Academics are increasingly expected to be research productive. An impressive research output requires the ability to communicate in sophisticated written English in order to ensure that a publication is of an acceptable standard. In response to the demands for advanced writing skills to maintain high standards in research publications, a pilot online writing network of information (OWN) has been developed to provide academics in the School of Nursing at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University with research writing support in English. In this paper the OWN database is introduced with an explanation of the theoretical foundations and the needs analysis that shaped each link. Then, with data from two questionnaires completed by the users and interview of four users, I present a user evaluation of OWN. The questionnaires suggest that users see certain links as more useful in providing individualised writing support, while the interviewees most appreciate the complete privacy in which support could be sought. Through this description and user evaluation, I argue that academics could benefit from English language support when writing for publication, and computer technology may offer both flexibility and privacy.
[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/10.1080/02602930301679]

Internationally, English is increasingly being adopted as the language of postsecondary education. In Asia however efforts by universities to promote the use of the English language both inside and outside the classroom may be threatened by the supposed reticence of Asian learners. This paper problematizes Chinese learners alleged reticence by examining how one group of undergraduates at an English medium of instruction university in Hong Kong were able to meet the demands placed upon them for participation in spoken activities within their English for academic purposes classroom. Interviews with students and teachers, classroom observations, audiovisual recordings of classroom interaction and documentary analysis were used to understand how students participated in classroom discussion. The results suggest that learners adopted particular oral roles and drew upon a range of resources in ways that enabled them to conceptualize participation in classroom discussion as, in part, the result of learner agency. Implications for classroom practices in content classrooms traditionally dominated by a transmission mode of teaching are discussed.
[Copyright of Asian EFL Journal is the property of Nanzan University.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/]

While assessment and its effects on learning such as 'washback' have been the subject of much debate (e.g. Alderson & Wall, 1993; Bachman, 1995: 356; Alderson & Hamp Lyons, 1996; Shohamy et al, 1996; Andrews et al, 2002), assessment as a tool for developmental, not merely evaluative, purposes has probably not received sufficient attention (e.g. Dickinson, 1996: 101; Gardner, 1999). Of interest to this study is a project by Dickinson (1996: 106) in which participants (tutors and learners) are shown to have benefited from a scheme of collaborative assessment.
[Copyright of Language Learning Journal is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09571730585200161]

Grading, feedback, and reporting of student achievement are key elements that support learning. This article reports an interview study on a range of English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) teachers' classroom assessment practices at the tertiary level in Canada, Hong Kong, and China. The interviews focused on teachers' use of marking criteria, student involvement in classroom assessment decisions and activities, and reporting procedures. The results demonstrate how these teachers make day-to-day decisions in these three contexts, thus adding to our understanding of ESL/EFL classroom assessment practices.
[Copyright of Language Assessment Quarterly is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15434300701348409]

This article reports on an action research project on ways and means of promoting learner autonomy in an ESL classroom. It focuses on the implementation of an autonomy-based English program with a group of first-year university students at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The context and objective of this autonomy-based program are presented, classroom procedures and group learning tasks are described, and suggestions are provided for teachers to adapt these procedures and tasks to suit the needs of their particular students.
[Copyright of TESL Canada Journal is the property of TESL Canada.
Access via Publisher's e-Journal: http://www.teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl/issue/archive]

Assessment is generally seen as one of the key challenges in the field of self-access learning (Gardner & Miller, 1999; Champagne et al., 2001; Lai, 2001; Kinoshita Thomson, 1996). Many researchers and practitioners point to difficulties with assessing language gains in an environment in which variables cannot comprehensively be controlled for. Furthermore, assessing the development of learning gains, such as the ability to plan and manage independent learning or to approach a learning task strategically (a key aim of self-access learning) relies on underdeveloped methodologies and assessment tools.
This article reports on a study of current approaches to assessment in self-access in 46 centres in 5 countries (Germany , Hong Kong , New Zealand, Spain and Switzerland). These centres were visited and extensive interviews were conducted with their managers. The interviews were based on a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) of each centre. Data from the interviews were analysed to identify current assessment practice. It was found that more than half of all centres conducted no form of assessment at all. The remaining centres showed a wide range of assessment measures such as self-assessment, which was the most common type of assessment, collaborative assessment with an advisor, external examinations and tests, teacher assessment, advisor assessment, peer evaluation and assessment through a panel. There was little evidence of a consistent approach to assessment in the centres, and its application seemed haphazard. There was no evidence that the instruments were checked for validity or reliability.
[Copyright of TESL - EJ is the property of TESL - EJ .
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/]

Informed by knowledge of linguistics, research findings in the areas of monolingual and bilingual acquisition, dyslexia and speech therapy clinical practice, five factors are proposed to argue that the acquisition of English by young non-native learners can be enhanced by learning activities which take into account factors of developmental sequence in language acquisition, language-specific properties, the relationship between oral and written language, the what-to-learn-first issue and the quality of the language input. Proper language goals can be set and appropriate activities designed, only if the language input provider interacts with a learner in a concrete activity while being sensitive to the developmental trajectory of monolingual speaking children, the development of the less dominant language in a bilingual child, the prosodic and phonological differences between the learner's mother tongue and the target language, the importance of phonological awareness which defines dyslexia, the use of non-abstract language structures grounded in concrete lexical items in the early stage of language acquisition and the strategy of expanding learners' utterance by one element as used in speech therapy.
[Copyright of Early Years: An International Journal of Research and Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09575140600898456]

Reading comprehension can be seen as a process dependent on the interaction of 'topdown' and 'bottom-up' processes. An important, but neglected, feature of this process concerns the effects of rhetorical organization. This article describes an experiment in which four rhetorically different texts, with identical subject matter, were read by 490 Hong Kong Chinese school children (mean age 14.1), studying in English (their L2). Comprehension was measured by a cloze procedure and by recall protocols. One way ANOVA was used to investigate the effects of different texts on the test scores. The results showed a clear difference in comprehension between the text types and suggest that pedagogical support to increase awareness of rhetorical patterns would be beneficial.
[Copyright of Reading in a Foreign Language is the property of Meena Singhal & John I. Liontas.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/]