Following up on the general framework of the research study of Yip (2007), this article sets out a similar research question, investigating the differences between high and low academic achieving Hong Kong university students based on their different learning and study strategies. In this study, we recruited 100 university students who pursued their degrees using the distance-learning mode to participate by completing a revised Chinese version of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI; Weinstein, Zimmermann, & Palmer, 1988). Results further confirmed that there were important differences between the different study strategies of university students with high academic achievement and those with low academic achievement, even in a distance-learning context. Finally, we observed that two components within the model of strategic learning (Weinstein, Husman, & Dierking, 2000) - will and self-regulation components - were even more important in differentiating high academic achieving students from low academic achieving students than the other relevant studies.
[Copyright of Educational Research & Evaluation is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13803610903354718]

The study reported herein aimed to determine the importance and value of internships in the hospitality industry to students so that academic institutions, receiving organizations, and the students themselves can better prepare for placements in the future. Content analysis was applied to the placement reports submitted by 279 students at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management in the author's home institution. Based on a simple counting of placement attributes mentioned by the students, the analysis yielded nine themes. How the findings can be used to enhance student satisfaction with internships and how the enhanced internship experiences can help solve career problems are discussed.
[Copyright of Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15313221003792027]

Books are traditionally set aside at the request of teachers from the main, normal loan collection to be put on reserve temporarily for checking out for a much shorter loan period to ensure that, at the expense of convenient, long-term loans for other users, all the students enrolled in a course have an opportunity to use them. Many studies have found that reserve usages are not high enough to justify the time and effort involved in making the arrangement. This article reveals that the accessibility and availability of materials to students, the idle status of reserve items on the shelf, and the usage of the collection may be improved if the access to books on reserve and on normal loan matches and fits the instructional choices of teachers and the study modes of students. As long as books in print format continue to play a role in the library collection, librarians have to manage their access to the best benefit of the users. Further studies on how the access to library materials can be managed and arranged concertedly to make the usage surpass the 80/20 rule are desired.
[Copyright of Journal of Access Services is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15367960903385771 ]

This article reports the adaptation and analysis of Pintrich's Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) in Hong Kong. First, this study examined the psychometric qualities of the existing Chinese version of MSLQ (MSLQ-CV). Based on this examination, this study developed a revised Chinese version of MSLQ (MSLQ-RCV) for junior secondary students in Hong Kong. Confirmatory factor analysis and Graded Response Model (GRM) were used to examine the internal consistency, construct validity, differential item functioning (DIF), and differential test functioning (DTF) of the revised instrument, which contains six factors and 50 items. Compared with the existing MSLQ-CV, the factor structure of MSLQ-RCV was expanded to incorporate two new factors: extrinsic value and peer learning. The reasons for these amendments and implications of the findings are discussed.
[Copyright of International Journal of Testing is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15305050903534670]

The Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) is widely used to assess the vocabulary size of second-language learners of English. The test assesses learners' knowledge of words of different frequencies within general English and of high-frequency words within academic texts. We used the VLT to measure the English vocabulary size of Chinese university students of English in Hong Kong where a large vocabulary is required for academic and professional success. Students achieved high scores for high-frequency words but scored poorly for low-frequency words. We consider the possibility that the low scores reflect a deficit of the test: words were selected on the basis of frequency counts from dated word lists of American words and at the lower frequency levels may not be representative of current Hong Kong English. We compiled a corpus of 14.7 million words of Hong Kong English. Cross-checking revealed a number of VLT words that do not occur in the corpus. We argue that these words are not required by English speakers in Hong Kong and that the lowest word frequency levels of the VLT should be revised to reflect modern Hong Kong English.
[Copyright of Language and Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500781003642478]