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.

This study aims to advance our understanding of the role of word knowledge in second language (L2) reading comprehension by exploring whether morphological awareness and vocabulary assessed one year ago contribute to decoding and listening comprehension which in turn contribute to reading comprehension in Chinese children learning English as an L2. A total of 167 Grade 3 and 4 primary school students (Mage = 8.99 years) in Hong Kong were tested on English morphological awareness and vocabulary at Time 1, and they were also tested on English decoding, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension at Time 2, one year later. Our regression models showed that word knowledge tested at Time 1 was a significant predictor of decoding, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension at Time 2; and word knowledge explained more variance in decoding, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension in children who had higher levels of word knowledge. The results of structural equation modeling indicated that vocabulary contributed to reading comprehension fully through decoding and listening comprehension. Morphological awareness contributed to reading comprehension partially through vocabulary and decoding, and it also had a unique direct contribution to reading comprehension. The findings from this study suggested the importance of emphasizing word knowledge in developing children’s reading comprehension in an L2 at an early stage of learning to read. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

This study explored whether children's second language (L2) vocabulary, syntactic awareness, and reading comprehension contributed to the growth of each other. A total of 184 Chinese primary school children (91 girls) aged 8–10 years old in Hong Kong participated in the pre-test of this study. Among them, 88 were in Grade 3 and 96 were in Grade 4. One year later, 178 of these children also participated in the post-test. These children learned English as an L2 at school. They completed a series of English language tasks. The results from a cross-lagged panel model show that vocabulary predicted the growth of syntactic awareness and reading comprehension. Syntactic awareness predicted the growth of vocabulary and reading comprehension. Reading comprehension facilitated the growth of vocabulary, and it also predicted the growth of syntactic awareness in Grade 4 students but not in Grade 3 students. Implications for teaching children an L2 are discussed. Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In this study, we investigated the direct and indirect associations of different cognitive–linguistic skills and Chinese reading comprehension in Hong Kong kindergarteners. We assessed 179 children's nonverbal IQ, cognitive–linguistic skills, word reading, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension. Results showed significant correlations between all variables and reading comprehension. Further path analysis results indicated that rapid automatized naming, orthographic knowledge, and morphological awareness contributed to reading comprehension via word reading. Nonverbal IQ and vocabulary knowledge were associated with reading comprehension through listening comprehension. Beyond that, nonverbal IQ and morphological awareness still contributed directly to reading comprehension. Overall, our findings elucidated the importance of nonverbal IQ and cognitive–linguistic skills within the framework of the simple view of reading in Chinese and highlighted the unique roles of nonverbal IQ and meaning-related skills in Chinese reading comprehension, which contributed to understanding the simple view of reading in Chinese. Copyright © 2022 Language Learning Research Club, University of Michigan.

Undergraduates are often advised to expand their discipline-specific vocabulary in order to cope with the rigor of reading and writing academic texts. For the students studying in English-medium settings, it is in their interest to acquire vocabulary in their disciplines as this is vital to academic success. While students recognize the importance of discipline-specific vocabulary acquisition, they are typically unable to do so due to their heavy work on learning and assessment tasks. With the advent of mobile technology, one way to address this problem is to create vocabulary apps. To meet this need, this paper presents a gamified, discipline-specific vocabulary learning app Books vs Brains@PolyU. It was developed to help busy undergraduates to build a repertoire of the vocabulary across seven disciplines. We explored students' perceptions and evaluation of this tool via interviews with sixteen student participants of the project. The results show that students found the tool useful and motivating, indicating the effectiveness of the app in helping busy undergraduates to build and expand their knowledge of discipline-specific vocabulary. Copyright © 2021 Hong Kong Bao Long Accounting And Secretarial Limited. All rights reserved.

When solving word problems, many children encounter difficulties in making sense of the information and integrate it into a meaningful schema. This is the fundamental phase on which subsequent problem solution depends. To better understand the processing underlying this fundamental phase, this study examined the roles of schema construction and knowledge of mathematical vocabularies in word problem solving. The participants were 139 Chinese third graders studying in Hong Kong. Path analysis showed that there were two kinds of pathways to word problem solving: language-related and number-related. In particular, reading fluency was related to word problem solving in two mediated language-related pathways: one via schema construction, the other via knowledge of mathematical vocabularies. In the number-related pathway, arithmetic concept was related to word problem solving via knowledge of mathematical vocabularies. These findings highlight the specific roles of schema construction and mathematical vocabulary in word problem solving, thereby providing useful implications of how best to support children in understanding and integrating the information from the problem. Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In recent years, the widespread growth of mobile-assisted language learning using apps has made English vocabulary learning increasingly accessible. This study investigated students' perceptions of a vocabulary learning app developed by the researcher as a tool to help them to improve their L2 receptive vocabulary. The app, containing 20 levels, works with both iOS and Android. The participants were 14 undergraduate students at an English-medium university in Hong Kong. A qualitative methodology of semi-structured interviews captured a holistic overview and revealed students' perceptions of the app. The results suggested that Hong Kong university students have a strong motivation for acquiring an L2 vocabulary. Participants also indicated a preference for mobile applications using gamified features. The study highlights directions for future research into apps for English language learning. Copyright ©I G I Global.

In higher education, understanding discipline-specific vocabulary can be challenging. Insufficient vocabulary can be a major challenge for students as they begin their university studies. This study examined university undergraduate English language learners' discipline-specific vocabulary retention when they used an in-house developed mobile app, Books vs Brains@PolyU, in Hong Kong. A total of 159 second language (L2) students from four disciplines participated in the study, and they completed a pre- and posttest consisting of 120 words in four difficulty levels in their chosen disciplines. The results suggested that participants acquired more vocabulary words at the intermediate and advanced levels than at the beginner and elementary ones. The findings improve the understanding of MALL and vocabulary acquisition using apps to facilitate and support learners' academic studies. Copyright © 2020 The Author(s).

Decoding and language comprehension skills have been found to be the core components of reading comprehension across many writing systems. The present study examined the contributions of vocabulary and some discourse-level skills to reading comprehension in Chinese in addition to that of decoding. One hundred and seventeen Chinese second and third graders in Hong Kong were tested on decoding, vocabulary, discourse-level skills, and verbal working memory. Results of multiple regression analyses showed that the discourse-level skills contributed an additional 5% of variance to reading comprehension over decoding, vocabulary, and other control variables, and all factors accounted for a total of 70% variance in reading comprehension. Further path analysis showed that all the direct paths of word reading, vocabulary, text-structure knowledge, and topic knowledge to reading comprehension were significant. Vocabulary also contributed to reading comprehension through indirect paths to discourse-level knowledge. The present findings support the simple view of reading with elaborations on the language comprehension component, namely, (a) vocabulary is a foundational language skill for text comprehension through its role on discourse-level knowledge, and (b) some discourse-level knowledge also plays an important role in passage comprehension. Copyright © 2018 Cambridge University Press.