Digital technology plays a crucial role in modern second/foreign language education. Enormous changes in technology and the growing emphasis on 21st century skills raise a concern about English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ competencies in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) more than ever. In response to the mounting concern, this study investigates pre-service EFL teachers’ readiness in the use of CALL in the Hong Kong context. It explores the experiences and self-efficacy of participants with respect to the evaluation of the current English teacher education curriculum for CALL at a university in Hong Kong and factors affecting the participants’ acceptance and willingness to use CALL. In-depth interviews were conducted with six pre-service EFL teachers to reveal the reality of the teachers’ attitudes, perceptions and experiences regarding the use of technology. Findings provide insights into the significance of language teacher education in CALL and ways for fostering pre-service EFL teachers’ knowledge and skills in the implementation of CALL. Practical implications are made for effective teacher training for CALL in EFL contexts.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge.]

Morphological awareness (MA) was defined as “awareness of morphemic structures of words and the ability to reflect on and manipulate that structure” (Carlisle, 1995, p.194). MA is viewed as a multi-faceted construct, including aspects like inflectional, derivational and compounding morphology. It has been identified as a crucial metalinguistic awareness influencing children’s literacy outcomes. Though a growing body of evidence has shown positive the effects of MA instructions, it remains relatively unclear regarding what components of MA instructions uniquely contribute to literacy outcomes. This study adopted randomized controlled trial design and examined the effects of English morphological instructions on improving word reading, reading comprehension and spelling skills in 29 Hong Kong Chinese third graders who speak English as a second language. Students were randomly assigned into three groups: a) derivational morphology group (n = 10), b) compounding morphology plus derivational morphology group (n = 10) or c) business-as-usual group (n = 9). All children received intervention for 8 hours (two 30-min sessions per week for 8 weeks) and were administered a battery of linguistic and cognitive tasks, including non-verbal intelligence, inflectional, derivational and compounding morphology, vocabulary, word reading, spelling skills and reading comprehension at pretest and posttest. The results of the study would be discussed in the presentation. The findings may shed light on the causal role of morphological awareness on literacy development as well as the optimal manner in teaching morphological awareness. Copyright © 2020 ARWA.

This paper investigates the application of Sydney School genre-based approach (Rose and Martin, 2012) for developing critical literacies in L2 settings. Genre-based pedagogy was originally developed in Australia to provide disadvantaged learners with more accessible instruction of academic literacy and its potential to improve students' critical thinking skills remains considerably under-investigated. With comparative case studies of one Secondary 6 class in a Thai bilingual secondary school, one Secondary 4 class in an EMI school in Hong Kong, and one Secondary 6 class in a Content and Language Integrated Learning program (CLIL) in Sweden, where English is not the medium of everyday communication, the paper explores the affordances of the genre-based pedagogy to improve secondary students’ critical literacies in L2 English regarding gender issues in the EMI Social/Liberal Studies curricula. Results indicate that a) the Sydney School genre-based pedagogy is effective for enhancing students' ability to express critical thoughts in L2 English in the three cases and b) it is important to adapt Sydney School genre-based pedagogy to the specificity of the L2 settings. The paper therefore proposes that more lexical and grammatical support should be offered to ESL secondary students for development of critical thinking in the social science classrooms. Copyright © 2015 The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. All Rights Reserved.

Members of four teams comprising local and international exchange (IE) students, who had undertaken service-learning (SL) projects in Hong Kong, were interviewed about factors influencing cohesiveness within their teams. They indicated that a major barrier was language-related and could result in the withdrawal or exclusion of IE students. Students also identified three factors that fostered cohesiveness. These were: (1) local students’ willingness to conduct meetings in English; (2) local students’ readiness to provide interpretation and translation at external meetings; and (3) the willingness of IE and local students to establish reciprocal and empathetic relationships. Students reported that the benefits were improved English language skills, greater flexibility and broadened horizons. We offer suggestions about to prepare local and IE students to work together on SL projects. Copyright © 2019 The 3rd International Conference on Service-Learning (ICSL).

Introduction. This study examines the impact of the availability of reading resources in the school, the classroom, the home and the social environment on the reading proficiency of Grade Four primary school students in Hong Kong.Method. Data about the reading performance of Hong Kong students in the 2011 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study is reported. The survey data of 3,875 Hong Kong primary school students’ reading performances were analysed.Analysis. The survey data of 3,875 Hong Kong primary school students’ reading performances and their access to out-of-school or in-school reading resources were statistically analysed using multilevel modeling.Findings. The analysis revealed that the number of books at home, the time readers spent reading at home, the literacy facilities in the school and in the home and the children’s use of school and local libraries significantly impacted their reading attainment. The results also showed the positive impact of home reading facilities and encouragement, and the use of public and school resources on the students’ reading attainment.Conclusion. This study applied multilevel modeling to simultaneously evaluate the impact of reading resources located in family, classroom and library on students’ reading attainments. It demonstrated the importance of access to reading materials in home and family environments for students’ reading attainment. Copyright © 2019 the authors.

Academic presentation (AP) is the most common type of oral tasks for academic studies. It is not only a means for speakers to exchange their ideas with (and gain feedback from) members in the academic communities but also provides speakers with an opportunity to develop higher-order thinking skills, through the process of which construction of new knowledge takes place. Regarding its unique roles, speech functions, linguistic and discourse features, recent scholarly discussion and research findings on academic presentation suggest that AP should be taught as a genre, and yet there is still a scarcity of research-based pedagogical instruction or instructional materials designed for EAP contexts. To be able to deliver quality presentations, ESL/EFL learners, as new comers of the academic communities, not only have to face the linguistic and cognitive demands, but also develop new identities and roles that are often very different from their L1 cultures. This chapter discusses the needs of ESL/EFL learners and their challenges in developing academic presentation competence in EFL contexts, such as Hong Kong. Following on a review of the knowledge, skills and strategies pertaining to the development of academic presentation competence and a discussion about current EAP practices, a pedagogical framework for EAP settings, comprised of designated tasks and evaluation measures, is proposed. Copyright © 2018 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

This study aimed to develop a corpus-aided pronunciation teacher-training programme and examine the effectiveness of a corpus-aided pronunciation teaching approach in English classrooms in Hong Kong. A workshop was conducted for 86 participants to introduce several English learner corpora. After the workshop, eight volunteer participants, pre-service teachers in Hong Kong, were paired off, entered into a seven-stage corpus-aided pronunciation teacher programme and attended interviews. One pair was selected to give a trial lesson, and 13 primary school students were invited to evaluate this lesson. The results revealed that the training provided sufficient knowledge about corpus-aided pronunciation teaching and task design. The pre-service teachers expressed a strong willingness to use corpus data as examples to raise students' awareness of commonly mispronounced sounds. They agreed that the flipped instruction component was effective. Of the 13 primary school students, 83.33% agreed that they learned how to pronounce the target sounds correctly, and 75% were able to identify their mispronounced sounds via the corpus-aided teaching method. The findings will not only provide pre-service teachers with examples of corpus-aided pronunciation lesson plans and materials but also contribute to integrating the flipped classroom approach into teacher education programmes. Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

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).

Phonology in second/foreign (L2/FL) listening has not received much attention from scholars and teachers. This article reports on a mixed-methods study which set out to fill this gap by exploring the effectiveness of explicit instruction in phonology and the use of songs to enhance English-as-a-L2 (ESL) learners' listening abilities in Hong Kong. ESL learners (n = 92) aged 17-20 participated in a three-month experiment. Data from pre-, post-listening tests and semi-structured interviews were collated. The findings demonstrated the efficacy of L2 phonology instruction in improving learners' L2 listening. More remarkably, the positive effect was augmented when the instruction was coupled with phonological analyses of song lyrics. However, using songs alone for gap-filling exercises (as is commonplace in L2 classrooms) was not found to be effective.
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This paper presents a small-scale study examining the effects of metacognitive reading strategy instruction on English language learners' reading comprehension in a Hong Kong international school. Twenty-five primary school (Grade 5) students who learn English as a second language participated in this study. Metacognitive instruction was incorporated into 10 process-based reading lessons. Data were collected from notes learners took during reading, post-reading reflection reports, teacher-facilitated group discussions and two types of reading tests. Results revealed that the young learners could articulate several knowledge factors that influenced their reading. In addition, learners reported a better understanding of the nature and demands of reading, a deeper awareness of metacognitive knowledge in improving reading comprehension and increased confidence in handling reading exercises. The learners also showed enhanced reading performance compared to those in a control group without metacognitive intervention. This study highlights the potential of metacognitive instruction to enhance primary school English learners' reading literacy.
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