teachers' idealistic ambitions. We suggest a way of expanding Rancière's model with reference to Étienne Wenger. We use this framework to examine a group of student teachers on practicum. Student teachers can use drama in the interstices by a process understandable on Wenger's terms, and successful on Rancière's terms. We use Wenger's terms 'alignment', 'engagement' and 'imagination' to characterise these student teachers' search for meaning in teaching.
[Copyright © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.]

If drama is to work as a technique for language education, it needs to work as drama, but in Hong Kong, the objectives of each lesson must be language objectives. This implies that we need intermediate objectives, process objectives, to make drama work for language education. This article examines two previous models of drama in language education, drawing imagination, aesthetics and emotion from them as process objectives. It is proposed that all three should be used in a single complex model. This study focuses on a course that presented this three-part model to student teachers, examining survey and interview data together with their essays for the course. Student teachers find the model to be usable in practice. Obstacles arise from the school system, however.
[Copyright © The Hong Kong Institute of Education].

In this paper, we shall explore academic writing in the framework of academic literacy development among Hong Kong university ESL learners of language and education programs. We shall also discuss discipline-specific academic writing in terms of the continuum comprising academic writing in science, social science and humanities and the implications for developing academic writing skills of Hong Kong ESL learners. In particular, we shall discuss in detail a number of issues regarding academic writing in the disciplines of language and education.
[The International Journal of the Humanities Copyright © Common Ground, Zhichang Xu, Lixun Wang, Pui Man Jennie Wong, Matthew DeCoursey, All Rights Reserved. The journal web site is located at http://ijh.cgpublisher.com/]