This article analyses the study-abroad identity of Central Asian undergraduate students in a Hong Kong university. It draws on the narrative data to explore the intercultural tensions and challenges they faced in the higher education context, as well as the impact of their study-abroad experiences on their identity-making when integrating into the receiving society. Drawing on Herzfeld’s (2005) concept of cultural intimacy, this article explains the students’ limited participation in local Hong Kong communities and their strong connection to the small, diasporic Central Asian network. It also reveals the co-existence of post-Soviet national identities and a cohesive Central Asian identity in the participants’ identity-making processes. Copyright © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

As an effective teaching approach that allows teachers and students to interact collaboratively and actively build on each other’s ideas, dialogic teaching can enhance classroom engagement and learning outcomes. This study addresses the use of dialogic teaching for improving English language learning among Chinese children with varied levels of English vocabulary. It focuses on the effects of dialogic teaching on vocabulary knowledge and phonological awareness. Seventy-two first graders from Hong Kong primary schools were tested on English vocabulary knowledge and phonological awareness and were assigned to control and experimental conditions. A 12-week dialogic teaching intervention was implemented in daily English lessons. Results from repeated measures ANOVA showed that students in the experimental condition with dialogic teaching implemented exhibited significantly greater growth in expressive vocabulary knowledge on textbook items in both low and high vocabulary groups, and greater gain in phonological awareness in the high vocabulary group, than those in the control condition. These results suggest that dialogic teaching in English-as-a-second-language (ESL) classroom enhances English language development in young ESL learners. In addition, when assessing the effectiveness of dialogic teaching in young children’s second language classroom context, it is important to consider its differential effects on children with diverse vocabulary levels. Copyright © 2021 The Author(s).

This chapter explores the identity of "local-born" Chinese-heritage language (CHL) learners who were raised and educated in the international school system in Hong Kong. In the literature, "CHL learners" refers predominantly to students who grew up in countries where the majority language is not Chinese. Most research on CHL learners so far has focused on North American or West European contexts, yet little attention has been given to CHL learners in Hong Kong, where there has been an increasing number of Hong Kong-Chinese students studying in English-medium international schools. As one of the few highly urbanized and populated cities in Asia, Hong Kong is governed as a Special Administrative Region (SAR) under the People's Republic of China (PRC). The participants were recruited primarily from the university CFL courses between 2012 and 2013. Data were obtained from a larger study with 16 university CHL learners in Hong Kong between 2012 and 2015, and were based on narrative interviews. Copyright © 2018 Taylor & Francis.

Teacher identity construction is seen as crucial for professional development and in readiness for adoption of pedagogical innovation. Based on life-history narrative study of three experienced CFL teachers, this chapter explores how the three teacher participants account for their experiences of constructing successful professional identities. The three teacher participants shared their stories of over 20 years of teaching Mandarin Chinese to non-native speakers in both the national school context in Australia and the international school context in Hong Kong. Their collective reflection on the process of constructing successful professional identities in Western-based school contexts revealed the complex and shifting nature of identity construction. The study finds that the processes of constructing a successful professional identity in Western-based school contexts are reflected in narratives of an effective blend of Eastern and Western cultural values and pedagogical practices. This “middle ground” notion of constructing professional identity has important implications for CFL pedagogical innovation in Western-based school context. Copyright © 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore.