Research into the teaching and learning of speaking in the ESL context is relatively neglected. There have been only a few studies that addressed the need to incorporate the development of strategic competence into the L2 oral classroom (e.g., Cohen, 1998; Dornyei, 1995; Konishi & Tarone, 2004). This paper will report findings from a strategy interventionist study conducted in the secondary English oral classroom in Hong Kong. Based on a psycholinguistic model of speech processing, eight strategies were identified and introduced to the treatment class in the study. A data collection method comprising stimulated recall interviews and observations that aimed to investigate respectively the learning process (i.e., covert thoughts) and the learning product (i.e., overt speech) was employed. A comparison of the findings between the treatment class and the control class which was not exposed to any strategies-based instruction supports the view that not all strategies are equal and that some are more teachable than the others. Specifically, 'Resourcing' seems to function as a 'bedrock strategy' for young L2 speakers. Possible implications for strategy instruction are made with a view to enhancing the development of strategic competence in the L2 classroom.
[Copyright © 2005 The Asian Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language.]

Within the English language teaching profession there is now general acceptance of the advantages of integrating language and content teaching. Yet challenges continue over how such integration can be accomplished within individual classrooms. In Asian universities using English as the medium of instruction (EMI), one of the key barriers to integration is the alleged reticence of learners to participate in spoken discourse within the classroom. If the language policy aims of these institutions are to be realized, these constraints need to be acknowledged. This paper uses a multidimensional investment framework to investigate the oral participation of one group of foreign language learners within their English for academic purposes (EAP) classroom at an EMI university in Hong Kong. Drawing on data from interviews, classroom observations, audiovisual recordings of classroom interaction, and documentary analysis, this paper argues that the successful integration of language and content teaching should include an appreciation of the institutional forces that constrain and enable learners' oral investment, how learners deploy a variety of knowledge, skills and understandings in support of this investment, and the degree of freedom learners enjoy in shaping the processes and products of their investments. The implications of this research for classroom practices are explored.
[Copyright © 2008 John Benjamins Publishing Company.]

This paper examines how Hong Kong has developed from a diglossic society, where the relationship between English and Chinese were largely in complementary distribution to each other, into a bilingual society, where there is a proliferation of mixed codes, involving a continuum of language use from “high” Cantonese and English to “low” Cantonese with code switching. Against this background, the Government’s recently promulgated mandatory language policy on the medium of instruction in secondary schools is examined. Though the obvious purpose of this policy is to improve the credibility and prestige of mother tongue education, it has the effect of creating a set of elite monolingual English medium schools. Whether these will be able to fully serve the needs of a bilingual society is discussed, especially as Putonghua and High Cantonese are increasingly used in the domains of government and higher education, and a variety of mixed codes and modes used in other social and domestic domains. The paper concludes with a preliminary examination into possible directions in research into the development of a bilingual teaching code, which is genre and domain sensitive and responsive to student needs.
[Copyright © 2000 International Association for Intercultural Communication Studies.]

Language in its broad sense refers to a message system communicated from one to another. It is not uncommon for teachers to teach with a specific kind of language to pupils, which creates unequal relations of power, particularly between teachers and pupils in classroom context. In turn, language itself becomes a discourse including the ways teachers speak during PE lessons. This study investigates the language used by two student teachers in PE lessons during field experience in a primary school in Hong Kong. The PE lessons conducted by the participants were video taped and analysed in the aspects of context, teaching process, and most of all, the language used during the lessons. Results indicate that the participants used language to teach and control pupils learning and discipline consciously and unconsciously. As student teachers, their teaching behaviour and performance were much influenced by the school traditions, such as routine training. However, through languages during the process of teaching, they exercised power and control over their pupils on thinking and ways of problem solving. Hidden curriculum such as sexism also existed unconsciously as another discourse in the lessons.

School teachers, in the move of educational assessment reform in Hong Kong, are currently developing their professional competence on making a good use of assessment to enhance their own teaching. Both groups of school teachers and teacher educators are concerned with the issue about how to make sense of assessment data and to transform them into feedback useful to classroom instruction. This research seeks to understand the kinds of protocols of assessment data school teachers perceived as practical information to become useful feedback to their teaching. We conducted 2 types of protocols using different analysis methods of assessment data (that is, basic item analysis and Rasch model) to represent primary and secondary students' responses to objective test items assessing the competency of reading comprehension of Chinese literatures. We presented the protocols to primary and secondary school teachers who are teaching Chinese language subject in Hong Kong. After demonstrations, we interviewed the groups to understand their perceptions on the protocols. Results shows that teachers most value assessment data which can help in identifying students' strength and weakness, assuring test item quality, stimulating reflection on their teaching practice, and turns out to become the foundation for rebuilding their classroom instruction.