All in all, the thesis tries to fill the research gap in the study of English pronunciation in a Hong Kong context. It exhausts the pronunciation of all types of English consonant clusters by native Cantonese learners of English, provides experimental studies to investigate the most effective approach to the acquisition of English consonant clusters, and applies Optimality Theory to elucidate the pronunciation phenomena found among Cantonese learners of English.
Apart from the inquiry into language pedagogy, this thesis also analyses and expounds the language phenomena of consonant cluster production through the application of Optimality Theory. From the data of the pre-test and post-tests, the pronunciation modification phenomena of subjects were summarised and analysed. It is found that subjects produced pronunciation forms that resembled that of native English speakers, but at the same time they produced forms that deviated from that of native English speakers. The most frequent pronunciation modifications are substitution and deletion.
Optimality Theory argues that phonological differences between languages are the results of the differences in the ranking of universal constraints; therefore, the preference towards certain modification phenomena and the production of certain pronunciation forms by Cantonese speakers can be viewed as the differences in the ranking of constraints between English and Cantonese. In the interlanguage phonology of Cantonese speakers, words like pray /pre I/ and find /faInd/ could become [pe I] and [faIn] phonetically. This can be explained by assuming that the English words are input to a phonology in which *COMPLEX (complex onset or coda is not permissible) is highly ranked, and that in order to observe this constraint, Cantonese learners of English might apply deletion to delete a consonant in syllables with consonant clusters.

There has been a growing concern that students in Hong Kong have low proficiency levels in English. Ths constitutes a challenge to language planning policy, which aims at providing opportunities for extending knowledge and experience through the acquisition of English grammar. Grammar forms a major component in English language teachng, and mostly has priority over other parts of the language. The acquisition of second language syntax is the focus of ths research. The main aim of the present study is to investigate the development of relative clauses in the interlanguage of native Cantonese learners of English within the framework of Keenan and Comrie's Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (1977, 1979). The study also seeks to distinguish the features of Cantonese-English interlanguage which may be attributed to language transfer from those which may be considered as universal to second language acquisition. The role of L1 is then examined. The study focuses on the theoretical concepts of language transfer, comparative study of Cantonese and English relative clauses as well as language universals from a typological perspective.
The issues are investigated with a database of syntactic judgements and production by a p u p of Cantonese-speaking students of English as a second language in Hong Kong. A number of features, namely, the use of resumptive pronouns, the retention of the head noun, shft of noun functions, nun-adjacency of .head noun and relative pronoun, preposition strandinddeletion, and avoidance of the use of zero relativizer are found in the data. These features are discussed and it is shown that they are more attributable to universal and developmental factors than to direct L1 transfer. One important finding of the study is that there exists an uncommon feature of retention of the head noun. Its presence is suggestive of lower proficiency levels in the target language.

This study investigates how expert-novice scaffolding and peer-peer scaffolding may facilitate the learning of grammatical forms in tertiary Chinese EFL classrooms and attempts to illustrate the features of different modes of interactions. It was a classroom research study with a quasi-experimental design, in which Chinese tertiary level students from two intact classes in Hong Kong and Wuhan were both given a task of revising a student's writing, focusing on the learning of the relative clause in three interactional scenarios: student-student (S-S), teacher-student (T-S), teacher-student + student-student (T-S + S-S).
On the basis of the microgenetic analysis of classroom discourse complemented with quantitative results, the study has found that scaffolding in T-S + S-S interaction generates the most effective impact on learning the target form in the three settings, followed by T-S interaction and S-S interaction. The learner's Zone of Proximal Development (hereafter ZPD) could be promoted most effectively in T-S + S-S interaction due to high quality of scaffolding functions, whereas there is little evidence of extension in the learner's ZPD in T-S and S-S interactions due to a lower quality of scaffolding functions. Moreover, the effective use of the seven scaffolding functions, i.e., Recruitment, Simplifying the task, Direction Maintenance, Marking Critical Features, Frustration Control, Demonstration, and Feedback, in T-S + S-S interaction, seems to stretch the tertiary Chinese students' grammatical competence to a greater extent than in the other two settings. More importantly, the findings have highlighted the importance of helping students notice the gap in their knowledge, promoting self-regulated learning of target forms, and encouraging independent learning when the teacher provides appropriate support.
The study has both theoretical and pedagogical significance. Theoretically, it has shown that grammar learning in EFL classrooms does not happen

This thesis reports the findings of a study which investigates the beliefs and classroom practices in grammar teaching of four ESL teachers in Hong Kong. A review of the literature is presented to show that while teacher cognition in formal instruction has attracted increasing research attention in recent years, a number of issues are not yet fully explored. In particular, relatively little has been written about teacher cognition in school settings where English is taught by non-native speaking teachers to large classes of students, who are in the classroom to learn the language simply because they are required to (Borg, 2003). This study aims to make a contribution by shedding light on this area of enquiry. It also aims to examine why teachers may hold conflicting beliefs, and how culture shapes the ways in which teachers think and act.
The four participants of this study are all Chinese teachers who teach English as a second language in Hong Kong secondary schools. Using case study methodology, the study involves indepth interviews with the teachers, classroom observations, audio recordings of the teachers' lessons, stimulated recall techniques, copies of materials used by the teachers, samples of student work, interviews with students, and metaphors generated by the teachers.
A key finding is that as the teachers have different professional training and teaching and learning experiences, they each espouse a unique system of beliefs. The teachers are not aware of all of their beliefs at the same time, and some beliefs may come to the fore of their awareness while others may recede into the background. This conceptualization of the "structure of awareness" helps to explain why some of the teachers in the study hold conflicting beliefs.
As the beliefs of the four teachers exhibit differences, their classroom practices also diverge. In terms of how they provide formal instruction, the four teachers can be placed on a continuum. Some teachers choose to

Girls out-performed boys in reading at the age of 15 in all 43 countries included in a credible study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and UNESCO. Male underachievement generally alarms educators. In Hong Kong, proficiency in English language more or less assures a better future, higher academic path and job security. Is there any sex difference in English language achievement in secondary three? If so, what are the factors and causes in the learning process responsible for this difference?
The present study aims at exploring the sex differences in English learning achievement, and in the learning process parameters in secondary 3. Gardner's socio-educational model serves as the theoretical model for multi-causal path analysis. The English learning achievement is related to motivation and then to learning orientations. According to local researches about English learning, Instrumental Orientation is added to Gardner's model for multi-group comparison.
Female students are found to have much higher English achievement and most of the learning process parameters, including Formal Motivation Intensity, opinion on MOI (medium of instruction) in English lessons, attitude of interest, attitude of essential, attitude towards bilingualism, motivation for learning English, Instrumental Orientation and Communicative Orientation.
In the causal relations between English achievement and learning process parameters, female and male students show significant differences. The causal path from Motivation to S3 English Achievement is 0.43 (t-value = 34.52) in females and 0.37 (t-value = 28.65) in males. It means when controlling Motivation, females can have higher achievement in S3 English. The causal path from Instrumental Orientation to Motivation is 0.67 (t-value=31.80) in females and 0.79 (t-value=29.33) in males. The causal path from Communicative Orientation to Motivation is 0.40 (t-value=20.32) in females and 0.27 (t-value=10.72)