The Primary English Language Curriculum Guide (CDI, 2004) promotes 'the use of a range of language arts materials such as songs, rhymes, poems, tongue twisters and plays' to provide opportunities for learners to 'give expression to real and imaginative experiences' (p. 178), develop 'cultural awareness and generic skills, in particular, critical thinking skills and creativity' and 'interest and a positive attitude towards learning a second language.' (p. 179). However, it is a long-established practice for the majority primary language teachers of Hong Kong to adopt the 'teaching the textbook' approach, which does not allow for a lot of creative or innovative teaching and hence it does not facilitate the implementation of the proposed curriculum innovations. Teachers who wish to support the innovations often find it difficult to change their existing beliefs and practices due to their lack of conceptual understanding and appropriate instructional strategies of language arts. This practical session presents the application of a few relatively 'new' and 'challenging' language arts activities such as reader's theatre and drama to develop the language competence and the instructional strategies of practicing teachers who undertook a Language Arts module of a professional development programme. Recorded performances will also be shown to supplement discussion.

Many teacher educator researchers often stand outside of schools to teach others about what is going on inside of them. In 1994 a team of researchers sought a different approach when they embarked upon a journey to enhance the professional development of primary teachers within the teachers' own school settings. The goal of this journey was to facilitate the development of literature-based reading programmes in selected Hong Kong primary schools. This colloquium will describe the process of facilitating and charting the development of the teachers as well as monitoring the growth of their students in reading over a three year period. The conditions and factors that influence teacher development will report briefly on the work in their respective schools and the approaches used to facilitate teacher development. Researchers will offer insights into their personal successes and failures and indicate directions for continuing teachers' professional development after the project. The limitations and strengths of adopting a long term approach to enhancing and studying teacher development from a curriculum initiative and research perspective, will be examined and recommendations offered for the way forward into the new century.

The Hong Kong primary English curriculum has shifted from an emphasis on oral proficiency in the 1970s through a focus on functional competence in the 1980s to a goal of developing learners' ever-improving capability to use English in the 1990s. This chapter applies a multi-level framework, based on Richards and Rodgers' (1986) model for curriculum discussion and comparison, to review and analyze the three syllabi available in the local teaching context in the past two decades. It describes and analyzes the changes in the aims, objectives, and methodology of the primary English curriculum under the "fads" of different approaches recommended in the respective curriculum documents. Attempts are made to capture the theoretical and methodological developments in the primary English curriculum. The main purpose is to explicate the underlying assumptions on the nature of language and language teaching and learning to formulate a basis for understanding curriculum implementation at the classroom level. It is argued in the chapter that congruence between the intended and implemented curriculum relies on the mapping of the underlying assumptions about language and language teaching and learning. Evaluation of classroom implementation, teachers' practices, and classroom research should be related to such deeper level of theoretical orientation. Implications for policy makers, teacher educators, teachers, and classroom researchers are sought.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]