With the rise of multilingualism and the use of a local variety of English in Hong Kong, the current article proposes a framework for EMI teacher training for university teachers ("WEMTT-Framework") to expose them not only to a theory of World Englishes but also a practicum of teaching in multilingual settings. Even though Hong Kong has been regarded as a trilingual (Cantonese-English-Mandarin) city where English is taught as a second language, the EMI teaching in Hong Kong is still highly exonormative-oriented. With an increasing number of studies revealing the possibility of EMI teaching with the help of multilingual and World Englishes elements, the current paper also explores how World Englishes and multilingualism help in the present EMI teaching environment. The framework and the discussion are not only applicable to Hong Kong but also places with similar multilingual settings, thus expanding to many Asian cities with colonial backgrounds. The paper ends with a call for action from educators and researchers to work on the implementation of teacher training and carry out further studies in different settings. Copyright © 2023 Language Institute, Thammasat University.

Research Findings: The present study examined the relation between socioeconomic status (SES) and Chinese children’s development of English as a second language in Hong Kong, and whether the home literacy environment (HLE) was an important mediator. Participants were 237 children (110 girls, Mage = 47.38 months, SDage = 3.66) and one of their caregivers. Children were assessed on phonological awareness, receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, and letter knowledge. Information on HLE (i.e. shared reading, extratextual talk, direct teaching, play and media-based activities, and literacy resources) was obtained via a caregiver questionnaire. Findings revealed significant SES differences in all aspects of HLE, as well as in children’s English receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, and letter knowledge. HLE was differentially related to children’s English skills, suggesting the mediating effect of HLE in the relation between SES and Chinese children’s English skills. Practice or Policy: Findings from this study highlight the features of HLE that can best support children’s second language development. The results can also inform the design of family interventions and policies aimed at reducing educational disparities. Copyright © 2023 Taylor & Francis.

This essay emerges from an ongoing conversation between us while collaborating on various projects that have explored the role that English plays in people's lives. One of us is an English teacher educator from Australia, the other an EFL educator from Iran now working in Hong Kong. Our conversation prompted us to reflect on English as a medium of communication between us that has enabled us to transcend the division between so-called native speakers and those who speak English as an additional language, without denying the differences between us. To take our conversation further, we set each other the task of writing an autobiographical vignette to inquire into how the English language has variously shaped our sense of self and our relationships with others. We thereby attempt to re-envision English as a relational and historically situated phenomenon in order to think again about our common project as English language educators. Copyright © 2023 Taylor & Francis.

This study examined proficiency levels and attitudes of main languages in use among ethnic minority students in Hong Kong. We surveyed 260 students from primary and secondary schools with English as the medium of instruction. They were multilingual speakers who were proficient in spoken English and Cantonese. Our results revealed asymmetric and correlated proficiency levels including in the students' native languages (L1s). Their multilingual proficiencies were also affected by factors such as age variables and associated with aspects of L1 attitudes. Our key finding corroborated previous research claims that mastery of multiple languages could allow ethnic minority students to construct a more powerful multilingual and multicultural identity. Copyright © 2023 Routledge.

Against the backdrop of internationalisation of education and the emergence of English as a global language, medium of instruction (MOI) has long been a controversial issue globally. The present study examined the relationships between secondary-level MOI (English, EMI; Chinese, CMI) and learners' tertiary-level academic achievement and perceptions. 434 tertiary-level business, science, and social science students in Hong Kong completed a survey and 18 of them also attended an interview. An overall significant difference was found in tertiary-level academic achievement between the EMI and CMI students. Significant differences were also found in their self-rated performance in and preferences for some but not all kinds of assessments. When analysed by tertiary-level disciplines, business students showed no differences while science students showed some, and social science students showed the greatest differences between the CMI and EMI groups. The interviewees highlighted academic and psychological challenges facing CMI students. Implications for educators and researchers are discussed. Copyright © 2023 Taylor & Francis.

This paper studies the identity dilemmas of a teacher negotiating the tensions underpinning the transformations in the language profile of a Hong Kong primary school. Using a rigorous triangulation of written journals and in-depth interviews, the study reconstructs a case narrative personified as “Lily”, an English language teacher at “Lexis Elementary”, a school that previously struggled with low student enrolments. As a solution, the school now enrols students from Mainland China, where the spoken language is Mandarin rather than Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong. Resulting tensions arose because of transformations in the school’s language profile. Lily constructs the language terrain she negotiates in her interactions with cross-border Mainland Chinese and local Hong Kong parents and students, and her responses to interactions among students. This paper provides original conceptual tools to explain complex “born-again” sentiments that trigger people to act in reverse against the stipulated conditions of the powerful. The concept of “born-again reversals” connects to global literature on resistance against “language learning for economic benefits”. Insights from this study reconcile theoretical debates on using economic power as soft power, providing teachers with the conceptual tools to understand the identity dilemmas they experience with language planning initiatives worldwide. Copyright © 2023 National Institute of Education, Singapore.

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is characterized by using students’ additional language (L2) as the medium of instruction of non-language content subjects. In recent decades, this type of program has been gaining worldwide popularity, especially in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) contexts, because of the assumption that it can facilitate L2 learning. However, this assumption may not be realized in many classrooms in EFL contexts, where both teachers and students are often not well-prepared to cope with the heavy linguistic demands to learn content and language simultaneously. Owing to a combination of sociopolitical and socioeconomic forces, Hong Kong has a rather long history of practicing some form of CLIL in secondary schools, in the form of English-medium instruction (EMI) education. Following some recent changes in the government’s medium of instruction policies, there are different models and practices of EMI in Hong Kong schools to accommodate students with different English proficiency levels and also the expectations of different stakeholders. This chapter will illustrate these different models and practices and discuss their implications and challenges for English language learning, content learning, and teacher education. Copyright © 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Critical thinking is believed to be an essential skill for 21st century survival and therefore has been widely promoted in education. In Hong Kong, critical thinking is one of nine generic skills to be developed across all subjects, including English. How students do critical thinking in ESL, which is seldom used outside school and yet holds high social value, has, however, been underresearched. This article is concerned with how some low-English-proficiency senior secondary students in Hong Kong conducted critical talk in English. The study specifically investigates how the students used English to express ideas that were first developed in Cantonese (the students' first language). Based on a discourse analysis of the criticality and elaborateness of the Cantonese and English utterances of one group of students, the authors discuss findings that reveal a significant contrast between the students' more elaborated discourse in Cantonese and a restricted discourse in English characterised by reduced content and limited lexicogrammatical structures. The findings call for more attention to the impacts of linguistic proficiencies on critical thinking performance of ESL learners and to how the communicative gaps in critical literate talk revealed in ESL learners' first and second languages can be gradually reduced.