In Hong Kong, the Education Bureau stipulates in the curriculum document that schools should enrich English language learning and teaching through incorporating moral and civic education, and use of information technology for interactive learning. To prepare preservice teachers to meet these pressing demands, an experiential learning project was conducted to engage student teachers outside the formal curriculum to produce a series of digital stories that stress values education for primary school children. A total of 11 bachelor of education students and MATESOL students joined the project, in which they collaboratively developed 12 digital stories using online tools, such as Book Creator and Canva. Interactive learning activities were designed to accompany the digital stories to facilitate school learners to develop positive values and good character, including respect, responsibility, confidence building, problem solving, sportsmanship, friendship, caring, helpfulness, compassion, civic sense and service to others. Various evaluation methods were used to gauge the usefulness of the experiential learning project. These encompass school trials, post-lesson evaluation, student teachers’ self-reflections and interviews. The findings indicate that the experiential learning process not only enabled the participating student teachers to enrich their pedagogical knowledge and skills but also provided opportunities to enhance various generic skills, such as creativity and critical thinking. Evidence shows that experiential learning plays a valuable role in equipping student teachers with the necessary skills for the challenges in their future teaching careers. Copyright © 2023 ECLL.

A corpus provides extraordinarily rich and flexible resources for self-learning and can guide students in finding answers to their language queries. Although corpus linguistics has become mainstream in language research, a corpus-based language teaching approach remains largely unknown to the frontline teachers due to various reasons. In the past few years, our EdUHK corpus team have been working towards bridging the gap between corpus linguistic research and teachers’ teaching practice by introducing a corpus-based language pedagogy (CBLP) to English teachers in Hong Kong, China’s Mainland and elsewhere. In this presentation, we will focus on an awardwinning website, The Corpus-based Platform for Language Teachers (CAP) (https://corpus.eduhk.hk/cap/), and demonstrate how we theorised CBLP and enacted CBLP training for in-service and pre-service English teachers through the learning and teaching resources we created on the CAP website. The CAP website serves as the ideal pathway to transfer our expertise in corpus linguistics to the broad teacher community in Hong Kong, China’s Mainland, and other regions/countries. We will first provide the theoretical framework for CBLP and then use concrete examples from the CAP website to show how we implemented the CBLP training for our target participants to help them develop competence to learn and teach with corpora. Copyright © 2022 ICELEAL.

With the increasing demand for communicatively competent citizens with global perspectives, culture learning has become an important component in the English language curricula in Hong Kong and mainland China in recent years. This paper will examine how culture is represented in two series of textbooks for junior secondary students in Hong Kong and Shanghai, both published by the same popular publisher. The study adopted Moran’s framework (persons, products, practices, perspectives and communities) and Kachru’s three concentric circles (inner circle, outer circle and expanding circle) to investigate how the authors managed the breadth and depth of cultural presentation. Unlike many previous studies which merely relied on manual analysis, this study combined both manual analysis and corpus linguistic tools to conduct a more comprehensive and objective study. The results show that the Hong Kong series outperformed the Shanghai series in terms of the breadth of the local and foreign cultures represented, as well as in terms of Moran’s cultural dimensions. Nevertheless, both series showed an imbalance in terms of Moran’s cultural aspects, with products (e.g., food, sightseeing places) being the most frequently depicted cultural element, and perspectives the least. This reveals a ‘tourist’s perspective’ and a lack of depth in cultural materials, which may not favour learners’ intercultural communicative competence development. Copyright © 2021 IAFOR.

The English language curricula in Hong Kong and mainland China place emphasis on ‘culture learning’. This study seeks to examine cultural depictions in two series of primary English language textbooks published in mainland China and Hong Kong. The study adopted Kachru’s three-circle model and Moran’s 4P framework (referring to products, practices, perspectives and persons) to investigate the breadth and depth of cultural presentation. The findings indicate that both series encompass content on the local culture as well as on foreign cultures. While the mainland textbooks focus on British culture in the inner circle through the cultural aspects of products and persons, insufficient attention is paid to other foreign cultures and the cultural aspect of perspectives. In contrast, Hong Kong textbooks include a wider range of foreign cultures and a more balanced presentation of various cultural aspects. However, both series contain mainly static and congratulatory cultural topics, and neglect the underlying value orientations. Copyright © 2019 Pedagogy, Culture & Society.

The paper explores and describes the kinds of learning attained by a group of Hong Kong preservice teachers who worked collaboratively to develop online grammar teaching resources for school teachers worldwide. Based on the quantitative and qualitative data collected during the ongoing collaboration, lesson tryouts, and post-project evaluation, the project results reflect the value of experiential learning in preservice teacher education. The themes that detail the student teachers’ experiences include textbook evaluation, professional knowledge, core competencies of teachers, and understanding of English language teaching outside the Hong Kong context. Copyright © 2019 Social Science Press.

Language textbooks are written to help students develop language proficiency as well as have a better understanding of the culture of the target group. English instructional materials are usually arranged in the form of linguistic structures and communicative functions, with culture being presented through how native people eat, play, work, dress and live. According to Pfister and Borzilleri (1977), five major cultural themes can be distinguished in foreign language textbooks: the social sphere, family unit and the personal sphere, religion and the arts, political systems and institutions, and the environment sphere. On the other hand, Cortazzi and Jin (1999) suggested another three categories to evaluate English language textbooks: the source culture (the learner’s native culture), the target culture (British or American culture), and the international target culture (other English and non-English speaking cultures). In the present study, a series of popular English language textbooks for primary students, recommended by the Education Bureau in Hong Kong, was compared with the authorized English language textbooks used in mainland China. The aim was to examine how culture is presented in the two regions so as to heighten students’ awareness of being Chinese citizens in a global community and foster international understanding. The research findings could also raise the consciousness of textbook writers and publishers on the need to remove biases in textbooks, and to promote a multicultural environment in the classroom. Copyright © 2018 ACLL.

This study examines the problem of sexism in English language teaching materials used in Hong Kong and Australia. The study investigates the relative frequencies with which females and males are referred to or depicted in verbal and pictorial texts, the order of appearance of males and females, the depiction of their domestic, occupational and social roles, and the use of masculine generic constructions.

To become an effective English language teacher, one needs to have a strong command of the English language, good pedagogical skills and cultural awareness of the target language. Short-term international experiences have therefore become a required component of all pre-service Postgraduate Diploma in Education programmes (English) in Hong Kong. The major aim of the immersion programme is to provide student-teachers with an opportunity to participate in an intensive English language and cultural awareness course at a university in an English-speaking country. Another important aim is for the participants to develop pedagogical knowledge and try out their learning in local schools. In this study the participants were encouraged to reflect on their expectations and experiences of the 6-week immersion programme and to write about these in pre-programme questionnaires, reflective journals, and programme evaluations. Positive feedback about the participants’ language development, understanding of education systems and development of teaching competency was collected. Areas for improvement were also examined. The findings will be of relevance to those institutions which wish to organize similar overseas programmes for student-teachers.

Although the importance of practicum for preservice teachers goes almost unchallenged, specific empirical evidence of growth in language teachers’ practical knowledge in the under-researched context of preservice language teacher education is limited. Informed by both the reflective approach to teaching and an activity theory perspective, this qualitative case study examines what types of classroom practices a group of ESL student teachers learned in practicum experiences, and what pedagogical strategies they appropriated to achieve their learning of those goal-oriented classroom practices. The study is different from the previous teacher reflective thinking studies in that the study participants reflected on their practice teaching experiences, and such reflections were further tested in real-classroom situations and resulted in transformational learning. The results show that the student teachers’ learning of effective classroom practices was essentially prompted by reflection of the challenges and dilemmas encountered in the learning-to-teach process. The study points to the importance of foreign and second language teacher preparation programs promoting and sustaining a culture of reflection to empower preservice language teachers to anticipate or cope with the uncertainties and challenges they will encounter in the practicum experience, which is essential to meaningful learning and knowledge construction.
[Copyright © 2015 De La Salle University.]