Within the region, a number of countries have viewed the importation of native speakers of English as a means of enhancing English language teaching in schools and promoting internationalization or cultural exchange. Adherents of such programmes anticipate benefits in exposing learners to authentic input, the use of English for genuine communication, and opportunities for mutual staff development or fruitful cross-fertilisation of ideas. Critics, on the other hand, point to a perceived lack of value for money, the difficulties of foreigners integrating into local systems, and conflicts between local and expatriate personnel. This paper will make some comparative observations about three schemes, EPIK (English Program in Korea), JET (Japan exchange and teaching program) and NET (Native-speaking English teacher), including their characteristics, successes and ongoing challenges. I will argue that both native and non0native speakers have their particular strengths and will propose some ways in which native-speakers might best be utilized in supporting enhanced standards of English in schools.

In recent years, school-based assessment (SBA) has been incorporated into the English Language subject of a traditional high-stakes public examination, the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination. As reactions from various stakeholder groups have been mixed, it was necessary to review this new practice. This paper reports on a study of 33 English language teachers who have been frontline SBA assessors. The study aimed to better understand (1) teacher-assessors' perceptions of the English SBA, (2) their professional development needs in relation to implementing SBA, (3) their perceptions of how students could benefit from SBA and (4) the pressing issues arising from the SBA implementation. The study found that, while many participants agreed that SBA could be beneficial to students' English learning, there was much room for improvement in all four aspects investigated. In particular, some problems identified at the very beginning of the implementation of the English SBA have still persisted.
[Copyright of Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969594X.2014.915207]

The research reported here investigated pre-service English language teachers' perceptions of newly arrived immigrant children from Mainland China in Hong Kong. Seventeen participants, who had at least 10 weeks of experience working with these immigrant children during teaching practicum, participated in focus group discussions and shared their perceptions. The data analysis revealed that the participants widely perceived these children as deficit and consider them a serious professional challenge. Further examination of the data helped reveal media, life and teaching practicum experiences with immigrant children as crucial sources that contributed to the formation of these perceptions. The findings call for teacher education programmes to involve pre-service teachers in critical engagement with the mass media and their own experiences so that they can address the deficit model applied by teachers to immigrant children.
[Copyright of Journal of Education for Teaching is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2013.869966]

Language-in-education planning in the form of materials planning has an important role to play in achieving a society's social goals. Gender stereotyping has been found in previous language textbook studies. Although gender bias has declined, some recent studies suggest that it still exists. This study analysed the content and language of a recently published Hong Kong English language textbook series for grade one students to explore its gender representation. The results of the study showed that males and females were almost equally represented and were portrayed in a similar range of activities. Females were also more visible in both illustrations and texts. The phenomena of females being underrepresented and male dominance that occurred in the previous textbook studies did not exist in the textbook series examined, though males were still mentioned first when two nouns were paired for gender. One implication that can be drawn from the results is that gender stereotyping or how gender is represented in textbooks should be an important factor to be considered when school teachers select textbooks for their students, and this aspect should be highly emphasized in the government's policy manual for selection of textbooks for use in schools, given the fact that textbooks may have strong influence on children's development of values and attitudes.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14664208.2011.541390]