Purpose: This study aims to examine the impact of the transformation of an assessment on students' performance and perspectives in an English for Academic Purposes course in Hong Kong. The assessment was changed from the traditional pen-and-paper mode to an unproctored online mode. Design/methodology/approach: Using mixed methods, the research team analysed the differences between the assessment performances of those who took the course before the pandemic (n = 664) and those who took it during the pandemic (n = 702). Furthermore, focus group interviews were conducted with seven students regarding their perspectives on the unproctored assessment. Findings: The results revealed that, although there were no major differences in the overall grades of the two groups, students who were assessed online during the pandemic performed significantly better in terms of their English use. Nevertheless, the shift to online assessment had several negative effects on the students. Originality/value: Previous studies on unproctored online assessments (UOA) were concerned with potential learning quality issues, such as plagiarism and grade inflation. This study, however, provided empirical evidence that high-quality assessment delivery can be provided via UOA if the question types and assessment arrangements are carefully decided. Copyright © 2023 Emerald.

Despite the rapid growth of English Medium Instruction (EMI) programmes around the globe, the language goals in such programmes have not been clearly defined, making it difficult to evaluate their success. Accordingly, our paper reports on a study that attempted to identify the language goals, operationalised as the vocabulary expected of learners, by investigating the under-explored area of EMI assessment. We sampled a corpus of 16 sets of examination papers in two subject areas, namely, Biology and Geography, spanning eight years in Hong Kong. The examination papers, analysed for their vocabulary profiles, indicated that students were expected to learn beyond the K3 level (the most frequent 3,000 words in English) and master mid-frequency words (K4−K8) as well as academic words. Our findings suggest that the less frequent words were not often shared by the two subjects. Analysing academic words also enabled us to showcase how some words were common across the two subjects while others were more subject-specific. Pedagogical implications are discussed, highlighting the need for teachers and students to attend to target language goals in EMI, and to consider the subject-specific nature of vocabulary items in EMI. Copyright © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

系統功能語言學認為語言具有其系統和功能，語文教學應該使學生掌握語言的系統，並在互動中學習如何恰當地使用語言。本文通過實證研究分析59位香港非華語學生的真實語料，結合量化數據和質性分析，探討第二語言學習者的實用中文寫作表現。研究發現，非華語學生整體實用文寫作能力較弱，尤其在語旨、語式、連接、文法等層面表現最弱；在語境內容方面普遍文類知識不足，無法掌握特定文類的寫作目的和結構，文步和層次不完整，亦缺少語境的概念；在表述方式層面詞匯量有限；在文法呈現方面受到英文文法影響，體現了語言的負遷移現象。本研究亦通過基於系統功能語言學發展出的寫作評估標準，為寫作評量提供新的視角，使教師和研究者能更細緻地了解非華語學生的寫作難點和學習需求，掌握學生到底是在語境內容、表述方式或文法呈現當中的十四個層面有甚麼不足之處，才能進一步發展有針對性的教學設計，通過相應策略提升第二語言學習者的寫作能力。Systemic functional linguistics emphasizes on the system and functions of language, and it suggests that language education should help students learn the system of language and how to apply it in communication appropriately. This empirical research analyzed the authentic materials of 59 non-Chinese speaking (NCS) students through quantitative and qualitative analysis. The research findings discovered the weak performance of NCS students in practical writing, especially in the aspects of tenor, mode, conjunction, and grammar. Other problems included the insufficiency in the genre knowledge, inability to understand the writing purpose and structure of certain genre, incomplete steps and phases, lack of the concept of context, limited vocabulary, and the language form affected by English grammar as the result of negative transfer in second language. This research not only studied their practical writing performance but also introduced a new scoring scheme of Chinese writing developed based on systemic functional linguistics. Therefore, teachers and researchers can understand students' writing difficulties and learning needs from the perspectives of context, discourse, grammar and presentation, and develop specific teaching design or relevant strategies to improve the writing ability of second language learners. Copyright © 2021 香港中文大學香港教育研究所.

In this case study, the author research on the current teaching phenomena of Paper 3: Creating of the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) Examination Elective Subjects: Music. The examination has been implemented after the curriculum reform of the senior secondary school since 2012 where music composition becomes one of the compulsory assessment. According to the Curriculum and Assessment Guide (Secondary 4-6) Music by the Curriculum Development Council and the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority, the assessment objective is to create and arrange music using appropriate compositional devices, and explain the use of music elements in compositional devices of their compositions. Without any prior experiences in the teaching composing for public examination in the past, schools have adopted different models to teach composition which include hiring external company and tutor to teach; forming a joint-school network; and teaching the whole curriculum by the school teacher. This qualitative study contributes to the understanding of the current HKDSE learning and teaching situation with a focus on the perspectives from school music teachers and composer-instructors. Copyright © 2021 Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia.

This study aims to develop and validate a strength-based instrument for assessing the academic advising needs of university students in Hong Kong using the Appreciative Advising Inventory (AAI) as a blueprint. We reviewed the content validity and cultural relevance of the AAI and developed a 37-item AAI Hong Kong Version (AAI-HK). We conducted Rasch analysis and principal component analysis. The AAI-HK has four stable and reliable factors (social competence and support; positive identity and participation; positive values; and commitment to learning and study), which represent key strengths of university students. Four AAI-HK subscales demonstrate good reliability. We found significant differences in AAI-HK scores between students who are under academic probation or not and between students who are local or nonlocal. Copyright © 2021 NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising, Inc.

The emergence of English as a lingua franca (ELF) has focused scholarly attention on non-native speakers' use of communication strategies (CSs) in international communication, which places emphasis on ensuring mutual understanding. With reference to previous ELF pragmatics research, this study examined the extent to which L2 learners' use of CSs reflects that in ELF interactions in a group interaction task in Hong Kong's high-stakes public examination. Our analysis of the students' CSs use was accompanied by semi-structured focus group interviews, allowing them to reflect on their own performance and prior English learning/use experience. The findings revealed an unnatural discursive pattern resulting from the assessment task design, although some CSs were found that have been identified in previous ELF studies. Students with higher academic attainment were more capable of using some higher-level CSs and diversifying their language forms, but this was mainly because of their higher English proficiency level/motivation, exposure to English and awareness of effective communication rather than their prior English-learning experience in the classroom. The paper concludes by offering suggestions for the design of communicative tasks and language learning/teaching practices to address the misalignment between L2 students' pragmatic production and naturalistic ELF situations. Copyright © 2021 Elsevier.

During the turbulent 2018–19 school year, we researched Hong Kong teachers’ perceptions regarding the design and implementation of National Education in schools for students aged 12–17. We seek to make a contribution to understandings of aspects of the cultural, political and social dimensions and contexts relevant to teacher education. 41 civic and/or national education teachers were interviewed about their educational aims, content, teaching methods and assessment approaches. Teachers believe National Education should deliver and assess knowledge of China and nurture students’ identification with the nation through teaching Chinese culture and history via a balanced pedagogical approach and experiential learning. They discuss the relationship between Hong Kong and China, and conclude that teaching about the Chinese government is unavoidable. This indicates that in addition to teachers’ long established cultural, civic and cosmopolitan forms of nationalism, they are now using national unity and economy-induced nationalism to frame their professional work. These findings are significant because they indicate teachers’ fundamental and educational characterisations of National Education at this crucial juncture of Hong Kong; highlight the issues that should be considered for any programmeof initial or in-service teacher education; and, ultimately, indicate the nature of what may possibly be implemented in schools. Copyright © 2021 Australian Teacher Education Association.

As the content knowledge of English language learners and immigrant students is assessed in their less proficient language, the validity and fairness of assessments related to those students have been widely discussed. However, such assessment issues have not received much attention in rapidly expanding bilingual education programmes, where students learn content subjects through a second/foreign/additional language (L2) and are often assessed in that language. This paper addresses this research gap by examining the mediating effect of language of testing on students’ performance in content subject assessments. 387 question items in the Biology papers of a public examination in Hong Kong were analysed according to their cognitive and linguistic demands. The performance of 480 students (half taking the test in their first language and half in their L2) on the questions with different demands was then analysed with MANOVA and multiple regression. The results show that linguistic demands, especially productive linguistic demands (e.g. writing sentences and texts), had a more significant effect on the performance of students taking the test in their L2. These results underscore the role played by language in the academic achievement of bilingual education students, which in turn illuminate valid assessment design and pedagogy in these programmes. Copyright © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

In Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programmes, students learn content knowledge and a second/foreign language (L2) simultaneously. It follows that both content and language are assessed, although research on how to do so remains scarce. This study explores the interplay between cognitive and linguistic demands of CLIL assessments. Having analysed over 4900 questions in Science/Biology textbooks, workbooks and examination papers in Hong Kong, we observed that junior secondary assessments were dominated by low-level cognitive (i.e. recall of knowledge) and linguistic (i.e. no production or word-level production) demands, whereas senior secondary assessments required higher-order thinking skills (i.e. application and analysis of knowledge) expressed in sentences or even texts. Also, based on the analysis of 70 junior secondary students' performance in school examination papers, we noticed a potential hindrance of linguistic demands to students' performance in CLIL assessments. These findings together underscore the integral role of language in CLIL assessments and raise questions about the adequacy of existing pedagogical practices in preparing students to tackle both cognitive and linguistic demands in CLIL assessments, particularly when they proceed to higher grade levels where the demands in both dimensions leap. These have significant implications for CLIL assessment design, pedagogy and teacher education. Copyright ©Routledge.