University instructors' classroom assessments play a central role in and inevitably influence their teaching and their students' learning. This paper reports on a comparative interview study conducted in a range of three ESL/EFL university contexts in Canada, Hong Kong and China. Six major aspects of ESL/EFL classroom assessment practices were explored: instructors' assessment planning for the courses they taught, the relative weight given to course work and tests in their instruction, the type of assessment methods (selection vs. supply methods) that they used, the purposes each assessment was used for, the source of each method used, and when they used each method. University instructors were also asked to indicate what they saw as the advantages and disadvantages of the methods they used, and whether they took into account prior student knowledge when making decisions about what assessment methods to use. The findings contribute to a better understanding of ESL/EFL university instructors' classroom assessment practices at the tertiary level in a range of three ESL/EFL university teaching contexts.
[Copyright of Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02602930601122555]

This paper reports on a large-scale study on learner autonomy in language learning carried out with students and English teachers at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hong Kong. It focuses on the teachers' views of their roles and responsibilities, their assessment of their students' decision-making abilities and the autonomous language learning activities that they have encouraged their students to take up. Generally, teachers perceive themselves to be more responsible for the methodological aspects of language learning, and for motivating their students to be responsible for assessing and evaluating their learning. However, they consider themselves less responsible for their engagement in outside class activities and their progress out of class. The paper will conclude with the pedagogical implications of such findings on the development of learner autonomy at tertiary level in Hong Kong.
[Copyright of Teaching in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1356251032000052311 ]

This study interviewed 53 novice or experienced students enrolled in part-time courses in Hong Kong universities. It was found that the attitudes to and ability to cope with study were influenced by a coherent set of beliefs about knowledge and the process of teaching and learning. This belief set was characterised in two broad orientations as didactic/reproductive or facilitative/ transformative. Novice students holding didactic/reproductive beliefs found it difficult to adjust to higher education if the teaching was not expository, as often happened with distance education tutorials. These students also experienced problems with assignments which went beyond the reproduction of material, since these were incompatible with their epistemological beliefs. The conclusion is that courses should aim to help students make the difficult transition to the belief orientation of the more experienced students as a means of assimilating students into higher education.
[Copyright of Studies in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075070120052116]

Objective: The purpose of the present study was to compare the predictive effects of acculturative stressor and meaning of life on negative affect in the process of acculturation between Chinese international students in Australia and Hong Kong.
Method: Four hundred mainland Chinese students studying at six universities in Hong Kong and 227 Chinese international students studying at the University of Melbourne in Australia completed a questionnaire that included measures of acculturative stressor, meaning of life, negative affect and demographic information.
Results: The Australian sample was found to have a higher level of acculturative stressor and negative affect than the Hong Kong sample. Acculturative stressor had a positive impact on negative affect in both samples, but the impact of different domains of acculturative stressor on negative affect varied between the two groups. Finally, meaning of life partially mediated the relationship between acculturative stressor and negative affect in the Hong Kong sample, but no such effect was found in the Australia sample.
Conclusions: Acculturative stressor is a critical risk factor for negative affect in acculturation for Chinese international students in Australia and Hong Kong. Meaning of life acted as a protective factor that mitigated negative affect for mainland Chinese students in Hong Kong, but not for the Chinese international students in Australia. The theoretical and practical implications for resilience-based and meaning-oriented intervention for Chinese international students are discussed.
[Copyright of Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry is the property of Informa Healthcare . Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00048670701517942 ]

This research identifies a range of issues and factors which impact on the formation of initial expectations developed by local university students wishing to study for a foreign degree program in Hong Kong. Key factors were foreign university Internet sites, exhibitions, agents and associations, brochures and friends. This is one of the first times this kind of research has been undertaken relating to the delivery of foreign programs within the home country, as previous research has tended to focus on study abroad, where the student travels to the foreign country to undertake a degree program. The research also considers how expectations change over time, as students undertake their study for a foreign degree program in Hong Kong, and develops the concept of continuous formation of expectations whereby students mould change, rebuild and continually revisit their expectations of the university program as they undertake a wide range of subjects. This part of the research is quite new and indicates the volatile and changeable nature of the educational service encounter. Both parts of the research are of value not just in regard to the location of the data collection but potentially further afield as an indicator of formative factors regarding expectations and in regard to the concept of continuous formation of expectations.
[Copyright of Journal of Marketing for Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J050v14n01_01]